Chapter 5
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T ucker scanned the room. Despite the early hour and the fact that it was a Sunday, most of the team was already there.
He’d spent yesterday getting ready for Brynn Barrington’s introduction to diving. He’d been looking forward to the lesson since he’d met her. It would be a disappointment if they were deployed in the next few hours. She’d been on his mind since their meeting on Monday. He kept seeing that long stride as she’d walked toward him. Had even dreamed about her wrapping those long legs around him while he thrust inside her.
Lieutenant Sam Harding sat with Arrow and Swan at the table next to him. As he conversed with the two, Harding didn’t look concerned, but then Hard Ass Harding didn’t flinch from much. Even when his father had been convicted of murder, he hadn’t had much to say. LT kept his feelings carefully controlled on the job. That’s what made him a good team leader.
Denotti slid his large frame into the folding chair beside Tucker and rested his muscular forearms on the table in front of him. “Any inkling what’s going down, Gilly?” he asked.
Tucker shook his head. “Can’t be anything good if we’re called in at zero-seven hundred on a Sunday morning.”
Denotti’s jaw tensed. “Fuckin’ eh. I don’t care what it is as long as we’re not going back to any part of the numerous sandboxes we’ve been dropped in the last few deployments. I’m sick of hot, dry sand and heat. I’ll take a shot at South American drug dealers over sand fleas.”
“Yeah, South American jungles are great,” Rosenburg aka Squirrel said from behind them. “If it wasn’t for the mosquitos big as crows, poisonous snakes, the locals who are always trying to shoot us, and the wildlife eager to invite us to dinner as the main course, they’d be great.”
Bullet and Beckham burst into laughter.
Despite the truth in his words, Tucker laughed, too, and turned to comment when he spied Lieutenant Commander Adam Yazzie entering the room. What he’d been about to say swiftly changed to “Attention!” as he surged to his feet.
“At ease,” Commander Yazzie said, striding to the head of the classroom. Despite being behind a desk much of the time, Yazzie moved with the athletic efficiency of an active team member. Tucker had heard the man did PT after lunch every day. He’d seen him running the obstacle course more than once and running the beach with some of the BUD/S classes. He was a hands-on Commander of the teams.
As he reached the front of the room, Yazzie turned to face the group. His pale gray gaze arrowed in on each member of their eight-man team with sharp interest.
“As of sixteen hundred hours yesterday a new investigation has been launched into Seaman Elijah Ashe’s parachuting accident. Three other similar tragedies have resulted in the deaths of Seaman Connor Stoddard, Seaman Ryan Singer, and Petty Officer Calvin Robinson. Four accidents of this kind didn’t raise questions, but looking more closely into the events, NCIS realized there have been several close calls. More than can be shrugged aside. Faulty equipment has been investigated and ruled out. They believe sabotage is a possibility.”
The room went pin-drop silent as though every man was holding his breath. All Tucker could think was some asshole had sabotaged Book’s chute. Jesus!
“I’m speaking to each of the teams who have lost a man in one of these incidents. To help with the investigation, I want you to think over the days before and after the jumps. Note anything unusual that happened. Anything that struck you as odd. Anyone out of place when you were being issued your equipment.”
“An investigative unit with NCIS has been assigned to look into all incidents. You’ll make yourselves available to the investigators when they contact you. It could be as early as tomorrow.” Yazzie paused half a beat. “Any questions?”
Harding raised a hand. “Have jumps been canceled until the investigation is complete?”
“Jumps will continue, but equipment will be transferred in from other installations until every chute here is unpacked, checked, and repacked. Guards will be posted at chute storage facilities until every possibility has been investigated.”
Meaning, they believed someone on post had sabotaged the chutes. But why would anyone do that?
“Anything else?” Yazzie scanned the group. When no one spoke, he nodded to Harding and strode out of the room as quickly as he’d arrived.
“What the hell?” Swan breathed his expression blank with shock. “Some motherfucker wrecked Book’s life and killed three people…for what?”
“For what he’s getting right now, Swan. Power and attention.” Harding’s face was tight with anger and concern. “Until they figure out who’s responsible for this, none of us are safe jumping.”
“Being grounded until they catch this fucker would’ve been fine by me,” Denotti commented. “They’re taking a risk continuing jumps.”
“They think it might be one of us,” Bullet muttered, his dark eyes alight with anger.
“It could be anyone, Bullet. We have a hundred and twenty-eight SEALs, plus support personnel, in each team on the post. They’ve all had access to the chutes.” Tucker was quick to point out. “They’re not just investigating us. They’ll have to investigate the entire base.”
“It wasn’t any of us,” Arrow ground out. “You’ll never convince me that anyone in this room would’ve harmed Book. We did everything we could to find him and get him medevac’d. If LT hadn’t found him as fast as he did, he wouldn’t have made it.”
“And no one had a grudge or anything against Book. Everyone liked him. There was no reason for him to be targeted,” Squirrel added.
After a moment of thought, Tucker said, “He may have targeted someone else, and Book was just unlucky enough to get the wrong chute.”
“And Beck wouldn’t have had anything to do with it. He wasn’t even with us back then,” Swan said.
Beckham’s expression turned grim. “I was in team one, Alpha platoon. I knew Ryan Singer. He was killed six months after Ashe’s accident and five months after I transferred to this team.”
“What are the odds all of them would’ve crossed paths with the same psycho?” Denotti mulled.
Their speculation was ramping up the guys, and Tucker felt the need to insert some calm. “It might just be random accidents, and NCIS is reading more into them than is really there. In any given week, there are hundreds of jumps carried out. Just because NCIS is running the odds doesn’t mean there’s a poison pill sneaking around trying to assassinate SEALs.”
“Tucker’s right,” Harding said, nodding. “We all have connections with other team members. The community is small, and we’ve worked with other teams off and on every deployment. Doing what we do, we can’t allow NCIS’s suspicions to plant even the smallest seed of doubt between us. We need to stick together as a team.”
Harding’s words reined in the group, and Tucker’s tension level eased.
“You can do more good by taking the time to think about the days leading up to Book’s accident. Anything you can remember…anything out of the ordinary that might have happened during that week…the week before and the week after.”
“Jesus, LT, it’s been almost two years,” Swan said.
“Yeah, for me, too, but I’m still going to go through as much of it as I can recall. And I want you all to do the same. If you think of anything, document it and bring it to me.”
After Harding dismissed the group, Tucker fell into step with him as they walked to the parking lot. “Problem, Gilly?” Harding asked.
“No, sir. Just an observation.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s been more movement of personnel, more transfers in the last few years than I can recall. Lieutenant Weaver moved out, and you took over as team leader. Beckham moved in, Morgan transferred in just a year ago, then back out. Rosenburg transferred out, then back in again. Depending on how long these accidents have been happening, it might be interesting to see what transfers occurred before or after them?”
“What are you getting at?”
“If you’d set up an accident for a teammate, wouldn’t you want to distance yourself from the fallout once it happened?”
“Transfers don’t happen that quickly, Gilly.”
“They would if they were already in the works. Something happens to piss the guy off; he puts in for training or a transfer, then as the time approaches for him to leave, he sets up the accident. It happens, and he’s gone.”
Harding stopped, and his eyes narrowed as he thought.
“NCIS has people who know how to set up an algorithm to sort those movements,” Tucker said.
“I’ll bring it up with Commander Yazzie. What made you think of this?”
“Swan mentioned transfers, and if these accidents have been happening in the last five years, there has to be a trail of that poison pill moving in and out or sharing training or other things with each team or platoon he’s hit.”
Sam looked thoughtful and said, “But he might not be hitting a specific team. Remember that male nurse who put insulin in the saline bags, and the patients died? It wasn’t just the patients he cared for that he killed. This guy could be setting up all of us, and it’s the luck of the draw.”
“Yeah, he could,” Tucker conceded. “But it wouldn’t hurt to see if there might be some kind of pattern.”
“Roger that, Gilly.” Harding nodded. “I’ll pass it along.”
As Harding strode away from him in the parking lot, Tucker turned toward his own vehicle. He needed to put this aside for now. Brynn was going to be at the house at ten. He needed to get his head straight and focus on her. He’d agreed to introduce her to scuba and help her get as proficient at it as possible before her trip.
He probably wouldn’t have taken her on, but Natalie had turned him on to Brynn’s podcast. The message behind every episode was to embrace life with passion and respect but always to be safe.
As he turned his vehicle toward home, he thought about how they all had to live in the moment just to have lives outside of their work.
How hard was it for Harding, the only married member of the team, to find time for Moira, his wife? How hard was it for him to shove things he could never speak of to the back of his mind and not share them with her?
Tucker drew a frustrated breath and then blew it out. He hadn’t had a steady girlfriend in two years. He’d had dates aplenty. Some good, some bad.
He flinched at the memory of the month-long fling gone wrong with a bored, married woman who’d claimed to be divorced.
Bailing out a window half naked when her Marine husband came home had not been one of his finest moments. The experience had made him more cautious and more cynical.
It was hard to balance a private life with deployments and training rotations. Women wanted a man who could be there for them, who could give them time and attention. And he was willing to do that…as much as he could.
But Brynn was a busy lady who seemed as devoted to her photography as he was to being a SEAL. That wasn’t exactly conducive to either of them getting time to date.
Teaching her to scuba would offer him an opportunity to get to know her, though. Maybe more. The physical chemistry had been there for him from the first time he’d watched her walk across the park toward him.
She’d been so closed up it had been impossible for him to read her reaction to him. Maybe he’d get a clue or two today.
In the meantime, he could check out her podcast more thoroughly and see what was so interesting about it other than her desire to try new things.
Once he arrived home, he fixed coffee and settled at the computer desk in the corner of his bedroom. He clicked on the podcast bookmark and opened it to see if Brynn had made a new post.
He paused the screen to study her. He’d rarely seen a woman with such perfectly symmetrical features. Her skin looked flawless, and her cheeks had a touch of color as though she’d been out in the sun. Her thick, sun-streaked hair contrasted with her sherry-color eyes that looked almost mahogany on the screen. Their slight tilt at the outside corners followed the wing-like slant of her brows. There was something exotic about her that he found striking. Her lips, as perfectly balanced as the rest of her, had a slight pout.
He un-paused the video to listen to her speak. “Thanks for tuning in to my podcast. I’m starting a course in scuba diving in preparation for an ocean dive,” she announced. Her voice had a kind of rasp to it that was sexy as hell. “My first class will be on Sunday. My instructor is a highly trained, certified master diver. I’m confident he’ll prepare me for my underwater adventure. I’ll post an update with some video on how things go in the next few days. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some research on my own, something I always do when taking on a new sport.
“I won’t just be diving. I’ll be taking photos underwater, too. So, I have a steep learning curve to address with new equipment, lighting, and adjusting composition and timing. Fish and other sea life aren’t going to pause and smile for me when I’m taking their picture, as humans will some of the time. In the meantime, I’ll share with you some of the photos I’ve taken recently in locations around San Diego.” A slide show of photos from the park and other locales started to run.
She was as talented as LT’s wife, Moira. The two of them would probably become best friends if he ever had an opportunity to introduce them to one another.
She didn’t mention the trip to Australia. She’d build up to that when she decided whether or not she was going.
He wondered what had happened in her life that had turned her toward using new experiences as a reaffirmation of life. Something in the way she talked about working past her fears gave him the impression that something major had happened that had affected her. Maybe he’d get some clues once they started working together.
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen at a number he didn’t recognize. “Petty Officer Giles speaking,” he answered.
“Petty Officer Giles. This is Agent Connor Byres with NCIS.”
Shit! He’d known it was coming, but he hadn’t expected it to be this soon.
Byers continued. “I know your commanding officer briefed you on our investigation into Seaman Ashe’s parachute accident. I need you to report to me at zero-seven-hundred tomorrow morning at the southwest field office here in San Diego. Do you know where it is?”
“I’m sure I can find it, sir.”
“Good. Bring any notes you’ve made about Seaman Giles’ accident, and we’ll talk then.”
“Yes, sir.”
Even though he knew he had no involvement with Book’s accident or the packing of his chute, the idea of being interrogated about the incident concerned him.
They’d be looking to clear their investigation quickly and would be looking for reasons to home in on a suspect, and he had just put out an idea about how the perpetrator may have planned and executed the whole thing. Jesus! He should have kept his mouth shut.