Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection Page 43

  The photo on the left was different than all of the rest. It was taken in front of a boat with Burgess and another man, probably thirty years his junior and a good six inches taller, in casual clothes instead of the formal ties and tuxedos that the subjects in the other photos wore. She wondered if the younger man might be Burgess’ son. They stood next to what was probably the same seven-foot swordfish that now lived on the wall, only it was hoisted up on a pole. Both men wore sunglasses, big smiles, and shirts you’d buy at a tourist’s trap in the Bahamas, their arms on each other’s shoulders. The name of the boat in the background was blocked partially by the huge fish; Cham_ _ _ on. Probably Champion, she thought.

  “And what about our golf game on Saturday. Okay, no mulligans this time. See you then, Mr. Secretary.”

  He hung up and said, “Have a seat, Agent Sperling. That one.” He pointed to a high-back, leather chair to the left of his desk. He smiled pleasantly as he watched her step over and sit down.

  “Thank you, sir.” She glanced at the swordfish again as she sat. “Nice fish.”

  Burgess kept his smile as he turned and gazed at his trophy catch. “Yes. Yes, it is, isn’t it?” He looked at the photo Spurs now sat beside, and she could see something distant and affectionate in his eyes. “It was our last catch on our little boat before Fran got it.”

  She didn’t understand. “Your ex-wife, sir?”

  He chuckled and glanced over his shoulder to the other picture. “No, I’ve been married to the same girl for over forty-two years. Her name is Susan. The hurricane’s name was Fran.”

  Spurs felt her face flush. “Of course,” she said and nodded.

  He paused before saying any more, still watching her with the smile that made her think of a father admiring his child on the kid’s first bicycle solo.

  “I’m sorry that this is the first chance we’ve had to talk, Janelle—oh, uh, I see you have a nickname,” he said, glancing back at an open file on his desk. “Spurs, I believe.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, smiling, “some of my friends call me that.”

  “Does that include me?”

  She grinned at him. He was good at breaking the ice. “Of course, sir.”

  “Good. And you’ve been out of training for what, a month now?”

  “Three weeks, sir.”

  “How do you like it so far?”

  “Just fine, sir—well, can I be frank?”

  “But of course, by all means,” he said, his face showing a practiced concern.

  “I’m getting a little bored with the paperwork, you know the filing and things. I was hoping I’d be assigned a case by now.”

  Burgess pulled a file folder from a stack on the corner of his desk and opened it. He leafed through it briefly. “Funny you should mention that, Spurs,” he said. “I just might have one for you, but I’m concerned that you may not be ready.”

  Spurs’ eyes grew big. “Sir, I’d do anything to prove that I am. I was second in my training class at the center—top of my class in forensic psychology in college.”

  “Yes, I see that. But those aren’t the reasons I’m considering you for this case. Normally, for what I have in mind, we’d use a more experienced field agent.”

  Spurs sat on the edge of the chair. “What I lack in experience, I’m sure I can make up in enthusiasm, sir. I have a bachelor’s in criminology.”

  “From Oklahoma University, yes, I know, but that isn’t it either, Spurs, and too much enthusiasm can get you killed in this business.”

  She sat back and tried to calm herself, realizing she was looking like a rookie—the kiss of death for an investigator, rookie or not.

  “Then what is it, sir?”

  Burgess’ eyes met hers over his reading glasses. “You’re in the Navy Reserve?”

  “Yes, sir, joined in my college freshman year. Six years now.”

  He looked back to her file. “Trained as a weapons officer?”

  “That’s right, sir.”

  “You’ve spent some time at sea. How did you like shipboard life?” He seemed to ensure good eye contact on this question as if how she’d dealt with being out to sea would be a major factor in determining whether or not she was suitable for the assignment.

  Spurs was only half truthful. On board ship, she was fine, as long as she didn’t have to get into the water herself. “I enjoyed it, sir.”

  “I guess it figures, your father’s Admiral Oliver T. Sperling. He’s retired now isn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve met your father. He’s a good man—tough, but good. And your mother drowned. I’m sorry.”

  “That was a long time ago, sir, when I was twelve.” Concerned that he might be searching for a reason to disqualify her from her first chance at an assignment as an investigator, she changed the subject. “What kind of case are you considering me for?”

  “It would be in line with your fields of interest: criminal investigations and counterintelligence. Undercover, aboard a ship.”

  Spurs swallowed hard. “Contraband, theft?”

  “Murder.”

  Spurs blinked. “Please give me a try, sir.”

  Burgess looked back at her file. “I’ll catch hell from Paul Royse. I understand my assistant director is your father’s stepbrother—your step uncle, so to speak. I’m sure that had nothing to do with you getting a job here.”

  “Uncle, sir. I don’t think about the ‘step’ part. But, even so, there’s no nepotism I’m aware of, sir. I passed all of the tests in the upper ten percent of the class.”

  “Uh-huh. But you’re very close to your uncle?”

  “Yes, sir. I pretty much grew up on his ranch in Oklahoma. And, after my mother died, Uncle Paul and Aunt Katherine took care of me—raised me. That was when he was FBI. I guess he’s why I wanted to be here. He said it would be a rewarding career and I could still be near the Navy.”

  Burgess nodded. “And your father will want a piece of my hide, too. There’s too much at stake right now to worry about that, though. You fit the profile, except for lack of experience. However, as I tell any of my undercover operatives, if I give you this assignment and you find you’re in over your head, you will abort and seek safety immediately.”

  Spurs smiled. “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re sure? There’s considerable danger. Your life could be at risk at any time without you knowing it.”

  “I’m sure, sir.”

  “All right, Special Agent Sperling, but if you feel that this assignment is not for you at any time during my briefing, you’ll stop me and not breathe a word of it to anyone, understand?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Burgess unlocked a desk drawer on his left and pulled out a two-inch-thick folder.

  “Again, I must warn, the security of the United States Navy might depend on you. Our own security at NCIS might already have been compromised— penetrated.”

  “A spy, sir?”

  “A traitor.”

  Spurs frowned as Burgess went on. “You’ll be stationed on the USS Atchison, a frigate.” He handed the thick file to her. “We’ve had two AWOLs and two suspicious deaths on board the ship—all in the last ten days. We’ve interviewed the relatives of all but the latest dead man and we’ve conducted an on-ship investigation. There appears to be nothing out of the ordinary—except an inordinate number of misfits aboard the Atchison. Your assignment will start with interviewing the family of the latest man killed— an Ensign Charles Nader. They live here in DC. You’ll put the pieces together while aboard the Atchison. You’ll be undercover, assigned as their weapons officer in place of Nader.”

  Spurs leafed through the folder as she listened. “Where’s the Atchison now, sir?”

  “Rota, Spain.”

  Spurs lifted her eyebrows. “How will I proceed, what will I be looking for?”

  “Here’s the risky part. We think that this problem may have something to do with a drug-smuggling ring funded by Arab terrorists. Allah’s Jihad
, to be exact. Also, it may be beneficial for you to operate as yourself instead of with an assumed name. Being Admiral Sperling’s daughter might be an asset. Most of the salts know or know of him. Might give you some weight. We’ll alter your PR file—take out any NCIS training recorded and maybe add a little black mark or two—say a minor drug bust that you were acquitted of due to lack of evidence. That’ll help you fit in well with this crew.”

  “Will I be alone, sir?”

  “We recruited a crewmember onboard some months ago when we were tipped of the drug ring. Due to security reasons, I can’t give you his name, but he’ll make himself known to you when the time is right.”

  “Security reasons, sir?”

  “In the event that you should back out. Trust is a precious commodity in this case.”

  “Who tipped us of the drug ring?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s one of those need to know things, and you don’t need to know.”

  Spurs looked back at the file. “There seems to be an urgency, even above these disappearances and deaths, sir. May I ask about that?”

  “You may ask, but I can’t tell you. And not because I don’t want to. All we know is that our man aboard feels things are festering, getting ready to pop.” He pushed away from his desk and leaned toward her with his elbows on his knees. “You’ll be in danger from the moment you step on that ship to the time this case is solved. But don’t forget, we have two agents assigned overtly to the fleet on the flagship, the Enterprise. If you need more help than your contact can give you, go to them. But until then, you must report through that contact aboard the Atchison, understand?”

  Spurs found herself daydreaming briefly. Her ex-fiancée, Doug Smith, was an F-18 pilot assigned to the Enterprise. She realized Burgess was staring at her, his question finally soaking in. “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “You should find transcripts from all of the interviews the two fleet agents conducted with the Atchison’s crew. The two AWOLs’ families and one of the dead crewmember’s families were also questioned. You’ll find those reports in the file, too, along with a print-out summary on each member of the crew. Senior Special Agent Taylor will have your airline tickets and orders ready for you by 1300. He’ll give you a final briefing. Also, before you go, you’ll need to interview Ensign Charles Nader’s family.”

  Spurs paged through some of the reports. “How many women are aboard the Atchison, sir?”

  “None.”

  She frowned, but Burgess continued. “But the good news is,” he said as he found a note placed by his phone, “before the Atchison shoves off, day after tomorrow, there’ll be twenty-three reporting for duty. It’ll be the first detail of women to serve on that ship.”

  Spurs nodded and glanced at the file folder, and then back at Burgess, feeling dazed by it all. She had been eager to become an investigator, to be assigned a case, but undercover and aboard ship were more than she could have ever hoped for.

  * * *

  The airliner buffeted as it changed its heading, trying to skirt the foul weather ahead. Spurs smiled down at the white Navy uniform blouse on her lap.

  It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

  Chapter 5

  COMING ABOARD

  May 1, 1530 - US Naval Station, Rota, Spain.

  THE FOUL WEATHER that had forced Janelle Sperling’s flight from Dulles to layover in London delayed her arrival in Madrid an additional eight hours. She was forced to take a later connecting flight to Rota. Sleep had come in nods and her once spotless and crisp polyester, summer-white uniform was smudged and wrinkled. She was pleased, however that even after nearly a year and five pounds, the blouse and skirt still fit nicely.

  Spurs stepped out of the taxi, grimacing at the bright day. The morning’s menacing storm clouds had made way for a neon blue afternoon sky. She handed the Spanish taxicab driver an American twenty-dollar bill for a ten-dollar fare as he laid her bags in front of her.

  “Keep it,” she said.

  She turned away and plodded past the last freight building on Pier Six with her sea bag in one hand and a handbag in the other. The USS Enterprise suddenly loomed before her causing a flutter inside her chest. She dropped her bags then gaped up at the Big E.

  The massive warship was moored a stone’s throw out. Its nearly two hundred million pounds of steel and aluminum enclosed over a million pounds of human flesh as it floated high and proud. It was even more of an awesome sight than she’d expected, but as she looked at the tall, gray lady, she couldn’t help thinking about her ex-fiancée.

  She scanned the enormous, gray superstructure from the water, up its tremendous hull to its flight deck, then to the top of its island in the ship’s middle, some twenty stories above the sea. Somewhere aboard the mass of metal was the Marine aviator she’d promised to marry more than five months ago.

  She shaded her eyes with one hand and squinted at several groups of men leaning on the lifelines along the nearly quarter mile long ship. They were only tiny blue and white specs lining the side. It had been six weeks since she’d seen Lieutenant Doug Smith. While eyeing the huge flattop, she wondered if it had been another woman—or this ship’s sex appeal that had stolen him away.

  Sighing, she turned to the USS Atchison tied off at the adjacent dock. Soon she’d become one of the first female members of the small, ancient frigate’s 217-man crew. The tiny ship’s purpose was to provide support and protection to the Enterprise, but from Spurs’ understanding, the vessel was so old and slow that its mission seemed almost in sympathy. She wondered if the Atchison wouldn’t serve her country better scrapped and made into something more useful like a trillion coat hangers or maybe a hundred train cars full of beer bottle caps.

  She took a deep breath of musky sea air and narrowed her eyes. The next few weeks were sure to prove interesting. Something strange was happening aboard this ship. Two men dead and two missing in the last ten days.

  There are accidents and people die and disappear in the Navy; it’s the nature of the beast. With what she had learned from Henry Dubain, and the fact that there had been so many accidents and disappearances over such a short period of time— from the same ship, this new problem seemed all too obviously related. Drug trafficking and missing crewmembers.

  Even though she’d inherited a cocky confidence from her old sea-dog father, thinking of her very first undercover assignment brought back her queasy stomach and the shakes she’d felt when boarding the plane the morning before at Dulles. “He’s out of the chute,” she said aloud, thinking of her childhood calf-roping days. “Time to tie him up.”

  Being a military brat, she’d been all over the world but never by herself—never really by herself. Of course, in college at Oklahoma University, in Officer’s Candidate School, and at NCIS training, she’d been alone—in a way. Then, at least, she’d shared the experience with her peers. This time would be much different. As she gazed up and down the last bustling dock on Pier Six in Rota, Spain, amid the clanking of steel, the fizzing of acetylene torches, the popping of arc welders and the whine of forklifts, she definitely felt alone.

  She lifted her bags then staggered from their weight toward the ship. Looking over the Atchison and not paying much attention to the goings-on around her, she was startled by the warning honks of a swerving high loader. The big yellow forklift careened away at the last second and she stumbled back, falling to her butt spread-eagled over her sea bag.

  “Idiot!” she said, frowning at the young heavy-equipment operator who drove away wearing a wide smirk while giving her a mock salute over his shoulder.

  As an officer, it was important for her to maintain her composure, but her first urge was to show the smart-ass her middle finger, which she did shortly. Still grinning, the young seaman in blue fatigues gave her a nod before turning back to his business. She quickly stood up and brushed off her uniform while scanning the area to ensure that no one else had viewed her newborn-colt-like clumsiness. Then, grabbing up her bags, she headed once again across
the pier to the Atchison’s berth, taking care to be more watchful.

  She gave a brief visual inspection of what was to be her home for the next few weeks and wondered how the small ship would ride the waves and if her sensitive gut would hold up. There were sure to be storms, and the smaller the ship the more tossing it would do. The vessel she approached now was one of the smallest in the US Navy and barely large enough to be considered a ship. Orange rust streaked her hull, and much of the gray paint that wasn’t discolored had risen in cancerous bubbles with oxidizing steel underneath.

  Spurs paused briefly at the foot of the gangway, leaned forward, hefting her sixty-pound sea bag over the right shoulder of her petite frame and then stomped up, squinting from the bright May Day sun.

  Halfway up the thirty-foot incline, she glanced across the dock once again to the Big E, wishing somehow her assignment could be aboard that giant Cadillac of the sea. She would rather be chipping paint and swabbing decks on the huge, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier than be the new weapons officer of the bucket she now boarded. But the Atchison would have to do.

  As in that first time in the rodeo, all eyes would be on her. She would have to prove herself again. Prove herself not only as an undercover Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent, but as a naval officer, and also as one of the Navy’s new battle-ready, seagoing WINS (Women in Naval Service). When she proved herself to the US Navy, then maybe she could finally prove herself to her father, Rear Admiral Oliver T. Sperling, USN, Retired. The last would be the toughest.

  The Admiral was of the old Navy. He stood firm against allowing gays into the military, blacks to achieve command rank, and women to serve aboard ships, especially warships. Not being a white, heterosexual male made her substandard, incapable, inept.

  Spurs reached the upper platform and set her duffel bag and handbag on the gangway. She quickly straightened her blouse and skirt, stuffed a few unruly strands of her strawberry-blonde hair under her cap and stiffened to attention.