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Graduation Day
(sequel to Just a Rookie)
by F.A. Behrend

Disclaimer:  The characters of Frank Donovan, Jake Shaw, Alex Cross, Monica Davis, Cody and Paul Bloom were created by and are owned by Shane Salenrno and Don Wilson.  No infringements intended.  All other characters are owned by the author.

Rated:  PG 13

~*~*~*~*~

            She was pacing in front of the window of her apartment with the phone at her ear, “it’s going pretty well, Mom,” she said with a laugh.  “I haven’t gotten anyone shot in the past couple of weeks, and I haven’t thrown up on Frank lately...”

            “See, honey, I told you it would work out.”

            “I still can’t get used to the guns, though.  I was fine at the Academy.  I could shoot at all the silhouettes they put in front of me.  I could just put on the ear protectors and the safety glasses and blast away.  It was such a controlled environment, there was nothing to be afraid of, but when it comes to a flesh and blood person as a target, right out in the middle of everything, it’s a whole different story.  I just completely get the shakes.”

            “Give it some time, dear.  I think it’s just a matter of getting used to it.  I know you’re a very serious, responsible person.  You won’t go shooting somebody who doesn’t deserve it.  It all goes back to the training.”

            “I know...I did OK in that bank robbery, even with a gun in my face I managed to stay cool and think, they weren’t actually shooting...if I could just get used to the noise, I think that would help.”

            “Well, dear, there’s a simple answer, if you need to adjust to the noise, just go out and shoot, maybe join some kind of club or something...”

            “Mom, that’s a great idea!  I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself!  If I could find someplace where they do a lot of shooting, and leave off the ear protectors, maybe I could get used to the noise...”

            “Just like you did that year you wanted to go to camp...you had such awful hayfever...you spent the whole winter getting those shots so you wouldn’t be so sensitive...”

            “That’s it!  I’ll de-sensitize myself to gunfire!  Thanks, Mom!”

            “All my love, sweetie.”

            Yes! she thought when she hung up.  If she could get used to the noise, if she could train herself not to go diving under tables every time someone fired a gun, that would go a long way towards giving her the confidence she still needed. 

            She walked around the apartment.  She had only been here for 8 weeks.  The boxes were unpacked and most of the pictures were hung, but she still felt very temporary.  Her first six weeks as an FBI agent had been pure hell, with one thing after another going wrong.  Two weeks ago she had started to turn it around.  Purely by accident, she had been at the center of an attempted bank robbery.  And purely by accident, or was it inspiration, she had helped bring that incident to a successful resolution.  At the station everyone was beginning to treat her with a little more respect, but each day she held her breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for some additional disaster to strike. 

            She kept telling herself to be patient.  She was certain that Donovan had requested her transfer, and she was also certain that the request had been denied.  She was still here and he was still stuck with her.  They both seemed to be making peace with it, but somehow she had to earn his respect.  Somehow, she had to begin to make some kind of contribution.  It wasn’t enough to merely avoid disaster, she had to begin to pull her weight.  Getting past her fears would be the first step.  If gunshots made her jump and run, she would train herself to overcome that.  She went to the phone book and began with the yellow pages.  She ran her finger down the listing for “gun clubs.”

            The others sat around the conference table and she could see discreet glances at wrist watches and at the clock on the wall.  Truth be told, she didn’t really mind the meetings.  She always felt that good planning would bring success at almost anything, and it was essential when lives were at stake. 

            They were currently discussing the interdiction of a major drug shipment.  They were coordinating with the Coast Guard and the DEA,  and if it went well, millions of dollars in drugs would be taken off the streets and a major supply route would be shut down.  They knew that a certain freighter would stop at a point offshore just outside the international limit, and offload the contraband onto small craft, probably a fleet of zodiacs, which would then come onshore under the radar.  The plan called for an undercover officer to take a job as a merchant seaman on the freighter.  When the ship came to a halt, that seaman would simply radio the position to the waiting Coast Guard.

            There were several problems and the team had been debating possible resolutions for most of the morning.  First, the Coast Guard would not be able to put enough craft in the water, and still stay off the freighter’s radar, to intercept all the zodiacs.  Any small craft that slipped through would still be able to pump their goods into the stream of drugs coming into the country.  Second, they did not have a specific date for the off loading of the drugs.  This meant that a major Coast Guard vessel would be tied up, steaming in circles, simply waiting to be called into action.  This would prove to be a major expense, and perhaps a budget buster in an era of tight money.  The third problem was personnel.  One man, probably Jake, would have to be aboard the freighter.  Many of these ships were known to have sophisticated jamming and tracking equipment.  If his signal was traced and he was discovered, he would be killed.  There would be no way to know what kind of equipment they had until he was on board.  At that point, the mission would either be scrapped or it would proceed, at considerable risk to Jake’s life.

            Cary sat listening to the discussion without comment.  They had concluded that Jake would begin to turn himself into a merchant seaman and were just about to adjourn the meeting.  “Excuse me, “she said.  Everyone stopped gathering their paperwork and sat back down, somewhat reluctantly.  “I think I have an idea.”

            Frank smiled, “go ahead,” he said.

            She cleared her throat.  She had never spoken up in a meeting before, and these were all very experienced people.  She felt a little foolish and more than a little nervous. 

            “Go ahead,” Frank encouraged her again, leaning forward slightly in his chair.

            “I was just thinking, I know that there’s been a lot of criticism that we rely too much on technology and not enough on real people, but I think this is one place where maybe technology could provide a better answer.”

            Everyone at the table stared at her.  In the few weeks that she had been with them, she had never said more that six words all at once.  She had garnered a reputation as something of a mouse, and hearing her speak had stunned everyone into silence.  The flush faded from her cheeks and she plunged in.  Oh well, she thought, in for a dime, in for a dollar.

            “Yes,” said Frank.

            “Well, don’t ships like that have to have transponders?  So other ships and such will know where they are and they won’t go crashing into each other in the middle of the ocean?”

            Jake nodded, “yes they do.  How does that help us?”

            “If we could get the transponder code, we could track it.  We would know where the ship is, so when it stops to off load the cargo, we just go get it.”

            “The ship doesn’t necessarily have to come to a complete stop,” Frank explained.  “They could just dump the cargo and have their small boats pick it up.  We would never know from the ship’s position what they were doing.  We would still need a signal from Jake, and that still puts him out there in danger.  Tracking the ship is a good idea, but it won’t give us everything we need.”

            Everyone began to get up to leave when she spoke up again.  “These ships have GPS, don’t they?”  Everyone sat down again.

            “Yes, why?”

            She turned to Cody, “I’m thinking off the top of my head here, but is there some way to corrupt a GPS signal?”

            Cody was an expert with anything that had to do with computers and he nodded vigorously.  “Absolutely.  What did you have in mind?”

            She went on without hesitation and Frank smiled as he watched her, “If we could corrupt the signal they get, or the signal they think they’re getting, could we make them think they’re outside the international limit, when they’re really inside?” 

            “Sure we could, but then what?”

            “We could take the whole ship, “she said simply.  Everyone stared at her, slack jawed.  They must all think I’m an idiot, she thought, somebody surely must have thought of this before.  “We have warrants for search and seizure, but of course if they off load outside the international limit, we won’t find anything once they get in to port.  We just end up burning the people who got us the information in the first place.  If we can take the entire ship, contraband and all, that’s a hell of a bargaining chip.  Instead of grabbing one shipment, we shut off the pipeline.”  She turned to Cody, “could we really do that?”

            “Absolutely!  I could come up with some kind of jamming device that would interrupt the signal they get, and then someone on board would have to reset the system while it was down.  If they have a backup, they would have to find it and reset it as well.”  He was thinking on the fly now and he continued, tapping a pencil impatiently on the table.  “We would have to set them off course by just a fraction, so it wouldn’t be noticeable when they came back on...”

            “But it could be done?”  Frank asked, very interested now.  “Let’s get some lunch,” he said, “and think about this.  This is a good idea, Cary.  Everybody back  here in an hour.  Let’s see if we can make this work.”

            They broke for lunch and when they met again, Cary was the first to speak up.  “I was thinking,” she said, “of a way to try to take Jake out of the equation completely.”        Jake looked up in surprise.  “Are you trying to put me out of work?” he laughed.

            “Oh, no!”  She blushed furiously, “I just don’t want to see you end up as fish food.”  Everyone around the table laughed. 

            “The fish would throw him back,” said Frank, “what’s your idea?”

            She turned the Cody again, “is there a way to corrupt the ship’s GPS signal remotely?”

            He thought for a minute, “it could be done,” he said.  “It would take a narrow EMP, aimed at the ship from a satellite.”

            “Explain,” said Frank.

            “An EMP is an electro magnetic pulse...”

            “Like from a nuclear detonation?”

            “Yes, exactly.  It scrambles electronics, fries’em.  An EMP, aimed at the freighter, would take out all their electronics. When their back-ups kick in, we feed them a false signal, make them think they’re someplace they’re not.”

            Cary spoke up again, “so Jake’s exposure is...’

            “Absolutely nil.  He wouldn’t need to make any changes to their GPS system.  It wouldn’t matter how many duplicate systems they had.   The EMP would take out everything.  They would be momentarily blind, and when the back-up kicked in they would be getting a false signal.”

            “Let me play devil’s advocate here,” said Frank, “wouldn’t other ships be affected as well?’

            “No,” said Cody, “we track the ship with its transponder and focus the EMP directly at that ship specifically.  As long as there are no other ships within a few miles, our target should be the only one affected.”

            “Wouldn’t they notice that they were suddenly in a different place on their navigation charts?  Wouldn’t it look like the ship had suddenly ‘jumped’ to a new position?”  Cary asked.  She had started this whole discussion and wanted to be sure all the bases were covered.

            “We would have to send them the new signal with only a very small variation in position, put them just a few degrees, or fractions of a degree, farther east than they really are.  They shouldn’t even notice.”

            “Is there a danger of putting them so far off course that there could be a collision at sea?”  Frank was thinking in big picture terms.

            Cody answered, “we would have to track them very closely with their transponder signal.  If they get close to another ship, we would have to warn that other ship...”

            “Without tipping off our freighter,” Frank finished.  There was a long pause while everyone considered what would need to be done to make the plan work.  “There is another problem,” Frank said.

            “Just one?” said Jake and everyone, including Cary, laughed.

            “Satellite time.  Re-tasking a satellite is probably going to take an act of congress.  Even if we can get it done, we have too large a window, we wouldn’t be able to keep the satellite tuned to our operation for that long.”

            “How long do we need, exactly,” Cary asked.

            “Well,” said Cody, “we would need to emit the EMP far enough out to sea that it wouldn’t effect any other ships, or land-based electronics for that matter,  but still close enough that we can go get the freighter while she still has the contraband cargo.  The only thing we know right now is when she’s leaving port in Marseilles and when she’s due to arrive here.”

            “That’s too big a window,” said Frank, “we’d never get satellite time for that long.”  The group at the table was silent.  It looked like a day’s worth of debate had gone for nothing and they would be back where they started, putting Jake on the ship and hoping he would be able to send them the signal they needed without getting killed. 

            Cary stared at the wall behind Frank, thinking of nothing in particular.  Well, she thought, it was a good try.  Then she focused on the calendar that hung on the wall, and suddenly a broad smile brightened her face. 

            “What?” said Frank when he looked up at her, “what?”

            She laughed out loud, “I know when that ship is planning to offload their drugs!”

            “Don’t tell me,” said Jake, “your clairvoyant.”

            “Of course not!”  She stood up and waved a pencil in the air, “it’s as clear as day and staring us right in the face!”  She stabbed with the pencil at the wall calendar.  “When do they leave Marseilles?”  Cody gave her the date and she put an X on the calendar.  She looked carefully and then took a red marker and circled another date.  “There,” she said, “if we can get satellite time for just a few hours on this date, we can do it!”

            “Why,” said Frank, “why that date?”

            “Think...like a pirate,”  she said,  “if I was going to run contraband cargo into shore, I’d do it on a night with calm seas and no moon. Here,” she pointed to the calendar, “there’s a new moon on this date.  If the weather service says it will be calm, that’s when they’ll do it.  They’ll probably maneuver to be just on the far edge of the shipping lanes, out of sight and out of contact with any other vessels in the area.”

            “Yes!” said Cody, “that puts them in a perfect position for the EMP burst.  And as soon as they cross into territorial waters, we take them!”

            It took only a few more minutes to iron out the details, assign tasks and put the plan into operation.  By late in the afternoon, it was a full go.  Jake would leave for Marseilles in the morning, but his presence on the ship was purely backup, he would need to take no risks. 

            Cary was straightening her desk and getting ready to leave for the day when Frank stopped her.  “Can I see you for a minute?” he asked.

            “Oh, sure,” she said, glancing at the clock as she picked up a stack of files.

            “I don’t want to keep you.  I just wanted you to know, that was good work you did today.  If this plays out like it should, we will be able to net some very big fish.”

            “Oh, thanks,” she stammered and shrugged, not quite sure how to take a compliment from him.

            “Well, don’t let me keep you.”

            “Oh, sure, uhm, thanks.”  She pushed her hair behind one ear.  Things may have been proceeding smoothly for the past few weeks, but she still felt like a kid in school every time he spoke to her.  She hugged the files close to her chest, “is there anything else?”

            “No,” he said, “that’s all.  I just wanted to make sure you knew.  Good job.”  He paused, on the verge of asking her if she had time for a drink some evening, but thought better of it.  No sense courting a conflict, he told himself. “Well, I get to take Jake to the airport.  Good night,” he said.   He turned and left. 

            She let out the breath she had been holding, put the files down quickly and grabbed her bag.  She was late getting to the shooting range, and she certainly felt she needed all the practice she could get.

            The drive to the airport was just as tedious as ever, and the traffic was just as bad, but Jake was in a terrific mood.  “What’s got you so revved up?” Frank asked.

            “Any day somebody can come up with a plan to keep my butt from getting shot full of holes is a good day to me.”

            Frank smiled and pulled out around a truck, “she came up with a good idea.”

            “Good?  This is terrific!  We don’t just get to plug a hole, Frank, we get to take out a whole system.  By the way, have you noticed how Cary has changed over the past few weeks?”

            “And how!  What do you suppose happened?”

            “I have no clue,” Jake said, “but whatever it is, it should keep on happening.  She’s going to be a terrific agent.”

            “Someday.  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  She hasn’t been involved in anything really risky since your informant got killed.”  He paused and then asked, “do you suppose she’s seeing anyone?”

            “You mean dating?  Talking about getting ahead of yourself!  But I can’t blame you.  She’s beautiful.”

            “I wasn’t talking about dating, I meant, do you suppose she’s seeing a shrink, or maybe some kind of counselor?  I can’t account for the change in her confidence level...”

            “Well, it might have a little something to do with you not jumping down her throat every time you see her, but of course that’s just a wild guess.”

            Frank laughed and they pulled up to the departure gates, “you’re probably right.”

            She crept slowly out to the corner of the old barn, weapon at the ready, held in a relaxed grip pointing upwards next to her ear.  She stopped and listened in the moonlight.  The mosquitoes buzzed around her head, but she remained still.  Sweat trickled down her back but she ignored it.  They had begun the game at dusk and it was now full dark.  She could sense rather than hear that there was movement off to her left, just beyond the side of the building where she waited.  She began her move, slowly, putting each foot down softly and gradually, making absolutely no noise.  Then she saw him, a dark outline against the trees, his back to her, unaware of her presence.  She lowered the weapon and squeezed off a round.  There was a satisfying “thunk” as the shot hit home and then she heard him say, “Fuck!  Is that you, Montgomery?  Where the hell did you come from?”

            “All the way around the perimeter, you sorry son-of-a-gun.”

            “Damn girl!  You are gettin’ good at this.  OK boys!  Game’s over, I’m out!  Cary’s team wins!”

            They gathered in the clearing in the moonlight, seven men and one woman, dressed in fatigues and goggles, and smeared with brightly colored blobs of paint.  She had joined the paint ball club several weeks before and was beginning to actually enjoy the exercises and games they played.  The weapons were not deadly, but they stung when they hit, and the sound gave her an approximation of what live fire was like.  This was the first game that her team had won since she had joined the group.  They went into the barn, turned on the lights and opened the fridge.  The head of the group, an ex-Marine named Danny, tossed them each a beer.  “Montgomery,” he addressed her, holding up his can in a salute, “I don’t know where you picked up your training, but I am damn glad those weren’t real bullets you were using tonight.”

            When she had first joined the group she had been afraid of her own shadow.  Of course that fear was obvious to everyone and as a result, she had come home after each session completely splattered in rainbow hues.  Now however, her confidence was growing.  She had learned that the paint ball only stung, it did not kill, and the noise when the weapon discharged was easily tolerated.  She felt that she was ready to move on to more aggressive training in her campaign to overcome her fears.  She finished her beer and the group began to break up and go home.  She drifted over to Danny.  “This is getting almost easy,” she said.

            “No kidding!  You’re really getting good at this.”

            “I was just wondering, do you know of anyplace where they do this kind of thing, but,” she didn’t know exactly how she wanted to phrase it, “sort of...more intense?”

            “Intense, like with real guns?”  She nodded.  He eyed her and smiled, “You are turning into some kind of extreme lady sharp shooter.”  He paused and considered her question.  “I do know of a guy, served with him in Saudi, runs a kind of a camp off in the hills.  They do some war games on weekends.  I’ll give you his name if you want.”

            “I’d appreciate it,” she said.

            “Mind if I ask why?”

            She walked over to the door of the barn and looked out into the quiet summer night.  “There are a lot of things I’m afraid of,” she said, “and I want to get over that.”  She did not explain further and he did not ask.  He gave her the name.  “Thanks,” she said, “you might have just saved a life, probably mine.”

            Monday morning dawned and she crawled out of bed, very reluctantly.  She hurt all over.  She had spent the weekend crawling around in the hills on her belly, trying to avoid getting killed.  Danny’s buddy, Darrel, had welcomed her presence in his camp without question.  “Nice to see a woman take an interest,” was all he had said.

            She had practiced with a wide variety of weapons, from small arms to fully automatic assault weapons.  At first, the noise had terrified her.  This was much more real than any paint ball game could ever be, but she drove back out to the range every evening and continued her practice with dogged determination.  She went through the obstacle course time after time, live rounds whistling over her head.  On her first attempt she had been pinned down, sick with fear and unable to move.  Choking back the bile that rose in her throat, she had pushed herself forward and completed the course.  By her fifth try, she was making good times and was at last able to ignore the sounds of the bullets and concentrate on the job in front of her.   

            The leader of this group had determined that she had a talent for sniping.  She was methodical and precise and her small size enabled her to get into position without detection quite easily.  On the weekend of the “war” she had been issued a rifle and a gilly suit and she had spent a day and a night crawling in the mud until she sighted her target.  She had cleared her mind, sighted in her weapon, and hit the sandbag dummy square in the head at 500 yards.

            At the end of the day there had been a picnic supper and congratulations all around on the successful conclusion of the game.  She ate and drank and then drove home, wondering if she would ever be able to take such a shot when she had a person in the sights instead of a sandbag.

            Everything was in position.  The night was dark, the seas were calm and Jake had been in position on the freighter since it had left Marseilles.  She stood on the deck of the Coast Guard cutter in the darkness, watching the distant vessel through night vision binoculars.  Even though it was a warm night, and she was dressed in full SWAT gear, she still found herself shivering slightly.  “They’re just inside the territorial limit,” said Frank.  He had come up behind her very quietly but she did not jump when he spoke. 

            “How long do we wait?”  she asked.

            “Just a little while now.  We want to make sure they can’t skip back out into open waters before we get to them.  How are you doing?”

            “Fine,” she replied.  “Once more, tell me how this goes down.”

            “Once the freighter is safely inside our waters we’ll send out a group of very fast zodiacs and choppers.  They’ll stop the boat and wait for the cutter.  Then we’ll board.  If the captain has any sense at all he won’t put up any resistance.  At his present speed and course he has no hope of outrunning us, and if he fires on anyone we get to chase him down.”

            “So we’ve nearly got this one in the bag.”

            “I like the way you put that, ‘nearly’.”

            “No sure things except death and taxes,” she retorted, and they both laughed, then after a few minutes she asked, “can I ask you a question?”

            “Sure.”

            “How do you stay so calm?  We’re about to go in harm’s way and you act like it’s no big thing at all.”

            “It isn’t.  Obviously, this is a dangerous thing we’re about to do, but some days, just living is a dangerous thing.  I trust my training, I trust my equipment, and most of all, I trust the people I work with...”  She looked at him and he continued with a smile she could see even in the blackness of the night, “and yes, I trust even you.  As for the rest of it?  Well, I always figure when your time’s up, it’s up.  So there’s really nothing for me to be nervous about.  Now can I ask you a question?”

            “Sure.”

            “What’s changed in you?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, in the past few weeks I’ve watched your confidence level soar.  So what’s changed?”  He stood leaning on the rail looking at her in the darkness.  She was glad that he couldn’t see her face clearly. 

            “I’ve been practicing,” she said quietly.  “I joined a shooting club.”  She didn’t really want to tell him any more.  She didn’t want him to know how hard it had been and how many times she had spent the evening in the ladies room at the club throwing up into the toilet.  It shamed her that she was such a coward.

            He accepted her explanation without question.  “Well,” he said, “it shows.  Your effort really shows.” 

            She nodded and smiled back at him.  “Thanks,” she said.  She was amazed at how calm she felt now.  When they boarded the freighter from the cutter they would be in extreme danger.  There was no telling what their reception would be.  They would have to take over the ship and secure all the crew members very quickly.  They had practiced this raid with the Coast Guard and the DEA officers who were with them, and she was actually feeling confident that she would be able to carry out her part of the assignment.  All she had to do was follow two DEA men onto the bridge of the freighter and remain there after they had secured and locked it down.  It sounded simple enough.  She took a deep lungful of the clear sea air and continued to watch.

            It was not so simple after all.  The men aboard the freighter put up a fierce resistance.  They had determined that their choices were either to die slowly and painfully at the hands of their employers, or die quickly at the hands of the FBI and DEA.  They chose the latter and turned the takeover of the ship into a running gun battle. 

            As soon as the officers landed on the deck they had been pinned down by gunfire from all quarters.  The ship was still underway and approaching international waters, and so her DEA counterparts had split off in order to flank the bridge and bring the freighter to a halt.  They had succeeded, and now she was in that control room and her task was to hold it.  The DEA men had gone on to help clear the rest of the ship.  The captain lay dead on the floor in front of her.  Amazing, she thought, I never knew that blood had a metallic smell. 

            Helicopters circled overhead, training their high powered spotlights on the disputed areas of the deck.  Shots rang out in every direction.  Through her head phones, she could hear how the battle raged.  Voices gave orders and other voices shouted for aid.  She crouched just below the window level of the cabin and looked out, spotting through her scope and trying to pick out members of the crew who were still keeping up the fight.  At that moment, there was a burst of gunfire near the door of the cabin and a man came rushing through.  He was young, dark, and carrying an AK-47.  He smiled at her.  In the flickering lights from the choppers, she could see that he was missing a front tooth and his clothes were blood stained.  He said something to her in a language she thought might be Spanish, and still smiling, he raised his gun.  She raised hers and fired, without hesitation.  He went down, dead before he hit the floor, his finger still pressing the trigger.  Bullets sprayed the cabin and one ricochet went through her thigh. 

            At first it didn’t even hurt, and she looked down in amazement as the blood, warm and wet, flowed down her leg.  Shit, she thought, now I might not be able to finish my job.  She heard her name in her earpiece, “Cary,” someone called, “are you OK?”

            “Fine,” she said, in as steady a voice as she could manage.

            “Are you hit?”  It was Frank.

            “Yes, but it’s not bad, just a scratch.” 

            “Are you sure?!”

            “Yes!  I’m sure!  How’s it going?”

            “We’ve got a problem.  Jake’s pinned down somewhere on the cargo deck aft of your location.  We can’t get to him...”

            “Give me a sec, let me see if I can locate him from up here.”

            She had crawled across the floor, past the two dead bodies that lay there and found a rag.  It looked like a towel, laying next to a tray of spilled food that might have been the captain’s dinner.  She knotted it around the wound and the flow slowed to a trickle.  Outside the gunfire was slowing, coming in sporadic bursts mainly from the cargo deck just behind the cabin that housed her.  She crawled to the cabin doorway on her belly and peered out.

            Helicopters were circling, trying to pierce the darkness with their spotlights and avoid being hit by stray gunfire.  She trained her scope around the deck.  At first she saw nothing.  Her leg throbbed and burned like fire.  She ignored it.  Jake was out there, in trouble.  Maybe I can still do some good, she thought.  She trained her gunsights around the cargo deck and finally spotted him. 

            Jake was indeed pinned down, trapped behind a container.  She scanned up and around and then she located the shooter.  He was inside the cab of the crane that loomed over the aft cargo deck.  If Jake moved forward, or left or right, he would be gunned down.  “Hey guys,” she said into her microphone, “I’ve spotted the shooter.”

            “Where?!”  Donovan’s voice.

            “In the cab of the crane.”

            “Damn!  He’s got the angle on us.  We’ll have to move some people back to the stern and try to come up on him from behind.”

            “No,” she said, “don’t move anybody just yet...”

            “We have to.  The way he’s pouring fire down on Jake’s position it’s only a matter of time until he hits him.”

            “No!” she said, forcefully into her mic.  “He can rotate that crane and get anyone on deck who’s in the open.  Have everybody sit tight.  I’ve got a shot from up here.”

            “Cary...” he began, and then her earpiece fell silent. 

            She trained her sight on the cab of the crane.  The choppers were doing a good job of keeping it lit up, and she had clear sight of him.  It was about 200 yards.  She thought of all the things that could go wrong.  This was not the rifle that she had practiced with in the hills.  This was not a powerful scope that she was looking through.  This was not a still night on land, but rather the gently pitching deck of a ship at sea, with a crosswind.  And it was not a sandbag with a silhouette tacked to it that she was aiming at, but a real person, a person that was about to take the life of her friend. 

            “Hang tight, Jake,” she said.  She focused.  She controlled her breathing.  She sighted in and squeezed off the shot, and missed.  But the shot blasting through the cab just a fraction from his ear pinned the shooter down long enough for Jake to race for cover.  One of the choppers got close enough to rain fire into the cab and then it was all over.  The last thing she remembered was the lights of the chopper flickering over the cabin and Donovan’s voice in her ear, “Cary.........”

            They stood on the now silent deck and watched the helicopter take her off.  Jake put an arm around Frank’s shoulder, slapping him on the back.  “Frank,” he said, “I think that rookie’s just graduated.”

The End