Chapter 11

Lee thumbed through the pictures, looking at each one carefully. Sharkey had gotten some good shots, though none of the man's face straight on. This man on the cliffs looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Glancing up at the admiral's impatient snort, he tossed the photos across the desk. "I don't know... He looks familiar, but I'm just not sure..."

Nelson picked the pictures up and glared at them. "He looks familiar to me, too. But I can't decide where I might know him from." He flung the photos down again and paced restlessly. "Sharkey will do another pass tonight, looking for anything else he might have missed. Then we can plan an expedition to the island. Pick your team."

Lee nodded, keeping his thoughts to himself. He was the best person to lead the team, he knew and accepted that, even looked forward to it. But he didn't like leaving the boat with Bishop. Even though the man was on his way out, just waiting for reassignment to a Navy boat, even though Nelson had spoken highly of him, even though he himself had never seen Bishop put a foot wrong, even though he'd shown his quality after the Lura affair, Lee hated leaving the man in charge of the boat. He accepted that it was a partial personality conflict, all on his side, while Bishop felt no malice toward him... He understood that Bishop had no idea how he had managed to turn the men against him. But the feeling was stronger now, when Bishop was about to leave them, than it had been before that. And he wasn't sure if it was Bishop, or if it was the fact that Bishop wasn't Chip...

Which again wasn't Bishop's fault. Lee drew a breath and rose from his chair. "Picked it already, sir. The COB, Ski, Pat, Riley, and Alfaro." He looked down at the photos again, then picked the clearest one up. "I'd like to show this to Chip, sir. Maybe he can identify the man."

Nelson nodded. "Good idea, lad." He smiled. "But don't let your visit to Sick Bay keep you from your dinner." The smile quickly died. They both knew Lee would likely need to fuel himself up since he would have limited opportunities to do so once he set foot on the island.

"No worries, sir." Lee headed for the door. "I'll let my team know that we'll be going tomorrow sometime. We'll reconnoiter and let you know what we find. But my gut says we need to take care of this fast."

The admiral nodded. "We'll take care of it fast, Lee. I hate to destroy the creature without studying it, but I don't see how we can safely study it..."

Lee frowned. "No, sir, it's too dangerous. You saw what it did to Chip." He shifted uncomfortably, wanting to get down to Sick Bay before dinner. He and the admiral sat in solitary splendor at the captain's table, except when the admiral was busy in his lab. Most nights this cruise, he'd been busy, and so the captain had dined alone. Now, he was tempted to visit the wardroom to see how the juniors were handling things without Chip to preside. Bishop probably wasn't as forgiving as Chip was...

But for now, he just wanted to confer with his XO about the proposed mission to the island. He suspected Chip would have some reservations about it; whatever he suggested, it would probably be sound. His input was always invaluable. "Good night, sir. Will I see you at dinner?"

The admiral grunted. "Not likely, lad. I have things to do.

Lee nodded and left Admiral Nelson to his business. Turning, he moved down the corridor, thinking about how he was going to play tomorrow's foray onto the island. Their best bet might be to approach from the south side of the island, which was thickly forested. It was new growth forest, with little undergrowth, yet. They would be able to move fairly silently through it, and the canopy would shield them from anyone spying from the cliffs. On the other hand, they wouldn't have many places to hide in among the trees. His team were experienced divers, and had been used often to extract him from his ONI missions, but they weren't forest men. Sharkey had done some hunting, and both Ski and Alfaro had been SEALs. But Riley and Pat were civilians, with no Navy experience, picked for their unique skills. They were smart and efficient, both of them, and they knew how to follow orders, but Riley spent his spare time surfing, and Pat was a photographer like his father had been. Neither of them had much experience in a forest, and certainly absolutely no experience with jungle fighting...

But the beach near the littoral cave that had started all this was wide open, easily observable from a dozen spots on the island, and the approach to the caves was probably under surveillance constantly, especially if prisoners were being kept there...

Lee sighed. He had a lot of work to do tonight, planning their route, mapping out how they would proceed. This wasn't an extraction, but it felt like an ONI mission just the same, with only one exception. This time he was responsible for a team of five men, and he had to bring them back safely...

He set his hand against the Sick Bay door, making wishes that wouldn't help him. If only Chip were on his feet, able to look after the boat; it would make everything so much easier, knowing that he wouldn't have to leave Seaview in Bishop's hands. And he had nothing against Bishop. He knew the man was more than capable of efficiently driving the boat. He just didn't care to trust Seaview to just anyone...

He had to laugh at himself then. Bishop wasn't just anyone. He was a hand-picked member of Nelson's fabulous crew. Lee just didn't like him; there were some days when he felt very guilty over that dislike, knowing that Bishop had done nothing to earn it. Then there were days like today when he simply felt uneasy about the man, without being able to put his finger on it.

Shaking his head, he pushed the door open and went in, stilling on the threshold when he heard Chip's voice.

"Yes, I know." The words carried a hint of martyrdom. "But, Will, does it have to be Jell-O?"

Lee laughed and moved into the room. "I thought he was the one who never gave you any problems, Will?"

The doctor turned in exasperation and crossed his arms, giving Lee back stare for stare. "He is. But he can be a whiner." He glanced at his patient, but didn't flinch at the icy glare. Doctor McKenzie was one of the few who could stand up to that look. "Don't give me that glare, Commander. What you were doing just now sounded very much like whining, and I even have your commanding officer as a witness."

Lee flung his hands up in denial. "Don't pull me in on this, Will!" He shot a laughing glance at his XO and caught the uplift of an answering eyebrow, followed by that slow, almost shy smile. "You were whining, you know."

"Excuse me, I am a United States Naval officer. I do not whine." Chip instilled as much dignity as possible - when in a bunk in Sick Bay - in the words.

"You look like a little boy," Will huffed, then smiled, too. "And yes, you're on a liquid diet, so it has to be Jell-O. Get over it." He eyed the two of them. "Is it safe to leave you two together while I update the commander's chart?"

Only a rhetorical question; Will turned away almost as soon as he said it, and headed for his office. Lee pulled up a chair and settled down by Chip's bunk. "You've got a long way to go if you want to cause actual trouble in here, you know. But I could give you pointers…"

"No, thanks," Chip answered promptly, lifting that expressive eyebrow again. "I'm not hankering to find myself in restraints." He eyed his tray with distaste, and pushed it away. "Did you get a look at the thing? Can I hope that the admiral came to his senses about capturing it?"

"We're not capturing it." Lee sighed and tossed the photograph down on the blankets. "Do you know who this is?"

Chip shot him a questioning glance and picked up the picture. "Bishop," he said quietly and started to hand it back, then stopped and looked at it again. "No..." There was hesitation in his voice; Lee plucked the photograph from his fingers and looked at it himself, wondering how he had missed the resemblance before.

"It can't be Bishop." The second officer had been on the boat the whole time Sharkey was in the air, reconnoitering. He definitely wasn't the man on the rocks; but there was an uncanny similarity between the two men. Bishop's hair was regulation Navy cut, not the longish, fashionable cut shown by this man. And Bishop's ears winged a bit more away from his head than this man's. But the broad, square nose, and the firm, strong chin were exactly like Bishop's, and the shape of the eyes, the width of the brow, were also dead-on. The man wasn't Bishop, but he looked enough like Bishop to be his brother... Lee looked up at the question in his XO's intense eyes. "Admiral Nelson believes the squid is the product of genetic engineering. He thinks that the creator has been feeding people to his creation..." He paused to study the photograph again.

"And he thinks that's the man?" Chip's voice was quiet, but it asked the same question that Lee had been avoiding. What was going on aboard the boat? What was Admiral Nelson planning to do? He knew that Will would have ten thousand fits if he brought Chip up to speed and caused the XO to rebel against the doctor's regimen… But if he didn't bring Chip up to speed, he would be the one feeling the heat from his ultra-efficient XO.

Lee made his decision, laid the photo across his knees and met those eyes with a direct stare. "We have to stop him. If that's what's really going on here, we have to end it. So tomorrow, I'm taking a crew out, and we'll end it."

He knew the man too well to believe in the calm, unruffled facade; the lift of that eyebrow, the heightened intensity in those blue eyes told him that tension roiled just below the surface, effectively hidden from sight, but not at all absent. But the only reaction he got was a hiss of indrawn breath, and then a quiet, unperturbed answer. "I trust you have some kind of plan?"

Not yet... But he would have. No need to worry anyone needlessly. Lee skillfully changed the subject. "I should ask Bishop about this picture. The guy looks enough like him to be related."

The blue eyes narrowed, indicating an unwillingness to drop the subject of tomorrow's expedition, but Chip followed his lead, however reluctantly. "He has a brother, I think... Had... I remember granting him leave a couple of years ago to attend the brother's funeral."

And he'd undoubtedly updated Bishop's file at the same time. Chip kept up with the men's files, far more religiously than Lee did. Oh, Lee knew them every bit as well; he just didn't delve into their files, keeping abreast of all the things that so often went unsaid. Chip felt it to be his job not just to vet all the men, but to continue checking on them, to be sure that all was as it should be. He had been forced to give most of his paperwork to Dolores, but he still kept up with what was going on in each of the men's lives. Because no one could ever be sure what might set a man off – their sonar operator, Steven Nash, was proof of that – but also because the personal touches were always appreciated by men who were in cramped quarters day in and day out for weeks and sometimes months on end. All of them knew the XO kept tabs on them, but none of them thought much about it. They welcomed the quiet word dropped in their ears, when congratulations or condolences were in order. It was a sign that their officers knew them well and cared.

Lee leaned back in his chair, contemplating the wall without really seeing it. "So, not a brother... Probably no relation at all, despite the resemblance, but better safe than sorry. I'll have a word with Bishop."

"If it is somebody he knows, you might take Bishop along with you tomorrow." Chip's elegant hands lay quietly on the blankets, but there was a tension in him that told Lee he worried about the expedition. "He might give you the edge."

"Or not." If it was somebody Bishop knew, the second officer just might sabotage the mission, too. He knew that neither Chip nor the admiral, both bending over backwards to be fair to the man would believe that. But the mission was Lee's, and he had to go with his gut...

If only his gut instincts agreed with the dislike he felt. And if anything told him that his feelings about Bishop were misguided, it was the clear instinct that Bishop could be trusted, that no matter how much he rubbed people the wrong way, he himself would do the right thing without hesitation. He held up a hand to forestall the protest he saw building in his friend's eyes, and admitted his fault. "I know. I know. Bishop is completely trustworthy. I agree." He spread his fingers helplessly. "I don't know why I don't like him. He does a good job, and he tries very hard." Shaking his head, he rose from his chair. "Will would kill me if I wore you out, so get some rest. And don't worry about the expedition. We'll be fine."

"You're flying by the seat of your pants, aren't you?" The words cut directly to the heart of the matter, showing Lee how well his XO knew him. "Will you promise me you'll at least come up with the rudiments of a plan tonight?"

Lee grinned as he headed for the door. "Hey, I always have a plan. You may not like my plan, but I always have one!" He paused at the door. "No chance Will will release you to duty, huh?"

Chip snorted in disgust. "Will says I'll be lucky if I don't come down with pneumonia, and promises that it will be at least four weeks before I'm fit for duty again." He heaved a long-suffering sigh. "I suppose he's right... Damn squid..."

Lee's lips twisted in a sympathetic frown. "Hey, blame the scientists, not the squid..."

"I hope you're excluding me from that blanket statement, Lee." Admiral Nelson entered Sick Bay gruffly, and shooed his captain out the door. "Go on, and get some supper. I need to talk to Will."

Lee met Chip's eyes and shook his head with a sigh. "Consider yourself excluded, sir." He glanced mischievously at the admiral, through his lashes, knowing how Nelson hated that trick. "This time, anyway!" With a laugh, he beat a hasty retreat, heading for his cabin and whatever meal Cookie had managed to whip up.