Seawolf End Game (5 page)

“You fellas planned this, didn’t you?” Terry asked Gibbs who was sipping a cosmopolitan.

Gibbs replied with a thin smile.

“Was it your idea, or did the XO put you up to it?” Terry asked the tightlipped petty officer.

“She needed a break,” Gibbs admitted, “and COB figured we could keep her out of trouble.”

It made perfect sense. It was no secret that Gibbs had adopted Kristen as one of his favorites, and there was no chance he would allow too much harm to come to her. The SEALs appeared to have the situation well in hand and would prevent any would be suitor interfering with her letting her hair down, and—Terry admitted—if anyone needed to relax, it was Kristen.

After about twenty minutes, Hoover returned to the table to finish his beer, but he kept his eyes on Hamilton and Kristen who remained on the dance floor.

Terry watched them dancing. Her normally perfect coiffure had come loose, and her hair now seemed alive as it flowed about her, creating an intoxicating image as she moved with the music. The alcohol, as the SEALs intended, had relaxed her. “Wow,” he murmured, “I wouldn’t have believed it.” Her normal stoic and cold façade had disintegrated as she let the music take her.

“What do you mean, Lieutenant?” Hoover asked. The pretty-boy SEAL was seated across the table next to Gibbs.

Terry wasn’t sure how to phrase it, but said, “She just always acts so prim and proper. You know, totally in control…”

“You can’t judge a book by its cover, Lieutenant,” Gibbs reminded Terry.

Terry looked over at the two men. They were both looking back at him with amused expressions. Again Terry had the feeling he was missing something, then Gibbs looked at Hoover oddly and said, “Isn’t that right?”

Hoover nodded with the same whimsical smile. “That’s right.” With that, the two men stood and joined Hamilton and Kristen on the dance floor.

Terry watched her, as an unfamiliar uneasiness grew inside of him. He couldn’t help but reconsider his entire opinion of Kristen as she danced with the three men. Until that moment, she’d had the personality of a mannequin, always in complete control. But now he realized the woman he saw everyday while on board the
Seawolf
with her fastidious attention to every conceivable detail and annoying habit of being nearly perfect at everything, came with a price. He’d thought Kristen had been just naturally hard working and socially introverted, but now realized the rigidness, the stoic nature, the perfection came with a terrible price he’d never considered. But as he watched her dancing and saw her move with reckless abandon—unchained from the expectations of the world around her—he saw the free spirit she truly wanted to be.

He swallowed hard, feeling a strange desire like he’d never known before.

Kristen awoke and her first thought was that someone was mining for gold in her skull with a pickaxe. She slowly opened her eyes. The overhead was spinning. She closed her eyes and groaned as realization struck her about what she’d allowed to happen. She and alcohol had never been a good mix, so she tried to avoid it. But the SEALs had gotten her to drink, and after her third hurricane the night had become a blur.

“Oh, no,” she groaned.

Her hand managed to turn off the blaring alarm clock beside her pillow. She then lay for a few moments, willing her pounding headache away. But it seemed a permanent feature now. Slowly, she climbed from her bunk and gripped the edge of it to steady herself, wondering how she could possibly make it to her division’s morning muster without everyone realizing she was nursing a raging hangover. She moved slowly, knowing she had to get a shower before getting dressed.

She looked down and saw she was still dressed in her liberty clothes from the previous evening. The last thing she clearly remembered was being around the dinner table in the restaurant and laughing about how she’d tried to calm Dr. Dar-Hyun by speaking English. After that, it was all a bit hazy.

Kristen made it to Brodie’s cabin, thanking God he was not in. Stumbling into the head, she turned on the red light to avoid the bright white light hitting her eyes. She knew she was going to vomit and went ahead and got it over with immediately before stripping down and stepping into the shower. She stuck her head under the water, turning it down until it was so cold she was certain ice cubes might shoot out of the showerhead.

She let the water run over her for a good ten minutes. It helped to clear her head, as she tried to remember the events of the evening. She didn’t even recall making it back to the boat and wondered how they’d gotten her aboard. The possibility she’d been carried aboard like a sack of potatoes over Hoover’s shoulder was too depressing to think about. The entire crew would know about it by now, and she cursed herself for being a fool. She dried off, stepped out of the shower, and began dressing. But, as she pulled on her underwear, she noticed something odd reflecting in the mirror.

“Oh, shit!” she swore and clicked on the white light frantically. “No, guys. Please!” she pleaded. She turned her left shoulder to the mirror and saw, in the middle of her shoulder blade, a trident tattoo. “Oh, come on!” Kristen said in disbelief. “Please tell me that’s not real ink.”

Kristen, now feeling worse than before she’d taken the shower, dressed and then made her way to the deck for morning muster. She hardly noticed the unusual quietness permeating the submarine, more concerned about the very real possibility of throwing up in front of her division than why it was so quiet on board.

She came up on deck, expecting to see the crew lined up for muster, but the aft deck was empty. Other than a handful of men on watch, the crew was nowhere to be seen. She glanced at her watch, seeing that she’d arrived a couple of minutes early, but by now the deck should be awash with men.

“Good morning, Lieutenant,” she heard COB’s deep voice from the sail. She looked up and saw him leaning against a railing.

“Good morning, COB,” she managed, feeling the need to vomit again.

“You’re up a bit earlier aren’t you, Miss?”

Kristen squinted her eyes and shielded them with her hand against the bright sun. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he replied with a knowing smile, “it is Sunday after all.”

Kristen closed her eyes tight and cursed her stupidity. On Sunday there were no muster formations, and the crew was normally on liberty. “I must have forgotten.”

“Maybe you should go back to bed, Lieutenant,” he suggested.

Kristen replied with a slight wave of her hand and went back below.

COB watched her disappear with an amused smile and then sat back down beside Brodie on the sail. COB had been awake when the SEALs brought Kristen back just after two in the morning. She’d clearly been intoxicated as she staggered aboard between Hamilton and Hoover, singing, and carrying her shoes. But at least, she’d been able to blow off some steam, which was what COB and Graves had hoped would happen. He took a sip of coffee and looked out at an aircraft carrier just visible on the horizon.

“Who’s coming in?” he asked Brodie.

“The
George Washington
and her battle group,” Brodie replied. “They’re due in today.”

COB raised a questioning eyebrow. “I thought they were in the Med?”

“They were,” Brodie answered. “Her entire battle group left the Med several weeks ago when all this nonsense in Korea seemed to be blowing up.”

“They must have burned out every bearing in their engineering plants getting here so fast.” COB had never been on a surface ship in his life but was aware, from his experiences on submarines, that every ship and piece of machinery had its limits. The Seawolf could sprint, potentially, for years at thirty-five knots off the power provided by her uranium pile, but this was only in theory. In reality, the turbines, the reduction gears, shaft seals, shaft bearings, and other equipment couldn’t handle such speeds for more than a short time before failures would occur. During their brief forty-knot-plus sprint to escape the torpedo a week earlier, the precision machinery in the engineering space had taken a beating, and the crew had spent every day since then replacing parts showing signs of either damage or—more often—metal fatigue from the stress placed on them.

“They didn’t want to miss the big show,” Brodie explained, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

COB watched his friend as Brodie continued to stare out to sea. COB knew something was troubling him. Up until recently, COB had chalked it up to this being Brodie’s last patrol. With each day gone there was one less day of command he would have. But recently, COB had become worried by Brodie’s increasing isolation. The two of them used to spend hours on the bridge when in port, sipping coffee and talking about nearly anything. But his captain had become increasingly moody, and their morning routine was no longer a given.

“How did she look?” Brodie asked, breaking the silence.

COB hadn’t expected the question. He knew Brodie took a personal interest in the welfare of everyone aboard, but assumed he’d already dismissed their hungover lieutenant. She was hardly the first young officer to return to ship drunk, and COB hoped she wouldn’t be the last. “She looks like she’s been out all night partying,” he replied honestly, watching Brodie out of the corner of his eyes as his friend exhaled a great flood of thoughts instead of speaking them as usual.

“I imagine she’ll finally get a good night sleep,” COB added, hoping to provoke Brodie to respond more than with a brief nod or a short quip. “But I think this might take more than just a one night’s drunk.” There was still no response from Brodie, and COB watched him for a few more seconds, not even certain his long-time friend was listening. “She hides it well, but I think she’s still pretty shaky.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Brodie asked pointedly.

“Maybe,” COB admitted. “But I think this might be a little more than some combat fatigue.”

“What’re you talking about?”

COB didn’t immediately answer, not certain if Kristen would appreciate him saying anything.

But Brodie insisted. “Spike?”

COB wished he’d kept his mouth shut. He shook his head in anger with himself. “Her father,” he said simply, “I knew him.”

“So?” Brodie asked. “What’s her father got to do with what she’s been through?”

“Maybe you should ask her.” COB felt like he was betraying an unspoken trust.

“I’m asking you.” An edge had returned to Brodie’s voice, something COB had heard a thousand times but never directed toward him. Brodie clearly didn’t understand what COB was driving at.

COB hesitated, cursing himself for not keeping his mouth shut. But he’d never held anything from Brodie before, even though he hated revealing what he knew of Kristen’s past. She was one of the two finest Nubs he’d ever seen. Brodie had been the other.

“Spike?” Brodie pressed in the direct and special way only he could.

COB lowered his voice and then said softly, “Her father and I served together on the
Memphis
nearly twenty years ago.”

COB saw that Brodie, who’d been preoccupied all morning, was now listening intently. COB again glanced about the sail to make certain he wasn’t being overheard by someone who’d climbed up without his knowledge. “I didn’t know him well. I was a junior petty officer in engineering, and he was the Sonar Chief.” COB hesitated again, feeling he’d already said too much. “Sir, maybe you should talk to her about this.”

“Dammit, Spike,” Brodie demanded harshly, “what happened?”

COB looked at Brodie with a hint of surprise, not accustomed to Brodie displaying such emotion. “All right,” COB relented. “We were in New London, just back from a patrol. One morning her father wasn’t in formation,” he explained uncomfortably. “Well, like I said, I didn’t know him too well. I’d seen him around the boat, but we didn’t know one another…”

“What happened?” Brodie asked with a growing seriousness in his voice.

“The Chief of The Boat and a couple of petty officers from the sonar shack drove out to the apartment he had off base.” COB lowered his voice even more and leaned closer to Brodie and whispered, “They found him lying in his bathtub, still in uniform, with his brains splattered all over the fucking place.”

“He killed himself?” Brodie asked, the shock clear in his voice.

“Used an old twelve-gauge shotgun,” COB explained. “A sonar operator who was there described the scene. Blood was everywhere, like one of those Hollywood slasher films. But that’s not the worst of it…”

“Damn, Spike,” Brodie asked incredulously, “how the hell can it get any worse?”

COB pointed down into the hull of the
Seawolf.
“She was there with him,” he whispered. “She was only seven fucking years old and had spent the entire night trying to figure out how to put her father’s damn head back together.”

COB saw the realization on Brodie’s face. Kristen had seen a repeat of her own father’s death in the torpedo room when Vance had killed himself. Then, if that hadn’t been enough, she’d been involved in what had been a harrowing experience during the incursion into North Korea.

“That explains it,” he whispered.

But COB wasn’t certain they were thinking exactly the same thing. “That’s what I mean when I say I think you might want to talk to her,” he suggested. “You know… do that thing you do.” COB had seen Brodie help hundreds of troubled seamen get over things from bad childhood experiences to messy divorces. He knew that among Brodie’s many talents, his ability to handle his men and take care of them was his greatest strength.

“I’m not a psychiatrist, Spike,” Brodie told him abruptly.

“No shit,” COB replied. “But you’re the captain and…”

“I’ll have Jason talk to her,” he said flatly, his eyes turning back toward the sea.

“What?” COB asked incredulously, not quite sure he heard correctly. “I didn’t tell you this so you could hand it off to the fucking XO like some damn report to finish up,” COB said, growing angry with Brodie, something that seldom happened and always behind closed doors. “I told you this so you would help her.”

“The XO can handle it,” Brodie snapped curtly. “I’ve got a boat to run.”

“Since when do you turn your back on one of your people?” COB asked, hardly believing he was speaking to the man he’d served with for the better part of two decades.