Disclaimers in part I.
1530 Zulu/1030 Local
Brig, Washington Naval Yard, Washington, D.C. – 1 December 2002
"Admiral, I hate to admit this, but it looks like our clients might actually be guilty of something," Lt. Loren Singer said as she and her commanding officer walked outside in the brisk late autumn chill. They were waiting for their clients to be dismissed from religious services.
"Lieutenant Singer, something I've learned from experience is that a good portion of the time when you're defending clients, they really did do it. It's just that the prosecution can't always prove it as convincingly as Roberts and Manetti will be able to prove this case." Hell, he added to himself, even some of the clients Rabb and Mackenzie have gotten off were guilty of some offense, just not the ones they were charged with.
Singer slumped in defeat. "The fingernail scrapings and defensive wounds really do us in."
AJ looked at his young officer, debating what tone to take with her. He opted for genteel. "Loren, do you know what separates a good lawyer from a great lawyer?"
She nodded with a quick answer. "Percentage of cases won, sir."
"No, lieutenant, although that's what most people think. What truly separates the good lawyers from the great lawyers is whether the cases they try are resolved to the truth."
Had she been a little more open to self-examination, Singer would have realized that her boss had given her the key to advancement, indeed, to the fulfillment of her goal to be the JAG eventually. But Loren Singer wasn't the type to reflect on herself very often and so she let that pearl of wisdom slide by her while she thought about a counter plea. "Sir, how about a plea to felony aggravated assault, 10-15 years confinement with dishonorable discharge to avoid the sex offender label?"
AJ sighed. She really was hopeless, this one. "Lieutenant Singer, what part of that DNA report did you not understand? Roberts and Manetti were in a very generous mood to give us 20 years for sexual assault plus the discharge. If we go to trial with the evidence against us, our clients could very well get life – or even, perhaps, death, since the Court of Military Appeals seems to be leaning toward stronger rather than lighter punishments and is unlikely to overturn a capital conviction."
"Are you ordering me not to offer a counter-plea, sir?" Her strident tone said volumes.
The admiral sighed. He had never liked to pull rank earlier in his legal career when he sat second chair to junior officers and it galled him to think he needed to now, but he recognized Singer's defiance. "If I must, Lieutenant."
An hour later, the admiral and the lieutenant arrived back at JAG headquarters to draft the plea agreement. Their clients would plead guilty to rape and to aggravated sexual assault, not even close to just punishment for ruining a woman's life and two promising military careers and for wasting over 2.5 million dollars of the taxpayers' money in 30 ill-used minutes.
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1830 Zulu/0830 Local
Officers' Quarters, Marine Corps Base Hawaii
Sturgis was still not having an easy time understanding exactly what Mac said through her thick Farsi accent; a couple of times the previous day she had needed to glare at him so as not to have him break their cover. This was such a time. Sturgis heard, "Foontsbery nace," causing him to meet her fierce gaze to get the meaning while the housing officer supervised the small crew working to off-load the contents of four large shipping crates for the Yassins.
Then he realized that she had actually said, "Furniture is very nice," as they got their first look at their partially furnished temporary home.
"Oh, yes, it is, Azaki," he said finally. They were going to spend the day working on their communications skills, the irony of which with regard to her relationship with Harm was not at all lost on the submariner.
"No, not there. Please put it here," Mac announced to one of the movers when he tried to place a small walnut table in the kitchen. She waved to the breakfast nook to emphasize her point.
"Master bedroom?" another asked Sturgis, nodding at the full-sized mattress and box spring set he and a partner had just pulled out of the truck.
"No, that's the guest bed," he replied. Actually, it was his bed, but no one other than Mac knew. "Second door on the left, and the pine headboard and nightstand go with it. We had to leave the dresser back in California in storage." Supposedly, the Yassins had shipped over from Twenty Nine Palms and had departed that base two weeks ago, allowing time for their personal effects to arrive when they did. Once again, only Mac, Sturgis, and two people at PACFLT headquarters knew that the items had been purchased in Honolulu and packed in the crates as a cover. The contents had been committed to memory by the two JAG officers on the long flight over.
The moving crew was done by 1100, leaving Mac and Sturgis about three hours to set up housekeeping before the Imam paid a visit to his newest congregants. Mac kept up the accent; Sturgis slowly began to pick up the nuances of both her spoken words and her non-verbal signals and by the time the doorbell rang at 1355, he hadn't misunderstood anything in over an hour.
Mac quickly put her headscarf back on, then nodded to her partner that all was in order.
"Imam Rais, thank you for coming," Sturgis greeted, ushering the man into their home.
"Please, call me Asif. We're of a rank," her returned, extending his hand.
"Ibrahim. And you've met my wife, Azaki."
The Imam smiled and bowed over Mac's hand. "I have indeed, and she adds much beauty to our small congregation."
Mac would have blushed anyway, so the redness in her cheeks was quite real as she murmured her humble thanks and moved swiftly into the living room to make sure it was presentable.
When the men were seated, she started to go back to the back of the house before Sturgis called to her in a slightly strident tone. "Azaki, stay."
The Imam watched the couple for a moment before it dawned on him who they must be. "Okay, I feel really silly now," he admitted. "I knew you were coming and I didn't figure you out until just now, and that only because of the timing. You're very good."
"Thank you," Mac replied in a more assertive voice, keeping the accent.
"You're really married, right?"
Sturgis quirked an eyebrow at the religious leader. "Is it a problem if we aren't?"
"No, no," Asif Rais assured them. "You just look and act like a married couple with a few problems lingering below the surface. Now I can see it."
Mac sat back against her chair. "See what?"
"That you're each pretending the other is someone else. And that there's tension between the two of you and between each of you and the significant other you're pretending to see." He had majored in psychology and taken advanced counseling courses after his religious schooling.
"It's an effective cover," the undercover commander noted dryly. "Safer, too." And now he wondered what Mac would do with that little observation, given his current tenuous relationship with Bobbi Latham.
"Well, you're very convincingly married, so rest assured about that. What would you like to know now that you're here?"
"Everything," the two from JAG answered in unison.
The sad part about all of it was that in isolation, very little Colonel Eugene Waters did was truly out of line. It was the pattern, coupled with the suspicion of illegal activities, that made the situation actionable. "Father O'Neill and I have been working to collect statements from those who have complained to us but we haven't gotten anyone from JAG involved yet – well, until now. Are you JAG officers?"
Mac nodded. "Yes, and with all due respect, Commander, it would be better for all of us if you didn't know too much more at the moment. We'll come clean at the end."
The Imam smiled with a nod. "And I'm guessing you outrank me, too. Fair enough. Just one more question – are you Muslims?"
"No, we aren't," Sturgis admitted, thinking back to an unpleasant conversation with Loren Singer earlier in the year.
"Then don't feel obliged in the privacy of your own home to keep Siyam."
Mac answered for them. "Thanks for the dispensation, Commander, but we're prepared and, as the old maxim goes, don't break cover unless you absolutely have to."
"Yes, ma'am. If you have any questions, please call me whenever," he requested, reaching into his dress blue coat for his business cards. He extracted one and handed it to Sturgis. "Cell phone is best but try home if I don't answer that."
"Thank you, Commander Rais. You've certainly made us feel welcome here, and we're really enjoying the evening meals."
"Oh, just wait until Thursday. Id al-Fitr is quite an extravaganza around here."
Mac's cell phone rang in the back room and she bade good-bye to Asif Rais, allowing Sturgis to see him to the door.
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0110 Zulu/2010 EST/1510 Hawaii
Admiral Chegwidden's Home, McLean, Virginia
"Azaki Yassin," the thickly accented voice answered 4,800 miles away.
AJ smiled. "Is it safe for you to drop the accent, I hope?"
"Admiral!" Mac exclaimed in her normal voice. "Is everything alright, sir? We were planning to call you tomorrow night."
"Yes, Colonel, I know. But several things have happened on this end since Friday and I need you to be in San Diego on Tuesday at noon." He wondered if Mac would make the connection between San Diego and La Jolla, where he intended the housing for this unexpected and expensive trip to be provided free of charge. That was his next call.
"Are you yanking me off the case, sir?"
"Far from it, Mac. I'm sending in the reserves."
"Harm?"
"He would be the reserve in question, yes," he answered, his voice the quality of an exquisite martini.
Mac laughed, and the image of her face in his mind was the one he saw for real only when Little AJ or Harm made her laugh. "Giving up on us so soon, sir?"
"No. We just want this case closed before Christmas. You're going to need to meet Colonel Waters tomorrow and get a read on him yourself, and you'll have Turner's input, as well. Commander Rabb will need all the advance first-hand knowledge you can give him because he'll need to insinuate himself rapidly."
"You found a way to use his All-America flyboy wholesomeness, I guess."
"Not me, actually. Chaplain Turner. With some assistance from the Commandant, who by the way says to tell you hello." Somehow, AJ had missed the fact that General Caine had been Mac's CO in Bosnia. "He's been following your career with interest."
"Nice to be remembered. What is Harm's cover, sir?"
"He will be the new XO of the regiment, with orders to report ASAP. We're allocuting tomorrow," he explained, knowing Mac would wonder if Harm had been pulled off the bench for doing something stupid.
She laughed again, this time with a sadistic edge. "I'm sure Lt. Singer was thrilled with that."
"She had no choice. The DNA evidence was convincing and our clients told us the whole story when we showed them the report. They were surprised that the prosecution offered such a generous deal as 20 year confinement at hard labor with dishonorable discharge."
"And Loren tried to convince you to counterplea, right, sir?"
"Mac, remind me not to play poker with you. You're downright scary with that mind reading stuff. Anyway, San Diego by noon Tuesday. Don't go through this office to make the arrangements to the mainland under your cover name, but let Tiner know where you're coming in and he'll get your transportation to San Diego arranged for you under your real name. We'll get all the cover information for Commander Rabb to you at the USO desk wherever you land from Hawaii. You'll be responsible for briefing him in."
"Aye, sir. Have a good evening, Admiral."
"You, too, Colonel." He hung up the phone and wondered just why it was that Mac's psychic abilities hadn't allowed her to see Harm's true feelings much earlier. "Probably the aviator's hard, thick head," AJ mumbled to himself, then snorted with a derisive shake of his head. That was a serious understatement. And then he had another thought which prompted him to pick up the phone and hit redial.
"Yes, sir?" Mac answered with what he could tell was a smile.
"Mac, when you talk to Harm tonight, don't tell him."
"Yes, sir."
Wait for it, AJ told himself, wait for it…
"Sir, what makes you think I'll be talking to Commander Rabb tonight?" The attempt at a tone of innocence failed when she stifled a laugh.
"Just a hunch, Colonel. Good night." He could read minds sometimes, too.
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1715 Zulu/0715 Local
Headquarters, Third Marine Regiment, Marine Corps Base Hawaii – 2 December 2002
Sturgis squared his shoulders as he worked up the courage to walk into the building where his new, albeit temporary, office was located, knowing that despite Mac's excellent coaching he was a long way from comfortable pretending to be a Marine. He thought he looked absurd in the olive drab dress uniform jacket and stiff olive pants, and never mind the color of the fore-and-aft cap that sat on his head at the wrong angle. And it was wrong in such a subtle way that he couldn't see the difference between that and his proper khaki cover of the same design, but Mac had spotted it and fixed it three times this morning alone. He would have to rely on sensory memory to get it back on correctly. At least he could hold his own in the intelligence specialty, having been, as all submariners are, a spook of sorts before he became a lawyer.
Two corporals approached and snapped to attention, throwing razor sharp salutes that he returned crisply, thankful that at least one thing could be automatic on this assignment. "Good morning, Corporals. Can you direct me to Colonel Waters' office?"
"Aye, sir," one said. "The Colonel's office is down the main hall on the left. His yeoman is Staff Sergeant Monroe."
"Thank you, Corporal. That will be all."
"Aye, aye, sir!" the two said in unison, executing textbook about faces and marching off toward another building in the distance.
Sturgis set his shoulders to try again, this time succeeding in entering the building and finding his way to the base commander's office. He announced himself to Staff Sergeant Monroe, who looked him over with the practiced eye of a veteran before announcing the newcomer to the Colonel.
Colonel Waters was slow in responding to Sturgis' presence; the undercover lawyer waited for nearly 20 minutes – Mac would know to the second, he laughed to himself – before the interior door opened to reveal the suspect officer.
"Major Yassin." Colonel Waters' deep voice had a touch of the James Earl Jones timbre in it, an observation which Sturgis was reasonably sure would not win friends and influence people – at least not the colonel. The man stood in his doorway.
Sturgis popped up from his chair and came to attention. "Major Ibraham Yassin reporting to Third Marine Regiment for duty as ordered, sir!"
"Enter." He turned and went back to his desk, simply expecting his new G-2 to follow.
It might have been Hawaii, but Sturgis shivered at the icy vibes as he moved into the office, wondering if he would be invited to sit.
"Twenty Nine Palms, I see. With TAD to the Sixth Fleet this past spring but no ground duty in Afghanistan."
It was an accusation of sorts, Sturgis thought, now knowing that he would be standing at attention during the entire interview. "No, sir. I had requested a billet with an MEU but there were no current openings. My detailer said there's a rumor running around that Third Marine is slated for deployment to Afghanistan by February 1." That tidbit was one the Commandant suggested via an e-mail from Admiral Chegwidden as a test of the waters.
"Really? I hadn't heard that. Of course, I'd be surprised if they would let you go."
Sturgis blinked. No one had predicted that blatant a challenge. "How so, sir?"
Eugene Waters shrugged and looked away from his new staff member. "I just don't think it's appropriate for us to be pitting practicing Muslims against other Muslims."
It was almost enough to cover the xenophobia, Sturgis mused, but for one flaw. "So if we were to go to war against Mexico, no Christians should be sent out because you shouldn't pit Christian against Christian, sir?"
"Um…" Waters squirmed and refused to look back at the man standing across the desk. "How are you settling in to quarters, Major?" he asked instead.
"Sir, just fine, sir." Two can play at this game, Turner thought.
"And your wife?"
"Sir, enjoying the weather, sir."
Now Waters did turn back to make eye contact with Sturgis. "Even under that god-awful black shroud I'm sure you make her wear as a faithful Muslim?"
"Sir, with due respect, I cannot make my wife do anything she doesn't want to do. She chooses, rather against my wishes, to wear a headscarf rather than a burqha, just as the women in her home region in Bahrain do. I would prefer that she assimilate a little more, wear the scarf only on Fridays and during Ramadan, for example. And that makes me no less a faithful Muslim than any woman who is a minister is a faithful Christian, despite some teachings to the contrary." Thanks, Dad, for that line.
"Well, I don't believe women should be ministers, personally."
Sturgis blinked again but said nothing; Chaplain Turner hadn't been willing to place a bet either way on the Marine Colonel's views on that issue.
Waters continued. "Let me be very clear about something, Major Yassin. I do not allow religious practice to interfere with the good order and discipline of my regiment. What you do on your time is your business, but on my time, you will be available for duty without interruption. We have working staff lunches around here and rotate the duty such that everyone has two weekends off each month. There will be no swapping of duty shifts. Fridays are a regular workday. I'll expect you and your wife tonight at the Officer's Club for our regular weekly social, 1730." He went on for quite a while about the ins and outs of the base and his expectations, which seemed to Sturgis somewhat outlandish even for a Marine. Finally the colonel wound down. "Your yeoman will explain the nuts and bolts of your department to you. Any questions?"
Lots, he thought. "Sir, no, sir." Just dismiss me already so I can sit down! He'd been standing at attention for 30 minutes.
Waters looked him over one more time with a hint of disdain, then punched his intercom and ordered Staff Sergeant Monroe to find the Intelligence Department yeoman. "You are dismissed, Major. I will see you at lunch; the menu is ham and cheese sandwiches."
From the look on the colonel's face, Sturgis knew that the menu was a deliberate slap, delivered with the expectation that he would break his fast. He decided to be blunt about it. "I'll gladly join you for lunch, Colonel Waters, sir, but this is the month of Ramadan and I am fasting during daylight hours. And even if I were not, I'm afraid I couldn't eat the ham."
That earned him a long glower, but any direct reply the base commander might have made got lost when Sturgis' yeoman was announced. "Go, Major Yassin. I will see you at lunch."
A few minutes later in the sanctity of his new office suite, Sturgis looked at his yeoman with a smile. "Staff Sergeant Harris, thank you for rescuing me," he said, extending his hand to the enlisted man. He hoped he had guessed right that the young man was one of Waters' targets; despite the generic last name he looked like he might be of Hispanic heritage.
"You're very welcome, sir," the sergeant replied, taking the offered hand and reading his new department head's face accurately. "I'm talking out of school, sir, but you've probably already noticed that the colonel is somewhat biased against people who aren't like him."
"Blonde and blue-eyed?"
That evoked a crooked smile. "Just all-American. He doesn't like you if your ancestors arrived after 1900 or if they came from somewhere other than northern Europe."
Sturgis was liking the enlisted man immensely. "And yours?"
"My mother arrived from Honduras in 1975, sir, and she married my father a year later. I was a honeymoon baby." Harris laughed, relaxing a bit as he sensed that Major Yassin wouldn't bite his head off for doing so. "My father's mother came from Guatemala with my grandfather, who was the son of a Guatemalan maid and an Irish diplomat."
"I take it you're Roman Catholic."
"Right down to my St. Christopher medal, sir. And that's almost as offensive to the colonel as being Hispanic. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that he belonged to the KKK, sir."
There would be time for a more in-depth conversation with the sergeant later; for now, Sturgis filed the young man's observation away and asked him for a quick refresher on the PBX phone system, which was slightly different from that at JAG HQ.
After another hour, he felt settled in enough to call his partner from his private office. "'zaki, it's Ibrahim. What are you doing now?" That was their code to let the other know the originating end was secure.
Still in her thick accent, Mac replied in the similar receiving end code. "Not much." She added, "Wishing we had no neighbors so I could lay out in the beautiful sun without causing any man to lust."
Sturgis stifled a laugh; that wish was most definitely for Harm's benefit the next day. "Hmm…I'll think about the tan. I've met Colonel Waters." He thought fast and prayed that Mac would pick up on his next statement. "I don't know if he's from Idaho or Alabama, but he's certainly opinionated."
"Maybe I can find out. It shouldn't be too hard to find out if he has a year's worth of rations and ammunition or a whole lot of extra sheets hanging around."
Oh, yeah. She got it and would add that to her research. "We have a dinner obligation this evening at the Officer's Club. There's a weekly social obligation, it seems."
"As long as we won't eat until after about 1810, that's fine. Remember the Imam said it takes only about 20 minutes after sunset here to be dark enough to not know the color of a thread."
Bless Mac for knowing all kinds of trivia; the Imam had been greatly impressed that first evening with her answer to his question about the traditional way of telling when the fast began and ended each day. "I'm sure there will be at least half an hour of cocktails before we even sit down to order."
"Ibrahim, what shall I wear?"
"A burqha," he answered, knowing that she wouldn't think that funny. The derisive grunt he heard from a mile away confirmed his thought. "What about that green velvet…"
"That one," she said. Sturgis hadn't needed to finish the sentence; Harm had made her model her wardrobe and helped her pack, then proceeded to tell Sturgis how much he hated the things that were most appropriate for the assignment. The two-piece had taken particular abuse because the full skirt was too long, the sleeves too loose, and the neckline too high. Which was precisely why she had purchased it several years ago in a fit of pique with the male of the species. "Okay, that will work."
"You know I always want you to be stylish. Wear the hat, not a scarf. I'll be home at 1645. We will probably leave for the airport right from the O-Club, so you might want to pack traveling clothes."
Obviously, Mac hadn't thought of that. "Okay. I have to be at NCIS Pearl in thirty minutes for orientation. I will see you at 1645, Ibrahim."
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1915 Zulu/1415 Local
JAG Headquarters, Falls Church, Virginia
"I'm a little disappointed, sir, to be honest," Harm said, sitting at ease in the chair closest to Admiral Chegwidden's desk. "I was looking forward to a trial."
"You'll have another chance, Commander. In the mean time, I have another assignment for you. You'll be meeting your contact in San Diego tomorrow for an undercover operation."
"San Diego?" Disappointment raised his voice a half-octave.
"Yes, Commander, San Diego. And I can't tell you who your contact is because that part of the case is being handled by another department at the Pentagon. Nor can I tell you anything more about the arrangements. But you were requested by name, if it makes you feel any better." AJ worked hard to control the smile that wanted to erupt on his face. He felt like a matchmaker arranging a blind date; it was kind of heady, actually. Especially since Mac and Trish Burnett were in on it, at least in part.
Great, Harm thought, a joint-service investigation. I want to go to Hawaii. "When do I leave, sir?"
"Tiner has your travel information. Take civvies and a couple of uniforms; you'll probably be provided with appropriate clothing once you're fully briefed."
Harm sighed. "Will I be in southern California, sir?"
"It's safe to say that if you pack for that weather, you'll be fine. I honestly don't know exactly where you'll be." That was true; he didn't have the GPS coordinates for the headquarters of Third Marine Regiment, after all.
