Beginning with You (23 page)

Annie stood open-mouthed, at a loss for words. Jarvis check her work? If she couldn’t check it out first, herself, he could rig it so that something would be wrong to get her into a hell of a lot more trouble. “I want Mr. Welsh to look at it. He’s the engineer.”

Rook stepped into the hangar, realizing belatedly that there was a confrontation going down. She frowned and walked over. “What’s going on here, Chief?”

Jarvis nodded deferentially in the officer’s direction. “I just placed Locke on report for insubordination to a superior, ma’am.”

“What?” Rook glanced over at Annie’s stricken face and then back to Jarvis, who was barely able to keep a somber look on his grizzled features.

Jarvis explained the incident, omitting his part in the conversation with Locke. “Further, I’m going to pull that ASE apart and look at it myself.”

Rook nailed him with a glare. “No, you won’t, Chief. I’ll notify Lieutenant Welsh, and he’ll come out and investigate this.”

Jarvis stared up at her. The bitch. “I’m line chief here,” he reminded her angrily.

“Not anymore,” Rook parried. “Not according to Captain Stuart’s orders. You push paper, Chief—you don’t have anything to do with a helo on the line.”

Heat soared up through Jarvis. He wanted to take a swing at Rook. He hated her confidence and authority. No woman had any business being a pilot!

“What’s going on here?” Ty came up, standing at Rook’s side.

Rook explained.

Jarvis smiled slightly, turning to Scanlon for help. “Look, Mr. Scanlon, I know these helos like they were my own children. All I wanted to do was check out the ASE, that’s all. How about it?”

Automatically, Rook tensed. Would Ty become a “good ol’ boy” and stick with what another man wanted instead of following the orders Stuart had issued? He was senior duty officer for the night, and what he decided became law. She could see the feral pleasure in Jarvis’s eyes as he looked at Annie. He’d already put her on report for insubordination. Dammit! Rook wished she’d gotten to the hangar sooner. Maybe she could have prevented this. The case had been particularly hard on Annie. She had had five other lives in her hands as she orchestrated the rescue. It was one hell of a load on anyone’s shoulders.

“Sorry, Chief. That’s not your job any longer,” Scanlon said.

Rook relaxed. Thank God Ty wasn’t going to side with the wheedling chief. “I already told the chief that Lieutenant Welsh would come out and do it.”

Ty nodded. “That’s correct procedure in a case like this. Chief, do you understand?”

Jarvis quelled his fury. “Yes, sir.” That was all right; he had Locke right where he wanted her, anyway. When Welsh saw the bare wire and dried saltwater on the cable and below it, Locke would be implicated immediately. Besides, to add to it, she was now on report. He silently celebrated.

“Come on,” Ty told Rook. “We’ve got paperwork ahead of us.”

Rook gave Annie a silent look that said,
Rrelax, we’ll help you as much as we can
. “Okay.” She wondered why the chief was here at this time in the morning. He didn’t have duty tonight. Dismissing it because of encroaching exhaustion, Rook followed Ty to the line shack.

“Look at this,” Tag said, pointing down at the wiring in the opened channel monitor panel. One of the hardover switch wires was bare, and there was dried saltwater on it, plus a small pool of dried crystals beneath it.

Rook, who was sitting in the left-hand seat, stared over at it. Tag had come on duty at 0800 and gone straight over to the hangar to inspect CG 1224. Annie was up, moving around in the hangar, going about her normal duties for the day, but Rook could see the strain in every feature of her vulnerable, pale face. Flicking a look over at Tag, sitting in the pilot’s seat, she said, “You know what this implies.”

“Yeah, that Annie didn’t do her required inspection,” he answered heavily. Writing down his findings on his memo pad, the scowl increased across Tag’s brow. “This isn’t like Annie. She’s a stickler for detail. I’ve seen her tear into a wiring panel when something was within normal range and she wasn’t satisfied with it.”

“I know.” Rook looked up and saw Chief Jarvis watching them from his office. Compressing her lips, she returned her attention to Tag. “I’ve got an ugly feeling about this, Tag.”

He completed his report. “What are you talking about?”

“Last night, when we got back from that SAR case, Jarvis was waiting here for us. I checked the duty roster this morning, and he didn’t have the duty. He looked positively happy when I came into the hangar while he was confronting Annie.” She shook her head. “It’s as if he knew….”

Leaning back in the steel pilot seat, Tag studied her in the gathering silence. “Knew what?”

Shrugging, Rook muttered, “I don’t know. I mean, why would he be waiting for us, like a buzzard ready to jump on a carcass, if he didn’t know something was wrong? Annie said she had barely gotten in the hangar before Jarvis jumped all over her case about the ASE hardover.”

“Poor kid, she’s devastated,” Tag murmured, watching Annie walk slowly back to the metal shop. “She’s got an impeccable performance record.”

“I know. She’s got all kinds of commendations. No one works harder than she does, Tag.” Rook rubbed her aching temple. “I smell a rat, and I know Jarvis is connected with it, but I can’t prove anything.”

“Well,” Tag said, getting up, “I’ve got to report this directly to the captain today. This little mistake almost cost six lives. He isn’t going to be happy.”

Rook chewed on her lower lip. “This is going to wreck her chances of getting OCS. You know that.”

“I know,” he said softly, apologetically.

Following Welsh out of the helo, Rook said, “I’m going to have a talk with Annie and tell her your findings.”

“Okay. See you later.” And then Tag grimaced. “The captain will call all of us in on this one sometime today.”

And poor Annie will die of embarrassment, Rook thought. “I know. See you later, Tag.”

Annie sat at the table with the ASE manual in front of her. She looked up to see Rook enter the empty shop. When Rook gave her a slight smile, she rallied.

“What did Mr. Welsh find, ma’am?”

Rook came over and sat down opposite her, folding her hands on the table. As gently as possible, Rook told her of Tag’s investigation. She saw Annie pale even more.

Collecting herself, Annie stammered, “B-but, was there any indication of saltwater on the covering?”

“No, it was clean.”

She frowned, staring down at the opened manual. “I’ve been going over and over the electrical schematic on the ASE, Ms. Caldwell. I’ve been racking my brain as to how a hardover could have occurred.” She swallowed, her voice thick. “I swear to you, I checked CG 1224 two hours prior to our takeoff. I lifted that plate on the channel monitor panel and checked for dirt, debris and water. It was clean. Clean!”

“Mr. Welsh checked the overhead and pilot’s window just to be sure there wasn’t any evidence of water leaking through it and dropping onto the console,” Rook said, trying to soothe her anguish.

“And?” Hope rose in Annie’s voice.

“It was dry. No evidence of leaks.”

Annie buried her face in her hands. She sobbed softly, her shoulders hunched and shaking.

Wanting to console her, but not daring to, Rook sat there and waited until Annie’s weeping abated. She got up and pulled a tissue from the pocket of her flight suit.

“Here,” Rook said, handing it to her. “Dry your eyes. We’re going over everything that happened one more time.”

Sniffing, Annie said, “But, I’ve put it down on my report, Ms. Caldwell. Mr. Welsh read it this morning before he checked out CG 1224. You’ve already heard it all.”

“I know, Annie, but run over it one more time—for me, please?”

Eyes reddened, Annie sat there, the tissue clutched between her fingers. “A-all right, Ms. Caldwell.”

Chappie waited happily out in the hall. To his right stood a very unhappy Locke. Right now, Stuart had the three officers in his closed office, asking, he was sure, plenty of questions about the ASE hardover. Chappie could barely maintain the proper stoic attitude. Occasionally, he glanced over at Locke. She was suffering, that was apparent. Feelings of triumph soared through Chappie as he perused her dejected posture, shaking hands and reddened eyes. This was one time the captain would have to go by the book. He’d bury Locke’s career on this one. No OCS for her. No more dreams of becoming an officer. Bucky Beaver was finally going to get the well-earned kick in her crooked teeth that she so richly deserved.

Ward winced inwardly when Annie Locke came in. He’d already studied her personnel file and was well acquainted with her record of excellence. He also saw the request for OCS that would have been approved by him and sent in next month. She looked devastated.

“Sit down, Petty Officer Locke.” His voice was firm, but he kept a gentle edge’ to it. There was no need to be tough with her; she was obviously suffering enough.

“Thank you, sir.” Annie tried to shore up the broken state of her emotions. Under no circumstance would she break down and start weeping in front of Stuart. She’d already accepted her fate, fair or not. All that remained was for the captain to go through the expected motions. Her dream of OCS was gone—forever.

Ward leaned forward and softened his tone. “I’ve read Mr. Welsh’s report on CG 1224, and I’ve read Chief Jarvis’s report regarding your insubordination to him. What do you have to say about all this?”

Clearing her raw throat, Annie faithfully repeated everything she had said to Welsh and Caldwell, leaving nothing out. She wondered why the captain had his recorder on and why he was taking such copious notes. Who would believe a flight mech’s word against such heavy proof in the opposite direction? Was Stuart trying to make her feel as if she were getting a fair hearing? If she didn’t know the outcome of such an error, Annie would have taken hope. As it was, the evidence was simply too powerful to negate and clear her.

“I’d like your side of the story as to why Chief Jarvis placed you on report, Ms. Locke.”

Annie’s brows fell. Her voice grew tight with barely veiled anger. “He jumped on me the minute I came in the hangar, Captain. We’d all just come off a very rough SAR case, and I was still high with adrenaline—shaky and jumpy. The chief came running—”

“Running?”

“Uh, no, sir. He walked in a hurry toward me. Sorry.”

“Go on.”

“He said, ‘Looks like you fucked up real good, Locke. An ASE electrical hardover? What’s the matter, you cheating on your QA checks and just signing them off, instead?’”

Ward’s eyes hardened. Any form of cursing was banned—especially that four-letter word. Jarvis would say something like that. “You’re sure those were his exact words?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What happened next?”

Ward listened closely to the rest of Annie’s explanation. “He says in his report you called him a bastard. Did you?”

“I did, sir.”

“What did he say to draw that sort of response from you, Locke?”

She avoided Stuart’s incisive gaze, her throat closing with tears. “Do I have to tell you, sir? I admit I called him that name. Isn’t that enough?”

Ward saw the tears glittering fiercely in her eyes. “Annie, how can I decide whether or not Chief Jarvis should have put you on report if I don’t know the reasons for such a serious charge?”

Struggling with a deluge of tears that wanted to fall, Annie stared down at her tightly clenched hands in her lap. “I—uh, he said, “Of course, with your looks, maybe work is all you have left to take pride in.’”

Ward straightened up, stunned. Annie sat there, head bowed, tears dribbling down her cheeks and collecting on her chin. He clenched his fist. Expelling a breath of air from his flared nostrils, Stuart said, “Is there anything else you want to add?”

Annie shook her head, afraid that if she spoke, she’d cry. Captain Stuart sounded furious; his voice was lined with steel.

“Very well, dismissed.”

Annie quickly got up, stood at attention and did an about-face, blindly walking out of the office. She avoided Jarvis’s sharpened look and the laughter in his eyes. She hurried to the bathroom, where she could cry without anyone hearing or seeing her.

Jarvis eyed the damning recorder that Stuart turned on after he sat down. Feeling fairly confident of his position in the matter, he relaxed, crossing his legs.

“All right, Chief, tell me what you know about the ASE hardover on CG 1224.”

Happily, Chappie said, “Yes, sir,” and launched with enthusiasm into the entire sordid incident that would ruin Locke’s promising career. Maybe then Stuart would change his opinion of him—see that he was a real watchdog, on top of things—and give him his rightful authority back as line chief.

Ward compared his notes to those of the previous people he’d interviewed. “You say you overheard Lieutenant Scanlon tell Lieutenant Caldwell that the CG 1224 had an ASE electrical hardover?”

“That’s correct, sir. I’ve been telling Mr. Welsh all along that Locke’s been sloughing off on her QA duties, but nobody would believe me. I’d see her out in that helo, just sitting around. I knew what she was up to—daydreaming about becoming an officer someday and not paying proper attention to her duties—”

Ward glowered at the man, barely holding his anger in check. “Let’s move on to the next topic. Locke’s insubordination to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ward pulled out a paper. “Did you say the following to her, Chief?” And he read what Locke had stated.

Chappie tried to look properly shocked. “Why, no, Captain. I’d never say any of those things to her! That’s against regulations, sir.”

“That’s called sexual harassment,” Ward growled, pinning him with a black look.

“Of course it is, sir. I didn’t harass her. I just questioned her about the ASE problems I heard over the radio, that’s all. She got real defensive and started yelling at me. She called me a bastard, just like I stated in my report to you. Sir.”

“She admitted calling you that name.” Ward reached over to his intercom. “June, get Lieutenants Scanlon and Caldwell up here, will you, please?”

“Yes, sir.”