“I’m going up this hill,” Train said equably. He concentrated on Beard while keeping an eye on Drool.
Beard hunched his considerable shoulders and leaned forward. “The hell you are., Bud. This here’s private. Turn that piece a Yuppie shit around and git your ass outta here.”
“Or?’ I
“Or?’ ” The man exclaimed in mock surprise, straightening up.
“Or!” He grinned down at Drool then, as if his morning had just been made. “Or I’ll throw your ass and that Ford down the goddamn hill. How’s that sound to you, asshole?” As he spoke, he reached down to pick up a tire and then began to smack it gently into his left palm.
Train spoke one -word, and Gutter came out of the car to stand next to Train, who quietly gave him the growl command.
When Gutter rumbled, Drool dried right up and began to scuttle backward, away from the motorcycle, on -his hands and heels. Beard frowned.
“Which one of you is rare?” Train asked.
Beard was still frowning. ““Fuck’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“Dog here likes his meat rare,” Train explained, eyeing Drool. “So which one of you is rare?”
That did it for Drool, who bolted for the trailer, not stopping until he was safely through the flimsy metal door. Both Train and Beard heard him lock it. ‘fsounds like he locked it,” Train announced. “Guess that means you’re rare.” He raised his hand as if to give Gutter a command, and Gutter obliged by notching up the volume and showing another yard or so of teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Train saw a shade flutter across the single front window in the trailer.
“Hey, man, hey, wait a goddamn minute here,” the big man complained, backing up now, the tire iron dropping conspicuously out of his hand.
“You wanna go up the goddamn hill, play in the snakes, that’s cool. You go right the hell ahead. We didn’t mean nothin’, awright?”
Train silenced the dog and flashed his ID. “I’m a federal agent,” he said. “You go back in your trailer with your girlfriend there, and you stay in there until you hear me leave. I’ll be leaving the dog on watch when I get up there.
You or anybody else goesup there will be disemboweled.
You understand disemboweled, do you?” The big man continued to back up, his eyes still locked on the dog.
“Yeah, right. Got it. No problem.” Then he turned and walked quickly to the door and beat on it for Drool to open up. The whole trailer shook.
He was still banging on the trailer when Train got back into the Explorer and resumed his climb up the hill, with Gutter outside, trotting conspicuously alongside the car.
After fifteen minutes of cooling her heels in the front office, Karen was startled when the buzzer went off on the EA’s desk. He picked up a black handset, listened attentively, and then said, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. ” He hung up the phone and looked over at Karen.
“The DCNO would like you to come in,” he announced.
Karen took a deep breath, got up, and walked back over to the closed door leading into Kensington’s office, ignoring the curious stares from the office staff. She knocked once and then opened the door.
Kensington was now sitting at his desk, his uniform coat still buttoned up. His face was tight with anger. Sherman was standing in front of the desk, and the other two admirals were sitting in adjacent chairs to one side. The, tension in the room was palpable, reinforced by Sherman’s expression of defiance. Karen walked over to stand beside Sherman, trying to keep the nervousness out of her own face.
“All right,” Kensington snapped. “She’s here., Now I want an answer.”
Sherman turned to her. “They want to know where I was on Thursday and Friday. I don’t think they need to know that. “
“Why does it matter?”
Karen asked the room at large, stalling for time.
“Because the admiral was technically an unauthorized absentee from his place of duty-to wit, the selection board,” Carpenter interjected. “We assume he had a good and sufficient reason for being so absent, but that assumption rests on his willingness to tell us what that reason was.
Beyond so-called compelling personal circumstances, that is.”
Karen did not like the fact that she was coming into this conversation cold, but she made her decision. “You do not have to reveal the reason, especially under these circumstances, I I she said, making it clear that she thought “these circumstances” had something of the flavor of a kangaroo court to them.
“Now look here, young lady,” Kensington began, but she ignored him. “I need to confer with Admiral Sherman,” she announced. “Privately. Excuse us, please. We’ll be right back. Admiral?” She took Sherman by the elbow and steered him toward the door.
“Goddamn it, JAG, she works for you. Do something,” Kensington protested, but Admiral Carpenter had a peculiar look on his face and was starting to shake his head. Karen pelled Sherman through the door of the inner office and pro then out into the A-ring corridor, pulling the outer door shut as she went through.
“What’s the deal?” she asked.
He sigped. “Mcnair’s told them everything. They want me to put my papers in. Ask for early retirement. If I don’t, they’re going to proceed against me for disappearing without notice. It would probably start with some kind of psych evaluation at Bethesda. Kensington started in with some kind of bullshit about how concerned they were about this Galantz situation. How they had lost confidence in my ability to focus on my duties with this extreme personal threat hanging over my head. How it would make the Navy look bad if I were to be hauled into a courtroom, an admiral in uniform, for being involved in two murders.”
“But Carpenter knows that’s a lie,” she argued. “He knows full well you’re not a suspect and that you were never involved.”
Sherman nodded as two commanders walked by, trying hard not to stare.
“I pointed that out. But strangely enough, Admiral Carpenter has had very little to say in there,” he said. He paused for a moment. “And I’m not about to beg him to speak up. If this is a setup, then he’s part of it’ ” Karen recalled what Galanti had said about the admirals being part of this. “But why?” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re a flag officer.
Why aren’t they protecting you?
Why are they so ready just to let you go over the side?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t done anything, other than bolt the other day.
And that wasn’t from fear of Galantz, but from overwhelming disappointment. You make flag, it’s not supposed to be this way., Karen.
Hell, at, this point, I’m ready to do what they want.”
“You shouldn’t do that. You should fight them.”
“But how? I don’t know where I stand. Kensington said he just got off the phone with the Vice Chief. If there’s a four-star against me, there’s no point in fighting it.”
Karen tried to make him look at her, but he resisted.
“You don’t know that,” she said. “He may just have said that. He may have been talking to the Vice about’t something entirely unrelated.
You said it yourself. You worked for all those years to wear these stars. At great personal cost, may I remind you.”
He looked at her then, and she saw in his eyes that he had crossed an important psychological bridge and was now prepared to bum it. He took her hands. “Karen, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The career has been everything. For all those years, it was my career, my advancement. I was always so very important, so very busy. And now my wife’s in an institution, and my son is in league with my worst enemy. All for-what?
Preserving my almighty stars?” He dropped her hands, and the emotion seemed to leak out of him. “To hell with these people.”