The fifth chapter is up and ready for your eyes only. How very James Bond of me :). For those of you searching below the Hammersley decks for Commander Mike Flynn, he makes an appearance this chapter, and very soon, he will make a more regular appearance and there will be a lot, and I mean a lot, more MK.
Be patient and enjoy.
Chapter Five
The prisoner and evidence transfer with the Australian Federal Police went off without a hitch. Almost. The movement itself was textbook. The appropriate reports were filled out correctly, signed and dated by all parties. There was no delay. There was no holdup. But there was someone who was making her feel uneasy. A man in khaki cargo pants and a cobalt polo shirt was standing a little way off, observing the transfer. And standing with him was her XO. A discussion was at hand. She could raise her binoculars and try to read their lips as SAS Captain Jim Roth had taught her, but their lips were barely moving. In fact, to the common man, it didn't look like the two had anything to do with each other.
Then there was one more thing to be concerned about. Once the Feds had made their bed on her warship, it was the Army's turn. It didn't make her feel uneasy—she knew these guys were good at what they did and there was little chance of an explosive ordnance accident—but there was an old rivalry and nobody wanted the other kids peeing in their sandbox.
The olive green technicians were examining the device closely with an immeasurable amount of equipment, most that Kate hadn't encountered before. But then they did something that was totally out of the blue. They opened it. She hesitated, dread filling her comfort space. Hadn't Raffy told her that it could explode when it came into contact with air?
There was no boom.
There was silence, until...
"There's nothing in here," one of the technicians shouted to his commanding officer on the wharf.
"What?" the CO had yelled back.
And 'what?' was certainly what Kate was thinking. And 'why?' She rushed down to join the Army team on the boat deck. If there was a reason as to why her crew had been securing and shielding an empty weapon for the past three hours, she wanted to hear it.
"No explosive materials, sir," the first technician clarified to the rather robust Major on shore.
Kate had arrived. "Then why, Sergeant, did my XO have reason to believe that it was a thermobaric bomb of some sort?"
"Because of the way it was packaged, ma'am," he replied politely. "I would have thought so too. It was designed that way without the placement of explosive ordnance substances."
A flicker of white on the gangway distracted her. Mike Flynn and Maxine White were making their way on to the ship.
"Permission to come aboard," Mike flashed with a smile.
"Always, Commander," she replied.
"Did I hear correct?" Maxine began, serious as always. "The bomb was a dud?"
"No explosive materials inside," Kate replied with a firm nod.
"That is very strange," she continued. "Did you question the crew about it?"
"Yes, my XO and buffer made several attempts but they did not yield any information," Kate replied.
Mike chose his words carefully. "Were you present during the interrogation?"
"No, I left that to the Charge."
"Well," Maxine said with finality. "It's the Feds' jurisdiction now. We should be returning to NAVCOM."
"Sure, just a moment, Max," Mike called back.
She was already halfway up the gangway. "Yeah, well, don't take too long."
"Will I see you tonight?" he asked Kate.
She shook her head. "Sorry, Commander, but I still have a routine patrol. This haphazard incident just interrupted it."
"Now that is a shame." His voice dropped and his tone sent shivers down her spine. They were working—did he really need to do that?
She watched closely as he disembarked, that effortless swagger in his step, and follow Maxine into the waiting black town car. Her XO was making his way back on to the boat, but she hadn't noticed. Her eyes were trailing the path her lover left behind, all the way out of the base.
"Ma'am," Raffy said politely, realising that he was probably interrupting something. "We're ready to sail in fifteen minutes. All crew are onboard and accounted for."
"Good."
He started to walk away.
"Have a nice chat over there with your friend?" she beseeched, her expression still motionlessly focused on the port ahead.
Raffy stopped his forward trajectory and turned. Perhaps she expected an angry retort, but that was not what she received.
"Can I run something by you, boss?"
She hadn't expected that. Not the civilised response. Not the polite gesture. And definitely not the use of the term 'boss.' As of yet, nobody had referred to her as the boss, not that she'd asked them to. It was change—she understood that better than any of them—and it would be a long while before everybody fully grasped the abstract concept that she'd somehow moved up in the pecking order.
"Please do," she answered sincerely, but he could pluck the sarcasm from her tone.
"Didn't that all seem a little weird to you? There was no explosive material at all in something that's been packaged and air-locked as a bomb. That boat has been on an inclusive watch-list for the past two months. Every time they made berth somewhere, somebody was watching. Nobody saw this."
"Intelligence agencies are notoriously unreliable when it comes to sharing intelligence and we cannot be in every port in Southeast Asia."
He wanted to kick the ground in frustration. "I know that."
"But to answer your question, yes. It raises another. What was the purpose of trekking into Australian territorial waters with a bomb that wasn't really a bomb?"
Raffy was surprised at how fast his CO was catching on. Clearly she was brighter than she looked. "Were they trying to gauge how effective our response would be? See if we covered all of our bases?"
"Or were they delivering the exoskeleton of the bomb to somewhere in Australia to be filled with explosives?" Kate put in, her eyes not hiding that smarmy, intelligent look.
"Or did they want to know what we did with the bomb, so that it could be remotely detonated when we delivered it?"
"But that would require for this to happen again, and it's not likely to be perceived as a coincidence," Kate added, her expression intent on weighing up all possibilities.
"You're right. The arresting crew would probably behave in a different manner than us now that they know something is highly suspicious."
"This isn't answering any questions, just creating new ones," Kate threw in, clearly irritated, and started towards the bridge. "Are you coming, Lieutenant Rodrigues? We have a patrol to finish."
"Yes, ma'am."
So far their routine patrol had been anything but routine. Such was life aboard the HMAS Hammersley. Admittedly, nothing had happened in almost a month. They were due. They were overdue, in fact. And when, at last, it appeared that things were going back to normal, somewhere in the Timor Sea, a Coastwatch alert disrupted any hope for a night's normal sleeping pattern.
"Sharkey," Kate said as soon as the R.O. had transposed the information to her, "wake the X and tell him that he is required on the bridge pronto."
"Yes, ma'am," the young Able Seaman replied. As she left the bridge, she fixed her shoulder length, curly blonde hair into a bun. Her scram was never as complex as Bomber's, their previous Chefo, but always good quality. With a new crew and new taste-buds to please, she never ventured outside the norm until she knew the invasion would be welcome. In fact, one sailor had been quite rude to her on her first day, but she shrugged it off and he slowly got better. He didn't even question the style of her food anymore.
Sharkey had to admit, she was a little concerned about knocking on the XO's door and waking him. Would he be grumpy? What would he be wearing?
She knocked.
"Yes?" came the response just a few moments later.
Hesitantly, Sharkey opened the door. Lieutenant Rodrigues, she observed, was half dressed in his Navy camo's. His t-shirt and jacket were hung on his chair. And she was left to do everything in her power not to stare at his insanely well-defined abdominals and pectorals. It was a difficult assignment.
"Did you wake me for some particular reason, Able Seaman Ward?"
He was grumpy.
"The CO said to wake you. We have a report of a suspect vessel."
"How far away?"
"Twenty-four minutes."
"Right." And he jumped out of his rack and threw on the shirt and jacket. When he looked back, Sharkey was still occupying his doorway. "You can leave now, sailor."
"Yes, sir." She was feeling a little sheepish, and a lot embarrassed.
Raffy did not take long to present himself for duty on the bridge. "What have we got, ma'am?"
Kate didn't sway from her chair. She was determined not to look surprised by the speed of his arrival on the bridge. If he had woken her at this hour, she would need to run water over her face at least to look somewhat respectable. He appeared totally unfazed.
"Coastwatch just alerted us to the presence of a suspected FFV in our sector," Kate responded professionally. "I want to check it out. Apparently, it's been behaving quite strangely and it was definitely seen passing something into the water."
"Do we know what?"
"It's dark and Coastwatch was doing a night time flyover. We can't ask for much."
"Twenty minutes to intercept, ma'am," the Swain announced from the helm.
"As soon as we're in range, Sharkey, I want an image on the EOD," Kate ordered.
"Yes, ma'am."
Raffy was pacing behind her. Perhaps that what he did when he was tired. After ten minutes, however, it was starting to get annoying. "Will you sit down?"
"I've got a visual ma'am," 2Dads alerted, his binoculars raised. "Red, two-four-five."
"Bring us port thirty degrees, Swain."
"Aye, ma'am, port 30."
"Got anything on the EOD?" Raffy asked Sharkey, invading her personal space by standing close behind her. His eyes were fixated on the screen.
"Zooming in closer... got it."
That grave expression was emanating from him again. "Ma'am... take a look at this."
"That's it?" Kate pondered as she looked over at the screen.
"I know that boat. It's not an FFV, and we will need the cover of darkness if we wish to board her," Raffy explained grimly. "Wake the crew, Sharkey."