his patience. It wouldn’t be like that on a ship , that little voice inside told him.
Maxie seemed to sense his internal conflict. “It’s not as if you have to decide right now. In fact, right now, you’ve got a ‘training exercise’ to do. I want you wheels up by dawn and running a search grid over the target zone ASAP.”
Dane put the matter of his career on a mental back burner. “I’ll tell the guys.”
“Good. Pour some coffee down Bonebrake’s throat. Maybe getting back out in the field will help him straighten up. Oh, and one other thing…”
“Sir?”
“I’ll need my name tag back.”
CHAPTER 4
Washington DC
Alex found sanctuary in a cheap hotel and didn’t venture outside for two days. She paid in cash and the desk clerk hadn’t batted an eye. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even made eye contact. It was the perfect place to lay low until she could figure out what was going on.
Survival was her first concern.
Don’s murder had not simply been a robbery gone wrong; the historian had been tortured, his office ransacked. The killer had been looking for something, and Alex was pretty sure she knew what that something was.
She wasn’t a believer in coincidence . Don had been killed on the very day that he was to receive several recently declassified government documents that he had requested under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act—documents that would have been sitting on his desk when the killer arrived had she not been running late. She still had the envelope from the archives. It only stood to reason that if the killer was still looking for it, he would be looking for her as well.
But who was he? Who did he work for? Until she knew the answer to that question, she couldn’t trust anyone.
Her first stop after fleeing Don’s neighborhood had been a bank ATM where she’d taken the maximum allowable cash advance on her credit card s. Most of the cash had gone toward the purchase of an IBM Thinkpad portable computer, which she felt sure she would need in order to puzzle out the deadly significance of the documents. Afterward, she’d stocked up on non-perishable foods, a few sundries, and then tried to lose herself in downtown DC.
As Don’s research assistant, she had a general idea of what was contained in the documents he had requested. Don’s next book was to be a detailed history of the so-called “hell ships” which had been used by the Japanese during World War II to transport Allied prisoners-of-war to forced labor camps. The conditions on the ships were inhumane, with hundreds of prisoners crammed into holds, deprived of food, water, and even fresh air. Many of the prisoners died of dysentery and other diseases en route. Many more however died when the transports were targeted by Allied planes and submarines who often did not realize that the ships were carrying their brothers-in-arms. More than 18,000 prisoners had been killed when the hell ships carrying them had been sunk. It was a tragic chapter in a brutal story, and one that might prove potentially embarrassing to the Navy and the US government, even fifty years later. But was it something worth killing over?
She spent a full day poring over facsimiles of log book pages from ships and submarines, engagement reports, transcripts and orders, all relating to the sinking of more than a dozen different hell ships. She recognized many of the names from the hours she had spent doing preliminary research for Don, so she decided to start by looking for any discrepancies between what was generally accepted as accurate history and the official and heretofore secret record. There were some, mostly incongruences in time and precise location, but nothing that sounded to her like motive for murder.
Exhausted, she ate a dinner of R amen noodles soaked in hot tap water, and turned on the local news. There was no mention of Don’s death or her own disappearance. Nor, she discovered had it rated mention in any of
Maxie seemed to sense his internal conflict. “It’s not as if you have to decide right now. In fact, right now, you’ve got a ‘training exercise’ to do. I want you wheels up by dawn and running a search grid over the target zone ASAP.”
Dane put the matter of his career on a mental back burner. “I’ll tell the guys.”
“Good. Pour some coffee down Bonebrake’s throat. Maybe getting back out in the field will help him straighten up. Oh, and one other thing…”
“Sir?”
“I’ll need my name tag back.”
CHAPTER 4
Washington DC
Alex found sanctuary in a cheap hotel and didn’t venture outside for two days. She paid in cash and the desk clerk hadn’t batted an eye. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even made eye contact. It was the perfect place to lay low until she could figure out what was going on.
Survival was her first concern.
Don’s murder had not simply been a robbery gone wrong; the historian had been tortured, his office ransacked. The killer had been looking for something, and Alex was pretty sure she knew what that something was.
She wasn’t a believer in coincidence . Don had been killed on the very day that he was to receive several recently declassified government documents that he had requested under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act—documents that would have been sitting on his desk when the killer arrived had she not been running late. She still had the envelope from the archives. It only stood to reason that if the killer was still looking for it, he would be looking for her as well.
But who was he? Who did he work for? Until she knew the answer to that question, she couldn’t trust anyone.
Her first stop after fleeing Don’s neighborhood had been a bank ATM where she’d taken the maximum allowable cash advance on her credit card s. Most of the cash had gone toward the purchase of an IBM Thinkpad portable computer, which she felt sure she would need in order to puzzle out the deadly significance of the documents. Afterward, she’d stocked up on non-perishable foods, a few sundries, and then tried to lose herself in downtown DC.
As Don’s research assistant, she had a general idea of what was contained in the documents he had requested. Don’s next book was to be a detailed history of the so-called “hell ships” which had been used by the Japanese during World War II to transport Allied prisoners-of-war to forced labor camps. The conditions on the ships were inhumane, with hundreds of prisoners crammed into holds, deprived of food, water, and even fresh air. Many of the prisoners died of dysentery and other diseases en route. Many more however died when the transports were targeted by Allied planes and submarines who often did not realize that the ships were carrying their brothers-in-arms. More than 18,000 prisoners had been killed when the hell ships carrying them had been sunk. It was a tragic chapter in a brutal story, and one that might prove potentially embarrassing to the Navy and the US government, even fifty years later. But was it something worth killing over?
She spent a full day poring over facsimiles of log book pages from ships and submarines, engagement reports, transcripts and orders, all relating to the sinking of more than a dozen different hell ships. She recognized many of the names from the hours she had spent doing preliminary research for Don, so she decided to start by looking for any discrepancies between what was generally accepted as accurate history and the official and heretofore secret record. There were some, mostly incongruences in time and precise location, but nothing that sounded to her like motive for murder.
Exhausted, she ate a dinner of R amen noodles soaked in hot tap water, and turned on the local news. There was no mention of Don’s death or her own disappearance. Nor, she discovered had it rated mention in any of
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