P Deutermann - Darkside

He glanced at the nearest room number and then turned left and headed toward the bay end of the building. The rooms were small and entirely uniform. Most doors were closed. The floor in the hallway was highly polished, and the place smelled of floor wax and cleaning agents. The doors to the men’s bathroom were open and the pungent odor of urinal disinfectant seeped out into the corridor. A plebe came out of his room in his bathrobe, hands rigidly at his sides, eyes in the boat, squaring every corner and walking briskly down the channel, or center of the passageway. He said “Good evening, sir,” as he passed the big man in the windbreaker. If he was curious about Jim, he did not show it. He was obviously trying to get to the head without running into any upperclassmen.

Jim arrived at room number 8424. Eighth wing, fourth floor, room twenty-four. The nameplate read D. BOOTH, 2002. Name and class. There was light showing through the frosted pane in the wooden door. Jim didn’t hesitate. He knocked twice, making sure his Naval Academy ring hit the wooden frame in two solid raps, a familiar sound in Bancroft Hall. To a plebe, it meant jump up into a brace and prepare to sound off, because there was at least a firstie outside, or maybe even a watch officer. He pushed the door open.

There was no one inside. It was a standard room: single-tier bunk on either side, two desks pushed back-to-back in the middle, an aluminum chair placed squarely in front of each one. The beds had been made up with military precision. There were no clothes strewn about, nor any other personal gear adrift. No shoes, clothes, coats, notebooks-nothing. The windows overlooked Lejeune Hall, the physical education center and home to the Marine detachment, appropriately enough. The dark bulk of Dahlgren Hall was visible to the right. He could see Branner’s white face peering up under the streetlights from the parking lot below. He turned off the room lights, waited ten seconds, and turned them back on. That was the second signal: I’m in and there’s no one here. She had wanted to come up, but he’d pointed out that if this worked, Dyle would think it would be just Jim waiting for him. Especially if Booth asked around and was told there had been one stranger on deck earlier, not two.

He looked around the empty room. There was a single PC on the right-hand desk, plus a reading lamp and four textbooks. A large Marine recruiting poster hung over one of the beds, indicating that was the one Booth used. The other bed was tightly made up but had no pillow. The room was spotless and entirely squared away. He opened one closet door. There was a full-dress Marine Corps uniform encased in dry cleaner’s plastic. It was fully rigged, right down to the gleaming second lieutenant’s bars on the shoulders. A curving sword case standing on end to the right of the uniform contained the Mameluke dress sword. He studied the uniform, the same one he’d worn with such pride for six years. Booth must be a really big guy. Better and better. He closed the closet door.

He was tempted to search the room, but he had no authority to do so, nor the training to do it right. In fact, he didn’t really rate being in this room at all. He took the tennis ball out of his pocket and put it squarely on the keyboard of the PC. Then he had an idea. He picked it up again and went to the washbasin. He ran just enough water over the tennis ball to get it wet, but not enough to obliterate what was written on it, YOU’RE ON. Some ink ran into the sink. He smudged out the signature HMC on the basin mirror. Then he went back to the desk and tapped the keyboard. The monitor came to life, giving him a log-on screen. He typed in “You know where” and then put the damp ball back on the keyboard.

The lights had been on when he’d come in. He turned them off as he left the room. If Booth was as situationally aware as Jim expected, that would be yet another warning cue. He walked back down the corridor and pushed the button for the elevator. There were no midshipmen wandering the halls. They must really make them study these days, he thought, then remembered exams. The door opened immediately and he stepped in and pushed the button for the basement.

Three minutes later, he was back in the truck with Branner. “Anyone see you?” she asked.

“One plebe, bound for the head,” he said, snapping on his seat belt. “But I don’t think I registered. I doused the lights when I left, so Booth should know the moment he steps in that someone’s been there.”

“Now what?”

“I’m going to call the chief and see if we can get some backup on the grates. Then I propose to wait here until we see that light go back on.”

“Can the chief do that?” she asked.

“He can’t get extra people out. No time to plan that, and besides, the overtime wouldn’t be authorized, not for this, especially not after what the dant said earlier. But we can get the guys who are out on Yard patrol, and maybe a truck from over at the naval station.”

“You gonna tell him we’re off the books on this one?”

“The chief? Absolutely. No point in getting him in trouble. He’ll probably be the security officer pretty soon.”

She grunted. “You know,” she said, “if Booth is really smart, he’ll chuck that ball out the window and stay home tonight.”

“Absolutely,” Jim said. “But I think he’ll take the challenge. Unless, of course, he tries for Julie Markham. Hopefully, she’s safe in her room, with Hays under the bed somewhere. One assumes the roommate will be cool with that.”

“Melanie Bright? From Cali for nia?”

“Oh. ‘Ya-a,’” he replied. “Hell, they’ll think it’s a game. Better let me get things set up with the chief. There’s a pay phone right over there. I need to stay off the radios right now.”

At eleven o’clock, the bells rang for plebes’ lights-out. They watched as the room lights blinked out in plebe rooms all along the facade of the eighth wing. The chief had understood the new situation right away. Acknowledging that they couldn’t roust out off-duty people, Jim had asked him to have the on-duty Yard cops go to all the Academy grates and block the lower-level steel doors from the outside, beginning now, and then for the cops on the morning shift to unlock them when they came on duty. The chief said he’d take care of it. He asked Jim to call him when he and Branner went down into the tunnels. Jim gave him a general description of Booth, and told him to alert the Yard cops to call central dispatch if they saw a firstie who looked like that loose in the Yard after taps. The chief still had that radio retransmitter set. He said he’d set it up just inside the Mahan Hall grate entrance, and leave two radios with it for them to use. He’d be topside, starting at midnight, with a radio tied to that frequency. They knew Booth could listen to that frequency, but it was better than nothing, and Booth probably did not have jamming equipment.

“That’s mighty good of you, Chief,” Jim had said. “But that’s getting directly involved. I mean you on the radio.”

“What radio?” the chief had replied blandly.

Jim deliberately had not told the chief about the storm drain entrance on the seawall. Booth was possibly using some as-yet-unknown entrance to the old Fort Severn magazine rooms, but there was an equal chance he’d use that big storm drain tunnel. The grating he’d seen was at least five feet in diameter. Even someone Booth’s size could move quickly up that big pipe and into the main utility tunnels, and it wasn’t as if there would be sewage or anything truly unpleasant in the storm drain.

As they waited in the truck to see if Booth would return to his room, Jim asked Branner why she was risking her job.

“Because you need some adult supervision?” she asked.