Chapter 5 - THE EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Elena did not raise her hands.
She stood perfectly upright between Commander Mercer and Petty Officer Chen, keeping her posture rigid, her chin lifted, her eyes locked on Mercer’s steady gun barrel.
“Commander Mercer,” she said, her voice cutting through the hum of the cooling transformers. “Did Captain Hale know you were running this operation right under his nose, or did he finally figure it out five minutes before Collins shot him in the chow hall?”
Mercer smiled faintly, though his cold gray eyes remained dead.
“Robert was an administrator, Elena. A bureaucrat who thought the Navy was still fighting the wars of the twentieth century. He believed that logistics was about counting beans and moving pallets of toilet paper and frozen beef. He lacked the imagination required to secure our strategic future.”
“Strategic future?” Elena scoffed, taking half a step to the left to fully shield Chen, who was trembling behind the breaker console. “You poisoned three junior enlisted sailors with synthetic nerve agents disguised as shelf-stable field rations! You call that strategy? That’s treason. That’s domestic terrorism under the uniform of the United States Navy.”
“Those sailors were an unfortunate calculation,” Mercer replied without a flicker of remorse. “We needed to verify the stability of the delivery matrix in an active personnel environment before the shipment transferred to the forward theater. The payload must appear completely indistinguishable from standard logistics supplies until deployed. If the field test hadn't produced clinical symptoms within seventy-two hours, the entire multi-billion-dollar program would have been defunded by Congress.”
“You used your own men as lab rats,” Chen choked out from behind Elena, his voice cracking with utter revulsion. “Miller is nineteen years old! He joined the Navy to pay for his sister’s college tuition!”
Mercer’s eyes flicked to Chen for a fraction of a second, his expression showing nothing more than mild annoyance at an irritating fly.
“Seaman Miller’s family will receive a full SGLI death benefit payout, classified as an in-the-line-of-duty training accident. They will have more money than they ever would have seen in their lives. Now, Lieutenant Reyes, hand over the evidence pouch.”
Elena slipped her hand slowly toward her pocket.
“And if I refuse?”
“Then I shoot you through the kneecap, take the pouch from your pocket, shoot Petty Officer Chen through the skull, and dump your bodies into the bilge of the Girdwood before she casts off. The storm is worsening. By midnight, nobody on this rock will be asking questions about where two rogue personnel disappeared to.”
Mercer stepped forward, his pistol never wavering from her heart.
“The pouch, Elena. Slowly.”
Elena reached into her pocket. Her fingers closed around the plastic evidence sleeve—and around the heavy brass override key she had wedged inside with it.
“You forgot one thing, Commander,” Elena said softly.
Mercer’s brow furrowed. “And what is that?”
“You forgot who maintains the fire suppression systems in these older electrical buildings.”
With a sudden, violent motion, Elena whipped the heavy brass key out of her pocket and hurled it not at Mercer, but directly into the open, exposed wiring of the primary high-voltage bus bar running along the ceiling above his head.
The result was cataclysmic.
A deafening explosion of arcing electricity shattered the overhead conduits. A blinding sheet of blue fire erupted across the ceiling, instantly tripping the automated halon gas fire-suppression system.
Thick, suffocating white chemical fog roared from the ceiling nozzles with the force of a jet engine.
Mercer shouted, firing his weapon blindly. The suppressed round cracked through the air, shattering the glass dial of a transformer inches from Elena’s head.
“Chen, go!” Elena screamed.
She lunged forward through the dense cloud of halon gas, driving her shoulder hard into Mercer’s midsection. The impact knocked the Commander off balance, slamming him back against the steel frame of the open door. His pistol flew from his grip, clattering out onto the rain-slicked gravel outside.
Mercer swung a heavy fist, catching Elena across the cheekbone.
Pain exploded behind her eyes, but she didn't retreat. She drove her boot downward onto his instep, hooked his arm, and used his own momentum to twist him around, slamming his face into the cinderblock doorframe.
Mercer slumped to his knees, gasping for air in the oxygen-depleted halon mist.
Elena broke out into the freezing storm, gasping the clean, icy air into her burning lungs. Chen was already outside, clutching Mercer’s dropped service pistol in his trembling hands.
“Did you get it?” Chen shouted over the howling wind.
Elena touched her pocket. The evidence pouch was still there, intact.
“I have it,” she gasped, wiping a streak of blood from her lip. “Where’s the ship?”
Down on the pier, the situation had deteriorated into absolute chaos.
Without shore power, the crane remained locked, but the crew of the USNS Girdwood wasn't waiting. They had severed the crane cables with a cutting torch, dropping the container with a massive metallic smash onto the forward deck, crushing two safety rails.
The ship’s massive diesel engines roared to life, churning the black harbor water into a froth of white foam as thick black smoke belched from its exhaust stacks.
The vessel was casting off its mooring lines.
“They’re running!” Chen shouted. “If they clear the harbor and reach international waters, we’ll never prove what was in that container!”
Elena looked across the pier toward the small harbor-master control tower at the base of the breakwater.
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“They aren't clearing the harbor,” Elena said, her eyes narrowing against the stinging sleet. “Not while I'm still drawing breath.”
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