5
At the Thursday-morning staff conference, the commandant was in the admiral’s chair to take the morning briefing. Jim Hall was sitting in again, this time in place of his boss. The commandant had been complaining that the Dell incident could not have come at a worse time. The papers were reciting the usual litany of recent scandals, the football player rape case, the expulsion of four mids in 1999 and five others in 1998 for sexual misconduct, and the quarterback plebe case in 1997. All the familiar Academy haters were popping back out of their holes, and the alumni were once again viewing the situation with alarm. None of the staffers knew what to say about all that, so they prudently said nothing.
“Okay,” Robbins said. “Last item. Mr. Hall, you have an incident to report?”
“Yes, sir. Apparently, the tunnel runners are active again.”
The commandant shook his head in frustration. “I don’t understand that bullshit,” he said. “Why the hell would anyone want to go down there?”
“Because they’re not supposed to be down there, sir,” Jim replied. “It’s mostly a game. We chase ’em; they run. I think it’s the same guy or guys doing it, and of course they can get out into town through the tunnels. Running the tunnels has replaced going over the wall.”
“When I was here, no one wanted to get out into town that bad,” Robbins said.
Jim didn’t say what he and probably some others at the table were thinking: Speak for yourself, there, Dant. Jim had had two girlfriends during his last year at the academy, on two different sides of town, and he had always been interested in getting out into town.
Robbins reminded everyone that he was still focused on the emergency at hand-the death of Midshipman Fourth Class Dell. He emphasized the importance of information control through the Public Affairs office. Then he stood up, which was the signal that the morning conference was over. Everyone stood at their seats as the commandant left the room.
Jim hadn’t mentioned at the staff meeting that he was more than just a little familiar with the tunnels and the small band of “runners,” as they called themselves. After Jim had taken over as security officer, one of the little dears had shut the two main valves for the steam-heating line leading to Bancroft Hall. Jim had decided to take a personal interest. He’d obtained the underground as-built drawings from the Public Works Center, then made several daytime recons of the tunnel complex, compiling a detailed map of the entire underground system. After more than 150 years of operation, the tunnel system was much more extensive and elaborate than he had imagined, with some of the branches dating back to the Civil War.
He had discovered that there were no fewer than five routes out into the city of Annapolis, although three of these were somewhat dangerous as escape routes because of high-voltage cables and transformers. The other two, however, led to places where it would be easy for someone to get into town, especially late at night, without being seen, coming or going. He’d also discovered that there was at least one tagger loose down there, and he had taken some notes on the graffiti designs and signatures. Two months ago, he’d even sprayed over one of the more elaborate territorial markings with black paint, then laid down his own tag, a macabre cryptogram he’d bought from one of the local tattoo parlors, with the name Hall-Man-Chu embedded in it. Two weeks after that, he found that his tag had been defaced, the jaws of a silhouetted shark surrounding it. He’d taken it as a challenge.
After that, he had made some nocturnal excursions to see if he could catch the mysterious runner with the shark tag. Each time, he had notified his own police force and the Public Works duty officer that he was going to be going down into the system. Then the Academy’s police chief, Carlo Bustamente, mentioned in passing that the PWC people were listing his nocturnal inspections on their daily maintenance schedules. He changed his MO, telling only the chief when he was going to make a tunnel run of his own.
He hadn’t yet escalated his surveillance activities to go hunting, because this was, after all, just a game played by some mids who were defying Executive Department regulations. As security officer, he didn’t care if the mids wanted to live dangerously and risk a Class-A conduct offense known in Bancroft Hall as “going over the wall,” even if it was technically under the walls. He also wasn’t sure what he’d do if he actually caught up with one of the runners. He had the authority to put the miscreant on report, assuming it was a mid and not a townie, but he was more inclined simply to count coup and then make the guy knock it off. It was bound to be a firstie, because if a firstie caught a second classman down there, he’d be obliged to put him on report. Whoever it was, he wasn’t really damaging anything, and if it was just a game, well, hell, it was just a game. As CO of the Marine detachment, he could never have taken such an attitude, which was one of the reasons, he supposed, that he’d become a civilian. Besides Bosnia.
When he got to his desk, there was a message from Chief Bustamente. Subject: the Dell case. The tunnels forgotten, Jim called Carlo.
Bustamente was a retired Navy chief warrant officer who oversaw the Academy’s seventeen-man civilian police force. He’d done twenty-six years in the fleet, starting out as a master at arms, making chief, and then warrant. Now he was nearly sixty and an old hand in the federal law-enforcement business, having worked in naval base security offices all across the country. Carlo prided himself on knowing what was going on under the floorboards of any installation he’d been assigned to, and he had a large network of contacts in both federal and local civilian law enforcement.
“Hey, Cap,” he said when Jim called, in deference to both Jim’s now defunct status as a Marine Corps captain and the fact that Jim was his titular boss.
“Chief,” Jim replied, observing the protocol, “What’s up?”
“You heard any of the details on this flier we had?”
“Only that the powers that be haven’t decided whether he was a jumper or it was a DBM-death by misadventure.”
“Not misadventure, but maybe AD-venture, Cap,” Bustamente said, lowering his voice. “Did you know our young Captain Marvel was dressed out in lace panties?”
Whoa, Jim thought. That’s a detail that ought not to be loose. “Yes, but I’m surprised that’s out there,” he said.
“An FAK fact,” Carlo said. “And I hear through the grapevine that the ME’s got some physical indications that he may have had some help in his final moments.”
Jim twisted his chair around so that his voice wouldn’t carry out into the admin office. “Physical indications? As in?”
“Bruising on lower arms, indicating he may have been gripped, with his arms pinned. Like maybe he was thrown or pushed, instead of jumping. Probably some other stuff, but that’s all I have.”
Jim was stunned. None of this had come out at the morning conferences-just bland generalities about continuing investigations and heightened sensitivity to indications of suicide or serious depression. This sounded like homicide. If it was true. He said as much to Carlo.