Backblast by Candace Irving (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

sailors to hurry and finish securing the CH-53E she and Riyad had disembarked to the deck. Evidently they were in for rough weather tonight.

No surprise there. The clouds had turned ominous well before her return flight from the carrier. Even now, the surrounding mist had begun to thicken, threatening to coalesce into flat-out rain.

Hopefully, it would hold off. She'd prefer to finish this conversation outside earshot of the majority of the crew. "Who was with you?"

"Ma'am?"

"Corporal Vetter and Staff Sergeant Brandt. Was either Marine with you when you executed the brig searches?"

The chief was forced to adjust her physical stance as well—along with the obvious mental realization that the coming morning's activities weren't perfunctory. Not only were the quarters searches and interviews serious, one of them just might lead to a court-martial…for murder. "Vetter was in the brig. Brandt had just gone off watch. He looked exhausted. I know the staff sergeant was guarding the prisoners last night and then spent his scheduled rack time dealing with everything that had happened to the translator today. I told him to go straight to his rack and get some shut-eye. Do you need me to wake him up so you can speak to him?"

"No. It can wait 'til morning. Did Corporal Vetter appear interested in your search?"

"Not really. He did ask what I was looking for. But he accepted my 'random search' excuse readily enough."

"What about Durrani? Was he suspicious?"

"Yes, but he was certain the search was tied to your absence."

Shit. "Someone shared my destination with him—and the reason for it?"

"No. He's been asking for you, though. Well, insisting. That's the other reason I came out here to meet you. Durrani's been in rare form tonight. Brandt called up via the sound-powered phone shortly after you left the Griffith for the autopsy. He said Durrani wanted to speak with you—that he was ready to talk. You can hear the 1MC in the brig. Brandt thought that Durrani had figured out that helo ops meant someone had left the ship and was worried that it was you; that you weren't going to complete that bargain you made with him. I agreed—because Durrani's still in a tizzy. He had Vetter phone my office again, after they passed the word to prepare for your return helo ops."

"Let me guess; the doc still wants to see me."

"Not exactly. Now he's insisting on it. He actually ordered me to tell you he's ready to deal. I don't think you should trust him though."

She hadn't planned on it.

Still, "Why not?"

"He hurt someone tonight. One of the hospital corpsmen. It happened just after the strychnine search."

Now that was unexpected. Nor did it bode well.

"Is the corpsman okay?"

Yrle nodded. "She's fine. Just a bit rattled. Petty Officer Nguyen had accompanied Dr. Mantia down to the brig. They were originally scheduled to remove Durrani's second round of stitches this morning, but with everything that happened with the translator and then a mess cook's fall down a ladder, it kept getting pushed back. Mantia was about to start on Durrani when he got called away again. Someone in engineering thought he was having chest pains. It was indigestion. But, anyway, both Vetter and Brandt were still in the brig for the watch turnover, so Nguyen told Mantia that she felt comfortable enough doing the removal on her own. According to Nguyen, everything was fine for a while. Well, except for the fact that Durrani kept trying to flirt with her. She ignored his constant comments and was applying a cream to reduce scarring when Durrani just reared up and head butted her. He hit her so hard he gave her a black eye. Brandt and Vetter gathered her gear and got her out of there immediately, but she was still shaken when I took her statement."

"And Durrani? How was his mood?"

The chief snorted in disgust. "Oh, he had that smooth, shit-eating grin on his face that he gets when women are around. I took Vetter's and Brandt's statements, ordered the staff sergeant to his rack, and then I left."

That sealed it. Durrani definitely knew something was up. And as usual, he was taking out his ire on the women around him.

Par for the doc's twisted version of Islam.

That black eye was payback for whatever Durrani believed they'd done to his cohort in crime earlier. No surprise there. The clues had been trickling down to the brig all day. And, unfortunately, Durrani was clever enough to collect them up and add them together. Hachemi had been missing since he'd been removed from the brig that morning. Even if Durrani had initially believed the man was ill and in sickbay, how many times had Durrani heard the word being passed for flight ops since he'd been brought aboard?

From what Yrle had inferred, not many. Other than John's, possibly none.

And now, at least three round-trip helicopter flights in one day? And she was at the center of two of them?

He knew—and he was worried.

Worried, hell. The man was genuinely terrified. In light of how prisoners were routinely "interrogated" in his neck of the woods, the doc had to be wondering what Hachemi had given up today…and if his remaining plans were about to implode.

It was why that corpsman was sporting a black eye. And why Durrani was openly showing his hand by insisting on seeing her.

And, hopefully, it was why she just might have the upper edge when she finally deigned to head down to the brig to speak to him.

But, first, she needed to secure the distracting presence of the biggest gun and largest caliber ammo that she could brandish.

She needed John.

It was time to get moving, anyway. The weather was getting worse.

Not only had she been forced to readjust her stance again, the mist was beginning to morph into a stiff, buffeting drizzle. The resulting droplets were soaking into her ACUs and the chief's Navy camouflage, puddling up and smoothing out the roughened, nonskid surface of the deck beneath them. A moment later,