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  Meisner turned his chair slightly. “And you, Commander Dunn?”

  “We’ll see what evidence presents itself, sir,” he answered coolly.

  The admiral nodded, satisfied. “We’ve set up a command center for the two of you three doors down. You’ll have a staff of six investigators, but you have clearance to use anything and anyone you want…CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and any local or national law enforcement databases or personnel. We’re putting together your list of contact liaisons right now. We’ll make sure that you’re made aware of any or all communications that we might establish with Hartford.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “When do we start?” Dunn asked.

  “Commander McCann’s records are to be reviewed before us in a couple of minutes. You’ll want to be present for that,” the admiral advised. “You’re dismissed right after that.”

  “Why only McCann’s records?” Sarah asked.

  Meisner frowned. “McCann is the most knowledgeable and powerful person aboard that submarine. We know that and we’re certain whoever is behind this operation knows that. He has the keys and the combinations that could result in a nuclear holocaust. You understand, don’t you, Lieutenant Connelly? ”

  “Of course, sir. We’ll assess the records of the others aboard Hartford.”

  Nothing more needed to be said by him, and Sarah didn’t miss the warning look sent by her superior. She was to stay objective.

  The television was turned off. Sarah had no doubt that the press conference would not actually take place for quite some time, if at all.

  Admiral Meisner called the meeting to order and made a quick introduction of the major players attending. He finished with Sarah and Commander Dunn. Looking up at the electronic map on the other side of the conference room, she realized that the submarine was now southwest of Fisher’s Island, but it had not yet made a change in its course to the east and the Atlantic. If it turned to the west, the sub would be bottled up in Long Island Sound. Not a good thing. It would be like having a tiger shark in a wading pool. A tiger shark with serious teeth.

  A handout was passed around. Sarah received her copy and stared down at Darius’s military resume. Years of hard work jammed into a couple of paragraphs. The stamp at the bottom read “Under Investigation.” She stared at the two-by-three photo of him in his dress whites at the top of the page. Professional and serious, but definitely good looking. His piercing dark eyes and chiseled features made him the classic poster boy. Tough, but not unapproachable. Confident, but not arrogant. She knew for a fact that the navy had used this same picture of Darius in recruiting efforts over the past few years.

  To calm her agitation, she reminded herself that this was only a briefing. As an attorney, she knew she could gather enough facts and figures to show that Darius could walk on water if it came down to it.

  A navy lieutenant named Seth McDermott, who sat on the far side of the table from her, began reading McCann’s fact sheet aloud.

  “Commander Darius McCann is 40 years old...today.” He paused for a second. “Commander McCann graduated magna cum laude from Notre Dame with a bachelor of science degree in Aerospace Engineering. Upon graduating, he attended Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. Received commission September of 1989. Following commissioning, completed nuclear propulsion training in Orlando, Florida, and Idaho Falls, Idaho.”

  An older admiral that Sarah remembered being introduced as Smith cut in. “Married? Children?”

  “No, sir,” the lieutenant looked down at the sheet in his hand before answering. “Never married.”

  “Steady girlfriend?” the admiral persisted.

  Sarah focused on the sheet on her lap, feeling the gazes of several in the room fix on her.

  “No, sir.”

  “Let’s stick to the resume, Seth,” responded Admiral Gerry, the commander of Atlantic Fleet.

  The older officer frowned at his sheet. “Go ahead,” he growled, “but it’s clear as day that this work is incomplete. I’m going to have some questions.”

  “I’m sure you won’t be alone, Admiral,” Gerry replied. He nodded to the lieutenant, who continued.

  “After completing Submarine Officer Basic Course, he completed three North Atlantic deployments before reporting to the naval postgraduate school in Monterey, California.”

  A light tap on her arm drew Sarah’s attention to Dunn, who tilted a pad of paper toward her. She read his scribbling. Old goat…retired Rear Admiral Joseph Smith, assigned to the panel by President Hawkins this morning. She nodded. That explained why she didn’t know him.

  Dunn scribbled something else on the paper. Sarah looked over.

  Smith doesn’t like me much.

  She gave a small nod and turned her attention back to the room.

  “Graduated with distinction, earning a Masters of Science in Physics with a military professional subspecialty in Nuclear and Directed Energy Weapons. He was presented the Naval Sea Systems Command Award and the Superintendent’s Most Outstanding Thesis Award for his work on Nuclear Propulsion.”

  “That’s impressive,” someone murmured. There were a number of other comments.

  “After completing Submarine Officer Advanced Course, subject reported as Engineering Officer on USS Rhode Island, completing two deployments, including numerous surfacing in the packed ice and open water polynyas of the Arctic.”

  Sarah remembered those blocks of time very well. That was when they’d first become romantically involved.

  “Immediately following second deployment, served as assistant force nuclear power officer reporting to the Commander Submarine Force, U.S Atlantic Fleet.”

  There was another tap on her arm. She looked over at Commander Dunn again. He had another note for her. Seth McDermott. Good guy. He’ll be working on our team.

  She nodded and turned her attention back to Seth.

  “During this assignment, instrumental in developing advanced submarine firefighting tactics, damage control equipment, and active ventilation procedures. Additionally, subject earned his Professional Engineering license in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”

  This time, there was no tap, but the legal pad slowly slid in front of her. Sarah looked down.

  Let me take the first swing.

  Surprised, she read it again before turning to Commander Dunn. He was all attention, focused completely on the speaker. She didn’t know what he meant or how to take his comment.

  “In his next deployment, he served as executive officer on a five-month deployment around South America on USS Omaha, during which time he conducted top-secret weaponry testing. Following that tour, he was assigned his first command, USS Hartford.”

  Seth McDermott finished reading and looked up. To Sarah’s relief, for a couple of moments, absolute silence ruled the room. Now she understood that it was actually advantageous for McCann to have his impressive record read by these people.

  “All the makings of a fine early career,” Rear Admiral Smith said curtly, flipping through his pages. “Now let’s get back to basics. Commander McCann. What was his first name?”

  “Darius, sir.”

  “Darius. What is Commander McCann’s ancestry?”

  Sarah had to fist her hand in her lap and bite her tongue so she wouldn’t stand and object to the question. She couldn’t believe what Smith was implying. The innuendo was hardly subtle. McCann’s flawless record spoke for itself.

  Lieutenant McDermott looked across the room at Admiral Meisner. Sarah saw her superior hunch over the table, his elbows planted on the dark mahogany. She knew that was a sure sign that Meisner wasn’t any too pleased with the question, either.

  “What is it that you want to know, Admiral?” Meisner asked.

  “I’m interested in his ancestry.”

  “How many generations would you like to go back, Admiral?”

  “One will do.”

  Sarah knew her superior was well aware of this information, so she was pleased when Meisner to
ok his time and thumbed through a manila folder on the conference table first before answering.

  “Father, fourth generation Irish. Cork City, I believe. Commander McCann’s mother was born in Iran.”

  Smith looked positively smug as he turned to Admiral Gerry, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet. “Has Commander McCann ever expressed anything that might demonstrate disagreement with our Middle East policy?”

  “Of course not,” Gerry said.

  “Does he have any family members that still reside in Iran?”

  “Admiral Meisner?” Gerry said, fending off the question.

  “He does, sir.”

  Sarah saw the Head of the Joint Chiefs scribble a note that he handed off to an aide. The man left the room immediately.

  “Is this his first patrol in the Persian Gulf region?” Smith asked the Atlantic Fleet commander

  “Yes, sir,” Gerry answered, obviously showing deference to the president’s advisor.

  “Did he have any objection to this assignment?”

  “No, sir.”

  “My apologies for interrupting, Admiral Smith,” Dunn said before Smith could fire the next question. “But we’re wasting valuable time discussing information of very little relevance.

  “Very little relevance, Commander Dunn?” Smith asked critically.

  “Yes, sir. My understanding was that this briefing was being held for the purpose of understanding the credentials of the ranking officer so that strategies can be developed to counter the potential actions of the unidentified hijackers. It serves no purpose to assume that Commander McCann has betrayed his trust.”

  “Do you think it is irrelevant that McCann has family connections with a rogue nation that is a sworn enemy of the United States?”

  “Yes, sir. It is entirely irrelevant to the purpose of this briefing,” Dunn responded sharply. “Unless, of course, we had all been told beforehand that you wanted to conduct a genealogy club meeting, then I could have brought pictures of my Russian great-grandmother who, as you know, was a diehard communist. Perhaps you have something to share about your own great-grandfather, who I believe stole horses for the South during the Civil—”

  “That’s enough, Commander,” the Head of the Joint Chiefs snapped. “But I have to agree that we are digressing from our purpose, Admiral.”

  Sarah didn’t miss the daggers that Dunn and Smith sent each other. He wasn’t kidding when he said they didn’t like each other.

  Admiral Pottinger, commander of the Atlantic Fleet Sub Force, spoke for the first time. “We need to discuss a plan for taking back control of this vessel. We cannot afford to leave that submarine in the hands of hostile forces for even a minute longer than we have to.”

  “Whatever is decided upon must be quick and decisive,” someone else replied from across the table. “We cannot allow any half-assed cowboy stunts like the one the Coast Guard pulled this morning.”

  Others began to weigh in with their opinions, but Sarah knew she’d have no involvement in any of those decisions. Admiral Meisner was on the same wavelength, for she saw him stack up the files in front of him and turn around and hand them to her.

  “McDermott will stay and bring you anything pertinent from this meeting,” Meisner said. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.”

  Sarah nodded and grabbed her stuff. Commander Dunn was on his feet, and the two of them left the room.

  Outside, she turned to him. “You’re lucky you’re not being escorted to the brig, talking like that to Admiral Smith.”

  “He’s retired,” Bruce said coolly. “He just doesn’t know yet that he doesn’t run every show.”

  Sarah looked at him as they walked down the corridor. “So what’s the real bone of contention between the two of you?”

  “If you really have to know,” he replied, smiling as he pulled open a door for her, “I’m his former son-in-law.”

  ~~~~

  Chapter 13

  USS Hartford

  8:01 a.m.

  Amy glanced over at the hole in the wall where McCann had disappeared before reaching up to make the first cut into the wires overhead. Without the schematics, she was no better than a bull in a china shop. But it really didn’t matter. Any kind of damage was a positive step.

  She felt partially responsible for this whole mess. She’d ignored the immediate warning flag that had gone up in her head the moment she’d started testing the navigation system in the control room. The rejection report completely disagreed with the actual sequence. From the first readouts, it was clear there was nothing wrong with the system. The local network malfunction could have only been caused by someone intentionally disconnecting a wire or loosening a connection. She had a good idea that it must have been something right there in the control room, too.

  From the moment she’d been given the job, she’d operated on the defensive, looking for screw-ups that would have occurred during production. She’d searched for catastrophic system failures and had totally disregarded the possibility of operator sabotage.

  She knew now why it happened, too. Someone had wanted to bring Hartford back in for this, the hijacking, and Amy had missed the opportunity to send up a flare. She’d never even voiced her concern to the sub’s commander.

  Idiot.

  She snipped away with her cutters, determined to do some real damage to the navigation system that she guessed was probably working perfectly now.

  ~~~~

  Chapter 14

  Key West, Florida

  8:10 a.m.

  Mina Azizi was born and raised in Iran.

  Iran was a different place then. It was a different time, long before the Islamic revolution had shattered the bond between East and West, before the revolution that set women back decades in their freedoms and in their perceived value in a society that was suddenly so foreign to Mina.

  Mina came from a large family where having an opinion was as vital as having bread and water; it was the sustenance of their very existence. Voicing that opinion was as natural as the water that ran over the stones in a river at the base of the garden. When she was growing up, every Friday, without fail, her parents’ house was filled with people. Young and old, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends who happened to be passing by descended on their house, since her father was the eldest in his generation. No matter how many came, there always seemed to be enough food. The conversations were lively, the arguments loud.

  She remembered sleeping on pallets on a second story porch with her cousins on warm summer nights. The smell of the flowers from the gardens still came back to her sometimes on warm evenings. She recalled the arguments she and her cousins had until her grandmother would come out and tell them to go to sleep. They were good days.

  Mina came to the United States in 1961 at the age of eighteen to attend George Washington University. That same year, she met and fell in love with a hazel-eyed, sweet-talking senior who proposed marriage to her at the end of their first date.

  Mina and Harry McCann married a year later, and Mina’s life took a different path than she’d ever imagined just a few years before, lying on her pallet on that summer porch, the scent of her family’s flowers in the air.

  Now, nearly fifty years later, she was happy to think that path had been a good one.

  There had been many sacrifices. From the very beginning, she’d missed her parents, her brother and sister. Early in their marriage, she and Harry made a point of visiting Iran every summer. But as their four children came along, each two or three years apart, the trips had become more difficult to make, less practical, and therefore less frequent.

  And then the revolution changed everything. Travel between Iran and the U.S. stopped completely. When her mother died, Mina couldn’t return for her funeral. She couldn’t visit her father after his stroke. She’d missed his funeral, as well.

  She still had a brother and sister who lived in Iran. She talked to them on the phone. But that was the extent of her connection with people who were everything to her
in the early years of her life. She sometimes felt it was as if she’d lived two separate lives.

  Harry filled many gaps in Mina’s life, and she loved him for it. He wore many shoes. As the years passed, they had created their own kind of Iranian-American family. Mina had no immediate kin nearby to stop by and fill her house on weekends, so they had created a new extended family that included their three sons and their daughter and an endless array of friends who had each carved their own permanent place in her heart and at their table. And now her family included five grandchildren that she and Harry were extremely proud of.

  Mina hadn’t been too keen on moving to Key West after Harry’s retirement. But with the way their children’s lives and jobs had developed, there hadn’t been that one place where they could live and be close to all of them. She finally gave in to Harry and, two years later, she had to admit that he’d been right. Her family loved to come to the Keys for visits. The grandchildren were more attached than ever to Mina and Harry. And the times when there were no impending visits, the two of them were flying to California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, or Connecticut to see them.

  In fact, this morning Mina was already planning to start packing for their Thanksgiving trip to Massachusetts to visit their daughter and her family, even though they weren’t leaving for another two weeks.

  Following her everyday routine, Mina slipped out of bed around 7:30, started a pot of coffee for her husband, and made herself a cup of tea. She stepped out the kitchen door onto the brick path already warm with the sun. The hibiscus in the back was blooming beautifully, and she marveled at their colors before walking around the side of their little house.

  On both borders of the walk, she and Harry had planted a rose garden, and the scents of the roses filled the morning air. Some of the prettiest had no scent, and Mina could never really understand why a botanist could breed a hybrid for beauty at the expense of smell. Still, she mixed the different varieties and was happy with the end result.

  It was Mina’s habit to take her time on this walk. It was her ‘moment of Zen’, as Harry joked. As she ambled along, she liked to search out every new bud and tend to every fading bloom. Along the brick walk, two or three feet apart, she’d placed clay pots of fragrant flowering jasmine. As she passed them, she collected pocketfuls of star shaped flowers, knowing how much Harry enjoyed the fragrance at the breakfast table. Reaching the gate by the driveway, she opened it, picked up the morning paper, and paused before starting back along the brick path.