Crossbones (2 page)

The FBI agent rested her hand on a file as she spoke, not opening
it. She knew the case well. “Your brother, Senior Chief Charles Kidd, is the suspect in a joint FBI, DEA, and Coast Guard investigation involving drug trafficking and multiple homicides. His ship just arrived at the base, and he is being taken into custody as we speak.”

Elizabeth stared at the female agent, stunned by the allegations and unable to speak. Admiral Whelan reached out and gripped her arm for reassurance.

“Our evidence,” the agent continued, “establishes that on June twenty-seventh of this year, Mr. Kidd was involved in a narcotics transaction just off the Washington coast, using his own boat. He murdered three foreign nationals during that transaction. A fourth survived, a witness to the homicides. As it turns out, that man was a DEA informant.”

Liz processed the words as the CGIS officer and her commander watched her. There was no notable change of expression on Liz's face, but inside was a storm of scattered thoughts and emotions. Chick, a murderer? Drug deals? Yes, he had his own boat, and when he wasn't at sea with the Coast Guard, he often went away for days at a time by himself to go fishing and camping. He had a temper, to which anyone who knew him could attest, and he wasn't the most polished person in the world. He'd barely hung on to his Chief's rate, drawing the occasional disciplinary action for conduct. There were other issues as well, troubles during his childhood, but these had never seemed to manifest as more serious issues in his adulthood. Not really. A murderer, though? Not a chance.

“Captain,” the FBI agent said, “Senior Chief Kidd resides with you in your home in Rainier Valley.” It was a statement, not a question.

Liz nodded. “He lives downstairs.”

Now the agent did open her file, and read off the address. “We'll be executing a search warrant there this morning. For both residences.”

Both residences,
Liz thought. She pictured men in black tactical gear and others in Windbreakers with yellow FBI and DEA letters
on the back, storming her home as if Osama bin Laden himself might be inside. It would be a circus, the media would show up, and Elizabeth Kidd's name—and profession—would be spoken on the air in the same sentences as
drug trafficking
and
murder
.

Oh, Chick, what have you done to me?
Whether it was true or not, regardless of the fact that she had known nothing about it, Liz had no illusions about what this would mean for her career, her command. The look on both investigators' faces said they believed she was in this thing up to her eyes. And what if they found something in Chick's apartment? Upstairs or downstairs, it would remove any doubts about her complicity.

There was a long silence then, except for a ringing phone in the outer office.

“James,” Liz said, turning to her commanding officer, “I can't believe this about Charlie, and
you
can't believe I had anything to do with murder, or
anything
illegal.”

The admiral's eyes were guarded. “Elizabeth, I don't know what to believe.”

Her heart broke as he said the words.

“The best thing for everyone is for you to cooperate and tell the truth,” the admiral said.

The officer from Investigation Services slid a legal pad and pen toward her across the desk. “Ma'am, we'll require a detailed statement from you, to get your initial position on record.”

Her initial position on record so they could pick it apart for comparison once the real questioning began. She wondered if she should ask for a lawyer.
Probably.
But then what could possibly make her look more guilty than asking for one and staying quiet?

The phone kept ringing outside, followed by a thump against the wall. No one seemed to notice. All eyes were on Liz.

The female agent pulled a phone from a jacket pocket, looking at a text. “The senior chief has been taken into custody without incident,” she said without looking up. “They have him at the dock right
now.” Then she rose, already dialing and moving toward the office door. “Excuse me,” she said, stepping out.

The secretary's phone was still ringing.
Answer the damn thing already, Beverly,
Liz thought. She looked at the pad and pen before her, at the impassive face of the Coast Guard investigator, then at her commander.

“Admiral, what is this going to mean for me?” She already knew the answer but needed to hear the man say it.

Whelan frowned. “Captain, you'll be beached and placed on administrative duty until this matter is resolved.”

Liz's heart fell even further at the man's official tone. “My ship . . .”

“Your XO will take command for now.” The admiral looked away.

Until you find a new captain to replace me permanently.
Her Coast Guard career was finished. A loud bang from the secretary's office made Whelan look up in annoyance. “Mr. Chamberlain, go see what that's about.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” The investigator crossed the room and opened the door.

Special Agent Ramsey was waiting on the other side.

Her charcoal suit was darkened and wet, both hands were bloody, and her once-neat hair looked pulled and disheveled. Red smears covered her mouth and cheeks, and her head hung low and forward. The FBI agent's eyes were a milky yellow.

With a snarl, she caught the Coast Guard investigator by the shoulders and sank her teeth into his Adam's apple, ripping it out in a red spray. Chamberlain let out a gurgling cry and went down with the agent on top of him. The woman held the man's head in both hands as she tore back into his neck.

Liz bolted to her feet, knocking over her chair, but the admiral just sat there, hands splayed across the table's polished surface. His mouth was working, but no sound was coming out. In the distance,
beyond the frosted-glass door that led from Beverly's office to the corridor, came a high-pitched screaming.

The admiral stood abruptly then, and Agent Ramsey's head snapped up at the sudden movement. She let out a low growl and bared her teeth, rising in a crouch over the dead Coast Guard investigator. Blood was soaking into the carpet around his body. The admiral seemed to be trying to anticipate which way the woman would go around the table, left or right, so he could move in the opposite direction and keep the barrier between them. By now, Elizabeth had backed into the room near her commander's desk, ripping aside the blinds to get at the catches that secured the tip-out windows.

The creature that had been Agent Ramsey didn't go left or right. Instead, she scrambled right up onto the conference table and scuttled forward on hands and knees, making a throaty, croaking sound. Admiral Whelan wasn't quick enough, and was standing there with his hands raised when the dead FBI agent lunged off the table and took the older man to the floor.

Still tugging on a window latch that would not give, Liz heard the attack behind her, heard James Whelan choking on his own blood. She turned to see Agent Ramsey straddling a man who had been not only her commanding officer, but her friend for more than a decade. Even as the woman savaged him, those dead, yellow eyes stared up and locked on the only remaining living thing in the room.

The creature—Liz could think of no other word for it—was between her and the door. She would never get by it. She also sensed that should she try to get out in the other direction, the thing would pull her down before she got halfway out the window. If she could open it at all.

Liz clenched her teeth. It was time to take the battle to the enemy.

On the wall among the admiral's many commendations and framed certificates was a chrome-plated anchor about the size of a hammer, affixed to a polished walnut plaque. Liz snatched it off the
wall and put all her lean muscle into prying the object off the wood. It came away with a ripping sound, just as Agent Ramsey scrambled to her feet and attacked.

Liz had no thoughts of how what she was seeing could even be possible; she only saw a combat problem that needed resolution, something that required the cool precision that had put her in command of the USCG's finest boat, and she moved on instinct.

In the span of a second she judged the distance and swung, the chrome anchor heavy in her hand, arcing overhead in a flash. One bladed end hit the woman's head right at the crown and sank up to the anchor's central shaft with a crunch of bone and a burst of red. The thing that had been Ramsey shuddered and dropped immediately to the carpeted floor, Liz ripping the hammer-sized anchor free as the woman fell.

She looked down at James Whelan and saw that he was beyond help, just as another croak came from across the room. It sounded almost as if there were a question mark at the end of the sound. Lieutenant Commander Chamberlain was sitting up, legs stretched out before him, his uniform soaked red. He was facing away from her and croaked again, turning his head right and left.

Back from the dead?
This went beyond bio attacks and into the realm of horror movies. Without hesitation, Liz strode to the sitting officer and buried the anchor in the top of his head. He sagged and was still, and as Liz wrenched her weapon free, she realized she had found the enemy's vulnerability. She would be sure to exploit it.

Special Agent Ramsey was carrying a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer in a hip holster under her jacket, with two full magazines in leather pouches beside it. Liz took it all, shoving the spare mags in her pants pocket.

A moan came from the outer office, followed by a metallic rattle and the terrified hissing and screeching of a cat. Liz ran out to see Beverly, her yellow dress torn and bloody, down on all fours shaking the pet carrier and trying to pry open the grilled door.

“Leave him alone!” Liz snarled, pressing Agent Ramsey's Sig against the back of Beverly's head and blowing brains and skull fragments across the office wall. She picked up the carrier, holding it so Blackbeard could see her face. “Mommy's here, handsome.”

Blackbeard made an unhappy wail but pressed his head against the grille. She gave him a scratch.

“Time to go,” she whispered.

A groan came from behind her, and as she spun she saw James Whelan standing, his throat torn out, his face and uniform red. The man's once-warm, brown eyes were glazed and malignant, and he reached for her.

Liz put a bullet between his eyes.

Then she cracked open the outer door, checked the hallway, and ran. The blood-sprayed cat carrier was in one hand, the Sig in the other, and the chrome anchor was tucked into her back waistband. Screaming echoed in the hallways, and thrashing shapes could be glimpsed beyond open office doors, but her only objective was the building's front doors and the parking lot beyond. As she burst into the morning sunlight, a single word repeated silently in her head.

Charlie.

Elizabeth Kidd's gray Camry raced through the streets of Base Seattle, hitting speed bumps too fast and jarring both woman and cat. Blackbeard's carrier sat on the passenger seat again, this time sharing it with a bloody chrome anchor that was staining the upholstery. Liz wanted to turn on the news, gather information, but she would soon be at her destination and needed her full attention on the road.

A Humvee with a flashing light bar on its roof blasted across an intersection ahead of her, quickly disappearing up a street to her left, its siren rebounding off warehouses. As she passed another admin building on her right, she saw a pair of bloody guardsmen lurching across a lawn toward the entrance, while in a second-floor window above them a woman in civilian clothes leaned out, screaming for help. The beat of helicopter rotors came from somewhere above, and the base siren was going off.

Liz had to slam on the brakes as a civilian worker in gray coveralls, hair matted to his head by blood, staggered into the road in front of the Camry. The man slapped wet, red palms onto the hood and glared at her through the windshield. Then he began pawing his
way up the side of the car toward the driver's door. Liz didn't wait for him. She accelerated and left the thing behind.

A turn took her between a large machine shop and a yard of storage containers, and she swerved to avoid two men in camouflage running with rifles. At the next intersection she hauled the Camry right, then tensed and cried out as the front bumper smacked into a woman crouching on all fours in the road. The impact sent the woman's body into a chain-link fence, limp as a rag doll, and the Camry bounced over the shape she had been feeding on with a sickening crunch.

There were masts ahead, black antennae and radar panels rising behind the roofline of a building. The docks were close, and she gunned the engine.

As the Camry burst from between two buildings and raced onto an open expanse of concrete, Liz saw a pillar of smoke rising over the base to her right, followed by the sight of an orange flash screaming low over the rooftops, a Coast Guard Dolphin helicopter. Ahead,
Joshua James
stood tied to the docks, several figures running on deck. Berthed just beyond it was another cutter, older and much smaller than her own, the
Klondike
.

Charlie's ship.

Midway between the vessels, parked on the concrete that led to the dock, another Humvee sat with its light bar flashing on the roof. The Coast Guard emblem was on the driver's door, and at the back, black lettering read
PORT SECURITY
and
K9
. A pair of uniformed bodies were facedown on the pavement near the hood, and two others, men in green camouflage wearing pistol belts, were hammering at the Humvee's side windows, leaving bloody smears.

Liz drove right at the Humvee and slid to a stop only yards away. The two law enforcement guardsmen turned at the sound of screeching tires and limped toward the new arrival as Liz jumped out with the FBI agent's handgun. Liz could see at once that their faces were slack and dead, horrific wounds visible through torn uniforms.

“Charlie, get your head down!” she yelled toward the Humvee, then opened fire. The Sig barked five times before both creatures went down with shots to the head, one stray bullet sparking off the Hummer's front rim, another punching a hole in the driver's door. Liz ran to the vehicle and jerked open the rear door. “Chick?”

Charlie Kidd, wearing his blue uniform without the ball cap, slumped in the backseat with his hands cuffed behind his back. “Jesus, Sis, you trying to kill me? Get these damn things off.”

“Shut up and get out,” Liz said, unclipping keys from one of the men she had just dropped, opening Chick's handcuffs as he slid out. An enraged German shepherd barked incessantly in the back of the Hummer.

“What the fuck is going on?” Chick demanded, rubbing his wrists and looking at the dead men on the ground. “Those guys got jumped by two of their own, went down firing, then a couple minutes later were back up and trying to get at me. What the hell?”

Liz didn't answer. She was looking at what could only be described as a brawl on the gangplank of
Klondike
, half a dozen coasties fighting each other hand-to-hand. Other men and women in bloody uniforms were staggering away from the older cutter and making their way toward
Joshua James
. Off to the right, a dozen more figures were shuffling across the pavement, heading toward the dock.

“Gather weapons,” she told Charlie, staring at the approaching dead, simultaneously repulsed and yet curious at their broken, relentless gait. They were people—monsters—some kind of abomination that fed on the living. It wasn't possible, but here it was all around her.

Charlie Kidd, eight years his sister's junior, began relieving his former captors of their weapons belts. He was not a tall man, but he compensated with a broad chest, a thick neck, and powerful forearms a strangler would envy. Chick's face was broad like the rest of him, his nose crooked from a tavern fight that had once cost him a stripe. He retrieved an M16 rifle from the front of the Hummer, along with a bandolier of magazines.

Liz was at her Camry, grabbing Blackbeard's carrier, shoving the bloody chrome anchor into her sea bag, and then throwing the duffel's strap across her chest. Behind her, the cries and barking of the German shepherd wouldn't stop.

“Let that dog out,” she shouted to her brother.

“Fuck that, it was there when they busted me.” He belted on one of the pistols, a Sig Sauer forty-caliber with a twelve-round magazine, the standard sidearm of the Coast Guard and a weapon with which he was more than proficient. “He'd go right for my balls.”

“Asshole,” Liz muttered, slamming the Camry's door and hustling across the pavement. “Move it, Chief!”

Charlie gripped the rifle and hurried after her.

An electrician's van was parked on the dock near the gangplank to
Joshua James
, a civilian in his forties standing nearby, looking confused and trying to use his cell phone. On the deck at the top of the gangplank, a pair of Coast Guardsmen stood gripping the rail, watching their captain run toward the ship, followed by a man she had just set free by shooting two other men.

Liz knew the electrician, one of the civilian contractors working to move her ship closer to commissioning. “Mr. Leary,” she said as she passed him, “get aboard, if you please.”

When the man didn't move, Chick yelled, “Assholes and elbows, mister!”

The electrician jumped, then hurried up the gangplank behind the captain, the senior chief following. On deck, the two enlisted men snapped off salutes, eyes wide. Liz handed the cat carrier and her sea bag to one of them. “Take these to my quarters.” To the other she said, “Is the XO aboard?”

“No, ma'am. Ensign Liggett is the watch officer.”

Liz looked down at the concrete expanse beyond the dock, where trucks would line up to move equipment and supplies aboard the cutter before sailing. There were no trucks, only a Humvee ringed
with fallen bodies, and beyond, figures shifting toward them with that sickening, lifeless gait.

To her brother she said, “Raise the gangplank and prepare to cast off.”

Charlie Kidd grinned. “Aye-aye, Sis, and thanks—”

Elizabeth was on him in an instant, grabbing his shirt in both hands and hauling him in nose to nose. “Do not
think
,” she said tightly, “that being related gets you a break. You sank my life and my career. Now you will snap to, or I'll put you back on the beach personally.” She gave him a shake, her voice low and coming through clenched teeth. “Do you read me,
Chief
?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma'am.”

She shoved him away from her. “Prepare to get under way.” Then she ran across the deck and disappeared through a hatch. At the gangplank, Charlie Kidd stared after her for a moment, then looked at the young seaman standing nearby.

“You heard the captain, deck ape! Raise the gangplank. Unless you want them aboard.” He waved at the slumping figures closing on
Joshua James
.

The seaman leaped to his task as Charlie Kidd went in search of crewmen to untie the ship from Base Seattle's dock.

•   •   •

L
iz quickly went up a steel ladderway, through a floor hatch, and onto the bridge of her cutter. The only person in here was a twenty-year-old, two-stripe seaman. He stiffened immediately, startled at her appearance.

“Captain on the bridge!” he shouted to no one.

Liz slammed a fist on a large red button, setting off the ship's general quarters alarm. She picked up a microphone handset, stretching out the cord as she went to the port windows. Down on the dock, dozens of figures in Coast Guard uniforms had nearly
reached the ship's hull where it pressed against the wharf. Out beyond, an orange helicopter hovered slowly over the base, stirring the smoke of a burning building. Liz's eyes were drawn to the flashing lights of a fire truck, its crew turning a high-pressure hose not on the flames, but on a mass of people stumbling out through the building's front door. The people were smoking, and a few had hair that was on fire.

She keyed the mic. “This is the captain speaking. All stations, make ready to get under way. Ensign Liggett, report to the bridge.”

Out on the forward deck, she saw her brother and two other seamen hurrying along the port side, casting off the heavy ropes that tethered
Joshua James
to the dock. Looking left, she saw with satisfaction that the gangplank had been raised and secured.

The dead reached them at last, pushing themselves against the white hull and hammering at it with their fists.

A vibration in the deck plates traveled up through her boots as the twin 7,400-kilowatt diesel engines fired and began warming up. Two young men ran up the ladderway and onto the bridge, a helmsman and a quartermaster second class who went immediately to the navigation gear.

“Mr. Waite,” Liz said to the QM2, “let me know as soon as we're under power.”

The quartermaster acknowledged, ordered the helmsman to stand by, and then called the engine room for information. Liz removed her cap from its cargo pocket and pulled it squarely onto her head, the bill low and at the perfect regulation distance above the bridge of her nose.

A woman of twenty-two entered the bridge next. Amy Liggett was fair and smooth-skinned, her dark hair pulled into a tight bun under her blue ball cap, her uniform stiff and new.
Joshua James
was her first assignment after graduating with honors from the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. She had a bachelor's
degree in engineering, a commission as a Coast Guard ensign, and next to zero operational experience.

“Captain,” she said, moving to her commanding officer.

“Who and how many aboard?” Liz asked.

The young officer flipped to a page on her clipboard. “Twenty-two, ma'am. Third shift. Plus yourself and two others.” Amy had already heard about the shooting on the dock, and about the man her captain had freed from Coast Guard custody.

Third shift,
Liz thought.
The smallest, and for the most part, most inexperienced crew.
Not too much happened in port overnight, so the bare minimum of personnel was scheduled. It would include six civilian contractors, four engine room personnel, three watch standers for the bridge, and a scattering of others, mostly technical ratings. Less than a quarter of the cutter's full crew of ninety-nine enlisted and fourteen officers.

“Any other officers?” Liz asked without much hope. The third shift schedule called for only one—an officer had to be aboard at all times—and the overnight duty, at least in port, went to the most junior.

“Yes, ma'am,” Liggett said, making Liz turn. “Lieutenant Commander Coseboom slept aboard last night.”

The captain nodded. Boomer was having marital troubles, a small blessing for
Joshua James
. “Is the master chief aboard?” Again, hopeful.

“Negative.”

“Who is senior enlisted man?”

The young woman hesitated, seemed unsure of how to answer at first, then looked at her sheet. “Chief Newman.”

Newman,
Liz thought.
Maritime enforcement specialist and a boarding team officer. Solid. But Charlie still outranks him. Damn.

“Captain,” said the quartermaster, “all crew are at battle stations. Engine room reports we are at full power and ready to get under way.”

“Very well, Mr. Waite. Stand us off from the pier. I'll conn us out.”

Base Seattle's main pier held only two cutters at the moment,
Klondike
and
Joshua James
, along with a cluster of much smaller patrol boats. The cutter was nose-in and would have to back down the man-made channel, past
Klondike
and out into the Duwamish Waterway before it could turn and put its bow toward Puget Sound. The quartermaster gave commands to both the engine room and the helmsman, and the big ship eased away from the pier. As it moved off, corpses that had been hammering against its hull toppled into the water.

“Mr. Coseboom to the bridge,” Liz said into the microphone. Boomer was an experienced officer, and she would need him, especially since there was barely enough crew to get under way. She stepped to the communication gear and switched on the Guard channel, a restricted, military-only radio frequency. Rapid chatter poured from the bridge speakers at once.

“Miss Liggett,” she said to the young woman waiting beside her, “I want a report on the following: fuel status, fresh water levels, name and specialty of every civilian on board, magazine levels and weapon systems readiness, a full inventory of light arms and galley stores.”

The younger woman scribbled furiously on her clipboard, her hand shaking. “I . . . I think . . .”

Liz took her by the shoulder, and in a low voice said, “Steady, Amy. A lot of that information will be in your watch orders.” She tapped the clipboard. “I already know that most of those things will be either low or nonexistent, but we need an accurate accounting.”