Guest review response: Thank you for the review! I don't love Jesse's comment. All Jesse knew was that Sasha chronically avoided romance, and until Sasha confirmed there was an ex during their dinner in Manhattan, Jesse assumed Sasha was in a long-term relationship that she couldn't disclose for security reasons. I don't think Jesse appreciates either how angry Sasha is with Andrew for insisting that Doak Stadium was the correct choice when Sasha's gut feeling was to isolate. Jed and Sasha's relationship is one of my favorite aspects of this universe (and the core reason it was written). In a lot of ways, I don't think Jesse understood until the prior chapter's conversation that Sasha's choice to keep the watch was as much about Jed as it was Tom. Re: Shakespeare, haha, I recall you once asking for the most miserable ending—have I convinced you they deserve a happy one!?
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When You're Out of Sight
in my mind
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"I don't want that crap on in my house." Kara snatched the remote from the coffee table and eliminated Jacob Barnes' grating appearance from her television screen. Debbie's stunned silence was only punctuated when Kara tossed it away, the clatter echoing between them.
"Wha—"
Ignoring her mother, she deposited her tote in an armchair, released her feet from the torture of her shoes, and went to Frankie's nursery at the rear of the craftsman-style bungalow they'd been assigned by President Michener's housing authority. Despite its three-bedroom footprint, sometimes Kara felt that even 10,000 square feet wouldn't be enough space to share a roof with her mother. At twenty-nine, Kara never pictured such an arrangement as a possibility, not after more than a decade of independence. Cursing under her breath when she almost tripped on the playmat left dead center in the room, Kara picked it up. Dismantling the gym bar, she folded, then returned the offending item to its cubby shelf while her mother's footfalls echoed on the hardwood floors.
"Sweetie, I just put him down to sleep."
"Jesus Mom! I can see my own child if I want to," she snapped, though her volume remained low.
Aghast, Debbie threw up both hands and walked away. Kara couldn't bring herself in the moment to care. All she could think about was Captain Slattery's expression when he entered her office and declared that, 'I need to tell you something.' Forcing the situation from her mind, Kara re-wound the mobile, greeted by the soft chimes of a lullaby, and lifted Frankie from the crib. She went to the rocking chair, soothing his deep frown with a gentle shush, and trailed her finger over his plump pillow-soft cheek. After a moment, Frankie settled again, his soft gurgles quieting into even breaths, and Kara closed her eyes, willing herself to choose faith. Danny would never give up on them. He would do everything in his power to come home, and she would devote everything she had to believing in him.
When Mike walked through the door of his brick townhome, he didn't expect that Christine would be waiting. She was dressed in scrubs, identification badge clipped to her breast pocket denoting her position as an RN at Saint Louis University Hospital. Going back into the Emergency Room hadn't so much been a choice as a necessity but returning to her field of passion had been perhaps the only positive to arise in the months since arriving in St. Louis.
"I thought you were scheduled for the night shift?" Mike interposed to fill the silence.
Truth be told, sometimes he didn't recognize the woman before him. He loved her—always would—but he didn't know her anymore.
"It's nice to know I'm not imagining that you've been avoiding me."
"Can we not do this?" Resigned, he tossed his briefcase into the coat closet and pushed the door closed. It rebounded. One of the kids' shoes had toppled and fallen into the doorjamb. He kicked it in, then forced it shut more aggressively than intended. "Please?"
"Jed called." In a mark of expectation, her brows lifted. "You didn't think that I would want to know about Daniel? Why didn't you call me? I helped deliver Frankie Green, for God's sake. Kara needs a support network right now."
Shaking his head, Mike muttered something under his breath and sidestepped her in the narrow hallway. "At least let me sit down before you ambush me," he grumbled, moving into the kitchen. Though the lights were off, the microwave glowed from above the stove. Mike decided that suited him fine. Enough illumination to navigate but offered his aching temples relief. Until becoming desk-ridden, he hadn't appreciated how conducive shipboard lighting was to reducing eye fatigue. He longed for it. The ocean. The bridge. A pilothouse. Power to take action that mattered. Made a difference.
The lights flickered on, and he cringed.
"Is this how it's going to be?" she began. "You, miserable because you're here in St. Louis instead out there with your crew? I don't know what you want me to do!"
"You can't stand the Navy. You hate it. Why would I call you—"
"I hate the institution," she hissed. "Not the people who get chewed up and spit out by its bullshit! This isn't about us! It's about doing what's right by the people who are sitting at home, waiting—"
The rest of Christine's words filtered out. He'd heard it before. Couldn't stop, in fact. Ever since Norfolk. "I can't change the past!" he bellowed, fist thumping the butcher block island between them. Stunned into silence, Christine stared, and the damning realization that this was perhaps the longest they'd maintained eye contact since Lucas died splintered the final fragment of Mike's resolve. "He's dead."
Christine's lips puckered. Her focus dropped to the floor, and her nostrils flared.
"Why can't we talk about him, Christine?" he rasped into the chasm between them. "He was our son."
Her mouth twitched. "I'm not doing this." The words came uttered, breathy, and dispirited. Movements frenzied, she scoured the counters, Mike assumed, for her keys. Riffling, now, through the catch-all drawer, she tossed offending items onto the granite: the kids' school lanyards. A few coins that tinkled against the stone.
"You're not the only one who lost him!"
The drawer plowed shut, and Christine vanished into the hallway. Moments later, a jangle. Metallic. Shrill. Next, a wooden door, protesting the force with which it slammed. And then he was alone. Forsaken, again.
May 18, 2014, 0800 UTC+7
USS Nathan James, Co To Archipelago, Northeastern Cost of Vietnam
Determined to review the remaining recordings before hitting her rack, Sasha hadn't managed more than four restless hours of sleep on the lower bunk while Jesse snored above her. Now, back in CIC, Sasha questioned whether Tom had made the attempt at all. After first checking the bridge and being directed to combat by an equally fatigued Andrea Garnett, she approached. Over a console, where a map of the South China Sea lay digitally depicted, he brooded. Arms folded, trying to solve an equation that, thus far, after her own efforts to reach an epiphany, seemed impossible.
"Anything?" she asked, coming to stand opposite him.
But a subtle change in Tom's body language occurred before answering. "We ID'd the boat that made the call. It was sortied for three hours until another vessel arrived. The second was a Qiongsha-class cargo freighter. Maximum speed of fifteen knots, the last ping puts it due south of us, but that was already seven hours since the attack, and by now, they could be anywhere. It's too broad a search area—even if we had the fuel reserves, and that's assuming that they're not already on land."
More than one hundred thousand square miles of ocean for the James to search, and every minute they spent idle only increased that number. By the time they could refuel? Sasha clenched her teeth and moved closer so they wouldn't be overheard. "What are your orders?"
"Sortie in place until the Shackleton arrives." Tom matched her sedate murmur. Upon the console were several notations made in red wax pencil. Extensive areas of ocean, circled. Even without the pirates' head start, waiting another fifty hours before commencing pursuit wasn't viable. Long after the transmission, Sasha had pondered the problem. Racked her brain like a Rolodex, searching for unprocessed information that could prove critical to understanding where Danny was taken.
"And the actual plan?"
Surreptitious and calculated, Tom's gaze slid upward to hold hers. "We need to refuel. And you're going to tell me everything that you know about the pirates and Hai Phong."
"There are hundreds of smaller factions operating in the region, but only eight major players." Sasha produced a notepad containing names in both English and respective native languages, then pushed it across the wardroom table. "Including Wu Ming and Takehaya." Next, she placed circles over Shangzhai, China, Hai Phong, Vietnam, Kuching, Malaysia, and Manila, Philippines. "These are the key port cities in which the pirates trade. From there, inland distribution networks take care of the rest." Moving northeast, she drew a line through the South China Sea, south of Taiwan. "Everything north of this line belongs to Peng. Before he went dark, my contact said that Peng was aggressively encroaching south into the Philippines and claiming most of the island chains in the region. He also intends to invade Vietnam. It's possible that he was focused on the Paracels for the same reason, they've been contested for decades, but that's purely speculation." She paused. No longer leaning over the large charter map, but standing. "Now that I know the Shackleton ID'd a North Korean submarine, it makes sense that Peng's been able to cut off trade to the east while keeping his fleet engaged in the south. From what Jesse heard and saw, South Korea was wiped out. After the formula for the aerosolized cure was released, North Korea launched missiles, and there has been little to no radio chatter over HF since."
"Then who was at the summit?" Tom interjected, lifting his gaze from the notepad which he now held.
"A Chinese countryman playing the part?" Somewhat, she shrugged. "Now that you mention it, I never saw them interact without their translator. And every time they spoke, they kept their voice down. Smart choice if you're trying to avoid any variation in your dialect from being detected. I've done it myself."
Tom examined the theory, finding that he couldn't provide a better explanation. "And what do the rest of these notes mean? Blood Orange. Yellow rag. Bottle of—something I can't pronounce…" he said. To his right, Tom caught Shemanski smirk, while lieutenants Burk and Damon glanced at Wolf.
"Those," she shifted, "are how the factions identify themselves and stay away from each other's bounty and territories."
"Takehaya doesn't have one," he said.
"Correct."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't trade in the open. His men only step foot in Hai Phong for one of two things."
He looked up from the paper.
"Cure. Or people."
Around the back of a chair, Burk's hands curled until the leather creaked.
"Even then, they do it quiet. Someone new to the area. Unsuspecting. Not wearing a mask either because they've been cured or they're immune. One minute you're walking through the trade crowds, and the next, you're gone. Vanished. No one's ever returned… and the few who've tried to take on his ships, found their body parts floating in the harbor with his name carved into them."
He tossed the notepad down, its weight producing a muted smack against the table's padding.
"And we also know that this symbol," Sasha overturned a small white paper resembling a receipt, revealing a black circle on its underside, "has something to do with Peng. It's the Chinese lottery ticket. The woman in Hai Phong operating for Wu Ming gave it to us and pointed to this circle and said his name. That's all she knew."
Eyes narrowed, Tom bent to examine the ticket, turning it over to study the markings. The numbers were written in both Chinese and English. "And the radio broadcast about Green was in Vietnamese?" he murmured.
"Yes," Sasha confirmed.
"Surely one of the other pirate factions has to know where these people are being taken?" Tom raised, unable to relinquish the ticket until he satisfied the gnawing sensation that he recognized something about these numbers. "Takehaya can't be the only one interested in buying immunes?"
"Not that we saw," Shemanski replied. "None of the other factions want to compete with him. They stick to cure, weapons, ammo, medications, food," Shemanski tipped his head, "you get the idea. Everything but people—though they're not above sellin' 'em." When Shemanski hesitated, Tom peered up, unblinking. "That's the first time we've heard a call put out on the open radio though."
"Sir, we can lure them to us," Wolf began, uncrossing his arms, and eager in delivery. "I'll pose as an immune. We can commandeer a local boat, there's plenty out here in the fishing lanes. We'll pay off the crew, have them make the call over the radio just like the Vietnamese pirates did. Once I get picked up, the James can pursue. They'll lead us right to Green."
"That's assuming everyone's taken to the same place," Tom objected. "Who's to say you won't end up a thousand miles from Green, and now I have two members of my crew at the mercy of pirates, not to mention the issue of a missing ship."
"We know they went due south," Sasha quietly said, intentional it seemed in avoiding eye contact with him, and again Tom saw Shemanski shift. The inkling that this was heading in a direction Tom wouldn't like became unignorable. "For at least a hundred nautical miles—theoretically, if Takehaya brings immunes to a central location before distributing them to his buyers, all the couriers should follow a similar route. There are only so many places to refuel, and Takehaya's men seem to avoid congested shipping lanes. After the exchange is made, if they deviate from the expected course, the James will be in position to abort and intercept—"
"But that doesn't account for any maneuvers once they fell out of range, Sasha. After that, we're purely speculating. We could waste days trailing a vessel in the wrong direction."
"True," she conceded, "but at the very least we'd still end up with their navigational logs and a contact that Takehaya is selling to—concrete leads. It's better than trying to convince someone to talk in Hai Phong or waiting for one of his ships to refuel there."
Burk's restless energy morphed into one of purpose. "Sir, it's possible that they'll have intel on the Hayward too."
Though there were too many holes and variables for Tom to label it strong, after hours of sleepless pondering, there appeared a glimmer of hope. If the virus taught him anything, it was that sometimes that's all you needed. Within him, the winch loosened but a fraction; that was until Sasha continued.
"There's another problem." Addressing Wolf, this time, she hedged, "Takehaya's men will want to test your blood for themselves before issuing payment."
Unanswered, Sasha's implication echoed, and now Tom understood why Shemanski was on edge.
"You're not an option," Shemanski dismissed, just before Tom's own objection could rip itself from his lips.
Committed, it appeared, to staring at the map, Sasha countered, "Unless someone else on the James happens to be immune and wants to volunteer, to me, it sounds like I'm the only option."
"I can kill a man with two fingers, Coop," Wolf interjected. "Of all the people here, I'm the right choice. We can figure something out. Plus, the lil' rough and tumble I took back in Hong Kong makes it that much more believable, right?" Wolf's ne'er-do-well smile appeared to have zero effect in convincing Sasha, despite having a point. The bruising had come into fruition, blotting putrid yellow around the socket of his right eye and temple, and while Tom felt uncomfortable selling anyone to a Japanese pirate, he'd seen Wolf take down a dozen men without a weapon. If things went south, Wolf had a fighting chance.
"We're not doing anything without fuel," Tom announced, aware of his own pulse hammering in his jugular. "What other ports do you know of that still have a reliable supply?" he redirected.
"Ever since Peng began hoarding production and qualified labor, everything but his own have become dangerous and unreliable. That's why the pirates started targeting larger ships. They needed to pilfer the fuel," Sasha replied.
Jaw clenched, Tom abandoned the lottery ticket to brace his palms against the table. To his right, Lieutenant Damon, present commanding officer of their VBSS teams, remained unreadable but engaged; commendable in his discipline, yet part of Tom felt more confident when he could garner reactions, and the lieutenant was betraying nothing.
"We gotta go back to Vietnam. We can't risk trying another port unless we can guarantee we'll find fuel there. We'll send Jesse up with a gunner to hold the harbor and man all crew-served weapons port and starboard." He faced Lieutenant Damon. "You'll lead the ground teams to monitor the fuel lines and hold the docks."
"Aye, sir," Damon responded with a curt nod.
"Burk—" the lieutenant came to attention "—work with CIC. Find me a boat to intercept on our way out of Hai Phong." Burk tapped his fist against the table before exiting.
Now left with three, all of whom lived beyond any written obligation to respect his chain of command, Tom withheld a sigh, over-aware of Shemanski's vehement stare. Instead of engaging, he approached the intercom attached to the wall, awaiting the indicative chime.
"Go for bridge," Garnett answered.
"This is the Capn'. Set a course to Hai Phong, all ahead flank."
"Aye, sir."
Returning the handset to its cradle hook with a resonating clunk, he paused and reflected, weighing how best to navigate the Tinderbox standing on the opposite side of the room.
After turning, Tom pocketed his hands. "You gentlemen are dismissed." Wolf exited without reservation, but as Tom anticipated, Shemanski failed to yield.
A torrent of exacerbation ripped across Sasha's face. "That means you. Paul."
Shemanski turned, confronting her head-on. "You're not healed yet, you're the only one who can translate the comms, and you're about a buck-forty at your best. Even at peak conditioning, you wouldn't be able to get yourself out against a crew of men using hand-to-hand. There's no conversation to have."
Inching closer until they were at almost eye level, Sasha folded her arms. Shemanski had the height advantage, but her frigid gaze compensated the difference. "We have one shot to pull this off," she began. "The second Takehaya suspects that he's been compromised, he'll modify his operations, and any intel we can pull from his vessels will be useless by the time we're in a position to act on it. If that happens, our search area becomes greater than a million square miles."
Lowering his chin, Tom pursed his lips.
"Green will be as good as gone, and we will have nothing," she finished.
Dead silence resonated. As much as Tom agreed with Shemanski and questioned to what extent guilt and comparison were motivating Sasha, her concerns were valid. It was his duty to hear them… with unbiased ears. The problem was Tom no longer believed himself capable of that, and without Mike around to keep him honest, he was already plotting ways to guarantee that "absolutely not," remained the sole outcome of any debate.
"Shemanski," Tom called. "I need the room. It's not a request, and I won't repeat myself again."
The man's mandible clenched hard enough for Tom to detect its outline beneath the scratchy beard. While there'd been no delusion that Shemanski played nice in the sandbox to serve the higher mission, this was the first time Tom questioned if that would continue. With the James idled and most of the crew briefing at daily muster with the Master Chief, it was quiet enough to hear the analog clock ticking from the wall. Another dozen seconds passed before Shemanski conceded, stalking from the wardroom, but allowing the door to slam. He'd deal with that later. After Shemanski had time to cool off.
Tom re-approached and curled both hands around the back of his chair. "Less than twelve hours ago, you asked me to put you down rather than end up in Takehaya's hands," he began, calm, though his gaze was steel. "And now you're telling me I should hand you over?"
Unfolding her arms, Sasha appeared to search for something. Tom wondered what she saw. "Are you going to listen?" she prefaced, raising her chin.
"Are you?" he countered, brows lifting. "Everything Shemanski said is true and disqualifies you."
"I'm not debating that." Funny. Tom was positive Sasha was trying to negate those facts. "But you need to understand," she continued, "that this isn't about Andrew or my son. Don't imply that finding Green could ease some of my guilt over what happened. It can't."
That caught him off guard. The directness with which she'd addressed the unspoken, but more so that she'd referred to the baby as her son. Until now, he'd known Sasha to maintain such detachment that her child sounded more like an object than a person who'd lived and died, however briefly.
"You're not going to get away with giving the pirates a positive test, and that's exactly what re-qualifies me."
"Unless there's a way to force a false positive result," he murmured, the idea taking shape and eliminating the need to consider Sasha's proposal.
"Then you should call St. Louis again before you decide, but knowing Doctor Scott's track record? I'd be surprised if that were possible."
Instant hope was quelled. Tom didn't doubt Rachel designed the rapid test to be impervious, but he wasn't doing anything until he'd exhausted every caveat available to him, including obtaining a complete list of any naturally immune crewmembers present on the Nathan James. "Noted."
A beat of stillness passed while Sasha appeared to deliberate. Then she shifted—not closer but less cold, and his disquiet flared. Whatever she was about to say would skirt deeper than duty.
"Tom," she breathed. "I know what I am asking of you."
Did she?
"Then convince me."
Was it sympathy or empathy that marred her forehead in response to his tone? Either way, maybe she did understand how deeply he feared another choice like Mayport. Of what it would do to be responsible.
"It's no different than an SERE evolution. The James will be in position. You know where I am, you understand the target, you have the tactical and mechanical advantage, and at the very least we know that I have to be alive to be sold. At best? Takehaya doesn't want his goods damaged in transit. I'll be sitting in confinement, waiting to be exchanged, and I'll know that anything they may do to me is finite. They'll either lead us to Green, or you'll abort the mission and recover me. They can't outrun you."
Every part of him rejected her phrasing, and his jaw clenched. "Unless something forces us out of range. What if the James is attacked? What if we're forced to re-group? What if we ping a North Korean submarine and have to go dark?"
If, if, if. Tom could conjure a dozen scenarios in which the mission catapulted beyond his control, yet the fear he'd detected mere hours before seemed banished from Sasha's being.
In a way, her belief in him felt worse.
"Then you already gave me your word," she spoke softly, no longer avoiding eye contact but maintaining it intimately. "I won't suffer."
But he'd spend a lifetime sentenced to that.
"Call St. Louis," she said. "Find out if there's another way."