P Deutermann - Darkside

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.