P Deutermann - Darkside

“Great minds think alike, don’t they?” she said. “You have my cell number?”

“Yep, got it,” he said, looking at his watch. “Have to remember when it’s low tide, too.”

She gave him a blank look, but he just waved and continued down the sidewalk toward the administration building.

Ev called Julie on her cell phone right after lunch but got her voice mail. He asked her to call him at the end of classes that afternoon. He had done exactly what Liz had suggested yesterday afternoon when he got home. He’d taken the scull and gone out for almost two hours, until he was so tired that he wasn’t sure he was going to make it back to the creek. By the time he got cleaned up and had some dinner, he felt sufficiently drained not even to want to go out of the house. He had called Liz at home and left her a message that he was just beat and going to bed early. He’d wondered for a whole three minutes if she’d be annoyed. Then he fell fast asleep and he’d almost overslept this morning.

Ahead was an afternoon seminar and then a faculty advisory board meeting. He was really anxious to hear from Julie. There were too many people moving around in her backfield: the NCIS, the Executive Department, that security officer. He wanted to warn Julie to be particularly careful, and to start communicating with Liz DeWinter. He absolutely hated not knowing what the hell was happening behind the scenes. The class bells began to ring. He groaned out loud, suddenly sick of academia.

As it turned out, it was Midshipman Hays who found Jim. Two hours later, as Jim was jogging along Dewey Field, Hays overtook him along the seawall. Jim became aware of the big shadow thumping along just behind him and turned to see who was there.

“Mr. Hall,” Hays said between breaths.

“Mr. Hays,” Jim replied. “This a coincidence?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Hays said, looking over his shoulder. “But maybe when we get around to the far end, we could go across the footbridge, maybe take a walk in the cemetery?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jim said, and turned it up a little. Hays fell back and kept pace, about twenty feet behind him as they jogged down to Rickover Hall and then across the arched wooden bridge that crossed Dorsey Creek and took them to the athletic fields on Hospital Point. From there, they slowed to a cooldown walk and went up the hill and into the trees of the Academy cemetery. Once they were entirely out of sight of the Yard proper, Jim plopped down on an iron bench next to a massive funerary monument and toweled his face. Hays did a 360 visual check and then sat down beside him.

“Some shit happened a few nights ago,” he said. “Let me tell you what it was, and then I’ll tell you who it is you’re probably looking for.”

Jim said nothing. Hays looked around again before continuing. “The deputy dant has put a lid on the whole Dell thing. The Honor Committee was told to shove off and shut up about what you and Agent Branner brought in.”

“Any explanations?”

“No, sir,” Hays said. “He told us to back out and graduate. Seemed like a pretty clear message to me.”

“Okay, that’s useful.”

“That’s part of it,” Hays said. “A couple of nights ago, I went back to my room from a study hall session down in Mitscher Hall. Actually, I’d been meeting with this youngster who’s doing a term paper for me.”

Jim nodded. The same thing had gone on when he was there: Graduating firsties, who had their hands full with finals, would pay a third-class mid to put together their senior year research paper. The firsties had to do the research and the writing, but the youngster would actually produce the formal paper.

“So. I got back to my room; my roomie’s not there. I get my uniform off, get into a B-robe, go to sit down at my desk, and I get bit.”

“Bit by what?”

“By a hundred and ten volts AC. It wasn’t a bad bite, because I had my rubber klacks on. But then I finally figured out that my whole desk was at line potential. The power had to be coming from my desktop PC-that was the only AC equipment on the desk.”

A Yard cop car nosed along the narrow lanes of the cemetery. The cop waved at Jim, who waved back. Hays looked nervous. “Somebody had rigged this?” Jim asked.

“Affirmative. I unplugged the desktop, took a look. There was the tiniest little copper wire you ever saw, coming from the hot side of the monitor’s power supply, through a hole in the case. It was married to the steel frame of the desktop with a drop of solder. Best yet, there was water on the deck on my side of the desks.”

“Whoa. For a perfect ground.”

“Damn straight. There were even one-inch rubber pads under the desk feet, which meant nothing happened until I touched the desk and the wet floor. One ten, straight in. And I’m not talking microvolts, either. Line voltage, line current. Just my side of the two desks. If I’d been sitting down, man, I’d have been welded to it.”

“Somebody wanted you dead.”

“Yes, sir. I think somebody did. And it wasn’t my roomie. Now, let me tell you the rest of it.”

“Wait a minute. Did Captain Rogers order you not to talk to me or Branner?”

“No, sir. Just said for us to ‘back out.’ We, the Brigade Honor Committee, are officially backed out. This is me talking here.”

“Okay. The rest of it.”

Hays hesitated.

“What?” Jim asked.

“I can’t prove any of this,” he said. “That bothers me.”

“Does Julie Markham going to the electric chair bother you?”

“What?”

“That’s ‘What, sir?’ Mr. Hays. See, the Dark Side here may shut down Branner’s investigation, but they’ll never shut down Branner. Or me, for that matter. And if what happened to Dell was homicide, Markham’s the best suspect NCIS has. Hell, she’s the only suspect NCIS has.”

Hays took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked around the cemetery grounds again, but everyone around them was long dead.

“There’s this guy,” Hays said. “One of our classmates. He’s also on the swim team. Calls himself ‘the Shark.’ Kind of a weird dude.”

The Shark? The name resonated. The Shark. Holy shit, as in that tunnel tag? “This shark dude have a human name?”

“Midshipman First Class Dyle Jones Booth. The middle name’s some kind of joke with him.”

“Describe him.”

“Big guy, freestyle swimmer. Black hair, dark, almost black eyes. Swims like a damned torpedo. Zero body friction. Totally hairless. Likes to look at you underwater as he’s passing you. Has one of those no-blink looks, man. Like I said, he’s out there, really weird.”

“This is a Naval Academy midshipman we’re talking about? A firstie?”

“Yes, sir. He was one of those special entries out of that diversity program four years back. No known parents-that’s the Jones joke, and he’s the first to tell you that. But this guy’s smart as a whip on the engineering side. Heavy into computer geekery, too. But no real friends. Hasn’t had a roommate for three years. Nobody’d stay with him. Total loner. In the Brigade and on the swim team.”

“I was on the swim team,” Jim said. “We were first and foremost a team. There were no lone rangers.”

“This guy is. But he’s unbeatable when he turns it on. Problem is, you never know when he’s going to turn it on. Once he wins, he sits on the bench by himself. No high fives or anything. Goes off into some Zen Zone. He’s super-fit. You wouldn’t want to mess with him.”

“And the Dark Side is cool with this behavior?”

“The dant’s always lecturing us about results. Booth gets results. N-star for three years at the varsity level. Academic stars on his shirt, too.”

“And what’s this got to do with Dell?”