Darkside

13

At just past midnight, the main tunnel looked and sounded familiar: sterile concrete walls and ceilings, smelling faintly of ozone and steam, with the hum of electronic equipment racks and the quiet rush of steam permeating its entire length. They walked slightly uphill toward the King George Street interchange with the city utility vaults. They passed the big shark graffito, which remained unchanged. They did not speak, in deference to the possibility that Booth had the tunnels wired for sound as well as visual and electronic surveillance. The big steel doors leading out to the city tunnel were locked. Jim unlocked them and tried to pull them open. Neither of them budged.

“Okay! Chief,” Jim murmured.

“Hope we don’t get a fire down here tonight,” Branner whispered, looking at those locked doors.

“We do, we call for help,” he said, holding up his radio. He keyed the transmitter three times. There was a moment of silence, and then both of their radios clicked three times back at them. He stepped into an alcove to mask his voice.

“All the doors blocked?” he asked the chief.

“Affirmative.”

They walked back toward the intersection where the Mahan Hall grate door was, checking equipment room doors and generally looking around for signs of anyone else being down there. Then they continued down the long stretch under Stribling Walk, Jim watching in front of them and Branner walking backward, keeping an eye out behind them. When they got to the dogleg turn, Jim stopped, put his fingers to his lips, and listened hard. He’d felt a change in the air pressure. Something had been opened. Then he remembered the storm drain. He pointed back up the tunnel and whispered that he was going to check the storm drain’s flap doors. Booth might have figured out a way to open them from the drain side. She indicated she’d wait for him, just out of sight in the dogleg turn.

Jim yanked out his own weapon and went back up the tunnel. He walked to one side of the steel plates running down the center of the tunnel to avoid making unnecessary noise. The vestibule above the storm drain did not have any sort of door or hatch leading from the main tunnel down to the drain itself. The whole point was to have an immediate draining point for any water that got loose in the tunnels. But all the main grating access doors should be closed and locked. So what had been opened?

He got to the vestibule and the spring-loaded, sloping flap doors. He got down on his hands and knees and pushed on the center of the crack between the two metal flaps. They moved, but not easily. Putting a foot on one flap, he pushed against the hinge hard enough to expand the crack enough to get his hand into it. He could feel air streaming past his head. He ran his hand up the full length of the right-hand flap edge, but there was nothing but smooth metal. He switched his foot and tried the left-hand side.

Bingo, he thought. He felt a crude U -shaped handle bolted to the other side. So someone coming up from the river would have access from the main drain pipe. He was withdrawing his hand when his wrist was seized in a viselike grip and he was pulled headlong right through the two flaps. He yelled, dropping both his Glock and his radio, as his body hurtled down through the doors into a sloping circular concrete pipe. It was pitch-black in the storm drain once the spring-loaded doors snapped shut behind him, and the bottom of the pipe was slippery with ancient moss and the trickle of water that was constantly draining out of the utility tunnel complex. Whoever had grabbed him had essentially flung him down the drain, and he skidded on his backside for an unknown distance until he gathered his wits enough to spread out his arms and legs and stop himself. He immediately flipped over onto his stomach and snatched out the Maglite. He shot it up the tunnel and saw nothing at all except his gun and his radio. It felt as if the storm drain was sloping down at about a ten-degree angle. Easy enough to maintain his position, but steep enough to have slid him almost sixty feet from the doors. Whoever had grabbed him probably had gone up through the doors once Jim had opened them. Branner. He had to warn Branner.

He scampered back up the drain, staying low enough not to hit his head, and recovered the radio first. He called Branner, but the thing didn’t seem to be working. He turned it over. The battery compartment had opened and the battery pack was missing. He swore and retrieved his Glock. He shone the light up and down the tunnel, looking for the cigarette pack-sized battery, and finally saw a flash of shiny metal. He recovered the battery, his hands fumbling because everything was wet. Son of a bitch had moved the doors to attract his attention, then simply pulled him into the tunnel. Strong son of a bitch, too. While Jim had been skidding down the drain, their quarry had gone through the flap doors and now was loose in the tunnel.

Hunched over beneath the flap doors, he fumbled to get the battery back into the radio, and then, realizing he was wasting time, swore again. Stuffing the radio and battery into a pocket, he pulled the flap door with the handle down into the drain. The yellow lights of the main tunnel flooded the drain. He stood up through the opening and yelled for Branner to look out, but she didn’t respond. Then he realized he’d screwed up again: Branner had probably heard the commotion when he went through the flap door, but now Jim had just given away her presence to Booth, who must have heard him yell. Screw it, he thought. He hoisted himself through the flap doors, fighting with the spring hinges, which were pinching into him like aluminum mandibles. He got up and trotted down toward the Bancroft Hall end of the Stribling tunnel. When he got to the dogleg, Branner wasn’t there. Now what? he wondered. He called her name, but she didn’t answer. Had Booth managed to take her down? He couldn’t have-she’d been waiting for him.

He pulled out the radio, dried off the battery contacts, and put the thing back together again. Where the hell was Branner? Then he had an idea. Maybe she was not answering in order to make Booth think Jim was faking it, trying to make Booth think he had backup. He put the radio up to his mouth but did not squeeze the transmit key. Then he gave a series of orders to a host of imaginary backup people. Then he did squeeze the key and said, “Lights-out.” Two seconds later, when the entire tunnel went dark, he flattened himself between two equipment cabinets.

At least the radio system is working, he thought. Branner should have heard him doing his deception routine and figured it out. Booth was in the tunnel. But where? And where was Branner holed up? She should be close by. He tried to think of the layout of the tunnel walls in the vicinity of the dogleg. Around the corner was the cross tunnel that led out toward the harbor area and the old Fort Severn doors. Branner could be anywhere. Hell with it. It was time to get it on with young Mr. Booth.

Keeping his Maglite handy but off, he patted the Glock and started feeling his way in the pitch-black tunnel, heading back toward the vestibule above the storm drain. He called out Booth’s name but got no answer. He called it again.

“Yo, Booth! Or is it Count Dracula-a-a? Where are you, Booth? The doors are all locked tonight, so it’s just us chickens down here, Booth. And chicken seems to be the word, hey, Booth?”

He listened to the darkness, but there was nothing stirring. Some of the equipment behind all the cabinet doors was still going, but the ventilation was off and the tunnel was starting to get warm. He kept inching his way along the wall on the Annapolis side, bumping quietly into steel cabinets, wireways, and pipe nests. He called out again.

“Hey, big guy. Come on down. Let’s have us a little chat.”

His fingers itched to turn on the Maglite. He had a vision of Booth in vampire drag, hanging upside down from the tunnel ceiling, waiting to pounce. His hand remembered that powerful grip that had pulled him down into the storm drain. His knees and elbows still stung. But he’d seen nothing. He stopped to listen. Then he felt a presence in the tunnel.

Was something there?

He pointed the Maglite in the direction his senses were indicating and waited.

Nothing moved.

He took another sideways step and stopped again. “C’mon, Booth. We know what you did. You can’t win this thing.”

A voice whispered right into his left ear. “Sure I can, Hall-Man-Chu.”

Jim barely suppressed the urge to jump out into the tunnel and snap the light on. The voice had been right beside his ear, but his ear was right next to a solid steel cabinet. No way could there be anyone there. It had been a chilling voice, a metallic whisper. As if someone was synthesizing it. He lifted his left hand above his ear and felt around until he encountered a tiny plastic box. There was a screen on the front of it. A speaker.

“Because, Booth, like I said, the doors are all sealed tonight. All except the storm drain, and I have people sealing the river grate as we speak. It’s like Hotel California, Booth-you can come anytime you want, but you can never leave.”

There came a booming sound of something heavy being shut way down the storm drain tunnel. The river grate, right on cue. But the voice spoke in his ear again. “Who wants to leave, Hall-Man-Chu? I certainly don’t. I’ve been looking forward to this.”

Jim began to perspire. Booth was speaking on the tunnel announcing system, which was a string of speakers scattered throughout the tunnels, so that the PWC could make announcements to people working down below. Shit! Was Booth in the PWC ops station? Or had he just tapped in? Yeah, that was it-he had tapped into the speaker system. And also provided it with some electrical power. Guy was good.

“So let’s chat, Drac,” Jim said, trying not to let his voice betray the anxiety he was feeling. If Booth could do sound, maybe he could do lights, too. And maybe even video. So Jim didn’t dare turn on his flashlight. “You can talk to me or to all of us.”

“You mean both of you, don’t you?” whispered the speaker. “Although one of you is-what’s the word?-indisposed.” A nasty laugh. “So what is it you think you know, sir, other than that you’re alone down here on my turf?”

Indisposed? He didn’t like the sound of that. Had he taken Branner? “I know you’re some kind of whack job who had something to do with Brian Dell’s so-called accident, for one thing,” he said. Then he moved back away from the speaker, very slowly, standing on tiptoes so as to make absolutely no sound. The darkness remained absolute. There weren’t even any lights from the power panel showing in the passageway.

“ Accident? You don’t know shit. Is that what Hot Wheels is telling you? Silly girl. She has it all wrong. Oh, and I know where she is right now, too. With that pretty little lawyer. You know her? Did you know she’s doing Julie’s daddy these days?”

What? Jim thought as he continued to reposition himself. He felt for the radio. He had to figure out when to call for the lights, but he didn’t want to do it before he knew where Booth was.

“Surprised there, Mr. Security Man, sir? Mr. Hall-Man-Chump? Mr. Lame -Man-Chump is more like it. Here’s whassup: I’m going to do you and your butch buddy there, then deal with Hot Wheels. Then, who knows-maybe I’ll just go radio-silent and wait to throw my hat in the air with the rest of my sterling classmates.”

Jim kept moving, turning as he went, one arm held out in the darkness to keep himself from bumping into anything, the other holding the Maglite close by his hip, ready to snap it on. He thought he was moving back down toward the dogleg turn, closer to the Fort Severn doors. Was Booth using a radio to key the speakers? If so, he could be anywhere in the tunnel complex. Or right behind him.

“No way, Booth,” he said. “We’ve told too many people about you. Your name’s already on the graduation hold list.”

The voice just laughed. Jim had moved far enough away from his starting point to be between speakers now, and the voice had an echo to it. He still sensed that there was some human presence nearby, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. “Not what I’ve heard, Mr. Security Officer, sir,” Booth whispered. “The word in the third is that the Dark Side’s gonna rug this one. The dant’s had some guidance from on high. Accident. All an accident. Very sad, but there you are. Told those naughty mid coolies not to go up on the roof. Told ’em a million times.”

“All true, Booth,” Jim said, stopping in place now and listening hard. “Except Julie’s given NCIS enough to reopen this thing. I personally told the supe we’d be reopening, or he could read it in the newspapers. And you know how the supe hates newspapers.”

“She can’t get me without getting herself,” the voice said softly, as if Booth were closer. Much less of an echo. “I know her. You don’t. She’s complex, Julie is. And she’ll never do that. Life for Julie is all about Julie, see. And without her, you and your rent-a-cop pals got jackshit. Most importantly, the Dark Side wants it over, Mr. Hall, sir. Even if you leak to the Annapolis crab wrapper, no one’s going to give a shit. By direction.”

“So where’s the Goth girl, Booth? What happened to little Miss Natter? Do you happen to know? Annapolis cops are looking into that one, by the way. They won’t care what the SecNav has to say.”

“They don’t care, period, Mr. Insecurity Officer, sir. It’s a missing persons case. And besides, if it all goes south, I’m prepared to do the honorable thing. And the name wasn’t Natter. In her world, she was Krill.”

“Krill, Drill, Snapping Shrimp, for all I care,” Jim said. “But we’ve given them your name as our best bet for the downtown Batman. See, the issue is time. Their investigation will take more time than you’ve got days left here. And that will give us time to pull the scab on Dell. You’re done, shithead. Come on down!”

Booth didn’t answer this time. Jim bumped into something on the side of the tunnel. He felt behind him and his fingers told him it was a door. It was ajar. There was a strange chemical smell coming from behind the door. He picked up the radio and called softly, “Lights on.” Nothing happened.

He called again, louder this time, feeling with his fingers for the radio’s power switch to make sure it was on. He heard what sounded like fading laughter coming from the speakers, then silence. The radio appeared to be working. Had the son of a bitch trashed the retransmitter? Screw it, he thought, and snapped on the Maglite.

The tunnel was empty in both directions. The concrete was strangely gray in the blue-white beam of the Maglite. There was enough humidity in the air now that he could actually see the shape of the beam. He was standing right next to the equipment room. He nudged the door open with his foot. The chemical stink was stronger. A can clinked as it rolled out of the way. Shining the light on it, he saw that it was a can of diesel engine-starter fluid. And then he saw Branner. She was slumped against a telephone switchboard cabinet. There was a swatch of duct tape plastered over her mouth, and what looked like a small sponge sticking up out of it under her nostrils. There was more duct tape wrapped around her arms and legs.

He recognized the smell: ether. Starter fluid contained ether. He looked both ways again and then stepped into the room. He bent down and snatched the tape and sponge away from her face. She groaned but did not open her eyes.

He stepped back out into the main tunnel and checked both ways with the Maglite again. Still nothing. No one lurking. He listened carefully. No one coming, either. He tried the radio again, but there was no answer. His fingers were sticky from the duct tape and stank of ether.

He felt the warm air stir, but it wasn’t like the last time he’d been down, when there had been a distinct pressure change. This was different, more subtle. He keyed the radio again and saw the tiny red light come on, indicating a transmit signal. The radio was working. The signal just wasn’t getting out. He could go up the tunnel and check the retransmitter, but then he’d have to leave Branner. He went back inside after sweeping his light around the tunnel one more time. He set the Maglite down on the floor and used his knife to cut away the duct tape from her arms and legs. She groaned again but still didn’t open her eyes. He could smell the ether on her breath. She’s going to hate life when she does wake up, he thought, the smell nauseating him.

He felt another stir of air as he checked her pulse. Booth must be big and fast to have been able to get Branner, the judo instructor. He had to get her out of here, and get her some oxygen and medical attention. That much ether, she might get chemical pneumonia. He reviewed the tunnel layout in his mind. The nearest exit grate was next to Dahlgren Hall, about 150 feet to the right, beyond the oak doors to the Fort Severn tunnels. It was at least two, maybe three hundred feet back to the Stribling Walk grating, and twice that to the interchange between the Academy and the town’s utility tunnels. The ether smell was making him increasingly nauseous. He knew he was forgetting something. Okay, so he’d carry or drag her to the-What was that?

He’d heard a noise but couldn’t identify it. He stopped to listen. Not a noise, exactly. A vibration. A rumble?

He hadn’t heard it; he’d felt it. Yes, definitely. A rumble from out in the tunnel. And then another sound.

Water. Rushing water. Lots of rushing water.

Oh shit.

Booth had probably opened one of the big valves on the fire main. Or maybe on the main containing potable water. Or both. He was going to flood the tunnels big-time.

Gotta move right now, he thought, his head spinning from the ether fumes. He grabbed Branner under her arms and tried to get her up into a fireman’s carry, but there wasn’t enough space in the equipment room, and she was heavier than he expected. As he eased her back down onto the floor, the rumbling got louder, and he felt, rather than saw, the first rush of water out in the passageway. Felt it and smelled it. A distinct odor of chlorine filled the already-humid air. He grabbed the light and shone it out the door. The water was flowing like a big black river, already covering the entire width of the floor and rushing down toward the storm drain.

The storm drain.

Well hell, that would take care of any flooding problem. That thing was four, maybe five feet in diameter, plenty big enough to drain off whatever the pressurized lines could put out. Even as he thought that, he felt water seeping through his shoes. He looked down. There was a two-inch coaming between the equipment room and the main passageway. The water was already coming over the top of it.

The water was rising. The flap doors to the storm drain must be blocked. But how? They were spring-loaded to open when there was any pressure in the tunnel.

That U -shaped handle. If Booth had stuffed something through the crack, a piece of rebar or something similar, the doors would allow water to leak through, but they wouldn’t open. And Booth could have done that while getting away, because the storm drain tunnel was some distance from where they were.

He put the Maglite under his right armpit and grabbed Branner again, straightening her out so he could pull her through the door and out into the main passageway. The water was rushing by. It had a real current now, and it was coming up over his ankles. The glow from the flashlight illuminated Branner’s feet, which were making a V -shaped wake in the torrent. He checked his orientation, made sure he was going the right way, and then began to pull her through the water toward the dogleg turn. He thought about finding the source of the water, then remembered all those valves on the fire main were outside the grating doors. The locked grating doors. By the time he found the right one, it might be too late, the way this water was rising.

He got about twenty feet before he tripped over something and landed hard on his behind. Branner’s head dropped underwater for a second and she came up spluttering. She sat up, her face white in the light, felt the water, and automatically rolled over to get to her hands and knees. Then she got a strange look on her face and began to vomit into the flood. Jim felt absolutely helpless as he watched her convulsions, even as he realized how fast the water was rising. As Branner slumped back down toward the floor, he grabbed her again and held her up.

“Wha-what happened?” she gasped. “What’s all this water? Where are we?”

“Booth got you with ether,” he said, getting to his knees. It was getting hard to stay in position. “Can you get up?”

She started to nod but then was racked by a bout of dry heaves as the ether worked its poisonous spell. He just held her while her entire body spasmed against him. The water was over a foot deep now.

He pulled her to her feet and put his arm around her to steady her while urging her forward. It was like walking through molasses, and the water was up to their shins.

“Booth’s flooded the tunnel. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“The radio?” she asked weakly.

“I think he got the retransmitter. I can’t get a signal out. They’re gonna know they have a leak down here as soon as someone looks at a water-pressure gauge.” And shuts down the system before the tunnel completely floods out, he fervently hoped. And doesn’t count on the storm drain to solve the problem.

He got her through the dogleg turn and then pointed her toward the Dahlgren Hall access grate. The water was knee-deep now and still rising. There was less of a current, but violent swirls knocked them from one side of the tunnel to the other. Jim tried not to think of all that electrical equipment behind the doors as they labored past them. Branner was able to move on her own finally, which meant Jim could use the Maglite again. They held on to each other as they leaned back against the current. Suddenly, they felt the current reversing, shoving them backward from their objective. Now what the hell? he thought as they both almost went down into the swirling blackness. Then the current subsided entirely. Even so, the water seemed to be rising faster now, and Jim could feel the pressure building in his ears. As they stumbled up to the grating door, he reached for his keys. Which was when he remembered that all the grating doors were blocked from the outside. Not just locked but physically blocked.

They were trapped. Unless the chief got to a door and unblocked it, that water would continue to rise until it filled the tunnels. And the chief, waiting for Jim’s signal up in the PWC operations station, might not even be aware that there was a problem. And even if he did, he’d have to get to the right grate. He saw that Branner had figured it out at about the same time.

“What do we do?” she said in a shaky voice.

Holding the flashlight under his right armpit, Jim fished for the collection of tunnel keys in his pants pocket and began fumbling until he found the one that unlocked the door. The water was now above their belts. There was no more current, just that inexorable rise. Jim could feel intense pressure in his ears now. He pushed the door, but it didn’t budge. Definitely blocked.

“We go back,” he said. “Try another door.”

“But-”

“They may have missed one. The radios don’t work. They don’t even know we have a problem. We can’t just stand here and drown. Let’s go.”

Branner fished her own flashlight out of her belt and they pushed through the rising waters, heading back toward the dogleg turn. Jim tried to figure out how Booth had known to flood the tunnel, but then realized Booth must have been listening to the radio circuit and heard them confirm the doors were blocked. Big mistake to have mentioned that.

His tunnels, not ours, he reminded himself as he pushed himself through the black water. It was slow going, and he found himself pulling Branner along with him. She still wasn’t 100 percent capable.

“We have another option,” he said. “We get to that vestibule above the storm drain before the water gets over our heads, maybe we can force those flaps open.”

“But the river grating is blocked, right?”

“Yeah, but that would dump the water. Give us time for the people in the PWC station to realize there’s a problem.”

“Not if it’s high tide.”

He thanked her for reminding him. His own brain wasn’t working all that well as the humidity rose. It was getting hard to breathe. Just then, there was a loud humming sound, and the cracks around an equipment room door to their right glowed momentarily with an unearthly blue-green light. Jim felt a tingling in the water as something big shorted out in the equipment room. Branner must have felt it, too, because she swore softly. They came abreast of the Fort Severn doors as another equipment room flared briefly. This time it was more than a tingle. Up ahead were a dozen more cabinets.

“They’ll know something’s up with that shit going on,” he said, puffing as he forced himself through the chest-high water.

“May be academic,” she gasped as she tripped over something on the floor. Jim tripped, too, and they both went down into the water, losing their flashlights. They came up blowing water out of their mouths, and then Jim dove back under to get his Maglite. Hers was gone.

“Deck plates are coming up,” he said.

“We’re getting nowhere,” she said. “You got a key for these doors?”

Jim stopped and looked apprehensively at the big oak doors. “Yeah, but we don’t want to go in there. It’s a damned cave-in waiting to happen.”

She pushed water away from her chest in an effort to stand upright. “No choice,” she said. “We’re outta time. We can’t get to the next door and find out it’s blocked, too. Which it will be.”

Another piece of electrical machinery shorted out down the passageway, and this one, sounding like a welding torch, blew vicious white sparks through the air vents and out into the passageway.

“Okay,” he said, getting the keys out. He held the light under his chin as he searched for the key to the left door. Even as he was looking, he knew this wasn’t a good idea. At the end of the Severn tunnel was that magazine, which was below the level of the main tunnel. Going in there would trap them like rats, unless they found the way up through that hole in the back. And he had never found out where that hole came out topside. If it came out topside.

“Hurry,” she said, hiccupping. “I’m treading water here.”

The water was up to Jim’s chest as he sorted through the bundle of keys. It seemed to be taking forever. Then he remembered that these doors took the antique keys. Why hadn’t he known that as soon as he began looking? The atmosphere was compressing hard and he was having trouble thinking. Oxygen mix must be off, he thought as his fingers found the big key.

He slammed it into the lock, but it didn’t work. Two doors. Two keys. He’d picked the wrong one. Back to sorting keys again. He found the second one and shoved it into the lock.

“I open this thing, we’re going for a ride,” he said, his brain beginning to spin from lack of oxygen. Branner said something, but he didn’t hear it. The air had filled with a white mist as the rising water compressed it. He was barely aware that there were more flashing vaults on either side of them as the supposedly watertight doors gave way.

He felt himself swept down the stairs and into the ancient brick-lined tunnel in a roar of rushing water. Just before he was tumbled down the arched passageway along with Branner, some detached part of his brain noted that the air was a lot better now. Somehow, he managed to hold on to his flashlight while trying to ignore what was happening to his arms, elbows, knees, and head as the tidal wave rushed them into the tunnel. He caromed off the small cave-in he’d caused the last time down and only just managed to grab Branner as she whirled past him. They didn’t stop until the wave of water came to the T junction leading down into the magazine area, and even then it was only because Jim got wedged across the intersection, with Branner plastered against him, yelling something he couldn’t hear above the roar of the water. He held on to the edge of the wall with one hand and grasped Branner with the other as the water quickly filled the tunnel.

Dumb idea, dumb idea, dumb idea, his brain chanted as he watched in horror while the water just kept coming. If they were dislodged, they’d be swept down into the magazines and pinned against that ceiling until they drowned. There’d be no time to get into that hole. They were screwed, blued, and tattooed.

Branner had managed to wedge herself in place and was yanking on his arm. He turned to see what she wanted and she pointed urgently at the wooden door in front of them. The door to the cross tunnel.

“Key?” she yelled above the roar of the water, which was now swirling back up to their chests and rising fast.

He grabbed for the keys and for one horrible moment couldn’t find them. Then he remembered he’d attached them to a belt reel. He reached way underwater and found the bundle dangling there. In the process, he dropped the flashlight, and this time it went down the stairs into the magazine vestibule before he could grab it. Branner saw it go. She didn’t hesitate. She launched off the wall and let the water take her down into the vestibule. By this time, only a few feet of air remained near the top of the tunnel, and Jim was left in total darkness. But the current was slacking as the tunnel filled, so he could relax his grip on the wall and push across the tunnel to the door. Except he couldn’t find it in the darkness. His grasping hands felt only tottering bricks, and he actually dislodged a couple of them while patting around for the oak door.

For a moment, he wondered if he’d become disoriented and was searching the wrong wall, but then he felt the smooth surface of the wood. Holding on to the key with a virtual death grip, he pushed it at the door, searching in the darkness for the lock. Now only about eight inches of air remained at the top of the arched ceiling, so he had to duck underwater to find the lock. It took him three tries, but he finally felt it. Then, amazingly, there was light as Branner surfaced alongside him, the Maglite in hand. He pointed with his chin, and they both went under, Branner pointing the light while Jim worked the key. The lock turned and the door swung open, and once again they went for a ride, but a shorter one this time, fetching up with a painful crash against yet another door at the end of the thirty-foot-long cross tunnel. This time, they managed to get to their feet as the water swelled through the open door behind them and filled the cross tunnel. When it was just about two feet from the ceiling, the current slacked off and Jim pointed to the open door.

“We need to close that before we open this one,” he gasped. “That way, we won’t flood the other tunnel.”

Branner understood at once. They swam down to the door and pushed it shut, holding it by kicking vigorously while Jim got the key back into it and locked it. Then they took a moment to get their breath. The water was no longer rising in the cross tunnel, although they still only had about twelve inches of air. Then they heard a deep sustained rumbling from behind the door and the entire door frame began to shake, rippling the water in the cross tunnel as they stood there on tiptoe.

“It’s caving in,” he said, watching the ceiling now as the vibrations from the other side precipitated the ominously familiar rain of dried mortar. “We’d better move.”

They half-walked, half-swam down to the other door. Jim wasn’t sure whether they’d gone up the tunnel or down. In the darkness, it was hard to tell. Branner held the light while Jim put what he thought was the right key in the door. It didn’t work. He tried the other key. It didn’t work, either.

“What the fuck?” Branner said, pushing a hank of wet hair out of her eyes. Beyond the far door, the rumbling was tapering off, but the door itself was making noises now. Jim flashed the light down on it and they saw that it was bulging under the sudden pressure of the tunnel collapse. Jim frantically tried all the keys that fit the Fort Severn doors, but none of them worked. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he reminded himself, but the lock didn’t budge. Damn thing had let them into the tunnel-why didn’t one of these keys work? He had never gone into the right-hand tunnel because-why? He couldn’t remember. Hell, he couldn’t even think. There was more water than oxygen in the air. The rain of mortar dust was turning into a spatter of old lime. Branner was looking at him expectantly. Then he had a bad thought: Maybe it had been the right-hand tunnel that had collapsed. But no-that wouldn’t affect the door behind them. He shook his head in frustration and to get the sweat out of his eyes. Why was it so warm?

“Is this water rising?” he asked Branner.

“I don’t think so,” she said, still staring back at the other door. The whole door frame was creaking and cracking under some enormous strain. Just for the hell of it, Jim tried the ornate iron door handle, reaching underwater and pushing it hard down. To his astonishment, the door opened, allowing yet another tidal wave to sweep them off their feet and out into the right-hand magazine tunnel in a tumble of arms and legs. Branner dropped the light and the wave of water swept it down into the tunnel. But the waterfall effect was over quickly this time, as the full flood couldn’t reach them. Not yet anyway, Jim thought, remembering the cross tunnel’s door.

He got to his feet and chased the Maglite. He came back to where Branner was sprawled on the floor in about six inches of water.

“This is getting tiresome,” she said, spitting out bits of mortar and wringing out the edges of her clothes.

“Lemme get this door closed in case the other one gives way. But as long as these doors hold, we’re not going to drown.”

He shone the light at the other door, which was leaking water around its seams. He closed the near door, then tried to find a key to lock it. This time, one of the keys worked. Once he had the door secured, he looked around by the beam of the Maglite. As far as he could see, this tunnel was the mirror image of the one he’d been into before. He could see the cement-block wall where the PWC people had sealed the gun pit tunnels. The anteroom to the actual magazine sloped down, just as the one on the other side had. The air was mustier and reeked of wet cement. Branner got up and came over to where he was standing, sniffing the air.

“What?” she said.

Jim shone the light up and down the tunnel area. Then he held it still. There was a mist in the air, but it wasn’t water. He felt the pressure in his ears again and tried to clear them, to no avail.

“What’s that mist?” Branner asked.

“Mortar dust,” he said. “These tunnels are unstable. The cement between the bricks isn’t really cement anymore.”

“What’s holding it all up, then?” she asked, lowering her voice.

“Faith, hope, and charity,” he said. “And some Roman engineering. Look, on the other side, there was what looked like a way out, in the powder room. Some kind of ventilation hole. We searched topside but never found the outlet. We need to see if this magazine has the same arrangement.”

“Why not go back to the main tunnel-that way, right?” she said, pointing back up toward the main tunnel complex.

“Because it’s flooded to the ceiling by now, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, frowning, aware now that her brain wasn’t working all that well, either. “Does that mean we go down this tunnel?” She eyed the locked oak door behind them, remembering how the frame of the other one had been shaking. Obviously, down wasn’t what she wanted to do just now.

“I think we have to take a look,” he said. “By now, they have to know something’s happened. All the utilities, all the electric power in Bancroft Hall’s gonna be out. All sorts of shit shorted out. Phone lines dead.”

“I’ll buy that,” she said, leaning against a wall and examining the bruises on her arms. “Except that it’s almost two o’clock in the morning. But what can they do about it? And how can they get to us?”

Good questions, Jim thought. At the least, they’d have to drain the tunnel, and the main route for doing that, the storm drain, was blocked. He wondered which lucky soul would get the honor of going up the storm drain from the river and pulling that blockage loose.

“They’ll realize the storm drain’s blocked. Once they get that opened, the tunnels will drain themselves.” All except these old fort tunnels, he realized-they were one level below the main passageways. From the sound of it, the left-hand tunnel had already caved in, and this one didn’t look too great. He shone the light beam down the tunnel again and saw the same silent cement snowfall. If that bastard goes, he thought, we’re buried. And they might not even know we’re in here.

“Wonderful,” she muttered, as if reading his thoughts. “Powder room it is.”

They walked down the now-slippery brick slope. When they got to the anteroom in front of the magazine, there was at least two feet of water pooled on the floor, glimmering in the light from the flashlight. The magazine doors were identical to those on the other side. Jim sloshed through the water to one of them while Branner held the light on it. He worked the latches and pulled hard. The door resisted but then moved, and, to their astonishment, the anteroom was flooded with white light.

Inside the powder room, the floor was flooded to the same depth as in the anteroom. But that wasn’t what got their attention. The room was lit by four fluorescent light fixtures mounted vertically on the wall beneath the domed ceiling. These lights were on despite the lack of electrical power throughout the rest of the system. There were six lab benches, all filled with various kinds of electronic equipment: video monitors, what looked like PCs without their cases, oscilloscopes, tools, a crude telephone switchboard, several printers, and three large wiring patch panels where wires of every description were jumbled into complex loops. On one side of the room, now almost afloat, was a single mattress, of the kind found in most midshipmen’s rooms. Next to it there was a small refrigerator. A makeshift hanging bar for clothes was rigged on the opposite wall, where there were some civilian clothes, as well as what looked like the vampire costume. A trash can in one corner had pizza boxes and beer cans in about equal numbers.

“Son of a bitch,” Jim murmured as he surveyed Booth’s lair. “I wonder how long he’s been hiding out down here.”

“Two, three years anyway,” Branner said. She walked over to one of the printers. “Check this out-doesn’t this look like an exam?”

Jim went over and examined the printout. “Sure does. Shit, he’s probably been tapping the whole Academy intranet down here. Listening to E-mails, copying admin traffic. Look at that headset-it’s tied to that PBX switchboard.”

“Where’s he getting power for these lights?”

As they looked around, they heard the whine of an inverter. They found a stack of car batteries hooked to the inverter, which was producing the AC power for the lights.

“Pretty slick,” Jim said. “Got his own power supply. This whole place looks like some mad scientist built it. Remember what that kid said about Booth-supernerd with a bad attitude?”

Branner nodded and ran her fingers through her wet hair.

“What pisses me off is that I never came over here,” Jim said. “Everybody agreed that this side of the tunnel complex wouldn’t be useful, because it went nowhere near Bancroft Hall. That damned door wasn’t even locked. Let’s look for the way out before any more of that tunnel caves in.”

There were the same two square holes in the back corners of the domed ceiling at the end of the room. Each one had a small pipe running up into the hole from about two inches above the floor. But this time, there was no ladder.

“Where are we, in relation to the buildings topside?” Branner asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “The maps we had were wrong about the other side, and about the Fort Severn layout in general. I never came over on this side because I was looking for a way in and out of Bancroft. We could be anywhere under Lejeune Hall, or even the field house. Or maybe even into the city. Hell, I don’t know.”

They heard some more noises from the tunnel complex outside. Jim went over to the steel magazine door and pulled it shut. It seemed to him that the water was a little bit deeper. Probably leaking around doors, he thought. Then they heard a loud bang from in the right-hand tunnel. They looked at each other, not saying anything. Jim was about to go back to the door for the cross tunnel to see what had happened when they heard what sounded like a small giant banging on that door.

“Cross tunnel just flooded out,” he said. “Damned door didn’t hold.”

He opened the steel door enough to shine the flashlight outside. The hammering sound had subsided into a steady vibration, which was being transmitted by the aging masonry to every joint in the anteroom ceiling. The mist became a fog as more and more of the cement vibrated out of the cracks between the old bricks. He swung the door closed again and reset the latches. They didn’t have much time before the whole thing caved in. He looked up at the ceiling of the magazine itself, but the cement covering it was smooth. Even if the anteroom caved in, this would probably hold. He hoped. He looked over at Branner, who was staring fixedly at that door. The expression on her pale face revealed that she fully understood their situation. The vibrations outside got louder.

Jim pocketed the Maglite and began pulling one of the lab benches over toward the right-hand corner of the room, underneath the closest vent hole. The fluorescent lights flickered and then steadied. He shone the Maglite beam up into the hole. He couldn’t see anything at all, just blackness.

“Try the other one,” he said.

They shoved a second bench under the left-hand hole. This time, he could just make out something way up in the exhaust shaft. The fluorescents flickered again and the pressure in their ears mounted. Branner looked over at the steel doors as they shifted audibly on their tracks.

“The other one had a ladder. He doesn’t just drop into this room. But how the hell we’re going to get up there, I do not-”

There was a crashing roar from outside the steel doors and then a wicked thump as something big hit them from the other side. One of the fluorescents fell off the wall and crashed down onto a bench in a flare of chemical light as a hundred sprays of water began blowing through the cracks around the doors, low at first and then rising fast. As the water began to swirl around their legs, Jim leaped across the room to the low rack where the inverter was mounted above the batteries and got it turned off just as the first of the batteries sputtered beneath it. The lights went out immediately, but they were no longer standing in water with an AC generator going. He sloshed back to where Branner was trying to hold the lab table in position beneath the hole.

“We’ll try to hold our position here,” he shouted above the rush of water as it boiled through the cracks now, flooding the space at the rate of a foot a minute. “The water’ll lift us to the hole.”

Branner’s face was frozen in fear in the glow of the Maglite. “Then what?” she wailed.

“We pray,” he shouted back as the doors, which had been built to resist pressure from inside the magazine, let go with a groan of fracturing metal and the room flooded with dizzying speed. Holding on to the thin pipe at the side of the hole, they rose with the water until their heads were bobbing directly beneath the four-foot opening in the ceiling. Stuffing the Maglite into his trousers pocket, Jim grabbed Branner and turned her around so that he could hug her from behind. The water forced them into the hole, where the air pressure rose immediately as the pocket was compressed by the flood below. Jim felt his right ear and then his left pop painfully, and heard Branner yell in pain as her ears resisted the pressure change. But then they stopped rising as the water pressure and the pressure in their air pocket reached equilibrium. Jim fished out the flashlight and switched it on. The water boiled ominously around their legs as the magazine finally flooded completely. Small bits of debris from Booth’s lab surfaced around their faces. Jim shone the light straight up.

“Anything?” Branner gasped. Jim saw that her eyes were closed. She had said she didn’t like confined places; this must be sheer terror for her, he thought. To his vast relief, the light revealed the bottom rungs of a ten-foot-long ladder. It was not permanently mounted to the shaft wall, but appeared to be hanging from a hook up at the top of the shaft. There was a rope coiled around a pulley at the top of the ladder. Finding the ladder was the good news, he thought. The fact that the bottom rungs were fifteen feet or more above them was the not-so-good news.

“Ladder,” he said. “This is the way he got in here. Now we just have to get to it.”

Branner opened her eyes and looked up. The movement put their faces together. She looked at him and he grinned at her. “This has to be true love,” he said.

She tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite come off. “I’m right on the edge of screaming my head off until this all goes away,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Except that it won’t,” he reminded her, trying to keep it light. The Maglite was beginning to give out, so he switched it off. She immediately asked him to turn it back on, which he did.

“You have no idea how scared I am right now,” she said. “But I do know how to get to that ladder.”

“And the answer is?”

“Chimney climb,” she said. “Move to the side as much as you can, and I’ll use my legs and back to go up the wall.”

He’d seen the technique and understood. “Okay; if you start to fall, let me know, so I can get out of the way.”

She squeezed herself sideways across the square shaft and started the maneuver. “If I start to fall, you’ll know it, not that you’ll have anywhere to go.”

“Just a thought,” he mumbled. “We’ll both go down.”

“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” she said as she started up the wall, wedging her legs against the opposite wall as she slid her backside up the surface. She was already puffing in the hot, humid, compressed air.

“I think that ladder is hanging on a hook,” he said, shining the light past her body. “I guess it’ll hold if you grab it.”

She didn’t answer, putting all her remaining energy into the climb. He kept the light shining past her face and pointed at the bottom of the ladder. He noticed there was a series of hooks, with the lowest visible one right in front of his face. The shaft appeared to be thirty feet high. Booth probably climbed down the ladder, wedging himself like she was doing, and then repositioned the ladder to the next set of hooks.

Jim kept himself afloat by wedging his own legs against the far side wall. The only sounds came from Branner’s exertions as she inched up the wall and the occasional thump and rumble from one of the flooded tunnels outside. He wondered if the cave-ins would show up on the surface. Not until daylight, if then. He looked up again. She was making progress, but it was slow going. The pressure in his ears was so great now that he had a headache, not to mention several points of road rash from being tumbled around in the tunnels. He wondered where Booth was. And how he’d gotten out once he released the flood. There were going to be some red faces when they got out of here. If they got out of here. He had no idea of what was up at the top of the shaft, but that ladder must lead to some kind of escape. You hope, he thought.

He shifted position to see better and to keep the fading Maglite pointed up so Branner could see her objective. Sweat was running into his eyes and he had to blink repeatedly to clear them. He tried to focus on the hook in front of his face, then realized it wasn’t there.

Huh? Where’d it go?

He felt around in the water and found the hook, but it was no longer at face level. It was now at chest level. Which meant-what?

That the water was rising. That he was rising with it. There was obviously enough pressure to force the water column in the shaft to rise all the way to the top. But if the tunnel had collapsed, where was the water coming from? He couldn’t think straight.

Okay, keep it simple. Linear. If she doesn’t make it to the ladder, we’ll just float up to the ladder. And beyond, to the top. That’s the good news. But then we’d better be able to open whatever the access is, because all our air has to be leaking out of the shaft up there for the water to be able to rise behind it. Should he tell Branner? He looked up again, even as he felt the hook touch his stomach.

“How’s it going?”

“About five more feet,” she grunted. “This is harder than it looks.”

“It looks plenty hard,” he said. “Can you see what’s up there?”

“No,” she said. “Focusing on the ladder. How strong are these hooks?”

“They’re pretty big,” he said. He saw that she had stopped to catch her breath. In the silence, her breathing sounded very labored. He hoped like hell she didn’t fall, because there was no way he’d be able to get out of the way, and she was ten feet above him at least. In the dimming light, he could see that she had locked her legs across the shaft and had her whole back pressed against the wall, her hands down at her sides. He couldn’t see her face.

“I have good news and bad news,” he said, finally, when she didn’t move.

“Bad news first,” she said.

“The water is rising.”

“My brain isn’t working in all this mug; what’s that mean?”

“It means that we need to beat it to the top and the outside before it pushes all the air out of this shaft.”

“Wonderful,” she said after a moment. “What’s the good news?”

“I lied. There isn’t any good news.”

“Hate it when you beat around the bush like that.”

“I know.”

She started her climb again, causing a small cascade of droplets to fall around him. He tried to think of something clever to say, but he couldn’t. He felt for the hook. It was below his groin. Think positively, he thought. That air has to be getting out somewhere up there or the water couldn’t rise. Means that the shaft must come out near or on the surface. Has to. Or why would there be a ladder hanging up there?

Unless it had been hanging there for one hundred fifty years.

He banished that thought.

“Got it,” Branner announced from above. “Now what?”

“Climb the ladder,” he said. “Gently.”

“Gently?”

“Just climb it; see what the hell’s at the top. Call for room service.”

“Can you give me more light?”

“That’s it, I’m afraid.”

He heard her change position in the shaft, and then the creak of wood as she very slowly transferred her weight to the ladder. He didn’t look up; doing so hurt the back of his neck. He could feel the hook down around his knees now, and the weight of his Glock in its holster felt like a small brick pressing against the small of his back.

More creaking from above him, and, despite the cramp in his neck, he looked up. He could see Branner’s legs on the ladder as she climbed up into the gloom. The flashlight was really failing now, casting little more than a weak gray beam into the humid mist. But at least the hook appeared to be holding.

“We have a door,” she said at last. He heard a rattle. “A locked door. A locked metal door, in fact.”

He groaned. “Old or new door?” he called up to her.

“I think it’s old. Can’t tell with no light. Feels solid, though. Maybe iron.”

He gauged the distance to the ladder. He was still eight feet or so below the ladder’s lowest rungs. He was too tired and probably too big to do what she had done with that climbing maneuver.

“Is there a handle? Any kind of latches, top or bottom?”

He waited while she felt around the surface of the door. “Nothing,” she said. “Not even a keyhole, at least not that I can find. Nor any hinges.”

“Frame?”

Another moment. “Feels like wood. Ow! Yes, wood. I just got a splinter.”

“What’s above it?”

“Top of the shaft.”

“Brickwork or cement?”

“Feels like both. A veneer of cement over bricks, maybe? Hard to tell.”

He felt for the hook to gauge his progress up the shaft. He couldn’t find it. “Can you tell how the air’s getting out?”

“Wait,” she said. He kept as still as he could while treading water so she could listen. He felt around for the hook again, but it was gone. The bottom of the ladder wasn’t that far away anymore. Water was rising faster.

“I can hear some air moving, but I’m not sure where it’s getting out. Feels like there are hinges at the top of this door, like it’s some kind of flap, not a door? I think the air’s getting out around one of these hinges.”

“Can you stop it? Jam something in the crack?”

“I can try, I guess,” she said, and he heard the rustle of clothing above him, then a ripping sound. He put a finger out in front of his chest and pressed it against the wall facing him, his arm floating as level as he could get it. Almost immediately, his body began to rise above the level of his arm.

“There,” she said. “I ripped a sleeve off my shirt. Stuffed it in the crack. I can’t hear air moving anymore.”

He concentrated on the position of his arm. Had it stopped moving? He thought it had.

“Here’s what I think,” he said. His voice was getting hoarse in the hothouse atmosphere. “This shaft, and the other one, were pressure-release chambers in case there was a fire or explosion down in the magazine. That door probably is a flap, designed to let go under pressure and vent the chamber down below.”

“How does that help us?”

“That flap door isn’t going to open with a key. Can you feel around, down at the bottom of the flap? There has to be a latch plate of some kind, so Booth could get out.”

She moved on the ladder. Booth had probably rigged a latch arrangement on the other side using either the original latch or a new one. He would have left it open whenever he came down here, and latched it when he wasn’t down here.

“There’s something on the other side. I feel rivets or bolts. Can’t see which.”

“Okay. Right now the water’s stopped rising, I think.”

“And?”

“Booth had that other shaft blocked off with a piece of sheet metal, remember? So I’m proposing to swim back down this shaft, out into the magazine, and open those big doors. That will let a wave of water in and put pressure on that flap. Then it’ll-”

“Jim?”

“Wait. Then it’ll push that flap out; and we can-”

“Jim!”

“What?” Why was she interrupting him? He was trying to get them out of this trap.

“That won’t work,” she said patiently. “There couldn’t be any water up in this shaft if the magazine wasn’t already flooded. There won’t be any wave of water.”

He looked up. She was a dim figure up in the haze at the top of the shaft. His mind was whirling. Of course she was right. What the hell had he been thinking? Shit. He was losing it.

“How close are you to the ladder?” she called.

“A couple of feet, but I’m not rising anymore.”

“I’m going to pull this rag and let some more air out. As soon as the water lifts you to the ladder, climb up to where I am. I’ll get off it and wedge in up here so we don’t lose it. Maybe we can dislodge this brickwork above the top of the door. It’s all crumbly, like in the rest of the tunnels.”

“And then?”

“There’s four feet of brickwork above the flap door. If we can make a hole, we’re out. But I’ll need you for that. We need brute force to get it done.”

“So I’m a brute now?”

“You were a Marine, weren’t you?”

He laughed, making a surreal sound in the shaft. “I’m gonna report you to the commander of political correctness down in Quantico,” he said.

“Yeah, right, and she’ll probably gum me to death. Can you reach the ladder yet?”

He was closer, but not quite close enough. But then he realized he could probably do what she had done, for that short a distance. He positioned himself and began to back-walk up the shaft. His clothes felt heavy as his body came out of the water. He had put the Maglite into his shirt pocket to free his hands, and it was bobbing its feeble beam everywhere.

“Got it,” he said, grabbing the bottom rung of the ladder. The bottom, which had been hanging vertically, pulled out at an angle as he grabbed it, reminding him of the tower jump ladder back in the Nat.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me get off it; then you climb up.”

He waited while she maneuvered above him, and then she told him to come on up. He climbed the ladder, first with his arms and then with both feet and arms, showering water back down into the shaft. When he reached the top, he stopped, puffing with the exertion of breathing the warm, wet air. From this position, he was able to shine the fading beam down onto the bottom of the flap door. There were eight rivet heads out in the middle of the bottom part of the door. He kicked out at the flap. Predictably, it hurt his foot. Whatever it was, it was solid. He could hear the sound of air whistling past some obstacle above the door.

“Look above it,” she said, and he raised the light. He saw the familiar sight of ancient brickwork, the mortar between the joints eroded a half inch into the joints, the bricks uneven in shape and alignment. He climbed a little higher on the ladder and felt the bricks, placing himself face-to-hip with Branner’s hunched body. He pushed on the bricks. They didn’t move.

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “There are probably several courses there. Feels pretty solid to me.”

“Pull, don’t push,” she said, adjusting her position. Her legs were wedged across the shaft and her head was right up at the top of it.

Jim took a deep breath and got very little out of it. The air seemed denser, more moisture than oxygen. He pulled at the most exposed brick. He couldn’t be positive, but he thought it did move this time.

“We sure could use a pry bar,” he said. Although not exactly an echo, his voice came right back at him. “I’ve got a knife, but it’s much too small.”

He eased himself back down the ladder two rungs to look at that latch area again and then noticed that his feet were wet. No, not wet-submerged. He pointed the light down, looked, and swore. The water had risen all the way up the ladder. As he stared, the black water rose above his ankles and onto his shins. Branner saw it, too.

“What do we do!” she wailed.

“Plug the airhole again, quick!”

As she reached across to stuff the sleeve back into the crack, the ladder shifted and she lost her perch against the wall. She fell clumsily past the ladder and down into the water, nearly knocking Jim right off the ladder. The rag patch disappeared. Jim swung sideways to avoid being hit and then went upside down on the ladder before he could regain his balance. While Branner thrashed around in the water below him, he scrambled back to the right side of the ladder and climbed back to face the flap door. The flashlight was barely putting out a yellow glow.

He looked down. The water seemed to be coming up faster now, and the whistling noise was louder. Branner was rising with it, hanging on to the ladder but not getting on it. In a few moments, the water would rise all the way to the top of the shaft and would snuff them out. Desperate now, he reached out from the side of the ladder and kicked the flap door with all his strength. It clanged in the darkness, but the latch, or whatever it was, held. The water was up to his hips now, and he could see Branner’s face only as a gray blob just beneath his hip.

“Get underwater!” he shouted. “Take a deep breath and go deep. Do it! Now! ”

He heard her take a huge breath and then the blob disappeared from sight. He pulled the Glock out of his waistband holster, shook it to clear any water out of the barrel, then swung aside and opened fire on the back of the latch. The noise was punishing as he emptied the gun at the back plate of the latch, which was almost submerged. Squinting his eyes and leaning as far out to one side as he could, he fired again and again, shutting his eyes each time a bullet blasted back at him or went spanging around the brickwork. Twice, he felt a lash of burning pain on his upper back, but he kept firing. The last two rounds blew water everywhere as the level came up past the back plate, and then he was squeezing on empty. He dropped the Glock and lunged again with his right leg, smashing it against the flap once, twice, three times. Branner surfaced alongside him, gasping for air. She realized what he was doing and joined in, kicking with all her might at the flap door as the water rose completely over its top. And then it let go.

In one small tidal wave, they both were swept into the hole where the flap had been, but then their hips got jammed in the ladder rungs and neither of them could get through.

“Wait, wait!” Jim shouted. “Let the water get out!” Even as he said it, he had to summon all his strength not to keep scrambling to get out. He grabbed the side wall to keep the flap from coming back down and cutting off their hands, and then they waited for another minute as the water subsided to a steady waterfall over the coaming of the flap. Then Jim disentangled his legs from the ladder and dropped out onto a tiled floor. He turned around and helped a trembling, white-faced Branner out. Her eyes were huge with fright and she held on to him with a desperate grip as they sank down onto the floor. There was light in the room, light that was coming from under a door. He could see a maze of pipes and valves along one wall. There was a wall of old lockers on the opposite wall.

Branner gulped down fresh air and then removed her hands, looking at them. They were darkened with something. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Let me see.”

“Ricochets,” he said. “Doesn’t feel like anything went in.” He bent his head while she surveyed his upper back and arms.

“You’ve got three tears in your shirt; I need more light to see how deep they are.” She wiped her hands off on his shirt. “Another fucking door! Where the hell are we now?”

“Out of that goddamned shaft, and that’s all I care about. This is modern construction. Try the door.”

The water kept coming up and over the lower sill of the flap door, which was hanging back down in position. It puddled on the floor and then ran under the room’s door. He could see the flap’s latch assembly in the half-light, the metal torn to pieces by the gunfire. Thank God that thing was old metal, designed to give way, he thought. Branner crawled on her hands and knees to the doorway and reached for the handle.

“If this thing’s locked, I’m going to do some serious screaming,” she said.

But it wasn’t. She pulled it open and the room was fully illuminated by a battery-operated fire-safety light. They could see a basement corridor outside, filled with more pipes and pumping machinery. The smell of chlorine wafted through the door, and Jim began to laugh.

“What?” she said, eyeing him suspiciously, obviously suspecting hysteria. She was still down on her hands and knees, her hair hanging over her forehead.

“I know where we are,” he said. “We’re in the basement of Lejeune Hall. That far wall with all the pipes? That’s the foundation of the swimming pool. We’re down beneath the fucking swimming pool!”

She tried to pull her soaked clothes away from her body for a moment but then gave up. She looked like a drowned puppy. “After all that, you bring me to a swimming pool?” she asked.

“Can’t dance,” he said weakly.

An hour later, Jim and Branner were sitting on the stone wall running along the portico of the second wing of Bancroft Hall, watching the circus. The entire Yard seemed to be filled with red and blue flashing lights as emergency crews worked to remove the water from the utility tunnels. Each of the major gratings was surrounded by firemen, police, and PWC workers, most of whom were standing around and looking down into the water-filled pits that had been the grating entrances. Jim was being careful not to lean back on anything. His tattered and bloody shirt covered a mass of bandages, which in turn covered the three grazing wounds he’d received from the ricocheting rounds in the air shaft. In the light of the emergency light stands set up around the Yard grates, they could also see a knot of white uniforms up on the superintendent’s front porch, where the supe, the diminutive commandant, and several Academy staff officers were conferring with the commanding officer of the Public Works Center. Directly above them, dozens of curious faces peered out of darkened windows in Bancroft Hall.

“Regular Lebanese goat grab,” Jim said to Branner. She was talking quietly on her cell phone to NCIS headquarters, giving an initial report of the evening’s developments. The chief’s police truck swung into the road in front of the second wing. Leaving his headlights on, Bustamente got out and came up the marble steps. The lights shone right on them.

“I guess this all seemed like a good idea at the time,” he observed, waving his hand at all the emergency lights strobing away in the unusually dark Yard.

“They get that river drain open?” Jim asked, trying not to move his back too much. The EMT had whistled out loud when he’d seen Jim’s back for the first time.

“Yeah, I think so,” the chief said, climbing to join them up on the terrace. “The PWC troops had this big circle jerk going, trying to figure out who was gonna be the lucky bastard who got to go up the drain and free the door. You know, which union, how were they gonna do it, maybe use a YP to pull a cable attached to the door out into the river, like that.”

“Lemme guess: They had so many volunteers to hook up the cable, they couldn’t make up their minds.”

“Yeah, right. It was starting to look like the XO himself was gonna have to climb down there and do it. Problem was, the drain’s several hundred feet long, and they couldn’t figure out how to pull the cable all the way up the pipe without some kinda winch. You know, that shit’s heavy.”

“And?”

“And while they were going on about this and that, there was this big-ass boom. Came from the storm drain. Everyone there, yours truly included, jumped a half a mile. Then the water came out like some giant was down there doing the green apple two-step. That grate on the seawall? History. Went flying out into the river.”

“So pretty soon, the tunnels will be pumped out.”

“Yeah, although now they gotta get down there, turn off the valves that little prick opened. They got the city water shut off upstream in town, but some other damn thing is still running water down there. Biggest priority is getting power back to Mother B. here. Anyways, they got a night’s work ahead of them.”

“So do we, Chief,” Jim said. “We’ve gotta find this Booth guy.”

“You actually see this little shitbird?”

“Big shitbird, I’m afraid, and no, I never actually laid eyes on him tonight. He pulled me into the storm drain, and he fed Agent Branner here an ether sandwich, but no, we never actually laid eyes on the son of a bitch. But we’re going to.”

Branner snapped her phone shut and rejoined them. “How’s the back?” she asked, eyeing the ruins of his shirt.

“Hurts,” Jim admitted. “I’m gonna have to be on top for a while.”

Branner flashed him one of her hundred-yard stares while the chief tried to suppress a guffaw. But then she actually grinned. He was relieved to see that she had stopped shaking. “Washington’s rousting out reinforcements,” she said. “Our director’s suddenly eager to reopen this thing.” She glanced over Jim’s shoulder in the direction of the supe’s quarters. “Uh-oh,” she muttered. “Incoming.”

Jim turned and saw the commandant and two commanders headed for them. “Should have turned your lights off, Chief,” Jim said.

“Whoops. I think I better go coordinate some shit.”

“Chicken,” Jim said. The chief saluted the commandant as they passed on the steps and then escaped smartly in his police pickup. The portico went back into shadow as he pulled away from the curb.

“Mr. Hall. And Agent Branner,” the commandant said as he reached them. “We’re so glad you’re safe.”

The two commanders waited discreetly down at the bottom of the steps. Jim didn’t recognize either of them. “Sorry about all this, sir,” he said. “Things kinda got out of hand down there tonight.”

“Well, I should say so, Mr. Hall,” Robbins said, giving him an arch look. “The OOD told me you’d been shot? Are you all right?”

“I had to use a gun to blast the latch off the door we escaped through,” Jim said. “It was in an old airshaft. There were some ricochets. Cut up my back, mostly, but apparently nothing too serious. Do you have any idea where Midshipman Booth is?”

Robbins frowned and chewed on his lower lip for a moment. “The OOD gave me a preliminary report. Midshipman Booth is not in his room, and no one knows where he is. Midshipman Markham is signed out into town and has not returned. Any thoughts?”

Jim took in the dant’s expression. The usual controlled anger was gone. In its place was something else, something he couldn’t read.

“Thoughts? Yes, I have some thoughts. I think this Midshipman Booth either killed Brian Dell or caused it to happen. I think he’s also responsible for the beating death of a federal agent, and some other muggings that have been taking place over in Crabtown. He may also be responsible for the disappearance of a student at St. John’s. And an attempt on Midshipman Hays’s life. Not to mention penetrating the Academy’s intranet, filching exam material, destroying government property on a grand fucking scale, and generally running wild for the past three years while nobody, nobody at all, caught on.”

“And you can prove these allegations?”

Ah, Jim thought, here it comes. “We need a little time alone with Mr. Booth. And then we’d want to show you his little underground lab setup, assuming we can still reach it. But, yes, I think we can. He as much as admitted some of this to us down in the tunnels tonight.”

“To both of you?” Robbins asked.

Jim chose not to look at Branner. “I don’t know how much Agent Branner heard after she’d been disabled,” Jim said. “But we sure as hell didn’t cause all that”-he gestured out into the Yard at all the lights-“to happen tonight. That kid tried to kill us both.”

“How did you know he’d be down there tonight?” Robbins asked.

Jim wasn’t about to admit that he’d challenged Booth to go down into the tunnels. “We didn’t,” Branner said. “But we’d learned some things at Elizabeth DeWinter’s office yesterday afternoon from Midshipman Markham, some things you may not yet know. We’re thinking now that Dell’s death may have been aimed at Markham. That Dell may have been a pawn in a bigger, and nastier, game between Booth and Markham.”

The commandant nodded thoughtfully. “And do your superiors agree with all these…hypotheses?” he asked her.

“NCIS believes the investigation into the Booth matter should be expanded and pursued vigorously,” she said.

The commandant eyed her carefully. “I believe you received quite different directions, earlier.”

“They became OBE after we’d talked to Markham. We knew that what she was telling us would change everything. So to speak.”

The ghost of a smile crossed Captain Robbins’s lips, but before he could say anything, Branner’s cell phone chirped. She turned to answer it, said “Okay” three times, and then closed the phone. “My headquarters wants a joint conference call with me and Mr. Hall, sir. Do you mind? We need to brief them officially, while everything’s still wet, as it were.”

Robbins nodded. “And then, in the morning,” he said, “I’d appreciate the same courtesy for me and my staff, if that won’t be too much trouble.”

“Not at all, sir,” Branner said before Jim could get a word in edgewise. “Thank you, sir.”

Robbins started to say something, then shook his head and went back down the steps. The commanders joined him and they walked around the corner of the building toward Tecumseh Court, the two officers perfectly in step with Robbins.

“WTF? Over,” Jim said quietly.

“That wasn’t Chang. I paged myself. We don’t need to get into a ‘Who shot John’ discussion with little Adolf there. Time to blow this pop stand. Get some sleep.”

“Time to find that goddamned Booth.”

“Let them look for him. If he’s still here in the Yard, he has to hide from four thousand of them, plus the officers. Let’s get you back to the boat before you fall down and I have to carry you. Some more.”

“I resent that, and I’m not that bad off,” he said, trying not to wince when he stood up. The bandages felt like a second skin, a badly sunburned skin.

“Okay, so let’s get me back to the boat before I fall down, how ’bout that?”

Jim dreamed he was locked in a room full of telephones, all of which had started to ring at once. It was an annoying dream, which got even more annoying when he picked one up and it kept ringing.

“Answer the damned thing,” Branner mumbled from beneath the covers.

He felt for the bedside phone, got it off the hook, and stuck it in his ear without opening his eyes. His upper back felt like he’d been dragged down a gravel road for an hour or so.

“Hall,” he croaked.

“Mr. Hall? Good morning, sir. This is Eve, the commandant’s secretary? The commandant’s compliments, sir, and he requests your presence in his office at zero seven-thirty.”

Jim opened one eye, glared at the clock radio. Once he was able to focus, saw that it was 6:50.

“Sure, why not?” he said, and hung up before Eve could reply.

“What?” Branner said, still underneath the covers somewhere.

“I’ve just been given a come-around,” he said. “Dant’s office, zero seven-thirty. That’s a half hour from now.”

“Have a good time,” she said. “Don’t tell anybody where I am.”

“Right,” he said, getting up and staggering over toward the head to shuck his clothes. Mindful of all the road rash on his back, he opted for a quick front-side-only shower. “Only thing is, they’ve probably got Booth,” he called, and grinned when he heard her swearing.

It seemed like only an hour ago that they’d collapsed on the bed fully dressed. Branner had made some noises about going to the guest cabin, but he had sensed her exhaustion and perhaps more. Within an hour, she’d awakened in the grip of a nightmare, fiercely holding on to Jim for several minutes of uncontrolled shivering and tears. He’d finally rolled her under the covers, clothes and all, and then just held her until she fell asleep.

Twenty-five minutes later, Jim and Branner drove through the gate at the visitors’ center in Jim’s truck and parked in one of the slots reserved for police vehicles. They walked across the Yard and entered Bancroft through the second wing’s terrace doors, where they found most of the overhead lights still out after the events of the prior night. The sound of a portable generator could be heard from the courtyard between Dahlgren Hall and Bancroft.

“Sorry about all the hysterical waterworks last night,” she said as they strode down the empty corridor.

“I was getting ready to do the same thing,” he said, careful not to look at her. “That was too fucking close, all around.”

“Still,” she replied. “I’m glad you were there.”

They made it to the commandant’s office at 7:29. Eve beamed her approval, then frowned when she saw Branner. Jim had managed a jacket and tie, but Branner was still in the same outfit she’d worn down in the tunnels and then slept in. It had not improved with age.

“But, um, I’m afraid this appointment is for Mr. Hall,” she began, eyeing Branner’s rumpled clothes. Jim cut her off.

“Agent Branner needs to know when she’ll be able to interview Midshipman Booth,” he said.

“Midshipman Booth?” Eve said blankly. “I don’t know anything about a Midshipman Booth. I’ll have to consult with the commandant. If you would both please have a seat, I’ll-”

“Get in here, both of you,” Robbins called from inside his office. Jim followed Branner into the commandant’s inner office. He did not invite them to sit down. He stood behind his desk, peering up at Jim over his reading glasses. “I think it was made clear the other day, to both of you, now that I think about it, that this matter had been resolved by a SecNav determination.”

“We’re talking about the Dell matter?” Jim asked.

“Yes, Mr. Hall. The Dell matter. What else would we be talking about?”

“I was assuming you wanted to know why the utility tunnel complex was wrecked last night. Why you and your office are all running on emergency generators this morning. That you’d want a fuller explanation of what happened down there, and why we were down there.”

“Yes, I do. But right now, Midshipman Markham hasn’t shown up for morning meal formation. She signed in very early this morning, well after the expiration of town liberty. And another firstie is also UA.”

“Gosh, let me guess,” Jim said. “Dyle Booth.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve misplaced him?” Branner asked.

Robbins frowned and sat down slowly. “It’s most unusual. Two first-class UA. Especially this late in the year. And most out of character for Midshipman Markham.”

“But not for Booth?”

“Booth’s company officer reports that he is something of a loner within the company, but he’s had no conduct offenses of any kind for almost three years.”

“Well,” Branner said, pulling up a chair and plopping down into it. “I’m tired, so I’m going to sit down. Let me fill you in on what we think we know about Midshipman First Class Dyle Booth.”

“But, see here, I-”

“You want to listen, Captain. That’s what you want to do right now.”

Robbins opened his mouth to protest, saw the look on Branner’s face, and shut it. Jim grabbed himself a chair, reversed it, and sat down, being very careful not to strain the shirt across his back. Branner was gathering her thoughts when the commandant’s door burst open. It was Captain Rogers, and he was visibly agitated.

“Sir!” he shouted. “We have a possible hostage situation. Eighth wing. One mid is threatening to throw another one off the roof!”

Branner whipped around in her chair. “Is one of them a female?”

Rogers blinked, focused on Branner, and then nodded yes. The commandant was standing up behind his desk. “Call the-” He began, then stopped. “Hell’s bells, who do we call? A hostage situation! What the hell’s our procedure for a hostage situation?”

Jim reached across the desk and snatched up Robbins’s phone. He called the chief’s direct number, got him, and told him to set up a police perimeter around the eighth wing, inside and out, to contain a hostage situation, and to get some help from the Annapolis police. To his immense credit, Bustamente said they’d get right on it. By now, the commandant was really spinning up, firing a hundred questions at Rogers, who had zero answers but began to take copious notes in a little green notebook. Branner was signaling Jim that they should get out of there.

“Sir, I’m going to take charge of the police operation,” Jim told Robbins. “I suggest you notify the FBI office in town right away, and that you clear all midshipmen and any contract personnel out of the eighth wing. The chief will call the Annapolis fire department, tell them what we have, and request an air bag and their big ladder truck.”

Robbins just gaped at him, but Jim moved quickly out the office door, with Branner right behind him. They jogged down the executive corridor to the wooden partition, through the rotunda, and into the fourth wing. Midshipmen were staring at them as they ran down the passageway and turned left into the line of buildings that led back to the eighth wing.

“Has to be Booth,” Branner said. “He’s got Markham.”

“That’s my guess,” replied Jim, who was puffing now, his back on fire from the jarring. “You ready for some stairs?”

“Anytime,” she said, and they turned left and up into a stairwell that led to the crossover breezeway between the sixth and eighth wings. They blasted through the double doors into the third deck on the eighth wing and stopped short. There were midshipmen everywhere being herded by upperclassmen toward the breezeway. A company officer was shouting orders, which were being relayed by several firsties. Jim and Branner let the crowd sweep past them until the corridor was empty except for the Navy lieutenant and two three-striper firsties. Jim told the company officer who they were, and asked for a situation report.

“We got a call about someone on the top deck with a gun. Big guy, shaved head, wearing sweats. He was waving the gun around and threatening to shoot people down on the terrace. Then he pulled a female up by the hair and threatened to throw her off the roof.”

One of the firsties interrupted. “Sir? That guy up there is Dyle Booth. He’s a firstie. We don’t know who the female is. She had tape across her face.”

“We do,” Branner said. “Is the top deck cleared out?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the other firstie. “We got everyone down here to the crossover level.”

“How do you get to the roof?” Jim asked.

“There’s one maintenance access stairwell,” the officer said. A phone began to ring in the company office behind him. “I should get that,” he said.

“Sir?” the larger of the two firsties said once the lieutenant had stepped back into his office.

“Yes?” Jim answered.

“Sir, people going topside to the roof? They go out their windows on the fourth deck. Walk the ledge.”

“Wonderful,” Jim said. Dozens of ways up. And down. Branner was talking on her cell phone.

The elevator doors opened and Chief Bustamente got off along with four Yard officers in tactical gear, all carrying riot guns. Jim signaled him over.

“Put one on the crossover bridge,” he said. “No access into the eighth wing on this deck except for law enforcement. Have him tape the stairways, too. Nobody goes above this deck. The other three will go with us up to the fourth deck.”

While Branner was talking on her phone, Jim turned to the midshipmen. He knew there weren’t enough Yard cops available to set up a proper perimeter, so he’d use the mids. “Everybody’s down from the fourth deck, right?”

“Yes, sir,” one said. “I checked it myself. Fire procedures.”

“Good man. Go through on the crossover and set up a midshipman watch there-nobody goes across except law enforcement. Same deal down on the zero deck at all the exterior doors. Nobody comes into the eighth wing except law enforcement or the fire chief. Anyone who does come in comes here to the third deck. I want a CP set up right here in this company office, and I want all firsties running this thing.”

“Got it, sir,” they said in unison. One headed for the crossover; the other trotted to the nearest stairwell and headed down.

“Chief, check on that ladder truck and the air bag.” The chief got on his cell phone.

The company officer came back. “That was the dant’s office. Wanted a sitrep. I told them you’re here and taking over.”

Jim explained what he’d told the mids to do. The company officer listened and then left to supervise those arrangements. Bustamente, still talking on his cell phone, went into the company office and began moving chairs. Two more of the Yard police got off the elevator, and the chief motioned them into the office to give them instructions. Branner got off the phone.

“I told Chang’s office what we think we have. They’re going to alert the SecNav’s office. We going topside?”

“Right now,” Jim said. He motioned for the Yard cops to follow. “You guys come with us, please. One of you have a radio I can use?”

One cop pulled his off his tactical belt and handed it to Jim, who called the chief and told him that they were going up to the top floor.

“Do we know exactly where the hostage is being held?” Branner asked as they went up the final flight of stairs to the top floor of the eighth wing. The fourth floor was physically the fifth floor, as the ground floor was known as the zero deck.

“All we had was that he was yelling at people down in the inner courtyard. But he could be anywhere. This wing is H -shaped, with the inner leg overlooking the rear mess hall entrance. Right about where Dell went down, actually. Shit, we need a key to that maintenance stairway.”

He called the chief on the radio and asked him to locate the key. The highly polished fourth-deck hallway, with its rows of dorm rooms on either side, was silent when they got up there. Jim stationed the sergeant in a position from which he could oversee both the wing’s side leg and the cross corridor.

“This guy’s reported to have a weapon,” he said. “If he comes down, he’ll probably climb down through a window and come out of one of these rooms. Don’t let him shoot you, but don’t shoot him-you duck for cover into a room, close the door, and report. He comes after you into that room, deadly force authorized, but only in self-defense. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. He was in his forties and had several bars on his service pin. Jim didn’t need any more midshipmen killed, even in a hostage situation.

Branner had gone into one of the dorm rooms, and now she stepped back out. “I can’t see any part of the roof of this segment,” she reported. “I can see the cross building, and a part of the other wing’s roof. But they could be anywhere.”

“They said he’d been yelling at people going into the mess hall,” Jim said, starting to move down the corridor. “That’ll be over on the inner leg, if they’re still there.”

“Or they could be holed up in one of these rooms already,” one of the cops pointed out. Everybody stopped.

Of course they could, Jim thought. He kicked himself mentally for not thinking of that. He ordered the other cops to spread out and start checking rooms while he and Agent Branner made a quick check of the cross wing to see if they could spot anyone up on the roof. The chief called back to report that keys to the maintenance stairs were on the way, and that the city SWAT team had been made available. He also said that the Bureau people were inbound, and that one of their hostage negotiation teams had been activated from Quantico but couldn’t be on-site for another two hours. Jim asked if a perimeter had been established around the eighth wing, and the chief reported that it was in progress.

“Chief, I need somebody to get up on the seventh wing across the way, top deck, to tell me if he can spot anyone on the eighth wing’s roof. We can’t see directly above us.”

“Roger that. The Maryland staties have a helicopter if we need it.”

“I’d like to see if we can get face-to-face with this guy, before it goes Hollywood on us. Make sure you get somebody from the Academy Public Affairs office spooled up.”

He put the radio back on his belt. Branner was helping the yard cops go room to room, making sure they were all empty. Jim followed them, staying out in the center of the corridor, trying to think of what else he should be doing. There was no noise other than the opening and closing of doors as the cops and Branner checked rooms, closets, and showers. When they reached the inner leg, Jim’s radio squawked.

“The midshipman officer of the watch reports from wing seven that there’s no one above you on the eighth wing’s roof as far as he can see. But there is one room with its window wide open, all the way down at the inboard end, mess hall side. He says it looks like a shade is flapping in that window.”

“Copy that,” Jim said, speaking softly. “We’re in the interior leg now. Stand by one.” He signaled the others to stop, then pointed down at the last door on the right side. One of the cops lowered his shotgun in the direction of the door, while the other cop continued to check rooms, although he was much quieter about it now. Jim signaled to Branner to join him and stepped back around the corner into an empty room to use his radio.

“Chief, we’re going to try to roust him out and talk him down. Don’t have a status on the Markham girl, but you should notify her father. He’s on faculty-in the bull department. What’s happening down there?”

“We got more city cops coming to complete the perimeter. The ladder truck is down for maintenance, and the nearest air bag is in Baltimore. The commandant is apparently on his way up here to the CP.”

“Keep him down there if at all possible,” Jim said. “How about the vultures?”

“No media yet, but I’ve asked the MarDet to seal the gates. Can you confirm this guy has a gun?”

“Haven’t seen him. But we don’t think he’s on the roof anymore.”

“Make sure your helper bees are behind some cover when you approach that room,” the chief said. “Have them stand in nearby doorways. Don’t all three of you be out in the corridor.”

“Hell, Chief, you’d think I never had any tactical urban warfare training in the Marnie Corpse.”

“You remember any of it?”

“He pops out with a gun, I probably will. But look, we’re all out of our depth here with a live hostage situation. I’m going to try to talk him down, but if it goes south, we wait for the pros, okay?”

“We could always do that now,” the chief suggested. Branner shook her head forcefully.

“I’d like to try once,” Jim said. “It’s not like we don’t know each other.”

“Your call, boss. I’ll brief the dant. And we’re clearing everybody out of the back part of Bancroft.”

“Good idea.” He looked at Branner to see if she had anything to add, but she shook her head. “Okay, Chief, let’s see if he’s in there.”

“Of course I’m in here, you dumb-fuck civilian,” a voice said over the circuit. Jim nearly dropped his radio.

“What-you forget I listened to all your circuits down in the tunnels? You think I don’t have this one covered, too?”

“Oka-a-y,” Jim said, trying to hide his surprise. “So you know you’re in a corner, Booth. What’s your program in there?”

“I’m getting ready to solve my problem, that’s what, Lame-Man-Chu. I’ve got a package all wrapped up and ready to fly.”

“A package?”

“Don’t play stupid, Jim, ” Booth said, aping Branner’s voice with surprising accuracy. “This package has a big mouth. I’m about to fix that problem. Ask your spotter over in seven what he sees now.”

Jim looked at Branner. “We need some secure comms,” he whispered. “See if there’s a telephone in one of these rooms. Anywhere. Call the chief, see what the guys over in wing seven can see.”

Branner hurried back down the corridor, looking for a phone. Jim went back into the other leg of the corridor and signaled the cops to follow him. He briefed them on the situation, then told them to take up stations, one in the room catty-corner from where they thought Booth was, the other in the adjacent room. Then he retired to the corridor intersection, where he saw the chief and Branner hurrying toward him. The chief motioned him out of the corridor and into a nearby room.

“SWAT team’s here. This is one of their spread-spectrum multistation radiophones. Can’t be intercepted. They brought a base station into the CP so we can talk on this. It’s full duplex. Hit this button to talk. Everybody can hear you, and you can hear them. Lock it down, you go into broadcast mode. Listen, the TAC lieutenant recommends everybody back out, let them bring the hostage team in, and then wait for the Feebs.”

The phone chirped. Jim switched it to talk. A voice from the CP relayed the fact that the spotter in the seventh wing was reporting something hanging partially out of the window, something white, looked like a mummy.

Jim acknowledged, a cold feeling in his gut. Booth had probably wrapped Markham up in one or more sheets to immobilize her, and was prepared to drop her to her death on the concrete below. He’d put the other radio down on the midshipman’s desk. He heard Booth talking on it. “So, we gonna talk, Jim? You said you wanted to talk me down. Don’t you want to know what happened to little Brian Dell?”

“Stand by, Dyle. We’re trying to outwit you. Admittedly, that takes time.” He turned to the others. “We can’t wait,” Jim told them. “I think he’s going to ice the girl and then himself. We need to engage him. Chief, see if you can figure out a way to get some assets onto the roof and snag that girl somehow.”

The chief stared at him. “Like what, lasso her?”

“Do something, Chief. Quietly, but do something. I’ll try to tie him up with talk. Get a bunch of mids together and pile every fucking mattress in the building under that window. If he drops her, maybe we can save her. But let’s get going.”

The chief exhaled dramatically and left the room. Jim picked up the police radio and looked at Branner. “Any bright ideas?”

“I can’t think of anything,” she said. “He’s fixating on you, so I think you’re right. Talk to him. Delay him somehow. See if you can get him out into the passageway. I’m going up on the roof and see if I can get into position, pop him if he moves to open that window.”

“You just going to shoot him if you see him near the window?”

“I’m going to hide and listen, but, yes, I will shoot him if it means saving Markham. This guy is whacked-out.”

They could hear some sirens winding down outside, behind the building. Jim nodded and keyed the Yard police radio. “Booth?” he said. Branner slipped out the door and headed back toward the other side of the wing.

“Yes, Jim?”

Jim stepped out the door and started walking down toward the end room opposite where Booth was holed up. “I’m coming down the passageway. I’ll go into the room opposite the one you’re in, wedge the door open, and sit down so you can see me.”

“Why the fuck would I want to see you, Jim?”

“I’m curious, Booth. I want to see if you are who you say you are. Don’t worry-I don’t even have a gun.”

“Sure you don’t. And I believe you. Of course I believe you. But I do have a gun, Jim. And I wouldn’t mind popping you. Wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have to be doing this at all.”

Jim locked the talk button down on the tactical squad’s radiophone and hooked it to his shirt as he passed the cop waiting behind the cracked door in the adjacent room. He kept talking as he walked. “I’ll put my hands on the desk so you can see them. And yes, I want to know what happened to Dell. The official word is he jumped on his own. Nothing to do with you.”

“Well, you’d be half-right, Jim. He did jump on his own. Where are you, exactly?”

Jim backed up to the door of the opposite room, pushed it open with his left foot, and tripped the doorstop. Holding the Yard police radio in one hand, he backed into the empty room, keeping an eye on the frosted-glass surface of the door on Booth’s side of the corridor. He pulled a chair over, twisted one of the desks sideways, making lots of noise but never taking his eye off that glass partition, and sat down. Then he laid the secure radiophone down behind a book on the desk. “I’m right across the passageway, Booth,” he called, using the unsecure radio. “Like I said I’d be. The door’s wide open. I’m sitting in a chair. No gun. No tricks. Just want to hear your story. Check it out.”

He made sure the radiophone was showing a red transmit light; then he hunched forward in the chair, watching that frosted-glass panel. Booth could just make a judgment about where Jim was sitting and try a shot, but Jim didn’t think so. He was pretty sure Booth knew he was trapped and had made some decisions. What he’d want now was an audience. Someone to listen to him. What Jim had to do was occupy Booth while the Annapolis TAC guys, who could listen in on whatever dialogue he got going, tried to recover Julie from the window.

The room was hot and stuffy, and Jim fingered his collar. Nothing moved visibly behind that frosted-glass pane across the corridor. No shadows and no noises. He had to speak loudly enough that Branner and the cop across the hall could hear. He was trying to think of something to say, when the frosted pane across the hall exploded with the boom of a large-caliber pistol, blowing fragments of glass all over the corridor. Jim ducked instinctively, then looked back over the edge of the desk. Booth was finally visible through the shattered panel, sitting at a desk that had been turned sideways to face the door, just like Jim had done. What looked like a. 45 auto rested on the desk, pointing casually in his direction. Behind Booth, the window was closed and the tan roller shade was pulled down all the way to the floor. Something bulged the bottom of the shade.

Jim straightened up and nudged the secure radiophone closer so the others could hear him. “Well, Mr. Booth,” he said as casually as he could. “That was a dramatic way of opening the door. Guess you do have a gun. What is that, a government forty-five?”

Booth bared a mouthful of large square teeth at him, teeth that Jim remembered from the first night’s encounter with the vampire in the tunnel. Booth’s face was gray with fatigue, and there were dark pouches under his eyes. His head was entirely shaved, making him look bald and almost too old to be a midshipman. For a moment, Jim thought he saw the bottom of the shade move.

“So, you’re here to talk me down, Mr. Security Officer?” Booth asked. His voice was raspy, and pitched higher than Jim had expected. He was wearing Marine camo trousers, highly polished combat boots, and a green T-shirt.

“Here to find out what you’re so pissed off about, Mr. Booth. Here it is, almost graduation day, and you’re flooding out the utility tunnels, taking people hostage, doing God knows what to plebes. Regular one-man wrecking crew. Think of what you’re doing to the Academy’s image.”

“ Fuck the Academy’s fucking image!” Booth shouted. “You think I give a rat’s ass about the Academy’s image? Didn’t give a shit about me. All these years, winning N-stars in swimming, hundred and ten percent on the PFTs, perfect conduct record since plebe year, top ten percent of my class in math and engineering, and half my fucking class crosses the street when I come down the line?”

“Maybe they know something, Mr. Booth. Or maybe they just feel something. I don’t know. That you in the vampire getup, knocking heads out in Crabtown?”

“Fucking A. Got behind you, too, didn’t I?”

Jim thought he heard something moving along the ledge outside his window. No noise, he prayed. Not a sound. “Yeah, you did. Have to admit, you’ve got vampire makeup down cold. So what was up with all that? You pissed off at civilians in general, or just townies?”

“Practicing for the Corps, man. Plus entertaining my pussy posse.”

“Oh, yeah, the Goths; I’ve seen them. Coyote-ugly, most of them. Tell me you’re not into all that bullshit, are you? Drinking blood? Worshiping at the altar of Death? Somehow, I can’t quite feature you and Marilyn Manson on a date.”

Booth laughed. “Fuck no, the only part of the Goths I was into was between their legs. They’re professionally bored, so I had to play the part to get it on with them. You know, here’s an Academy dude, only he’s back in black. Had my pick, man. Had my pick.”

“It was me, I’d have to be a little drunk, do one of those weirdos. I mean, like that whiteface shit? They always look like they’re about to puke right through their nose rings.”

Booth grinned, showing all those teeth again for just a second longer than necessary. It was obviously a move he’d perfected. Jim could just imagine what that would be like underwater. Then he heard another sound, above his head. He was sure of it this time. The TAC squad must be moving, trying to get a line on Julie Markham before Fuck Face there opened the window and let her drop. He wondered where Branner was, and whether or not the listeners on the radio circuit could hear Booth. He had to keep Booth’s attention. “That shit in the tunnels-that was pretty impressive. How long have you been running?”

“Since youngster year, Mr. Security O. Just like I’ve been into the Brigade intranet since youngster year. And the faculty LAN, too. Shit, I had the exams before the head of the department. Then I found that old magazine space, got it set up for my computer lab. Dumb-ass PWC dudes were too scared to go down there. Especially after I showed up one night in the Drac rags and ran off a coupla their guys.”

“They never mentioned that, although you’re right-they weren’t too keen on going down there. But I thought you were a supergeek. What’d you need the exams for?”

“Two reasons. One: to sell them. Oh, that surprises you? Think there might be a little ethics problem out there in the Blue and Gold Brigade?”

“I suppose there are always some rotten apples in the barrel. What was your other reason?”

“I’m a data dink. Couldn’t do bull. They told me it’s a brain thing. The bull department cut me no slack. Always with the fucking essay questions. So I’d get the questions, pay some smart dude to write me up some answers, all hypothetical, and do it that way.”

“And you’re telling me that midshipmen are buying and selling exams?”

“Guys in trouble are. It’s a little like loan-sharking-only guys in trouble come to the Shark. Shit, the rest of these dudes are so square, they’d faint dead away at the thought. Got that honor bug so far up their asses, they can’t walk and fart at the same time.”

“And you got Markham’s father to tutor you in reading?”

Booth’s expression changed slightly, with some of the arrogance draining out of it. “So what if I did?” he said. “I lusted after her sweet ass, figured it wouldn’t be a bad move to get close to her old man. Find out where she went weekends. Where home was. Had a feeling about her, that maybe she wasn’t the straight-arrow chick everybody thought she was.”

“She told us about the UVA meet. The party.”

Booth grinned, back in the driver’s seat again. Jim wanted to look at his watch, but he didn’t dare distract Booth.

“I won everything down there. Clean sweep. I think maybe that’s why she finally came across at that UVA party. Or maybe it was the roofie I put in her drink. Don’t remember. I do remember her, though. Hot and sweet. Did she tell you there was a video? Talk about a starring role.”

“So what the hell was the big deal about Brian Dell?” Jim asked. “Seems like kind of a little guy for someone your size to be running.”

“You go here?” Booth asked. He appeared to be listening. Had he heard the team on the roof? Jim shifted in his chair, which brought Booth’s full concentration back to him.

“Yeah. Then I went Marine option.”

“That was my plan,” Booth said, cupping the barrel of the big. 45 into the palm of his left hand. “Dell? Little shit got on my nerves. He was passive. No balls at all. He was just so fucking weak. Other plebes, you’d run ’em until they finally show a little defiance. But not Dell. I ordered him to wear girls’ panties to his late-night come-arounds, and damned if he didn’t do it. Said he got ’em out of the girls’ locker rooms. Piece a shit faggot plebe. Didn’t belong here.”

“So, tell me: How’d he end up going off that roof? This roof, I guess,” Jim said, gesturing at the window behind him. The moment he moved his hand, the. 45 was pointing straight back across the hall. Booth had the reflexes of a rattlesnake.

“I think he got embarrassed, Hall-Man-Chu. Guy in panties on his knees in your room late at night? You figure it out.”

“Can’t feature you as a gay blade, Mr. Booth. Big strong guy like you. Going Marine option and everything.”

Booth let a triumphant look spread across his face. “You ask Hot Wheels if I’m gay, man. She’ll tell you, and I have the video to prove it. But Dell? Shit. Mouth’s a mouth, man. What the hell did I care?”

“So you’re saying he offed himself? Out of embarrassment?”

“Well, he-”

An imperious and familiar voice from out in the corridor interrupted, demanding to know what the goddamned hell was going on. Jim cringed. The dant had arrived. Booth’s face lost all expression. He got up, came around the desk, pointing the. 45 right at Jim’s chest, and stopped just inside his doorway. Jim half-expected Branner to take him out from across the hall, but then he realized that Branner might be on the roof.

“What is the meaning of this, mister?” Robbins yelled. The big midshipman looked down at him with an expression of such contempt, Jim thought he was going to shoot the commandant right then and there. Robbins was so angry, he was starting the Dant Dance, probably not even realizing he was doing it. His fists were clenched and his face was turning purple.

“You!” Booth shouted at Jim. “Hands on top of your head. Twitch and you’ll have three eyes, understood?”

“Okay, okay,” Jim said hurriedly, clasping his hands on top of his head. “Let’s not get all excited here. Nobody’s going to do anything. Not the captain, not me.” He said that to alert the TAC squad that there was a new complication. He could just see Robbins frozen in place beyond the right side of his door. Booth filled his own doorway. The kid was really big. And pissed off. He leveled the gun, trained it on the commandant, and ordered him to get on his knees. Robbins tried some more bluster, but then Booth thumbed back the hammer and Robbins gulped audibly.

“Get on your fucking knees, dickwad,” Booth spat out.

Robbins, ashen now as he began to appreciate the danger he was in, sank to his knees, his hands held out in front of him as if he didn’t know what to do with them. Jim tried to think of something to say so that the listening cops would know what was going on, but he couldn’t come up with anything there, either.

“Got word you wanted to see me, your highness. So now you can see me, right? Got something to say?”

Robbins swallowed hard, cleared his throat, but nothing came out. Jim could just barely see the commandant’s trembling hands. The captain was clearly terrified now.

“C’mon, Short Round,” Booth taunted. “You’re the big fucking deal in this building. You always have something to say. Spit it out, motherfucker!”

Robbins’s mouth was working, but no words came out. Then Booth fired twice, blasting a pair of those huge slugs on either side of Robbins’s knees. The bullets ricocheted off the floor, one shattering a glass door pane, the other exploding a fluorescent fixture in the ceiling. Booth stepped farther out into the corridor and fired three more rounds at the floor next to the terrified commandant. The rounds went howling down the corridor, smashing windows at the far end. The noise was deafening, and Jim felt his fingers unclasping, but he commanded them not to move, which was a good thing, because now the. 45 was aimed back at him. There was a haze of gun smoke in the hallway. Robbins was prostrate on the floor. Booth was already back inside his doorway.

“Awfully quiet down there, Superman,” Booth said. “Or are you too busy pissing your pants? Goddamn, man, look at that. It’s a fucking lake. You really needed to water your snake, didn’t you? Look at that! Get all those medals and ribbons wet, did you, Dee?”

Robbins, whose eyes were still closed, was making whimpering sounds down on the floor. “C’mon, Booth,” Jim said. “You’ve had your fun. He’s not part of this, is he?”

“He’s probably the biggest part of this there is, Jim. All those ethics and morality sermons he made us sit through? That look like a stand-up guy to you, Hall?”

“Like I said, he’s not part of this, ” Jim said. “This scene right here. This is about you, Mr. Booth. You’re here to pay back Julie Markham, and then you’re going to show us all what you’re made of, right? I mean, shit, it’s not like you’re going anywhere, except maybe out to Leavenworth. You beat up a federal officer so bad, he died. You probably disappeared that Goth freak, Hermione whatever, the one you left behind in the tunnel that night. You personally wrecked the entire underground engineering facilities for this end of the Yard. You’ve cheated your way through school, made a mockery of everything this place stands for. Now you’ve made the dant piss his pants. You surely don’t think they’re gonna let you throw your hat with the rest of your class, do you?”

Jim stopped, because he saw the look spreading across Booth’s face. The kid’s hand was trembling ever so slightly. Jim tried to remember how many rounds that gun carried. Not that many, not like the nines everybody carried today. He also remembered that the thing was impossibly heavy, even for someone of Booth’s heft. Seven rounds, that was it.

“C’mon, Mr. Booth. Send that pissant back down the hall before he craps and makes the place smell really bad.”

Booth grinned at that and nodded. There was a gleam in the kid’s eyes now that hadn’t been there before. Drugs? Meth? Where was the SWAT team? How would he know when they had Julie? Then he realized something: They might manage to get a line on Julie, but they couldn’t move her until Booth opened that window. Based on what he could see of the extended shade, she was hanging by her knees, literally.

“Get out of here, you fucking worm,” Booth said, waving the gun at Robbins. “Slide on back down the passageway, the way you came. Only now you’ll slide better, all wet like that. Move it, asswipe!”

Robbins didn’t hesitate. He started to get up, but Booth aimed the gun right at his head, and the dant subsided with a squeak. He began to inch his way backward, literally leaving a trail on the polished linoleum. When he’d gone fifty feet back, he turned around, still crawling, and went on hands and knees like a frantic turtle until he disappeared around the corner.

Booth backed into his room, checking to see that the shade was still in place on the window. Then he sat down again, facing Jim.

“So you figured this deal out, huh?” he said. “That why you’re here? You wanna watch?”

“I figured this has been coming for some time, Booth. That you knew you’d probably never make it out of here. I mean, after Dell, there’s been too much heat. And all that shit down in the tunnels? But you nearly succeeded, you know.”

“Yeah. They were gonna sweep it, weren’t they? Until that NCIS bitch got in the way.”

“She’s pushy, I’ll say that,” Jim said, trying to keep it going. Then he saw a shadow flick past the tan shade behind Booth. All right. They were on the roof and they were doing something to retrieve Markham. “So why the hell did you even come here? You don’t believe in any of this honor stuff. You hold the whole program in contempt. You came from nothing. What were you thinking?”

“A full boat to a degree and a commission. What else, man? That’s what everybody here came in for.”

“Not me, Booth. I believed all that stuff about duty, honor, country.”

“Nobody believes that shit, Jim. All we have to do is watch how the Dark Side behaves. Hell, they knew the Dell thing wasn’t right, but they were willing to hold sweepers on it.”

Another shadow. Keep it going. “And you wanted to be a Marine?”

“Damn straight. At least the Marines are up-front about what they’re all about. Shock troops. Stone killers. Kill a Commie for mommy. The light green machine. Pure. Simple. Hell, you know.”

“I know you’d have never made it through Quantico, that’s what I know.”

“The fuck you mean? Look at me, man. I could eat all that platoon commander shit up for breakfast.”

Jim realized that he was approaching the break point here. He needed to get Booth angry enough so that the guy focused exclusively on him, but without getting himself shot. The TAC team could listen to him talking, and hopefully know when to move. “Wrong, Booth, because the Corps’s always on the lookout for psychos like you. For sick puppies who like to dress up and paint their faces. Who get young boys to do nasty things. They’d Section-Eight your ass in a heartbeat.”

“Fuck that noise, man. Nobody here got wise. Why would they catch on now?”

“Because the Marines are the real deal, Booth. The grunts might fancy themselves Hollywood stone killers, but they expect their officers to have some personal standards beyond being physically fit. They’d catch on to you on the first day in the barracks. Hell, troops’d see you do that thing with your teeth and know you were bent.”

“So how come I got through four years here, huh, smart guy?”

“Because they weren’t looking, Booth. That’s the problem when the Navy does social engineering instead of maintaining their standards. I still don’t understand how a whacko like you even got in.”

Booth laughed that nasty laugh again, waving the big pistol around. “Blame it on the nuns, man. They wanted to score an Academy appointment. I was the only dude in the school who could do the math at the eight hundred SAT level.” He turned in his chair to check the bulge under the window shade, then turned back just as another shadow flicked across the shade.

“So what’s the plan, Stan?” Booth asked. “You gonna make a scene, try to keep me from doing what I have to do?”

“Nope,” Jim said. “Markham lied to us from day one. Between you and me, she shouldn’t graduate, either. I assume you’re gonna open the window, drop her ass on the bricks, and then do the right thing?”

“Not quite, smart guy. Julie’s just window dressing, so to speak. But you know, since I’ve got nothing to lose, why not take your ass with me?”

“Because you only have one round left, Booth. Like I said, I’m not going to interfere. Although there may be SWAT snipers up on the seventh wing waiting for you to check the window shade. But me? I’m your testimonial, Booth. I’m going to be the only one knows how you stood up and did it like a man. Because otherwise, the Dark Side here is going to tell a very different story, right?”

Booth looked at him for a long moment. He had the gun pointed in Jim’s general direction. He’s probably counting rounds, Jim thought. At that moment, Booth twitched his right wrist and the magazine dropped out of the. 45; with his left hand, he jammed a new one into the weapon so quickly that Jim almost couldn’t even see it happen. He watched Booth rack the slide back and chamber a fresh round, ejecting the lone remaining round into the room.

“Guess what, Jim?” He said. “Got lots of rounds left now.”

Jim shook his head in wonder. “I have to admit, that was the fastest combat reload I’ve ever seen, Booth. You must have been practicing.” As in, Hello, TAC squad. He’s back in business.

“Betcher ass I practiced. And now,” he said slowly, leveling the big gun at Jim again. “Now I think we’ll see how much of a man you are, Mr. See-cure-it-tee.” Aiming carefully, he fired once, blasting one past Jim’s right ear, so close that he could feel it. The window behind him exploded in a rain of glass. Jim hadn’t moved, not because he was brave, but because it had happened so fast.

“Well, that was close,” Jim said, letting the listeners know he was still alive. And now would be a great time to make your move, guys, he thought.

Booth nodded approvingly and fired again, this time past the other ear. More glass. Jim began to sweat. He tried to calculate how quickly he could duck down behind the desk. Dyle fired again, the shock wave hurting Jim’s ears as the round raised the hair on the top of his head and whacked into the wall behind him, ricocheting around inside the plaster after it hit the granite facade outside.

At that instant, a small dark shape crashed through the window behind Booth, followed by another. There was a blinding flash and a huge booming explosion, at which point Jim submarined in his chair, dropping out of sight behind the steel desk even as another round came howling right through the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, knocking it over. There was a second huge blast from the room across the way as a second flash-bang let go, and then a third. Then a rattling noise, followed by another big blast, but this one out in the passageway, then a howl of pain from the room where the Yard cop had been hiding. Silence ensued, punctuated only by noises from the roof. Jim was barely able to hear anything except the ringing in his ears. The entire area was full of smoke. As he very carefully peered around the corner of the desk, shapes in blue jumpsuits appeared out of the smoky gloom across the way, pointing guns at everything, including Jim. Then he thought he heard a couple of shots way down the hall, and another window’s worth of glass crashed into a room. As Jim, still behind the desk, got to his feet, hands in full view, the roar of the . 45 came booming down the hallway, dropping the TAC guys to the deck en masse while bullets whacked all around them.

“The roof! He’s going for the roof,” someone shouted, and Jim whirled, jumped over to the window, and looked outside. To his amazement, there was Booth, about ten windows down the hall, hanging by his fingertips from the fourth-deck ledge. Then he dropped like a cat, landing on the next ledge and grabbing the wall for an instant before letting go again and dropping to the next ledge. A TAC cop brushed Jim aside and leaned out to take a shot, but by then Booth had levered himself through a window on the second deck and disappeared. The TAC cop swore and made his report into a shoulder mike.

Jim brushed himself off, checked to make sure he hadn’t peed his own pants, and went out into the hallway, where everyone was getting back up. It was hard to see or even breathe in all the gun smoke. Shoulder radios were chattering away everywhere. A big cop in full tactical gear, wearing a sergeant’s shield, walked up to Jim.

“Nice going, Mr. Hall. You gave us all the time we needed. Got the girl. She’s up on the roof with Branner.”

“She okay?”

“Yes, sir, she is,” the sergeant said, taking off his face mask and turning down the volume on his tactical radio. The other cops had fanned out down the passageway and were checking rooms. Jim’s Yard cop came out of his room, obviously dazed, bleeding from the ears and nose. The TAC guys got him to sit down on the floor and sent for medical assistance. “One of our flash-bangs went slow fuse on us. Fucker picked it up and threw it back out the window just as we hauled the girl up onto the roof. Scared us all to death. Then he caught the next one, and apparently pitched it out here, got your guy. That’s how he got away.”

“No help from me,” Jim said. “I was trying for China after he combed my hair with that forty-five.”

“China’s good,” the sergeant said with a grin. “Ah, and here comes Ms. Branner now.”

Jim turned, to see Branner’s bottom easing backward through the window in the room where he’d been. Behind her were two TAC cops, who held a white-faced Julie Markham between them on the ledge until she, too, could climb through the window. One of the medics who had come up from the third floor took her in tow and wrapped a blanket around her. Branner turned to Jim and blew out her cheeks. “Some guys do all the work; some guys just sit and flap their jaws,” she said. The cops grinned.

“Agent Branner here was the one on the end of the rope,” the sergeant said. “She was the lightest one up there, so she hung out there to tie the harness on while you kept him busy.”

“Thank God you guys could hear us talking.”

“Yeah. And it was all recorded down in the ops van. We catch his ass, he’s DA meat.”

The radio squawked out a relay call from the perimeter cops. “Suspect broke the perimeter,” someone yelled. “Academy cops say he’s going into Lejeune Hall.”

Jim looked at Branner. “He’s trying for his lab access.”

“No way-that’s all flooded,” she said.

“Not anymore-they drained it, remember?” Jim said. He turned to the TAC sergeant. “Tell them to get people into the basement, down where the swimming pool piping is. There’s a storage room, where they keep the chemicals for the pool. That’s where he’s been getting into the tunnels.”

The TAC cops got on it while Jim and Branner started trotting down the hallway. “Can he make it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, turning down the cross corridor, suddenly aware of his burning back again. Funny how that. 45 had taken the pain away, he thought. “If the approach tunnels to the magazines did collapse, then the magazines still ought to be flooded-nowhere for the water to go, right?”

They ran down the stairs and outside, Branner flashing her badge as they raced through the perimeter of police vehicles and watching cops. When they finally got to Lejeune Hall, there were more cops milling around outside. By the time they worked their way down to the basement and found the storage room, the door was open and there were TAC squad guys poking flashlights down into the access hole. The big metal plate was still hanging askew, dimpled with bullet holes.

“Is it flooded?” Branner asked.

“Nope,” one of the cops said. “Can’t really see shit down there, but it doesn’t look flooded. Somebody better call Public Works. They’ve got crews down there.”

“So,” a TAC cop asked no one in particular, “who’s volunteering to go down there after his ass?”

Before anyone could answer, there came a deep sustained rumbling sound from beneath their feet, with the clatter of individual pieces of falling masonry echoing up from the access hole. Then it became very still. The access hole exhaled a small cloud of damp cement dust out into the storage room.

“May be a moot point,” Jim said, staring at the hole. “With any luck, that right there was bye-bye, Dyle.”

Just after sundown, a subdued Ev Markham was staring out into Chesapeake Bay from the fantail of the Not Guilty. Liz and Julie were down below, doing something in the galley, and he was sipping some scotch and reflecting on the day’s events. The boat was back alongside its moorings at the Annapolis Yacht Club after a two-hour cruise out on the Severn and its estuary. Ev was very proud of the way Julie was bearing up after her ordeal at the hands of Dyle Booth. She’d been virtually uninjured, unless you counted some bad bruising around her midriff and knees from hanging out the window and a small knot on her head from the rescue exertions. He was mostly relieved that the whole thing was finally over, and that they now knew who’d been behind all the awful things happening at or around the Academy. He heard footsteps approaching out on the floating pier and swung around in his deck chair. It was the security officer, Jim Hall, and Agent Branner. He got up and unlatched the railing gate.

“Come on aboard,” he said. “Liz is down below. I’ll get her.”

The two came up the plastic steps on the pier and walked onto Not Guilty ’s pristine deck. Hall was wearing a gray business suit, and Branner was wearing a form-fitting blue blazer over a gray skirt. She kicked off her low-heeled leather shoes as she stepped aboard, in deference to the shining deck. They both looked tired, and Ev offered them a drink, but they both declined.

“I’d love one,” Hall said, “but then I’d probably fall asleep right here on the boat. We just came by to give you and Julie a quick sitrep. She is here, isn’t she?”

“Here they are now,” Ev said as Liz and Julie came up the companionway and out onto the stern lounge area. Liz repeated Ev’s offer of a drink, but they again politely declined. Everyone sat down. Ev noticed that Hall was being careful not to rest his back against the curved Naugahyde sofa.

“I imagine there’s been some paperwork to do after all this,” Liz said.

Branner smiled. “Many trees’ worth,” she said. “Many trees. With all those cops out there this morning, there’s paperwork about the paperwork. Plus, the Bureau got into it.”

“When will they want to see Julie?” Liz asked.

“With any luck, they won’t,” Hall replied. He told them about a three-hour meeting with the commandant earlier that afternoon, after some semblance of order had been restored in Bancroft Hall. With the exception of the room that had been flash-banged, and several bullet holes and lots of broken glass up and down the fourth-deck corridor, the actual damage had been minimal. The mids, disciplined as ever, had reoccupied their building, cleaned everything up, and returned to their routine.

“We went over the entire case with the supe and the dant during that meeting. I did the part about the tunnel runner, Branner here did the Dell case, and we jointly went over the parts where the two came together. Then we had a separate meeting with our cops, the town cops, and the Bureau people.”

“So it was Booth in the tunnels?” Liz asked. Ev noticed that Julie still appeared to be distracted, as if she were mulling something over. She’d been very quiet ever since they’d picked her up at the dispensary earlier.

“Yes,” Branner said. “And it was Booth terrorizing the back alleys of Annapolis with his vampire act. Mr. Hall here managed to get him to talk for the record, as it turned out, because the TAC squad always records its radiophone network anytime there’s an incident.”

“We’ve been laying low all afternoon, Mr. Hall,” Ev said. “Liz suggested the boat because we could get away from any media and at least the landline telephones. We did call into Bancroft to tell them where Julie was, but no one seemed to want her back right away. Thanks to you, I assume?”

“What really happened to Brian Dell?” Liz asked.

“As best we can tell, Booth was hazing him, late at night. He made him do some bizarre things, such as wearing women’s underwear, and perhaps even sexually assaulted him. Our best take on the matter is that Dell did in fact commit suicide after being humiliated one time too many. I suspect that Booth saw it happen, or even egged him on. But that’s all we know, and, of course, that version came from Booth.”

“So it wasn’t Dell who was gay, but this Dyle Booth?”

“I think Dyle Booth was just your basic sadist, as well as being someone who hated everything the Academy stood for. He was never really accepted by his classmates, so he ended up holding the entire program in contempt. If I can indulge in a little amateur psychology, I think all this violence at the end, these increasingly outrageous acts, was an indication that he knew he’d never make it in the Corps. He wasn’t homosexual. He was just very badly bent.”

“But he did do this to Brian to get back at me,” Julie said in a small voice, speaking for the first time. Ev wanted to reach out to her, but she had been so withdrawn all day that he’d been afraid to make the first move.

A yacht rumbled into the marina from the outer harbor and blatted its horn for a line-handler. A young man came trotting down the pier from the clubhouse. “I think he did this to Brian Dell because he could,” Hall said, casting what looked to Ev like a quick warning glance at Branner. “The fact that Julie had pulled Dell under her wing probably made Dell a better target, but he was already a qualified target for the likes of Dyle Booth.”

“Shit. Shit. Shit, ” Julie muttered, shaking her head. “I should have spoken up way earlier.”

“Well, you had something to lose, didn’t you, Midshipman Markham?” Hall said. “He told us about the video.”

“What video?” Ev asked, sitting up in his chair. Hall didn’t answer, but he looked at Julie expectantly.

She took a deep breath. “After that weekend in Charlottesville, Dyle sent me a video clip over the Academy intranet. Somebody at the party had filmed everything. I guess you could say I was the star. Dyle said he’d put it on the Web unless I did what he wanted.”

“When did he do this?” Branner asked softly.

“The clip came right after the UVA weekend,” Julie said. “Come to think of it, that was probably where my underwear went adrift. But the threat to put it on the Web was yesterday morning. He called it my ‘graduation present.’”

“Sweet,” Branner said.

“Where’s the video?” Ev asked.

“No one knows,” Jim said. He was watching Julie’s face, but she just shook her head.

“And that’s how he was able to take you prisoner this morning?” Branner asked.

Julie nodded. “I stewed about it all day and all night. Especially after having to run away from Bancroft Hall last night.” She flashed her father a quick look but then faced away again. “Then when I heard that something huge had happened down in the tunnels, I figured it must have to do with goddamned Dyle. I went to his room, but he wasn’t there. So I waited. A long time. But he didn’t come back. Thirty minutes before reveille, I gave up, went back to my room.”

“And there he was?”

“And there he was. All dressed out in his jarhead costume. He put a knife to my throat, said he’d stick Mel if I made a sound. She was asleep in her rack, right there, next to us. He pulled me out into the passageway and put a pillow-case over my head and taped it. After that, I don’t know where we went, but we ended up on the roof. That much, I could tell. Right as morning meal formation was going down, he started screaming crazy shit down into the court. Now I know what Hitler sounded like.”

“Where’s Booth now?” Liz asked.

“We think he escaped back down into the tunnels,” Hall said. “The old part, the Fort Severn magazines. Way down there, under Lejeune Hall. But we also think they collapsed while he was down there. Knowing what we know about those tunnels, we suspect he’s dead.”

Julie just nodded. “Good,” she said. “Dyle needed to be dead. Hell, I think he wanted to be dead.”

“The final part of our meeting with the heavies was about you, Midshipman Markham,” Hall said.

“Oh, I can just imagine,” she said. “Four valiant years, down the tubes.” She looked over at Ev. “Sorry to disappoint you, Dad. Almost made it.”

Ev really wanted to get up and hold her, but Hall was shaking his head.

“Actually, I think you’re going to be all right,” he said. “There’s maybe something you didn’t know: Booth gave you a roofie that night at UVA.”

Julie just stared at him.

“What’s a roofie?” Ev asked.

“Rohypnol,” Branner said. “The date rape drug. A tasteless, odorless, clear liquid you put in the girl’s drink and she’s all yours, all inhibitions gone, and, what’s even better, she won’t remember a thing.”

“Holy shit.”

“He said that? He slipped me a roofie?”

“Did you get tested afterward?” Branner asked. “Anyone do a rape kit on you? Blood test?”

Julie shook her head. “I thought it was all me, getting drunk, letting it happen. Just once, in four years, letting go, totally losing control. That was the Dyle effect. And let me tell you, I dreaded that commissioning physical exam like the end of the world.”

“Well then, you had no way of knowing,” Branner said. “But he told Mr. Hall here that he gave you a roofie. Put it in your drink. You never would have noticed until the next morning, when I’m sure you did notice.”

Julie blushed but then nodded. “I was so damned ashamed-of myself, of Dyle, even. Everything they teach us here…”

“Well, like I said, I think this is going to come out all right for you,” Hall said. “The commandant does not view your mentoring Dell as a serious conduct offense. And the fact that you weren’t entirely forthcoming in the NCIS investigation can be justified by the grotesque blackmail Booth was running. They’re working on an official version of events, but your part in it is going to get sanitized. A lot.”

“Why are they doing this?” Julie asked.

“Because you really didn’t do anything so very wrong, Julie,” Hall said. “You tried to help some poor plebe who was barely afloat, and in the process you crossed paths with a sadistic monster who had fooled the system, big-time. I think they’re more than a little embarrassed about that too.”

“But I lied when I said I didn’t know Brian very well!” she said. “That’s-”

“Understandable, given the circumstances. Before this morning’s events, Booth was already responsible for two other deaths. If it hadn’t been Brian, it may well have been someone else. We think he was getting a taste for it. And what he did last night in the tunnels was absolutely homicidal.”

Julie shivered. “When he hung me out that window, I thought it was all over. But then he said we’d go together when the time was right.”

“Sometimes things work out,” Hall said.

“So it’s finished?” Ev asked. “She can graduate?”

“As best I can tell, unless she blows an exam or two.”

Julie blinked and then put a hand to her mouth. “I want to go home, Dad,” she said, finally facing Ev. “I think I want a big sleeping pill and twelve hours to enjoy it.”

Ev stood up, more than happy to oblige. “When does she have to be back?”

“They said Sunday night, eighteen hundred,” Hall said, also standing. “Agent Branner will want to get a written statement for the record, but she can do that early next week. Why don’t you take her home, Prof? We’re gonna secure, too. It’s been a long damned night and day.”

Ev gathered up his jacket and shoes, put his arm around Julie, and escorted her off the boat. He told Liz he’d call her later, and she just smiled and waved. He hoped, as they went up the pier, that the smile was a good sign. He was vastly relieved at the outcome of the meeting in Bancroft Hall and that Julie was going to graduate after all. But in ten days’ time, she’d be on her way to Pensacola, and he still had no damned idea of what he was going to do then.

Jim watched them go as darkness settled on the marina, and then he and Branner got ready to leave. Branner unsuccessfully stifled a huge yawn as she went over to the railing and began putting on her shoes. Liz DeWinter came over as Markham and his daughter passed out of sight around the clubhouse building.

“Okay,” she said, looking up at him. “How’d you really manage all that?”

“Manage what, counselor?” he asked innocently.

“Getting my client out of the shit. As all you boat-school types have told me repeatedly, they take that honor code very seriously over there.”

“Oh, that,” Jim said, teasing her just a little until he saw Branner giving him that range-finding look over Liz’s shoulder. “Well, a certain captain, who shall forever go nameless, walked right into my little standoff with Booth on the fourth deck up there. Booth held this officer in somewhat low regard. He emptied a forty-five all around said individual, who was at the time attempting to find that fabled route to the Indies right through the center of the earth.”

“And?”

“And he may have pissed his pants. Just a little.”

“Just a little?”

“Well, perhaps more than a little. Think lake.”

“Ah.”

“Yes. And as he was winding himself up this afternoon to unleash the Honor Committee and the Brigade investigators and all the rest of the ethics and morality mafia, I called for a coffee break and had a private word, during which he and I reviewed certain aspects of the incident that had not yet reached the public domain.”

“How you do go on, Mr. Hall,” Liz said.

“He’s learning,” Branner said from across the deck. “Slowly, though.”

“I certainly am. Anyway, in the fullness of time, you can share this insight with your erstwhile client. Maybe after she throws her hat in the air and swears the appropriate oath.”

“And tell her what, exactly, Mr. Hall? That you blackmailed the dant into letting her go forward?”

“Call it leverage, not blackmail. Plus it seemed like the appropriate thing to do, counselor. And I guess you can tell her, ‘Welcome to the real Navy, Ensign.’”

Liz started to chuckle. Jim took Branner’s arm. “Come on, Special Agent. It’s tree time in the city.”

They drove back over to Jim’s marina, which was not nearly so grand as the AYC, and then had to hunt for a parking place big enough to accommodate the pickup truck. After much backing and filling, he got the thing wedged in between two much smaller vehicles. Branner then discovered that she couldn’t open her door.

“This damned thing needs tugboats,” she said. “Let me ask you something: You really think Booth’s dead?”

“Shit, I hope,” Jim said with a yawn. “He was a resourceful bastard. I guess you’ll have to get out this side.”

She didn’t move. “I mean, what if those tunnels didn’t collapse? What if that was something else caving in down there?”

“They collapsed when we were running for our lives,” he pointed out.

“So what was that noise this morning? When we were all trying to figure out how not to be the first one to go back down that hole?”

“Um.”

“Yeah. So what was left to cave in down there?”

“Maybe we should call the PWC?” He looked at his watch: 8:15. “They must still have crews down there, restoring power, drying those cabinets out.”

She rolled down her window, looked again at how close the other car was, and shook her head. “Yeah, I think we should. Just in case. Otherwise, we’re assuming. I always get bit right in the ass when I make assumptions.”

“Oh, is that what it takes?” Jim asked, provoking a pained look. My prospects aren’t looking so good, he thought. He said, “Okay,” then put a call in to the chief, who got him patched through to the PWC ops station. They, in turn, put him through to the on-scene coordinator down in the tunnels, a Lieutenant Commander Benson. Jim identified himself and briefly explained his problem. Benson, who said he was near the Fort Severn tunnel doors, told him to hold the line and he’d go take a look.

“Where would he go, if he did get out of that mess down there?” Branner asked.

“Either back into Bancroft Hall, where he could probably hide, for a little while anyway, or into town, where he could go to ground with his Goth crew.”

“Yeah, but they’re just college kids. They’d only hide him until the heat began to build. You said he was ready to grandstand his way into the next world. If that was the case, what else might he do?”

“My brain’s failing and my back hurts like hell. What are you getting at?”

“Would he try again for Markham?”

Jim had to think about that one. The cops had enough, based on what had been captured on tape, to put him away. Not to mention the fact that Booth had fired on the TAC squad officers. But this was Dyle Booth they were talking about.

“He might,” he said. “Just to show us he could. But that hole under Lejeune Hall went to the right-hand magazine. Which we know was flooded. Both those tunnels should have collapsed. I can’t-Wait one. Yeah, Mr. Benson?”

Benson said they’d checked both tunnels left and right. Left was collapsed right up into the anteroom.

“And the right one?” Jim asked, a small tendril of apprehension coiling in his stomach.

“The right one was open,” Benson reported. “All the way down to the right-hand magazine. Lots of muddy mortar, but the ceiling was holding, barely. The cross tunnel had collapsed, and part of the right-hand magazine had collapsed.”

“Which side of the magazine collapsed, as you looked in from the door?” Jim asked, looking at Branner, who now appeared to be wide awake as she listened. Benson said he hadn’t gone down there personally. Place scared him to death. But the cleanup crew’s supervisor said there was apparently a ladder of some kind sticking down out of a hole in the ceiling, if that helped.

Jim sighed, thanked him, and hung up. “Right tunnel held,” he announced.

“Oh shit,” she said. “We’d better alert somebody. And we’d better call Professor Markham, warn him that Booth might be loose.”

“That’s not a call I’d like to get right now,” he said. “Why don’t we go out there, tell him in person, maybe baby-sit the place for the night? Although Booth is probably long gone.”

“You start driving,” she said, pulling out her own phone. “I’ll call my people. All that Washington help is still down here. They can notify the Feebs if they’re still in town. And I guess we need to tell someone in Mother B. that their favorite psycho might still be up and running.”

“And he’s only had all fucking day to get his shit together,” Jim said as he eased the pickup out of its parking place without removing anyone’s mirrors. “Damn it!”

Ev took a cup of coffee and a bottle of scotch out to the dock, where there was a small picnic table and two benches. He turned on the small spots at the water end of the boathouse to attract the bugs and settled down to absorb the darkness. Julie had gone up to her room after an awkward good night at the bottom of the stairs. The night was clear and almost warm, with only a few spring mosquitoes buzzing. In another month, it won’t be possible to come out here at night, he thought. The summer mosquitoes would first rip up the dock planks, take away the table and chairs, and then come back for the humans.

There were other dock lights twinkling across the still black waters of the creek, and at least one unhappy outside dog was trying to wear his owners down with a steady, incessant barking. After the past couple of days he knew he ought to be sleepy, but he wasn’t, and sitting out here was preferable to staring at the ceiling in what had been his and Joanne’s room. He poured some scotch into the coffee and recapped the bottle. He noticed he was drinking more these days, and enjoying it more, too.

His and Joanne’s room. Well, not anymore, and that was one good thing to come out of all this. He’d found a woman to fill that gaping hole in his life, tiny as she was. The fact that she could talk about Joanne and his prior life made it even better, because if she could accept it, then maybe so could he. Liz was in so many ways a sweet woman, but there was some steel in there, too. He wondered how many other lawyers had taken a look at her and made some legally fatal underestimations. He felt a vibration along the planks of the dock.

“Is that scotch?” Julie asked, materializing out of the darkness in the penumbra of the boathouse spots. She was wearing a set of Navy sweats and white socks, and she had an empty glass in her hand.

“Didn’t know you liked scotch,” he said, sliding the bottle toward her as she sat down.

“Have to learn sometime,” she said, pouring a half inch into her glass. “Have to do better with booze than I’ve done so far if I’m going to be a naval aviator.” She sipped some and made a face. “Tastes like medicine,” she muttered.

“In my day, a naval aviator’s breakfast was officially a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and a puke.”

“Now it’s a Coke, a handful of Midol, and a puke, or so I’m told,” she said.

“You don’t have to drink to fly, you know,” he said.

“On the other hand, I may want to,” she replied, looking out over the black water. Something swirled out in the middle of the creek. “Man. It seems like it was just parents’ weekend.”

“Sweating exams?”

“Not really. This semester was a pretty light load. I could bust them all and still have the QPR I need to leave.”

“Well, what’d you think of it? Your four years at the Academy?”

“As in, ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you enjoy the play?’”

Ev laughed and poured them both some more scotch.

“Discounting my Dyle Booth experience,” Julie continued, “it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was pretty good. Solid. Long, maybe, but at least they get you out in four. Most of my high school classmates screwed off their freshman year and now they have another one to go.”

“You think you have a good class?”

“Yes,” she said, trying some more scotch. This time, she didn’t make a face. “Better than those weak-ass babies in O-three. That’s another thing my civilian friends will never have-real classmates.”

He nodded. “Very true. And that’s for life, too, no matter if they stay in or get out. In fact, at my twenty-fifth reunion, the most rah-rah people were all the ones who got out after five years. Apparently, there’s something missing out there in civilian life, too.”

There was another swirl, something fairly big, out in the creek. Tide must be in, he thought. Some big fish is here for some easy pickings.

“In a way, the Academy’s so artificial,” she said, settling deeper into her chair. “We have all these rules, standards, universal athletics, mostly smart people, profs who all speak clear English, and reasonably ethical people. While my high school friends got summer jobs at Burger King or smoked dope at the beach, we were going all over the world on summer cruise. And we have the next five years wired.”

“But no money, to speak of.”

“Yeah, but most of them won’t have much either. The money difference doesn’t get big until five years down the pike. Besides, none of them will get to strap on an F-eighteen Super Hornet and go blasting off a carrier. Money can’t buy that.”

“Assuming you make it to jets,” he warned. “Not many do.”

“Hell, Dad, that’s assuming the dant doesn’t change his mind in the next week.” She was quiet for a moment, then turned to look at him. Her face was barely visible in the darkness. “I’m sorry about the lies. Charlottesville. And especially Dyle Booth.”

Ev nodded in the darkness. “Just don’t do that in the fleet,” he said. “You’ll be an officer. You can’t let go like that anymore. And if anybody puts the squeeze on you, go tell your boss. It’s not all Dark Side out there.”

She did not reply, and he felt he’d said enough. He was suddenly glad it was dark. He wondered if it was a porpoise out there as something surfaced again, closer to the pier, just out of the dim cone of light from the spots. He could hear it blowing, but not squeaking. They came into the creek sometimes, hunting.

“I hope so,” Julie said, hugging her knees to her chin. “One of the reasons I turned Tommy off was because of what happened down there at UVA. Plus, I had no one else to tell. What are you looking at?”

“I wonder if that’s a porpoise out there,” he said, leaning forward to listen. He got up to go investigate. Julie got up, too, following him down to the very end of the dock, where the steps were. Ev tilted one of the boathouse spots down as he reached the end of the dock, aiming it down into the water, where he saw a shimmering white face with a huge mouthful of teeth just below the surface. Julie saw it at the same time and screamed just as Dyle Booth surfaced, ten feet off the dock.

For a moment, Ev was frozen in place. He distantly heard a screen door slam next door, and then his neighbor, Jack Johnson, called out to them, asking if everything was all right. At that moment, Dyle raised an ugly black government. 45 auto and pointed it at them, drooping the muzzle just enough to drain the water out of it. He was treading water effortlessly, staying just off the dock. He tilted his head in the direction of Johnson’s voice. Ev understood.

“Yeah, Jack, we’re okay,” Ev called.

“Thought I heard a scream,” Johnson said. “Is that Julie with you?” His voice carried with perfect clarity across the water. Dyle was grinning again, but that. 45 never wavered. Julie seemed to be still frozen in shock.

“She got a splinter, Jack. We’re okay.”

“All right, Just checking. Night, Ev.” The old man went back into his house. Dyle moved a little closer to the dock. He called Julie’s name, and she slowly, very slowly, looked down at him.

“Thought it was over, didn’t you, TC? Thought you’d dodged a bullet? You forget something, TC? You forget our little deal?”

Julie swallowed and moved closer to her father, but she didn’t say anything. Ev could feel her trembling. “What the hell do you want, Mr. Booth?”

“Fuck you, Professor, ” Booth spat back at him, ducking almost all the way back under but keeping the. 45 aimed right between them. “You never gave a shit about me. Thought I was some dumb ass kid. I could see it every time I came in. And your precious little girl there. Too good for the likes of me, right, Julie? Except for that once, huh? You thought it was pretty good that night, didn’t you, baby?” He slapped the water hard. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, bitch!”

“She wasn’t thinking at all if you gave her Rohypnol, Booth. That how you get your girls? A little better living through chemistry? Couldn’t get any on your own?”

“Dad, don’t,” Julie murmured, but it was too late, as Dyle stopped his movements in the water and settled back down until only his face and the muzzle of the gun were above water.

“Tough talk from an old has-been who’s ten feet from the business end of this,” he said, waggling the. 45 and once again drooping the nose to make sure the barrel was dry. “You were Navy once. You do understand I can drop you both in under a second, right?”

“What the fuck do you want here, Booth?” Ev demanded again, getting angrier by the second. “They know what you did. They know what you are.”

“What I am? What I am? And just what’s that mean, Professor? You have no idea of what I am.”

Ev had been trying to think of what to do, but now he just let his brain ride, his old pilot instincts kicking in. He moved ever so slightly to get closer to Julie. “What you are is a piece of shit, Booth,” he said. “A highly polished turd that got by the treatment plant and into the drinking water. You’re a technogeek, right, Booth? A whiz with the computers?” He moved again, not picking up his feet but just willing his body to ooze its way closer to Julie. He didn’t really know what he was going to do, but he was going to do something. Almost there, arm’s length. He felt his leg come up against his scull, which was lying upside down on the dock. “You know what Gee-Go means in computer talk, right, asshole?”

Booth’s face tightened into a furious rictus. Those huge teeth dominated his entire face. Teeth and burning, clearly insane eyes. Ev was almost to the point of being able to touch Julie, inside of arm’s length now, except the damned boat was in the way. “Gee-go, Booth. You’re the personification of gee-go. G-I-G-O. Garbage in, garbage out. The academy let the barriers down and you slipped over the rim of the bowl like the stinking piece of shit you are, Booth.”

“Dad, stop it,” Julie wailed. “He means it.”

“You tell him, TC,” Booth said softly, dipping again into the black water while his other arm oared his body back into position to keep facing them directly. The boat, Ev thought. Use the boat. Booth dipped down into the water again for just an instant, and Ev backhanded Julie with all his might, a sudden blast of adrenaline pumping him so hard that he knocked her off her feet even as he bent down, grabbed the boat, and in one surprisingly smooth thrust slid it directly at the evil face in the water. Booth fired once, a huge, booming shot that slashed the air where Julie’s head had been an instant before, and then, a split second before the prow of the boat hit him in the face, he fired again, and this one caught Ev in the left side of his chest, spinning him around like a dog under a bus. Ev was conscious of being down on his side, down on the edge of the dock, as Julie scrabbled on hands and knees back up the dock, screaming something at Dyle and then for someone to help them. The gun went off again, this round tearing through the decking, splitting one board into pointed fragments that lashed Ev’s face and hands. Ev lifted his head to look back down into the water, but his neck muscles betrayed him and his face sank back down onto the shards of wood.

Have to get up, he told himself, must get up. He heaved again, trying hard for more air. Something wrong with my lungs. But he managed to get up on his hands and knees, turning deliberately to face the water and ladder, but then Dyle’s glaring face was rising over the edge of the dock. He heard dogs barking somewhere in the background, the sounds of voices, Julie still yelling. He thought he saw lights coming on, but his eyes were focused on Dyle as he came up the ladder. One of Dyle’s eyes was swollen shut and he was bleeding from his nose, where the boat’s sharp prow had hit him squarely, but he was grinning that terrible grin, his open eye focused right on Ev’s face. He stepped up onto the dock, out of the cone of light from the spots, his huge body gleaming, and suddenly he was bending over Ev, grabbing him by the hair and jerking him upward so he could look into Ev’s eyes. Ev grunted as a huge wave of pain washed through his chest, and he heard himself making a gargling noise in his throat.

“She warned you, old man,” Dyle said softly, struggling to hold Ev up so he could push the nose of the. 45 under Ev’s rib cage. Ev couldn’t do anything except try to breathe. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, and he couldn’t even look up into Dyle’s grinning face because Dyle’s forearm was in the way. He felt Dyle glance sideways up the pier, where Julie was still yelling for help.

“Goddamn you. We had a deal, bitch, ” he hissed, but Ev didn’t think she could hear him. He felt Dyle pull the hammer back. “Not here to do Julie, you stupid fuck, but you? You don’t count, see?”

Ev felt his body sagging, and Dyle had to pull harder on his hair to keep his face up.

“Look at me,” Dyle growled, and Ev tried again to focus. All he could see was a mouthful of teeth, and then he felt his fingers close around a big piece of the shattered dock planking.

“That’s the Look, Pops. Hold still now, don’t move-don’t want to get anything on me, do we?-and then everything’s gonna be all right.”

Ev suddenly felt footsteps running back down the pier, and he heard Julie screaming, “No, no. What are you doing?” as Dyle looked over at her and grinned again. Summoning every ounce of strength he had left, Ev stabbed upward with that stiletto-sized splinter, catching Dyle in the belly and, because of the angle, driving all eighteen inches of it right up into Dyle’s heart. For a terrible instant, nothing happened, and he realized he could feel Dyle’s beating heart pulsing through the piece of wood. Then he felt the stub end of the. 45 barrel that had been pressed to his own side fall away, and then Dyle, cross-eyed now, let out a long, wet sigh and collapsed like a huge sack of potatoes, a fountain of blood welling up out of his mouth, past all those devil teeth, until his entire weight was pressing down on top of Ev.

Goddamn, he thought. I was having enough trouble breathing without this shit. Then there were people, hands, lights, and lots of noise. He heard other voices, familiar voices, more feet pounding down the dock. He thought he heard Julie sobbing. Tried to lift his head, tried to tell her it was okay, that Booth was all done, but from the sounds of it, Julie had clearly lost it. He couldn’t get himself upright because the dock was slippery with all the blood. He even thought he heard Agent Branner yelling something.

So do something, Ev, a voice in his head was saying. Take charge here. Talk to her. Call her name. Hell, call any name.

But which name? he wondered dreamily. Julie. Liz. Joanne. Branner? Branner didn’t have a name, now that he thought of it. All these women around him. His own voice was echoing maddeningly in his head. You ought to call one of them, Ev. You really should. This is not time to lose control, not after everything that’s happened. Just say a name. Pick one, Ev. Because if you don’t, you may have to go with Booth.

“Liz,” he croaked.

“Don’t talk; just be still,” a woman’s voice was whispering in his ear, her soft, cool hands on his cheek. Amazingly, he detected a splinter in his other cheek, the cheek that was sticking to the pier. He felt the weight of Booth’s body move farther sideways. “You’ll be okay,” she said. “The EMTs are coming. Just hang on. Stay awake. Keep breathing.”

Keep breathing. Right, he thought. He tried to say something, anything, but he just couldn’t get enough good air down into his lungs, where the pain was, terrible, suffocating pain now. Yet in a way, he wanted to laugh. Here was yet another woman telling him what to do. It figured. Even so, he thought he’d picked the right name. He tried it again, but nothing came out this time but a big red bubble. Then all the noise seemed to withdraw into a rush of darkening echoes. His ears filled with the sound of wind rushing through trees, a veritable roaring, and he decided, Okay, enough’s enough. Just go with it.

Jim Hall and Branner sat in her Bronco in the parking lot outside the Navy and Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, listening to the echoes of the vice president’s voice as he wrapped up his commencement speech. The parking lots were filled with cars and security vehicles. In a few minutes would come the three cheers and the blizzard of white midshipmen’s caps going up again and again as the class of 2002 achieved its freedom.

“Eight minutes,” Branner noted, looking at his watch. “I guess if you have a heart condition, you tend to cut to the chase, even when making a speech.”

“As if they’re listening,” he said. “See all these new cars out here? They belong to the mids. Notice anything about them?”

“They’re all better wheels than I drive,” she said.

“No. They’re all pointed nose out. You’re gonna see a Le Mans start in the away direction here in about fifteen minutes.”

“Why so fast?” she asked. “What are they afraid of?”

“That the Dark Side might change its mind.”

There was a sustained round of applause within the stadium. Then a new voice began speaking. It was hard to make out precisely what he was saying because of the way the speakers reverberated around the stadium and the parking lots.

“I can’t believe you really want to leave all this behind,” Jim said. “Trade quaint Olde Annapolis for the frigging Washington Navy Yard.”

“Well, it’s just about as old as this burg,” she said. “And looks it, too.”

The band began playing some martial music, and then there was the rumble of everyone standing up for the oath of office. They listened through the open windows, waiting for the big cheers. They came a minute later. They could just see some of the hats flying through one of the walk-through arches on the side of the stadium.

“All done,” Jim said. “Now it’s Enswine Julie Markham. Lower than whale shit once more. One moment, a firstie. Now an officer plebe. Funny how that works.”

“At least it isn’t Second Lieutenant Booth,” she said.

“Amen to that,” he said. “And to think he swam all that way, up the river and into that creek. He knew right where to go, too.”

“You’d think the Academy would have seen this coming,” she said, watching the gates. “I finally got his admissions record yesterday, got his personal history.”

She told Jim about Booth’s background. How he’d been born and raised in a Baltimore housing project, apparently never knowing his father. His mother had come to Baltimore from West Virginia, trying to catch up with the man who got her pregnant. She ended up staying because there was little to go back to in the coal hills. She’d gone from welfare to work and back again, having two more children along the way, before getting shot and killed in a convenience store holdup when Dyle was twelve. He’d gone into the system, then was placed in a foster home, where the couple, a retired teacher and his wife, recognized Dyle’s latent intelligence and got him into the Catholic school system, eighth grade right through high school. Some teacher comments alluded to a violent streak, based in part on his size, but they were collectively of the opinion that this problem had been addressed by some of the Dominican brothers in his high school. He’d demonstrated a pattern in high school of excelling in math and science, but sometimes getting C ’s in his nontechnical classes. But the combination of mathematical ability and athletic ability had proved irresistible to the Academy.

“All in all, he turned into one scary dude,” she concluded.

“He was when he was doing that vampire thing, I’ll tell you that much. I can still see that face.”

“Well, the professor did exactly the right thing then, didn’t he?”

He shook his head and then took her hand, surreptitiously now, because people had begun to stream out of the stadium. “I’m going to miss you, Special Agent,” he said.

“I was serious about coming to work for NCIS. You’ve impressed Harry Chang, and that’s about all it would take.”

“That would mean having a real job. A career. You know that’s a big step for me, Special Agent.”

“You know these people are going to fire your ass. What else do you have to do?”

He shrugged. “I guess I could sit on my boat a lot, harass my parrot. Cherry-pick the bars, bring young lovelies back to my yacht, ply them with charm and some really good booze, have my way with them all night. You know, the usual. I mean, hell, somebody’s got to do it.”

“So many girls, so little time, huh?”

“Something like that. I may even take the boat out one day. Get up one of those all-girl crews, sail topless out of the harbor, or group moon the AYC. And all because you won’t tell me your first name.”

She clucked sympathetically. “But maybe if you came to Washington…I mean, there’s a marina right next to the old battleship gun factory at the Navy Yard. You get to hear gunfire most nights. You were a Marine-you must miss that. And Jupiter could curse pigeons all day long. Oh, and up there, they’re called women, not girls.”

“Oh. Women. But how do those Washington women feel about unemployed, non-career-motivated wharf rats? Seems to me everyone in D.C. is either on the take or on the make. Not sure Jupiter and I’d fit in.”

She looked over his shoulder. “Incoming,” she murmured.

He turned around and saw Julie Markham, resplendent in her graduation whites and gleaming new one-stripe shoulder boards, pushing her father’s wheelchair toward the Bronco through the flood of fleeing graduates. Liz DeWinter followed behind them, barely visible in a white linen suit, white gloves, and huge floppy hat. Jim and Branner got out to meet them.

“Congratulations, Ensign Markham,” Jim said. “If I were still in uniform, I’d collect that dollar.”

“Our battalion master chief already got it,” Julie said with a little smile. It was traditional that the first enlisted person to salute a newly commissioned officer received a silver dollar. “But thank you both. For everything.”

“Second that,” her father said. Jim thought he looked older and thinner, but losing a lung that way probably contributed. At least he was alive. When Liz put her hand on his shoulder, his face dropped ten years. Jim could relate to that.

“And the records are all cleaned up, right?” Jim asked. “Books closed on the Dell incident?”

Julie’s face grew serious as she nodded. “Admiral McDonald didn’t quite look at me when he handed over my commission, but at least he kept a smile on his face.”

“You meet the new commandant?”

“Nope. And probably never will. Supes, dants, plebes, report chits, BIOs, formations-that’s all in the past now. Thanks to you both. Again.”

Branner shook her hand and then Ev’s, nodded politely at Liz DeWinter, who gave her a cool smile in return, and then got back into the Bronco.

“I heard a story,” Julie said to Jim. “That the real reason the dant closed the books on all this was because of something you said to him during that meeting. Like you had something on him.”

“Stories are a dime a dozen after an incident like this one,” Jim said, glancing at the professor to see what he might know. Markham’s face was a polite mask. “Usually, the stories come from people who weren’t there but who want to pretend they were. I think they closed the books because it was becoming too politically painful to keep them open.”

Julie gave him an appraising look for a moment. All of a sudden, Jim thought, she looked very grown up indeed. “I suppose no one will ever tell the whole truth about this, will they?” she said.

“Probably not.”

She didn’t say anything, just looked at him expectantly.

“Welcome to the fleet, Ensign,” he said. “Happy landings at Pensacola.”

“I’ve told her that a good landing is one you can walk away from,” Ev offered. “But that a great landing is one where they can use the airplane again.”

Julie smiled and then they left to join the escaping hordes. There was a flurry of sirens and red lights as the vice president’s motorcade eased its way through the crowd. Jim got back into the Bronco, where Branner was watching the stream of ebullient graduates, trailed by teary-eyed parents, girlfriends, and soon to be ex-girlfriends as the mids, now officers, headed out for those fabled seven seas.

“Professor Markham looks like he was shot at and missed, shit at and hit,” she observed.

“Actually, shot at and hit,” Jim said. “He’s lucky to be alive. Forty-five can put a truck down. I’m surprised he’s out of the hospital.”

“Lady lawyer looked pretty spiffy,” Branner said. “What there is of her.”

“Hmm,” he said, being very careful.

Branner turned in the front seat to look directly at Jim. She was wearing one of her short A-line skirts, which made it a dramatic turn. “You really want to know my first name?” she asked.

“Hell yes,” he said, thoughts of lady lawyers long gone.

“I have a tattoo,” she said, her green eyes bright. “It takes some finding, but that’s where my name is.”

“Finding.”

“It’s privately placed, as the brokers say. But first, you’d have to come up to Washington.”

“Washington?” His voice almost squeaked as she did something with her hair. Every part of her seemed to move at once. “For how long, Special Agent?”

She shrugged. “Long enough to find it?”

“But, like I said, I have so much to do here in Crabtown. There’s the boat. And Jupiter. Painting. Scraping. Bright-work. And, hell, just lotsa stuff. You know me-I’m the security officer. Very important, very busy.”

She discovered a small snag in her stocking, just above her right knee. She licked two fingers and massaged the errant material. “Like I said, it’s going to take some exploring. But if you can still read by the time you find it, well, then you’ll know.” She ran both hands partway up her thigh to smooth out the rest of the nylon, then pushed her skirt back into place. She cocked her head expectantly. As if he had a chance in hell.

He swallowed once and then grinned. “Oh, shucks, Branner, I might as well.” He paused. Then they both said it in unison, “Can’t dance.”

Julie Markham stopped on the steps of the eighth wing to soak up a quiet moment of personal triumph. She had changed into civvies, and her car was packed for the trip south to Pensacola. She was finally done. Everything was out of her room. Liz had taken her father out to lunch at the Yacht Club, where Julie was supposed to join them shortly. She’d said her good-byes to Tommy, Melanie, and several of her company classmates as everyone got ready to leave Mother B. for the last time. The exodus of the class of 2002 was just about over, with the echoes of noisily promised correspondence already beginning to fade. There were even some parking spaces along the Yard’s streets. Bancroft Hall overlooked the whole messy process with stony indifference. A gaggle of mokes, as the cleaning crews were called, pushed canvas-sided trash dollies toward the ground-floor entrance, hoping for some commissioning week treasures.

She could almost feel the marble facade of the eighth wing towering over her back. She’d been able to see the still-broken windows on the other side of the wing as she packed up. But all that was behind her now. Dyle. Brian Dell. Even Tommy. Poor Tommy.

Directly in front of her was Lejeune Hall, with its strange ramped entrances, which always reminded her of a castle’s sally ports. Probably made the Marines feel at home. She took a deep breath. She had some unfinished business there.

She took her last bag to the car, locked it, looked around to see if anyone was watching her, and then walked over to Lejeune. She went in one of the side entrances, found the right stairwell, and went down into the basement. The familiar smell of pool chemicals hit her. How long have I been swimming competitively? she wondered. Twelve years? Seemed like forever. She could still taste those McDonald’s breakfasts, shoved down her throat after predawn practices while someone’s bleary-eyed mom drove her and her teammates to school. She already felt a little out of shape after not swimming for an entire week.

She walked along the narrow passageway that contained the pool piping and the racks of chemicals and chlorine bottles. The air was, as always, humid and warm, and the overhead lights were all encased in steam-tight globes. There was no one about, and her footsteps echoed quietly in the hot, wet air. The hum of machinery was almost comforting.

She reached the storage room, with its broken door. Nothing got fixed quickly at the Academy. She stopped in front of the door and listened for sounds of anyone else down in the basement, but there was only the whine of the filtration pumps. She pulled the door toward her, scraping its bottom edge over the tile. She stopped and listened again. Just to make sure. The light inside the storage room was still on. Some of the tiles were warping up off the floor, and there were hundreds of muddy footprints. Straight ahead was the three-foot square hole in the wall, with its hingeless metal plate dangling forlornly from its bullet-smashed latch. A faint smell of wet cement seemed to be welling up from the black hole. To her right, along the wall, there was a bank of empty rusted steel lockers, which had obviously not been used for a very long time. She poked her head out the partially opened door to make sure no one was coming down the passageway, then went over to the locker nearest the back of the ruined door. She hesitated and then lifted the rusted latch. The door squeaked open reluctantly on partially frozen hinges.

Inside, there was a mildewed laundry bag on the floor of the foot-square locker. She reached in, picked it up, and pushed the door shut. She took the bag over to the square hole in the back wall and pulled the strings to open it. Inside were all the elements of her Goth rig. The long black slit skirt. Those thigh-high fishnet stockings and black witch clogs. The studded dog collar. A bulging makeup kit. Fake fingernails. The fingerless gloves. The ridiculous wig. The very special video, its cassette broken and the tape pulled out in an unusable tangle.

All of it. She shivered, but now it was over. She felt bad about Dell, because she really should have anticipated how far Dyle might take it. And she felt even worse about what had happened to her father. But she’d warned her father not to provoke Dyle. He hadn’t really come to do anything to her. Even that whole scene in the dorm room had been aimed at getting that security officer into the room, so Dyle could boast. The popinjay commandant showing up like that had been gravy. Fucking Dyle. He’d taken her right out to the limits again, but he wouldn’t have dropped her. Not Dyle. He’d known, ever since Dell’s death, that he’d never make it out of there, never make it to the Marines. The only person Dyle was going to hurt that night at her house was Dyle. But give him that: He’d been a true believer, right to the end. Death before dishonor and semper effing fi, right? He’d only come up the river to find her so she could watch him finally do it. That had been part of their deal. She had been required to watch, to witness that he was man enough.

She felt another twinge of guilt about what had happened to her father. Her games with Dyle had been her sole, burning secret, the one part of her life that no one, especially not her father, had known about. That was the reason she’d lost it on the pier when Dyle shot her father: they had a deal, all right, but the second part was that no norms were to get seriously hurt. But Dyle had gone increasingly, frighteningly out of control: first Brian Dell, then that agent, and Krill-what had he done with hapless Krill?

She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. No future in this kind of thinking. Their secret game was over. And everything that had happened, well, that had been Dyle driving the train, not her. Which made it okay. Her father was going to recover. And now he had Liz, so he was going to be all right. She had her diploma and her gold bars. As long as everything worked out, then what had gone on before was just-history, that’s all. She nodded to herself and took another deep breath. Then she closed the bag and reached through the hole to drop it. She heard it hit somewhere way down below in the shaft with a muddy thump. No one would ever be going back down there. She popped her head into the hole for a moment, but there was nothing to see. Just the strong smell of old wet cement. She backed out, thinking about all that was to come, flight school, her new life as a naval officer, fast exciting men, all the new horizons, and, if she was lucky, really lucky, the feel of a hot jet in her hands and between her knees. Everything lay in front of her. And only a few tingling memories of the walking, talking chaos that had been Dyle Booth fading behind her. Every time with Dyle had been the ultimate highwire act, especially the last time. It was positively amazing how sheer terror could make you feel alive as never before or after. She hoped the jets would be that big a rush. Everyone said they were.

She smiled one last sly smile. A roofie. As if.

“Damn you, Dyle Booth, you crazy bastard,” she whispered, remembering still the way that sliver of wood had throbbed in time with Dyle’s final heartbeats. “Am I going to miss your zone or what.”

Then she cleared her face, reassembled her midshipman’s dutiful mask, no, her ensign’s dutiful mask, took a final deep breath, and left the storage room for her new life among the norms. What was done was done. Everyone, even the Dark Side, was ready to get past it. Closure: that’s what everyone always wanted, right? But, hell, she thought as she climbed the stairs: everyone says those jet jocks are crazy bastards. Maybe there was hope. Maybe Dyle wasn’t the first of his kind to get through here.