Darkside

10

On Tuesday morning, Jim met Mike Carrick, the PWC utilities manager, at the Stribling Walk down ramp into the main tunnels. He’d asked the manager to bring along the keys to the Fort Severn tunnels. Above them, the sky was darkening fast with the approach of a spring thunderstorm. They hurried down the concrete steps and into the main tunnel just as the rain began. When they got down to the descending alcove leading to the big oak doors, Jim found a small crew already there. They had the left-hand door open. A battery of portable air handlers was doing a fresh-air exchange into the normally sealed tunnels.

“Gas-free engineering,” Carrick shouted above the roar of the Red Devil blowers. “No telling how much oxygen’s down there. Or how little.”

“How much longer?” Jim said.

As if they’d heard him, the crews switched off the blowers and began retrieving several feet of bulky air hose from the tunnels.

“They’ve given it thirty minutes of air exchange,” Carrick said. “Let them do their tests, and then you can go in.”

“Not coming with me?”

“Not on your life,” Carrick said. He stepped forward and tapped the top of the brick arch nearest to the doorway. A fine snowfall of masonry dust wafted down. “You want to go down there, be our guest. But I’ll require that you pull an air line with you for when it caves in.”

“ When? Is it really that bad?” Jim asked, eyeing the moldering brickwork.

“It might be, although we haven’t had a cave-in since the eastern gun gallery tunnel collapsed. But that was some years ago. Arches are Roman engineering. Pretty strong. But those are basically mud bricks, well over a hundred years old.”

The test engineer went into the left-hand tunnel for a distance of about thirty feet and tested the air for free oxygen and any explosive gases with his instruments. Then he backed out. “You want us to do the right-hand tunnel?”

Jim shook his head. “The map shows it’s a mirror image of the left-hand side. Is that correct?”

Carrick nodded, looking at his diagrams. “It ends up in a magazine that’s right under the front walls of Lejeune Hall,” he said. “The map doesn’t show it, but I think there’s a connector tunnel between the two branches. Probably caved in by now.”

“I’m only interested in this left-hand side,” Jim said.

“How come?” Carrick asked.

“I think some mids have been into it,” he said. “Can I have your site map?”

“Right here. Layout’s pretty simple. Two tunnels, parallel for two hundred feet. Then they branch left and right, respectively, into the magazine vaults. That’s where I think that cross tunnel is, but, like I said, it isn’t on the map.”

“Okay,” Jim said.

“From the magazines, there were two tunnels that kept going out to where the gun pits were. That would be under the landfill now, and they’ve collapsed. Sealed them with cement-block walls. The main tunnels are one level below where we’re standing right now. The magazines are one level below the main tunnels. Steel doors, no locks. Oh, and the left magazine is flooded, by the way. Okay so far?”

“Yep.”

“There’s no lights, no power down there. The air exchange may not have reached the magazine alcoves. You start getting dizzy, have trouble breathing, you back out.”

“Okay.”

“There’s a liquid manometer outside the main magazine chamber. If there’s water visible in the manometer, then that’s the level of the water in the magazine. Don’t open the doors.”

“Big magazines?”

“Big enough: fifty by fifty, arched dome, twenty-foot ceilings.”

“No ammo or guns, I take it?”

Carrick laughed. “Long gone. If there was powder down there, it would be marvelously unstable. No matches or flames down there, by the way-there could be methane. That Maglite is okay.”

“I’m having serious second thoughts,” Jim said.

“You want to quit now, no hard feelings.”

Jim took a deep breath, wondering if it was going to be his last. But he had to go. Those scratches on the lock had been deliberately obscured. Had to be a reason for that. Even if the magazine itself was flooded. He shook his head. “No, I have to take a look.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll have two guys stand by while you’re down there. They hear a rumble, they’ll start air into the hose and get the recovery crew in. Here’s your air hose, and here are those spare keys you requested.”

He handed Jim the antique iron keys, the tunnel diagrams, and the end of a reinforced air hose, which had a tiny sound-powered telephone wire wrapped around the outside. “The hose is graduated,” Carrick said. “If you get a cave-in, it’ll tell us how far into the tunnel you are. That there is a microphone where we can talk back and forth, assuming you survive it.”

Nobody was smirking, Jim realized. These guys were obviously taking the possibility of a cave-in seriously. “Don’t bother to bring the air hose out when you come back; we’ll use the cable reel to retrieve it. How long you going to be in there?”

“Half hour, max,” Jim said. “I want to make a quick tour, see what I see. I’ll back out as soon as possible.”

“You back out if you think the structure is giving way. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Run like a striped-assed ape.”

“I think you’re scaring me.”

“That’s the idea. And good luck.”

Jim took the end of the air hose in hand and went down the stone steps into the left-hand tunnel. Behind him, the PWC crew unreeled the hose for him. By the diagram, the right-hand tunnel led directly out toward what had been the original banks of Spa Creek, which in turn fed into the Colonial harbor of Annapolis. Subsequent landfills to expand the Academy grounds had long since buried the original shoreline, but Fort Severn’s foundations were supposedly still there, along with these underground facilities.

The left-hand tunnel, on the other hand, branched back toward Bancroft Hall. If their runner was using it, this would be the one. The diagrams might not be that accurate, so there could be a tie into the basements.

The Maglite threw bobbing shadows along the brick walls as he walked forward. The arched tunnel ceiling was barely an inch above his head, increasing the feeling that he was taking a walk in a burial vault. The air was musty, smelling of old lime. Tiny little avalanches of mortar dust trickled down from between the odd-shaped bricks in the side walls as his footfalls disturbed the silence. He shuddered when he realized the entire massive weight of Dahlgren Hall was pressing down on all this crumbling ancient brickwork right above his head.

The floor appeared to be hard-packed dirt until he scuffed it with his toe and uncovered more brickwork under an inch-thick layer of white dust. Mortar dust, he realized. Good deal. The joints between all the bricks were recessed at least a quarter inch. He thought about testing one to see if it was loose, then thought better of doing that. Hate to find out I’m right, he thought. He kept tugging on the air line until he reached the first intersection, about two hundred feet from the alcove entrance. One tunnel went left and sloped down. The other, presumably the gun pit tunnel, went straight ahead and then branched left. He stopped fifteen feet back from the intersection, squatted down on his heels, and examined the dust.

There were regular depressions in the fine dust. Not exactly footprints, but spaced at about the right intervals. He realized he should have come down here sooner. The mortar dust was the consistency of confectioners’ sugar, so it didn’t hold the definition of a footprint or the ridges of a sole or heel pattern. But the depressions in the dust were regular, about two feet apart. He put the Maglite down on the tunnel floor, but that didn’t help. Still no definition.

Just then he heard a low, ominous rumble echoing down the tunnel, and his heart jumped. But then he recognized it: thunder. The storm must be overhead. As he worked to control his breathing, there came another clap of thunder, louder and more pronounced. He shone the light back down the tunnel. The tiny metal bands that bundled the air hose and the phone cable winked back at him through a fine mist of falling masonry dust. A third thump of thunder, and the mist thickened momentarily. He swallowed and wondered if he ought not to give this shit up right now. But there had been thunderstorms before, and the tunnels were still standing. He decided to go on.

Then he realized that the intersection was actually a three-way junction. The left turn went down to the magazines. Straight ahead were the blocked-off gun pit tunnels. To the right was another oak door, smaller than the main entrance. He pushed on it, but it was locked. He tried the keys, and one worked the lock. This had to be the cross tunnel. He relocked it, turned around, and took the left turn down toward the magazines. The tunnel floor sloped down noticeably, and he wondered how far underground he was. He should be beyond the massive granite bulk of Dahlgren now, and approaching the right-hand edges of either the sixth or the eighth wing of Bancroft Hall. Or maybe even the tennis courts. He voted for the tennis courts. The air hose was getting much harder to pull, and he was tempted to leave it. The magazine doors were visible twenty feet away, framed by an arched alcove. It looked as if they were made of cast iron, not steel, with rivet heads visible in the harsh white light of the Maglite. There were wheels under the doors, and, based on iron semicircles embedded in the floor, they apparently swung outward against the alcove walls. He checked for more depressions in the dust, but they weren’t as obvious on the sloping floor of this tunnel.

When he reached the doors themselves, he found the manometer to one side. It was a thin vertical glass tube about four feet long and an inch in diameter. It was supported by a bracket at each end, and there were tiny brass valves above and below the brackets. Small pipes led through the masonry at top and bottom so that the water level in the tube would always match the water level inside the magazine. And there was definitely water, right up near the top of the manometer.

Okay, so much for that. Based on where the manometer was mounted, the magazine was flooded at least eight feet up from the bottom sill of the doors. So nobody could be in there. He’d have to ask the PWC manager if the water level varied, but it probably didn’t. The magazines were simply sealed underground chambers that had been abandoned for over a hundred years. Okay, then what were those depressions? Then it hit him: They said they inspected the tunnels every five years or so. Those were the footprints of the last inspection team. There had been nothing to disturb them once the men had backed out. Another rumble of thunder echoed down the tunnels. More mortar dust. He imagined he felt the earth itself shifting under his feet. Then the steel doors in front of him moved.

Again he froze. Had he imagined it? He hadn’t actually seen them move, but he had heard them stir on their ancient iron rollers. A trick of the acoustics down here. He waited, and then remembered to breathe. He stared at the doors. Another boom of thunder, the sensation of movement, a slight pressure in his ears, and, yes, by God, the door moved. Less than a fraction of an inch. Air pressure. Somehow, the storm was modulating the air pressure down here, and the doors, being at the end of a tunnel, were being affected. While his logical brain worked that out, his lizard brain was beginning to sound a repeating refrain: Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Great damned idea, he thought, and, dropping the air hose, he started back up the tunnel.

Another thump and boom from the storm up above, and the answering veil of mortar dust streamed out of the arched ceiling.

I will not run. I will walk. If I run, my footfalls could disturb the brickwork even more.

I will not run.

But I can trot. Or do a fast shuffle, maybe?

And he did, keeping his footfalls minimized, trying not to make any big vibrations, wiping the perspiration off his face and realizing it was gritty, fixing his eyes on the beam of white light ahead of him as he followed it back up to the intersection. He was terribly aware of the tunnel roof right above his head, and he stepped out and picked up the pace. Eighty feet from the entrance, he heard a crack from the brickwork, somewhere behind him. I will not run. I will not run.

A moment later, he bounded up the steps past the two crewmen who were watching with knowing grins. A boom of thunder let go that sounded as if it had gone off down here in the main tunnel, but the sound was obviously just coming down from the various gratings in all its beautiful fury.

“All done today?” the older of the PWC guys asked him as the other one began to crank on the reel of the air hose. “Look a little white around the gills.”

Jim wiped his face and saw that his entire hand was white. “That thunder was starting to move shit around down there. Scared my ass.”

“Yeah, it does that. Compresses the air. You were at the end of the pipe. It’s interesting shit.”

“That’s one word for it,” Jim said, and all three laughed.

“At least you didn’t rabbit. We had the PWC officer himself back there, Captain Johnson? Same thing happened. He damn near went over the crew’s backs to get out of there.”

“Wasn’t like I didn’t want to,” Jim said. “I was afraid of making vibrations.”

“You ought to try it when there’s a storm out on the bay and we get big waves. The waves hit the seawall out on Farragut Field. That’s all packed landfill, you know, rammed earth. Transmits the vibrations back into the Fort Severn foundations. That’s really interesting. Sure you don’t wanna go down this other tunnel?”

Another boom of thunder bellowed down the concrete walls. “All the same to you,” said Jim, and the guy nodded. Jim asked if he could help with the cable reel, but they thanked him and said no. Then he asked why PWC didn’t just fill these death traps in.

“Money,” the man said. “They shoulda done it a hundred years ago, but there you are. Army then, you know. Army does everything half-ass.”

Jim thanked them again and headed for the surface, forcing himself to walk through the tunnel at a normal pace. When he reached the Stribling Walk access doors, he could hear rain streaming down the steps. There was a more pronounced gurgle under the steel deck plates out in the middle of the tunnel floor. He decided to wait it out.

So what had he learned? That he was scared of underground chambers. Okay. But why had there been scratches on the lock, and why had they been covered up? His runner take a tour one night and have the same reaction? He should have gone down that other tunnel while it was open. He knew they wouldn’t open it again anytime soon. But there was just no way. When that huge damned door moved, it had taken all his self-control not to drop that air hose and just bolt.

A small tingle at the back of his brain told him he was missing something here. He tried to think. Shit. He realized he should go back down there right now and explore that second tunnel. He wouldn’t get another chance unless some really hard evidence precipitated opening up and gas-freeing the complex again.

Another clap of thunder blasted seemingly right above his head, rattling the steel door and the gratings above. He felt the pressure in his ears and thought he saw the overhead lights sway.

Go back down there? Screw that noise.

Branner called Jim after lunch and asked if he could come up to the NCIS office to meet someone. There had been a staff meeting called for 1400, which Jim was more than pleased to skip, so he said he’d be right over. There was still intense media pressure relating to the Dell case, and the commandant was all over the Public Affairs office to control the spin. The Yard police had caught a television crew from CBS national news hawking the Nimitz Library steps, trying for interviews with midshipmen. The mids had turned them in immediately.

“Mr. Hall, this is Mr. Harry Chang,” Branner said, making introductions in the conference room. “Mr. Chang, this is Mr. Jim Hall, Naval Academy security officer.”

Jim almost did a double take. Harry Chang appeared to be a clone of Mao Tse-tung. The same broad, round face, thickset body, thinning grayish black hair, and black eyes gleaming with wily intelligence. He grinned when he saw the look on Jim’s face. “Scary, isn’t it?” he said, shaking hands.

“Mr. Chairman” was all Jim could manage, and Chang laughed out loud. “See?” he said to Branner. Then to Jim: “I understand you were a Marine?”

“Yes, that’s right,” he said, wondering if he was going to get another query about what he was doing here in the security officer job.

“I was, too,” Chang said, gesturing for everyone to sit down. “Enlisted. Intel specialist. Four years. Saw some interesting times in Nam. But that was thirty years ago or thereabouts. I joined up with NCIS when it was still called NIS.”

“Mr. Chang is from headquarters,” Branner said. “He’s a homicide specialist. Actually, I should say he is the homicide specialist.”

“Actually, I happened to be the homicide specialist who zigged instead of zagged when Agent Branner called in yesterday,” Chang said with an easy smile. “Our senior directing staff told me to butt in.”

“I briefed him on what we’ve done up to now,” Branner said. Jim noted her choice of “we” and wondered how that sat with the senior NCIS people.

“She said you proposed an interesting theory of the case, Mr. Hall,” Chang said. “Could I hear it in your own words?”

Apparently, his participation in the NCIS investigation didn’t bother their headquarters people. Jim nodded and went through it again, saying that maybe what had happened to Dell was incidental to something aimed at Midshipman Markham. Chang stared at him the whole time he was talking. His expression revealed absolutely nothing.

“As Agent Branner here observed,” Jim concluded, “that would mean we might be dealing with a sociopath, if not a psychopath. A midshipman, in all probability.”

“A psychopath at the Naval Academy,” Chang said. “That raises all sorts of interesting problems, does it not?”

“Got that right,” Jim said. “The Dell case. The system here. The admissions process. If I’m right, it’s not going to be a very popular theory.”

Chang nodded emphatically. “Our brief,” he said, “is to pull the string on the possibility that what happened to Midshipman Brian Dell was a homicide. The emphasis coming from our overseers is to dis prove homicide. Then maybe the current media circus can be damped down somewhat.”

“That’s coming from the supe?”

“That’s coming from the SecNav. Or so I’ve been told.”

Jim considered this news. If the SecNav’s office was involved in this case, then the stakes were considerably higher than he had thought. “Hell, it’s just a theory,” he said.

“And now you’re feeling like the messenger who’s set himself up for a shooting,” Chang replied.

“My Marine experience showing,” Jim said. “But now that you’re here, maybe the two of you can develop an alternate theory. I’ll be more than happy to butt out, if that’s what you want.”

Chang was smiling again. “You said he was smart, Agent Branner. But actually,” he said, turning to Jim, “I’d like you to stay connected, if you can. I should say we’d like you to stay connected. My boss’s bottom line is that a midshipman’s dead; go find out what happened.”

“That’s pretty straightforward,” Jim said.

“And having you involved on an informal basis has one other advantage, Mr. Hall. Can I assume you are back-briefing the commandant on what NCIS is doing?”

Jim colored. They’d known all along? Branner was studying the edge of the table, not looking at him. “Yes, of course,” he admitted. “We have to protect the NCIS investigation from any charges of command influence, which is probably why he chose me.”

“Exactly,” Chang said. “Thanks for not bullshitting me. And that suits us, too. We have to strike a balance here. We’ll focus on finding out what happened to Brian Dell. The Academy will focus on mitigating any damage to the institution, the system, as everyone seems to call it, from what comes out of our investigation. Tell me, you find this investigation interesting, Mr. Hall?”

Jim was somewhat thrown off balance by Chang’s quick shifts in directions. “I do,” he replied.

“Okay. Here’s our deal: You stay involved. According to Agent Branner here, you’ve been very helpful, in terms of insight into the midshipman culture. You can tell your bosses whatever you want to about what we’re doing. We ask for only one thing: If you sense that they are going to get in the way of finding out the truth of what happened here, you give us warning.”

Jim sat back in his chair. Mr. Harry Chang was being extraordinarily straight with him. And this was what Liz had been talking about, too. But where did his own loyalties lie? Branner’s request for his help had made it possible for him to do what the dant had asked him to do, and he’d pocketed the advantage. He could still do that. As to their one condition-he would not want to be part of anything that smacked of cover-up or a railroading. He’d had enough of that crap in the Corps. It had cost him any chance at a career. But then he remembered what else Liz DeWinter had said.

“Okay,” he said. “With the proviso that if I think I’m being used by NCIS, I back out and we part as friends.”

“‘Used by NCIS’?” Chang asked. “How?”

“Let’s say, NCIS headquarters and the superintendent strike some kind of deal to produce the required right answer, with me being inside the investigation so that later I could corroborate that it all looked like the real deal to me.”

“Wow,” Chang said. “You overestimate NCIS headquarters. Nobody up there is that clever.”

“There are some folks down here who are,” Jim said, thinking of the dant, although he actually didn’t think Admiral McDonald would play a game like that.

“Fine,” Chang said. “That’s okay by us. We could always flood the problem with a special team brought in from a larger NCIS office, but that would hurt Agent Branner’s feelings. And none of us wants to be on her shit list.” He was smiling as he said it, but the expression on Branner’s face was not one of amusement.

“Back to your theory of the case,” Branner said. “Have you thought of a way to explore that?”

“Possibly,” Jim said. “During the interview with Markham, I got the impression she’s hiding something. Not something she did, but something she knows. I’ve also spoken with her lawyer, who came to see me last night, by the way.”

“She did?” Branner looked truly surprised.

“Yeah, I meant to tell you. She’d learned that I was there again for the Markham interview. She just dropped by at the marina to ask why. I tried to do a little soft-shoe routine, but she brought up the business of command influence.”

Chang frowned and glanced over at Branner. “How’d you answer that?” she asked.

“I told her I was there to interpret midshipmanspeak for Agent Branner here. She seemed to buy that. Anyway, I asked her if she thought her client was telling her the whole truth and nothing but. She gave me the impression that the answer was no.”

“Is Markham being deceptive, or just a mid dealing with a civilian?” Branner asked.

“Well, there you go,” Jim said. “I guess that’s what I’m here for-to make that interpretation. As someone who’s lived through the Bancroft Hall experience, I think she was acting out of character for a midshipman the other afternoon.”

“And what’s that got to do with your theory?” Chang asked.

“Let’s say Dell’s death was not an accident. I have to ask myself, What could Markham have done that would make another mid kill Brian Dell and then try to pin it on her?”

“She’s a good-looking young woman,” Branner said. “She turned somebody down?”

“The boy-girl thing down here that intense?” Chang asked. “I mean, would a normal guy go to these lengths to get back at someone for that?”

“I’m thinking this isn’t a normal guy,” Jim said. He could see from Chang’s expression that he seemed to be having trouble with this logic. And Jim suddenly had the feeling he was missing something crucial, as well. “I know,” he said. “This is a reach. It’s entirely out of character for the Naval Academy and the kind of people who want to come here. But I’ve met Markham a couple times now, and I simply can’t feature her throwing Brian Dell off the roof, if that indeed is what happened.”

“Well, that’s something you could help us with, Harry,” Branner said. “Get the forensics people to sharpen up the focus of their report. One way or another. I think we’re both struggling with the concept of murder at the Naval Academy.”

“And even more so with the idea that somebody did this to Dell simply to destroy Markham,” Jim said. “I could just be all wrong, you know.”

“I sure as hell hope so, Mr. Hall,” Chang said. “But from what Agent Branner here tells me of the clothes evidence, it does seem a little too pat for my tastes. Could a psychopath get into the Academy? And if he got in, wouldn’t they catch him?”

“We’ve talked about this,” Jim said. “If he got through the admissions process, he’d have to lead a totally double life. Look like one thing but think and do shit totally out of character for a midshipman.” Then it hit him: a double life-like running the tunnels at night, dressing up like a vampire, hanging out with the Goth crowd, and beating the shit out of drunks out in town. And almost beating an NCIS agent to death. The thought struck him like a bucket of water in the face. Branner saw it.

“What?” she asked.

Jim hesitated. If he told Chang what he’d just thought of, NCIS would absolutely bring an army down, if only because of Bagger. And he, Jim Hall, would then be the proximate cause of doubling the scandal already whirling around the Dell matter. No way, Jose. He decided to run it by Branner, but only after Chang left.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I had a thought, but it’s too outlandish. But I did have an idea of how we might test my theory. I think we need to invoke the Academy’s honor system. The part about knowledge, as opposed to conduct.”

“Meaning what, specifically?”

“If someone is caught lying, cheating, or stealing, he or she is down for an honor offense. Punishment can range from dismissal to lots and lots of demerits. But let’s suppose a mid goes back to his room and finds his roommate looking at a copy of tomorrow’s final math exam, which someone else has filched and put on the intranet. He goes, ‘What the hell?’ The roomie says, ‘Hey, dude, you don’t want a look at this? Go get a Coke somewhere. I’m failing math and I need this Gouge.’ By the code, that mid is expected to go down to the batt office and drop a dime to the math department. They immediately ask, ‘How do you know the exam’s loose?’ The mid says, ‘I saw my roommate going through it on his PC.’ The roommate goes down in flames, and an investigation is launched to see who else got a look.”

“And what happens to the first guy?” Chang asked.

“Well, there you are. He played by the rules. The guilty roomie, however, is probably gonna tell everyone else who goes down that it was his roommate who dropped the dime. He’s managed to bilge a hundred of his classmates, and chances are he will experience what the Brits used to call ‘Coventry.’”

“He’ll be ostracized.”

“Yeah, I think so. Or maybe worse. But the thing is, that’s an example of knowledge of a potential honor offense. You swear not to lie, cheat, or steal. That mid’s got a tough decision to make.”

“So what would really happen?” Branner asked.

“That really happens,” Jim said. “Or at least it did once. But the other way is for the mid to make an anonymous phone call or send an E-mail to the math department, letting them know the exam has been blown. That way, the opportunity to cheat is excised, and supposedly no one will get directly burned.”

“‘Supposedly’?” Chang asked.

Jim smiled. “Yeah, well, that’s where the system would come into play, depending on the commandant. If the math department can corroborate that, yes, the exam was compromised, and, yes, it looks like a copy got out on the Brigade intranet, the administration would then turn around and announce at noon meal formation that anyone who saw the exam is to take one step forward. Now you have a real honor system dilemma. It’s clear that somebody must have seen the exam, because of the anonymous phone call. But they’ve now put the mids who did see the exam in danger of two honor offenses: one for looking at the exam, one for not reporting that it had been compromised.”

“What happens if nobody steps forward?”

“I think they’d ask each one individually: ‘Did you see a copy of the math exam on the intranet last night?’ If he says no, and they can later prove that, yes, he or someone using his PC did access that file, he’s expelled for three honor offenses: looking at a compromised exam, not reporting the situation, lying when they asked the question. If he answers, yes, he did, he may or may not get expelled-probably not, since he didn’t add a third honor offense to the first two.”

“Consequences,” Branner murmured.

“You play with the honor system, you play with fire,” Jim said. “And that’s true right up to graduation eve.”

Chang raised a finger. “Are you saying that if they don’t ask in the first place, he doesn’t have to tell?”

“I’m saying that if they don’t ask, he’s not likely to tell. He was always required to tell.”

“Damn. That’s a lot for a twenty-year-old to handle, what with his entire Academy career riding on the answer.”

“Sure as shit is, which brings me back to Markham: She’s a senior, homing in on graduation and her new career. If no one asks, I think it’s likely she is not going to tell. I’m new at this investigation business, but I think we need to find something to ask about, something that presents her with a clear honor situation. If she’s the straight-arrow type everyone says she is, that might break this thing open.”

“And if you’re wrong?” Chang asked.

“Then I’m wrong,” Jim said. “Been there a couple of times, too.”

“Haven’t we all,” murmured Harry Chang.

The phone rang in Branner’s office. She got up to go take the call, striding out of the room at her customary thirty knots. Chang got up to get them some coffee. They could hear Branner raising hell with someone.

“She’s a pistol,” Jim said.

“On full auto, most of the time,” Chang said. “But she’s pretty good at what she does. That’s why she’s in charge down here.”

“I have to ask,” Jim said, but Chang waved him off.

“I don’t know,” he said. “We all call her Special Agent. Safer that way, from what I gather.”

Jim laughed. Branner had the entire NCIS wondering what the hell her first name was? “How’s Bagger Thompson doing?” he asked. Branner was shouting now.

“Fair, just fair. They say he’ll pull out of it, but you never know with head injuries. The head doc says it’s unknowable. Let me ask you one.”

“Shoot.”

“Back there when you looked like you saw a ghost. What was that all about?”

Jim gazed into Chang’s black eyes, which suddenly seemed implacable. “Let me kick it around with Branner,” he said. “If she thinks you ought to hear it, I’ll leave it up to her.”

The older agent continued to look at Jim, who got the sudden impression that Mr. Harry Chang would be one tough bastard on the other side of an interview table. Then Chang smiled.

“Mr. Hall, haven’t you wondered why there hasn’t been a horde of agents down here after the Bagger thing?”

“Yes, I have.”

“And Branner has told you, ‘This is my turf, and I don’t want any damn horde. I want this prick all to myself.’ Right?”

“Right.”

“Well, there are two possible answers to your question, especially when we’re talking about a prickly pear like Branner. One is that Branner’s a really clever lady, and we’re all asleep at the switch up in the Navy Yard.”

“Possible, but now that you put it that way, not likely.”

“Not likely, Mr. Hall. No. So what’s the other possibility?”

Jim hesitated, although he thought he knew the answer. “Rope,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Hall. Rope. Let Branner run with this hairball. Give her lots and lots of rope. That way-”

“Okay, I understand,” Jim said. “Palace games. But you didn’t see what I saw-the day Brian Dell fell out of the sky. In my book, that trivializes any palace games.”

Chang just stared at him. Then Branner came back. She dropped into her chair with a small bang. “Piece of shit maintenance pool,” she growled. Chang flashed a warning glance at Jim and stood up. “I’m going back to the Navy Yard,” he said. “For now, I’m your point of contact on this matter, Agent Branner. I don’t have to tell you that time is of the essence.”

“I think we already know that,” she said briskly. “And you’re going to put a boot up the forensic lab’s ass for me, right?”

“Not in so many words, but yes,” said Harry Chang with a wry grin. He looked over at Jim, and the smile lost some of its warmth.

Branner plopped down at the conference table after escorting Harry Chang out to the front door. “I heard Harry say you saw a ghost. I caught it, too. Give.”

“We were talking about the possibility of a psychopath getting through the admissions filter. How he’d have to live a double life.”

“Yeah, and?”

“By day, he’d be Mr. Clean. Maybe super-gung ho. Hard-core, full bore. But by night, maybe he’d run the tunnels, do graffiti, go out in town, consort with the most anti-establishment crowd out there, those Goth freaks, and maybe, in his spare time-”

“Beat the shit out of drunks. And Bagger. Motherfuck! You think?”

“If our runner is a mid, then yes, it just might be.”

“Which would mean your theory of the Dell case goes from being off-the-wall to on the mark.”

“Not like I have any evidence, though,” he said, getting up to dump his coffee cup. His nerves were starting to jangle. He raised his eyebrows at Branner, but she shook her head. “I mean, all I know about this guy is that he’s game.” Then he told her about the tennis ball.

“You figure he knows who you are?”

“I figure he knows I’m someone in authority here at Canoe U. Specifically, no, not unless he figured out my cryptogram, Hall-Man-Chu.”

The phone rang back in Branner’s office again. She got up to get it, and Jim went to the whiteboard to lay out a list of what they did know about the runner. He was halfway through it when Branner came back in and punched a button on the speakerphone.

“Detective, I’ve got you on a speaker,” she said. “With me is Mr. Jim Hall, security officer here at the Academy. Mr. Hall, this is Detective Sorensen, who’s got some news. Go ahead, Detective.”

“Right,” Sorensen said. “As I was telling Agent Branner, we’ve got a missing persons report in from the college. One Hermione Natter. Remember her?”

“Yes,” Jim said. “The Goth girl we picked up in the tunnels.”

“That’s the one. You guys didn’t file any immediate charges, so we ROR’ed her. Well, now her faculty adviser is back to us, asking if we picked her up again, because she missed all her classes yesterday and her morning ones today.”

“Kids skip all the time,” Branner said.

“Yeah, but this adviser-name’s Evelyn Wallace-had our Hermione on a short tether since we picked her up. Supposed to report in at the end of each day kinda thing, plus no more all-night flights with the rest of the coven. Well, she didn’t show. Adviser asked around, found out she’d gone AWOL.”

“She go home?” Jim asked.

“Pulled that string. Parents didn’t have a clue. In fact, didn’t know she’d been in trouble with the cops. Did know she was doing the Goth scene.”

“But they hadn’t heard from her.”

“That’s a negative. Now they’re all spun up. I told them to call Professor Wallace. She called back here, saying Hermione’s roommate hasn’t seen her for three days. The college cops are involved now, so we’re gonna have us a situation here, I think.”

“Is the roommate into the Goth scene, too?” Jim asked.

“Don’t know. Professor Wallace simply gave me the facts. Said the parents are coming down to Annapolis from D.C. this afternoon. They’re both civil servants, apparently.”

“Well, we don’t have her and haven’t seen her,” Branner said. “Are you gonna work it?”

“Unless I can find someone else to, yeah, I’ll work it. They’ll want to talk to you guys.”

“We’re available. And she’s just flat gone, huh?”

“Well, with that Goth crap, who knows? You know how they get, all into doom, death, despair, vampires and shit. Maybe she flew off to Transylvania for some OJT.”

Jim and Branner smiled. Then Jim remembered he hadn’t told the dant about catching the girl in the tunnel. “When you come to the Academy, come through me if you can,” Jim said. “I need to go up my tape so nobody gets surprised.”

“Better go now, then,” Sorensen said. “The only reason we saw her was because of you guys.”

“Will do,” Jim said, and gave the detective his office phone number. Sorensen thanked him and hung up.

“I’ve gotta get over to the admin building,” Jim said. “I told the Ops boss about the runner, but he didn’t want to go up the line with it because of the Dell incident. I don’t need the dant getting blindsided.”

“Okay, you do that. Then let’s meet and get going on Markham. I’m assuming this Natter bullshit won’t knock Dell off the top of the dant’s priority list.”

“How about this other problem, the runner? I’d planned to go back down tonight to see if he got my message, but he made it clear he already had. So now I’m gonna set up some backup with my guys and go after him tomorrow night.”

She thought about that. “If he’s tied into this Dell business, maybe sooner would be better. Get him, we might not need Markham.”

Jim shook his head. “My theory’s interesting, but hardly solid. We need Markham. I still think she’s the key to what happened to Brian Dell. I’ll call you from my office.”

Jim found the operations officer having an early lunch at his desk, the Washington Post spread out under his sandwich.

“Only time I ever get to read the damn paper,” he said. “What’s up?”

Jim told him about the developments with the missing girl, and that someone would be coming to see the Academy authorities soon.

“Oh, great,” Michaels groaned. “Just what we need-more bereft parents.”

“I need to back-brief the dant on where we are with the Dell case. I can bring him up to speed on this stuff, too.”

“He’s gonna ask why he didn’t hear about it before-the runner bit, I mean. And that’s my fault.”

“Actually, he did, at one of the first Dell meetings. Picking up the girl will be news. I did that. He won’t have time for getting pissed off.”

“He probably won’t have time to see you, either,” Michaels said, pulling out the executive calendar sheet. “He’s got a dry run for the Board of Visitors briefing. He’ll be with the academics all day today. That’ll put him in a great mood.”

“I’ll check with his admin guy; the dant said to come see him when I had news and that he’d work me in.”

“Take your flak vest, matey,” Michaels said. “And if there’s any shit over my not bringing the runner problem up the line, I’ll go fall on my sword later this afternoon.”

Jim grinned. Commander Michaels was in his swan-song tour, with retirement coming in less than a year. He definitely did not sweat the career load. Jim called the dant’s assistant but struck out. Everyone was with the dant over in the Mahan Hall auditorium. Jim asked the secretary where the commandant would be for lunch.

“With the supe in quarters,” she told him. “He’ll swing back through here for five minutes at around thirteen-fifteen. And no, you can’t see him then.”

“Tell you what,” he said. “Tell him I need two minutes on the Dell matter. I’ll be waiting in the rotunda.”

“I’ll tell him, Mr. Hall,” she said. “But with his sked today, you’ve got those famous two chances.”

She was wrong. Jim was summoned a few minutes later. The dant was standing behind his desk skimming through a stack of staffing folders. His assistant stood at his side, making notes. Three lines were blinking on hold on the console phone. Jim stood in front of the commandant’s desk for three minutes before the dant finally looked up.

“Report,” he said.

Jim had done some thinking about what to say in the allotted 120 seconds. The dant would not be interested in theories. He wanted to know where NCIS was with the case.

“Sir, they’re pursuing a homicide investigation,” he began. The dant put down the folder he had been reading and stared at him over the top of his reading glasses.

“Ruling out or ruling in?”

“In my opinion, ruling in.” He told the dant about meeting Harry Chang and that they were going to pull a board together to review the forensics package. “And there’s a possible link to another problem I’ve been working, sir. The tunnel runner.”

The commandant decided to sit down in his chair. “Tell Mary to tell the dean I’ll be delayed ten minutes,” he said to the assistant, who left the room. Jim then reviewed what had been going on with the runner, including the news that more parents were inbound.

“There’s a possibility that this guy was responsible for beating up that NCIS agent, Thompson, last week, plus some other incidents in town. Assuming he’s a mid, we’ve got a really bad apple loose in the Brigade. If that’s all true, and I know there’s a lot of assuming going on, I believe he might be connected to the Dell case.”

“You have evidence of any of this?”

“No, sir. Nothing direct. But Special Agent Branner thinks it might be possible. I’m setting up a full court press to catch this guy, and then we’ll see if there’s a link to the Dell case.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Robbins said, frowning. “What link?”

“Sir, given the time press right now, it would take too long to explain that. I’m inside the NCIS investigation, and they’re comfortable with that, including that Harry Chang guy.”

“Hang on a minute,” Robbins said, and hit the intercom button. When his admin assistant responded, he said, “Pren, the subject is NCIS. Find out who Harry Chang is. He’s at their HQ.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the assistant answered. The commandant turned back to Jim.

“These are our problems, Mr. Hall,” he said. “A dead midshipman. The Board of Visitors. The press. Dell’s parents. Commissioning week. The vice president. We need the Dell matter resolved, not expanded. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And if there’s any doubt or ambiguity about this being a homicide, we need a determination that it wasn’t a homicide, and we need that in public, and now would be really nice. I’m not pleased at all to hear about ruling in rather than ruling out. You sure this isn’t some kind of ego trip with that Branner woman?”

Jim hesitated. Branner’s ego was obviously formidable. And she’d wanted no outside help with the Dell case. And the same thing with the runner-if this runner was the one who got Bagger, his ass was hers. But then, Chang had hinted that maybe Branner was being set up for a fall, for being too independent. “I guess that’s possible, sir,” he began. “But-”

“No buts, Mr. Hall,” Robbins said. “I’m ready to weigh in at the highest levels in NCIS or above if that’s what it takes. It is preposterous, in my opinion, to think that Dell was murdered. No one has turned up any mortal enemies, and my sources tell me he was surviving, if not exactly prospering, as a plebe. His parents avow that he was not overly depressed, and definitely not suicidal. I think he fell off the damn roof by accident, and unless there is direct and palpable evidence to the contrary, that’s the ruling I’m looking for. And, like I said, today would be nice. Right now would be nice.”

“Sir?” came the assistant’s voice on the intercom.

“Go.”

“Mr. Harry Chang is the number-three guy at NCIS. He’s an SES, directs all their criminal investigations. Big kahuna.”

“Thank you,” Robbins said, and turned back to Jim. “Was this how he was introduced to you, Jim?”

“Not exactly, sir,” Jim said, flushing a little. “Branner said he was in charge of homicide investigations.” Mentally, he swore. Had Branner and Chang been screwing around with him at that little meeting?

“Isn’t that interesting,” Robbins said. “Okay, I’m out of time. Keep going, but brief me daily, starting tomorrow. Go tell the deputy dant everything you know about your tunnel runner and the arrest of that civilian girl, but, for the moment at least, leave out any tie-in with the Dell case. Go do that now. He’ll handle any further inquiries on that problem. That’s all.”

Jim nodded. As he left the room, he overheard Robbins telling the assistant to get the deputy commandant on the line ASAP. He assumed there was going to be some political precalibration. He’d wait ten minutes before going next door to see him. In the meantime, he needed to talk to Branner.

It was three o’clock by the time Jim had finished briefing the deputy commandant on the tunnel runner situation. He had called the chief in so that he could bring him up to speed at the same time. About the time Jim was finishing up, the deputy’s secretary had announced that a Detective Sorensen of the Annapolis Police Department was on the line and wanted to speak to him about a missing college girl. Rogers had waved Jim and the chief out of the office with a grim smile. Both were glad to escape with at least part of their afternoon still intact.

The chief gave Jim a ride back over to the admin building as the Yard filled with midshipmen returning from afternoon classes. He parked on the Maryland Avenue side of the building, pulling into the superintendent’s official slot, but kept the engine running. “You keep this up, you’re gonna have to go get a job as a detective,” he said. “I haven’t seen you so involved with your job since you got here.”

Jim gave him a sideways look, and the chief put up his hands. “No offense, boss,” he said. “It’s just that us old-timer Yard cops have always kinda wondered what, um-”

“Don’t start, Chief,” Jim said testily. “Talk to me about backup and a plan of action for catching this little fuck.”

Bustamente nodded earnestly. “Right, boss. So, I think tonight would be too soon. I need to get a gander at those maps of yours and talk to my sergeants. We have to coordinate some overtime, figure out where we need to put people, and how to do it without attracting attention. From what you say, this guy’s got pretty good antennae.”

Jim agreed. Tonight would be too soon to set up a coordinated operation. And it was only Tuesday. Wednesday night would be a much more probable window for the runner to make an excursion, because there was no town liberty on Wednesday night. “Come inside and I’ll get you those maps. I also want a PWC boss to know about it, but not everybody in PWC. This guy’s managed to get keys; he may have penetrated their internal control system, too.”

Jim met with Branner at 4:30 back in the NCIS office. Her phone rang just as they were getting coffee, so she had to go take care of that first. As he sat at the conference table, he tried to work out what, if anything, to say about the commandant’s earlier comments. Probably nothing at all. Harry Chang might have been all about putting Jim at ease, while at the same time sending notice to the Academy that there was adult supervision being brought to bear on the local NCIS office. And yet, Branner hadn’t seemed to have been overly deferential or even worried about Chang’s senior rank. But then, we’re talking about Branner, aren’t we? he thought. A woman who would never win the Miss Deferential contest.

The second issue was the Dell case and Midshipman Julie Markham. He thought he had that worked out. He was about to go get some coffee, when a pale Agent Branner came back into the conference room. The expression on her face made him forget what he’d been thinking about.

“What?” he said.

She sank slowly into the chair at the head of the table. “Bagger Thompson. He died an hour ago. Stroked out. Blood clot got him.”

“Oh shit,” Jim said. “I’m truly sorry.”

Branner nodded numbly, staring down at the table. She seemed to shrink into herself, and for a moment, Jim wanted to get up and go to her. But he kept his seat, knowing fury would follow her shock at losing Thompson. And of course it had been Jim who’d taken Thompson out into town and introduced him to the black Irish beer.

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said, as if reading his mind. “Bagger always drank too much. And when he did, all his inhibitions and most of his training went right out the window. He liked to fight, too. You’d never know it, behind that mild-mannered office face. But he came up from a tough neighborhood. Positively loved to rumble.”

“What happens now?”

“That was my divisional supervisor at the Navy Yard. They’re convening a board to decide what to do next. They have my report from when it happened. My guess is that they’ll get with the Annapolis cops and start a circus.”

“I met with my chief this afternoon. He’s setting up for tomorrow night, when we’re gonna try to nail this guy.”

“I will be there,” she said, still not looking at him.

“Goes without saying,” he replied immediately, although he hadn’t planned that she would be along. But now…

“This business with the missing Goth girl. I got Harry Chang on his cell phone, gave him the background on that. He’s wondering if she might have been ‘disappeared’ by this guy, whoever the hell he is. Because she knows who he is.”

“Whew,” Jim said. “But how would he know that we arrested her? Or what she might have said to us?”

“She told him? And then said she hadn’t given him up to the cops?”

“And he-what? Assumed she had? And then did something to her? I don’t know, Branner-that’s stretching it a little bit.”

“Not if he’s the guy behind what happened to Brian Dell.”

Hoo boy, Jim thought. That theory was my contribution, wasn’t it? “Maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here,” he said. “If we’ve got some guy, mid or civilian, who’s responsible for people dying, maybe it’s Bureau time. This shit’s getting out of hand.”

“Not necessarily,” she said. “I’d get laughed out of court with all these theories based on the evidence we don’t have. Look, we, or you, know those tunnels better than anyone right now. Let’s take a shot. If he gets by us again, then I’ll declare defeat and get the bosses to initiate a monster mash.”

“The dant will need to know about Bagger.”

“Certainly. And I’m going to have to go up to D.C. this evening. Probably stay the night. I’ll brief my boss on what we’re gonna try tomorrow night. You’ll have manpower?”

“I’ll have to get the overtime authorized, but, yeah, I’ll have every cop we own on it. Especially when the word gets out that this guy may have taken Bagger down.”

“Okay, then. Back to Dell.”

“Right. Dell. And Markham.”

“You said you had a plan,” she said. Her face was tightening with the anger he’d been expecting.

“I said I had an idea. Right now, we think Markham is holding back. She’s been able to answer no to every question, which, if she’s playing the honor game, means we haven’t asked the right question.”

“How do we beat that?”

“We get them to convene the Brigade Honor Committee. Bring Markham before the committee. Tell her that we are pursuing the Dell investigation as something other than an accident or suicide. And then ask her, in front of them, if there’s anyone who might want her harmed, who might also have harmed Dell. Remind her that failure to tell the truth now would be an expulsion-level honor offense.”

“Suppose the answer really is no? Or she just lies? Says that no, there isn’t.”

“Then I’d ask her if she’s ever been involved in the Goth scene, either in Annapolis or elsewhere.”

“Again, no, or she lies. What have we accomplished?”

“If she’s telling the truth, we’ve done no harm. If she’s lying, then we’ve put her in the honor box. Either way, what we do then is request that the committee investigate the possibility that there’s something behind the first question. They have to do it if requested.”

“What’s that get us?”

“It gets us behind the blue-and-gold wall. Midshipmen investigating midshipmen, with all the clout of the Honor Committee. Honor offenses are the third rail of conduct offenses. A mid might lie or quibble or evade when we come around asking questions, but no mid would lie to the committee.”

“A liar’s a liar. Why wouldn’t a mid lie to the committee?”

“Because an honor offense is an offense against the entire Brigade. They’ll bend the rules behind the blue-and-gold wall to protect one of their own from what they see as unfair treatment: The little shit. Ten demerits and two hours marching offenses. But they’ll expose an honor offender and push him, or her, right through the wall and into the system’s claws.”

“I’m not sure I understand this.”

“It’s because the system stands for something. Something that’s good and clean and honest and fair. That’s what the honor system is all about. It’s what these kids signed up for when they came here, because it totally distinguishes them from the ‘outside,’ with all its equivocal don’t ask/don’t tell bullshit. The only way they justify the wall is by guaranteeing they’ll draw the line at honor offenses. They’ll play cops and robbers with the officer of the day, or the midshipman officer of the watch, about room inspections, unshined shoes, being two minutes late, after taps high jinks, illegal stereos, nonreg uniform gear, cars in the Yard, even booze in Bancroft Hall-all the game offenses. But not when it comes to honor offenses. And the system accepts that. The Executive Department plays the game with them, for four years. Both sides get pretty good at it. With that one proviso.”

“If they draw the line at honor offenses, how about that example you cited-the guy coming in and seeing his roomie looking at a compromised exam?”

“The last time that happened, a hundred-odd mids went down the tubes. Exposed by their own roommates or classmates.”

Branner thought about it. “There was something else you said, something about the mids always watching. That if they thought the system was playing fuck-fuck, then they would, too, right?”

And now I know why you are the head of this office, Jim thought. “You’re exactly right. The one thing the administration could do to make them all go deep and rig for silent running is to compromise your investigation, say by declaring a desired right answer: This was an accident, or, worse, suicide.”

“But isn’t that what they want to do?”

“Don’t know,” Jim said, wincing inwardly at his own evasion. He knew that was certainly what the dant wanted to do. “But that’s certainly a possibility. If this was indeed a homicide, some hoary cultural tectonic plates are going to tilt around here.”

“So we need to move quickly, then, with this Honor Committee thing.”

“Yeah. I’d suggest you contact the deputy commandant, Captain Rogers, and request that the committee be convened. Tell him what you think about the Dell thing, although I wouldn’t emphasize the possible connection between our runner and the Dell case. Ask him to move on it immediately. Within twenty-four hours. Time is of the essence.”

“Shit,” she said. “Maybe you had the right idea-bring in the Feebs. They love hairballs like this.”

“They’ll push you right out of the room,” he said. “And they’ll never get behind the wall. You have a chance. To solve both incidents.”

“And what about you?” she asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“I owe it to Bagger,” he said. “And if some psychopath made it into this place, I want his ass found and burned, preferably before he gets to the fleet or the Corps.”

She looked at him. “You believe in all this, don’t you? This duty, honor, country stuff?”

“Yes. More of us do than don’t.”

“I wonder,” she said. “Especially when I hear the dant wanting a ‘right’ answer. When the big dogs get their paws around a ‘right answer,’ it’s often best for the little dogs just to go along.”

“That what you expect me to do?” he said, a little anger in his voice.

“Don’t get pissed off. It’s just that if this thing recoils in our faces, you might get burned. I work for NCIS. You work for them. You could find yourself out of a job.”

“Well, Special Agent,” he said as evenly as he could, “you keep telling me it’s a nothing job, right?”

She smiled and said, “Touche.” Then she went to look up Rogers’s phone number. Jim tried to figure out why he was mad. Was he just possibly looking for some payback of his own?

Jim checked in with the PWC before going down into the tunnel at 10:00 P.M. Tuesday evening. He’d previously briefed the chief that he was going to make another recon, and that he was still looking for a direct access between Bancroft Hall and the tunnel complex. The PWC people had been requested to call the chief if Jim didn’t surface within two hours. He’d also asked the chief to alert the Yard police patrols that he was down there, and for them to be alert to any suspicious activities around the principal access gratings in the Yard until midnight.

He first checked the shark graffiti: No changes. The atmosphere in the main tunnels was normal, permeated with the scent of steam and ozone. Some of the burned-out lightbulbs had been replaced, so the light was more homogeneous than before. The door to the King George Street city utility vaults was locked. On the way back, he checked his motion detectors, but they did not appear to have been disturbed.

As he walked through the main tunnel, he realized that the guy might not ever come down here again, the little note on the tennis ball notwithstanding. Assuming it was a firstie who’d been doing this shit, he would have to know they were going to keep trying to catch him. Graduation and commissioning were only days away. Why put all that in jeopardy just to satisfy some macho pride? How about because the guy was a nutcase?

He came to the intersection of the Stribling Walk tunnel and the hinged flaps of the big storm drain leading down to the Severn River seawall. No sign of intrusion there, and besides, half the time the drain’s mouth was underwater. No, this wasn’t the way in. He had to find something that was physically under Bancroft Hall, something bigger than those electrical cableway lines. This guy had been tracking him when he threw the tennis ball. He had to have a direct way back into Bancroft in order to just disappear like that.

After verifying that he was in the vicinity of the Bancroft Hall foundations, he spent the next hour checking out every equipment cabinet, utility vault, steam pipe, and chilled water transfer plenum. Every one of them led into Bancroft somehow, but it was all via cableways, piping bundles, and wire conduits-nothing big enough to accommodate a human. Twice he passed the big oak doors leading down into the buried remains of Fort Severn. He touched the keys in his pocket, knowing he did not really want to revisit that crumbling brickwork anytime soon. He explored the branch tunnels that ran out to Lejeune Hall, the field house, and the city harbor utilities, but the farther he got from Bancroft, the less useful they would have been. He retraced his steps, ready to call it a night. As he passed the oak doors for the third time, he noticed that the gas-free engineering equipment was still there, piled in an alcove across the passageway from the big doors. He stopped.

He had never resolved the problem of the painted-over scratches. The PWC people had not done that. Only someone trying to conceal the fact that the door had been unlocked would do that. Ergo, someone had been using that old tunnel for something. Had to be.

He stood in front of the door and considered his options. For getting into Bancroft Hall, the right branch wasn’t possible. It had to be the left-hand tunnel. He felt for the keys, tried one, then the other, and the big door on the left side swung inward slightly with a creaking noise. Half-expecting a vampire to leap out at him, he pushed the huge door all the way open. Light from the main tunnel spilled down the steps, but no farther. Beyond was the familiar darkened arched ceiling. He pulled his Maglite and shone it down the dusty passageway. No snowfall of mortar dust-yet. He checked his watch. He had about twenty-five minutes before he was supposed to call in. Time enough to walk down the magazine tunnel to the powder room and take another look. He wondered if he should pull some of that air hose with him, but the Red Devils weren’t set up. Besides, it would take too much time.

He stepped down into the alcove below the floor level of the main tunnel. Then he went back to the door to see if it could be unlocked from the inside. It could. He tried it, then adjusted the bolt, leaving it protruding to prevent the door from closing if some back draft occurred out in the tunnels. Then he set out for the magazine room. He walked quickly this time, although as softly as he could, not wanting to set up any significant vibrations. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with the anticipation of falling dust, but actually the mortar seemed to be undisturbed this time. He looked behind him as the arched frame of dim light back at the entrance diminished into a smaller and smaller block. Then the tunnel bent slightly to the left and the light bled away. The only light now came from his flashlight, and it seemed to magnify all the cracks in the mortar joints between the old bricks. Once again, he thought he could feel the massive granite weight of the buildings above bearing down on him.

When he reached the magazine anteroom, he saw the glint of railroad rails embedded in the stone floor. He hadn’t noticed them before. He rubbed the dust off the rails with his foot and saw that they led under the heavy metal doors. Probably for ammunition wagons. The rails went on up the sloping passageway to the intersection with the gun pit tunnel. He shone the light around the entire anteroom but noticed nothing else of significance. He still couldn’t see any clearly defined footprints in all the mortar dust, not even his own from earlier that day. He stood there, thinking. This area was certainly near the foundations of Bancroft Hall, if not under the eighth wing. But he had to be at least twenty, thirty feet down underground, so how the hell…

He went back to the doors and felt the cold steel with his bare hand. Cold steel. He glanced at the manometer again, then ran his hand up the door to about where the air-water interface should be inside. No discernible temperature difference. Wouldn’t the water be colder than the air? Or, after all these years, would they simply be in equilibrium? He looked at the hinges, which were huge round pin-type fixtures, four per door. The doors must weigh a thousand pounds each, he thought. He thought he felt the air shift around him, and he listened carefully. He heard nothing, not even the subtle vibrations from street level that could be heard out in the main tunnels. He studied the hinges again in the harsh white light of the Maglite. The rivets holding them to the door were rusted. They probably had used dissimilar metals, not understanding the corrosive effects of galvanic cells.

He stared at the doors. He was missing something. He was sure of it, but for the life of him, he-Wait, he thought. There was a crack visible between the door frame and the door itself, especially next to the four hinges. Not much of one, but definitely a crack. He put the Maglite right up to the crack and tried to look through it. He couldn’t see anything. He fished for his pocketknife, unfolded a flat blade, and poked it into the crack. It slid right in.

So where was the water?

He walked back over to the manometer and then figured it out. There were two isolation valves, one at the top and one at the bottom. He tried to turn first the top and then the bottom valve to the right. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he said to himself. The valves didn’t budge. That’s because they’re not open, he told himself. They’re shut tight, Einstein.

The clever bastard. He’d closed the bottom isolation valve, filled the manometer with water, and then closed the top valve. Any passing inspector would see the full manometer, assume the space behind the door was flooded, and never open the doors. But of course it wasn’t flooded. On the other hand, he’d better check.

He opened the bottom valve on the manometer, then the tube’s drain valve. Then he cracked the top valve. The water quickly poured out into the dust, forming tiny glittering beads in the white lime carpet before disappearing. Then he fully opened the top isolation valve. If the space behind the doors had been flooded, there should have been an arterial stream shooting out of the bottom of the manometer. But there was nothing. Not a drop. The clever bastard.

He went to the center of the two doors. There were iron ring plates bolted to the doors, and he pulled on one. It didn’t move. He pulled on the other. He thought he felt it move a fraction of an inch. He stooped down to check the bottom and found a vertical latch disappearing into the thick dust. He grabbed it with both hands, expecting it to be rusted shut. To his surprise, it lifted easily, almost too smoothly, and the huge door actually edged out toward him. He backed away from it, not wanting to catch a foot or hand underneath, but even the big rollers operated smoothly. The door was perfectly balanced, and it came open with hardly any effort at all. On greased hinges, no doubt, he thought. He pulled it all the way open and shone the light inside.

The powder room itself was about fifty feet square, with a smooth, twenty-foot-high domed ceiling that appeared to be made of concrete. No, he thought, it only looks like concrete. White cement had been parged over the brickwork of the roof, although imperfectly, as patches of brickwork shone through when he put the light on it. Heavy wooden racks lined the four walls, but they were all empty. In the two back corners of the ceiling, there were dark holes, about three feet square, which he figured had either been ventilation holes or pressure-release pipes in the event of a fire in the powder magazine. The hole on the left had a steel grating. The one on the right was open, and the steel grating was down in the dust on the floor, leaning up against one of the racks. What looked like the bottom of a wooden ladder protruded down out of the right-hand hole and rested on the top shelf of the closest rack.

Bingo, he thought. That hole leads up the surface. Or probably into the basement of Bancroft Hall. He couldn’t be sure of where he was in relation to the surface. He felt another subtle change in the air pressure and stopped to listen again. He heard nothing, only the sound of his own pulse thumping in his ears. He walked over to the hole and shone the light up the ladder, but he could see only blackness above the top of the ladder.

He looked at his watch. Only ten minutes left. No time to climb the ladder, and he didn’t particularly want to climb into yet another, smaller hole. He’d taken the maps of the Fort Severn tunnels home but then forgotten to bring them with him tonight-he’d had no intention of ever coming back down here. But the maps should tell him where this pressure-release pipe came out up on the surface. Now he had a decision to make: He could climb up there and pull the ladder down. Then somehow lock those steel doors from the outside. Or touch nothing and close the place up. Leave everything as it was. That way, if they secured the other possible routes into the tunnels from the Yard and then watched the oak doors, they’d have a better chance of catching their quarry. As long as he didn’t see Jim’s footprints in the dust, or notice that the manometer was now empty.

He decided to leave it as he’d found it. Turn the old Fort Severn tunnel into a trap. He backed out of the magazine and got the door shut and latched. Wait-the latch. It was outside the door. So how did the runner unlatch the door from the inside? He opened the door back up and checked behind it. Sure enough, there was a block magnet, probably lifted from a large stereo speaker, stuck to the door halfway up. Okay, that’s how. He closed the magazine back up, then went over to the manometer. He closed all the valves and then used his penknife to tap the glass in the lower half of the tube until a small crack appeared. If the runner checked, this would explain the loss of the water. Then he took off his shirt and swept it over the floor of the anteroom, trying to obliterate his footprints in the mortar dust. A low cloud of dust coiled up from the floor like a fat white snake. He made a final check of the latches and then headed back up the tunnel to the intersection with the entrance to the collapsed gun pit tunnel.

Once at the intersection, he turned off his flashlight to see how far the anteroom light penetrated. It didn’t. The darkness was absolute. The curve-you’re forgetting that the tunnel curves, he told himself. He snapped the light on again; then, holding the tight white beam down at his feet, he walked toward the oak doors. His feet made no sound in the flourlike dust. When he figured he had rounded most of the curve, he turned the flashlight off again. To his surprise, the dim arch of light he’d been expecting to see as he neared the doors wasn’t there anymore. Jim stopped dead. No light meant one of two things: Either the door he’d bolted open was now closed. Or the main tunnel lights had all gone out.

He flattened himself against the left-hand side of the tunnel and tried to think. He felt a tickle of mortar dust against the back of his neck. The bricks pressing against his right hip seemed to move a tiny bit. They felt like ceramic snake scales. He forced the image out of his mind.

He hadn’t shone the flashlight down the tunnel. It had been pointed at his feet. It was still almost a hundred feet, maybe even more, to the anteroom below the oak doors. His footfalls were not audible. So if someone was waiting for him up there in the darkened anteroom, he shouldn’t know that Jim was approaching. He tapped the Indiglo light on his watch. Three minutes until his call-in time. Hell, he could just wait right here and let the PWC crew come looking. Except they wouldn’t know he’d come into the Fort Severn tunnels, would they? Shit.

He realized he’d had his eyes shut in the darkness. He opened them. No change. The total darkness of a cave. Or tomb. He listened but could hear nothing, either from the tunnel or the surface above. After a minute, he imagined that he could hear the fine sound of mortar dust falling on the floor. Like the sand in an hourglass. He bent down and lifted the Glock from his ankle holster. It wasn’t chambered, and if he did chamber it, that noise would definitely carry down here. As he stood back up, his belt caught on the exposed corner of a brick and it moved. Definitely moved. And then it slid out of the wall with a small sound and thudded down into the deep dust by his ankle. Then another one came out, and suddenly he felt the whole wall press out against his back. He froze in place, straining his back muscles to hold the tottering masonry in place. He felt his heart beating wildly as he thought about the arch over his head. If the wall gave way, would the arch come down? Hell yes.

He flattened his shoulders and pressed against the wall as another brick slid between his legs and landed with a click against one of the first bricks. Then a third popped out of the wall and landed on his right shoulder, perching there for an instant before dropping into the dust. Then things stopped moving. He felt a sneeze coming on as the air filled with dust.

Gotta move, he thought frantically. Which way? Left, of course, up the tunnel, toward the oak door.

Sure about that? Or was the door to my right? I didn’t turn around, did I? Another brick slid down the back of his pants leg and clicked against one already on the floor.

Hell with this shit, he thought. First, he racked the slide and chambered a round. The sound seemed enormous in the darkness. Unmistakable, too. Then he pumped himself off the wall, going to his left, and switched on the Maglite. Behind him, a whole section of the wall slumped to the floor in a muffled rattle of bricks. Amazingly, the ceiling didn’t come raining down behind it. He switched the gun to his left hand and walked fast up toward the anteroom, holding the flashlight out in his right hand while keeping his body pressed to the left side of the tunnel, just in case someone started shooting. But when he reached the anteroom, it was empty. He made sure, even sweeping the light up over the ceiling to look for suspended vampires.

He shone the light back down the tunnel from which he had just come. It remained empty except for an ominous cloud of white dust that seemed to be approaching like some kind of billowing ghost. His heart in his throat, he pulled on the huge door. It swung gently back, spilling white light from the main tunnel back into the anteroom. He poked his head and the Glock out into the main tunnel, but everything was as he’d left it. A little more noise from all the utility lines, but the place was definitely empty. He looked behind him as the white cloud expanded silently into the anteroom. Glancing at his watch, he realized his time was up. He stepped up into the main tunnel, pulled the big oak door closed and locked it, then hurried up the tunnel to the first available grate where he could get topside and use a cell phone to call the PWC people. Assuming he could get his voice to work-his throat was dry as all that mortar dust. He shivered as he thought of that tunnel collapsing all along its length. And nobody would have known he’d been down in there.

He drove back to the marina after checking in with PWC. As he was getting out of his truck at the marina parking lot, a thought hit him like a small hammer. He had left the bolt protruding on that damned door to keep it open. But it had been completely shut when he got to it. So who the hell had moved the bolt? It would have taken a key to do that. If it had been their runner, then there would be no trapping him in the Fort Severn tunnel. Not now that Jim had been detected down there. He swore out loud, startling a couple getting into the car next to his. He gave them a weak smile and headed for the boat and a badly needed drink. He wondered if Branner was back from D.C. yet.

Branner called Jim on his cell phone an hour after he got back to the boat. She was back from Washington and just entering Annapolis. He invited her to come over to the boat for a nightcap, and she arrived fifteen minutes later. He poured two snifters of single malt and told her about what he’d found down in the abandoned tunnels. He showed her the probable exit point on one of the maps.

“I took a look, although it was dark. I’m guessing it’s a light standard,” he said. “One of these towers along here that light the tennis courts behind Bancroft Hall. Or a manhole. They probably hit the magazine vent pipe by accident when they put the lights in and just left it. Those standards are hollow.”

“So he doesn’t have to use one of the Yard grates?”

“Right. Nobody, not even PWC, goes into the old Fort Severn tunnels. They’re lethal. They weren’t very happy about my going down there.”

“Where the hell did he get keys?”

“Those locks are old, very old. The doors are solid oak. I think those locks could be picked with a thin screwdriver. The point is, no one’s been looking. The guys who maintain the utility tunnels couldn’t imagine anyone being dumb enough to go into those death traps.”

“You included?” she said, eyebrows rising.

“Trust me, having been down twice, I don’t want to go back. But there’s more.” He told her about the bolt being moved after he had left it protruding.

“Shit. So you think he was down there? And knew you were down there?”

“Not the first time, either,” Jim said. “The tennis ball came down the tunnel right when I was there to see it. He knows when someone else is in the tunnels after hours.”

She sighed, sat back in her chair, and sipped some scotch. She looked really tired. “So, how’d your trip go?” he asked.

“Frustrating. There are two camps at headquarters. One wants to flood the mugger case with agents-ours, Feebs, marshals, whatever. NCIS doesn’t lose agents.”

“Except that he was on his own time, wasn’t he? I’ll bet there are people saying this wasn’t an operational loss.”

She nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. And of course he has family, and, officially, the agency doesn’t want to say that Bagger hit a bar, got drunk, followed some girls, and got whacked.”

“So what was he doing-a follow-up to an ongoing investigation? Conducting a joint investigation with the Academy security officer, who was looking into unauthorized intruders into the Academy’s underground utility areas?”

“Something like that,” she said. “They were wondering if you’d go along with that.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “The bosses know the real score. No sense in dissing Bagger’s good name. Anything on the Dell case?”

“Harry Chang’s running some kind of game with that one, I think. Strong sense that SecNav’s office wants the Dell case put to bed. As in, Lose the homicide angle.”

“That would sell well here. But what about my theory-that the two cases are related?”

She finished her scotch and put the snifter down on a table. “I’m not sure. Harry’s intrigued, but there’s no real evidence. He told me after the main meeting that the only way he could hold off the ‘send a mob’ crowd is by saying that it might spook the runner.”

“Who could, if he wanted to, just decide to stay in Bancroft Hall, run no more, and then graduate right on time and take his sick-ass, criminal mind out into the world of commissioned officers.”

“The thing is,” she said, “if this is the guy who did Bagger, we want him clean and prosecutable. Not mired in some complex web with the Dell case.”

“Well hell,” Jim said. “Then we need to move out. Stop talking about it.”

She rubbed her face with her hand.

“You look beat to shit,” he said, getting up. “Why don’t you go home, get some rest, and then I’ll come over to your office in the late morning? Then let’s go see the deputy dant and stir up the Honor Committee bees. Or did you already do that?”

“I called Rogers. I declined to tell him what it was about, only that we needed to move out smartly. He said to bring it on.”

“Okay, I’ll snoop around the admin building first thing in the morning. Word of your call will have come through by then. I’ll see what the walls are saying.”

She agreed with that and they walked up on deck. The harbor was silently beautiful in the moonlight. The gray granite bulk of Bancroft Hall shone across the glimmering black water, although most of the room lights were out by now. “I don’t know,” she said, looking across at the Academy precincts. “I think I’m perfectly willing to let the Dell case fall out however the elephants want it to. This shit with Bagger, though…I want the sumbitch who did that.”

Jim nodded. “I want him, too, especially if he’s a mid. He’s a fucking alien.”

Better and better. I hear someone’s going before the Honor Committee. Right before graduation, even. Anyone you know? My little web is beginning to close. Wonder who the BIO will be? Wouldn’t it be rich if they use Tommy Hays? Man, but I love to screw around with the system, and it looks like the system is going to do exactly what I want it to do. There are consequences when people cross me. Especially when they were once my friends. Well, for a little while anyway. Can’t say as I have any friends at this place, but then, I never expected to. All these shiny white faces, all with parents who have the same name as they do. I’ve often wondered what it must have been like, growing up in one of those perfect, made-for-television families. With each kid getting his or her own room. New clothes every year. A car. Being able to cruise the malls with people just like them.

The Shark, you see, never had any of that. In a sense, that’s how he became the Shark. We are solitary beings. And let me tell you, the juvie system will damn well teach you what solitary means. Whether in Juvie Hall or in a foster home, you’d better be solitary. Otherwise, it’s the gangs, with all their hip-hop secret sign bullshit, scabby women, and tribal boundaries, or maybe it’s foster daddy creeping the back stairs at night, looking for what foster mama doesn’t want to give him anymore. It’s going to school, year after year, even the parochial school, knowing you don’t belong there, because you’re not like them, not like any of them. It’s a solitary feeling, but I’m cool with it now, because it’s the source of my strength. When you operate alone, when you hunt alone, when you crush your enemies all by yourself, no one can rob you of the victories. No one can betray you. Hell, most of the time, no one can even see you. Just like my classmates here at Canoe U don’t see me. They don’t want to. They know I’m different, and if it weren’t for a few overachieving cells in the math and science part of my brain, they’d have had my ass out of here a long time ago. My own classmates!

Which is why I undertook to screw the system. To lie, cheat, and steal with vigor. To role-play by day and then consort with the other end of the human spectrum by night. Not just to run plebes but to terrorize plebes. To taste, whenever possible, the bounties of some of these lovely mids, and then to degrade them. I know what they really think of me, and I feed their preconceptions. Big, shaved-head, bruising Dyle, who shouldn’t be here. Strong in body, no getting around that, but hardly the kind we’d want to see at the Officers Club cotillion. Book-smart in the techie world, but gets mysteriously good grades in the bull world, too. Looks like he couldn’t even read. Going Marine option, we understand. Snigger. Snigger. That fits: What the hell does a Marine need with being able to read and write? Look at him: six-feet-plus tall, six feet across the shoulders, six feet through the chest, Man Mountain Dean in the flesh. Makes all that noise. Can march like a robot. Face like the Terminator. Shoes to blind the uniform inspector. Creases on his creases. A perfect rack in his room, but no roommate, we understand?

They can laugh, but what they don’t know is going to hurt them. The whole class will be tarred with what I do in the next week. I expect to get away with it, but if I don’t, well, hell, screw ’em all if they can’t take a joke. My being here has been a joke, a bad one, I’ll grant you, but that’s what you get when you allow the Navy’s premier penitentiary to indulge in a little social engineering. And I’m all set for those two featherweight cops who’ve been sneaking around my tunnels. They think they’re going to trap me down there. Well, there’re traps, and then there’re traps. Oh, am I waiting. I have the most interesting surprises set up for them. And maybe one or two for you, too. You just think it’s over, don’t you? Not hardly.