ninja who seeks revenge?”
“His own superiors are supposedly hunting him. But if he comes after me, or, more importantly, after Karen Lawrence, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”
Hiroshi thought some more about it. “And if you remove this man, would this not please your superiors? As well as all the other superiors who want to find this man?”
Train grinned. “You have, as usual, hit the nail on the head. I thought that Is what my boss had in mind. He may yet want that, but he is not permitted to say it.”
“Your boss is a most devious boss,” Hiroshi observed, getting up. “I will release the night dogs now. When will you leave in the morning?”
Around ten or so. I’ll need time to go over my plans with Commander Lawrence. And I badly need some real sleep.”
Hiroshi nodded again. “This woman has no husband?” he asked. “He died about a year ago-She remains sad.”
Hiroshi cleared his throat. “What?” Train asked. “Kyoko says not that sad.”
Train eyed the old man. “Don’t you start, Hiroshi.”
“Kyoko says Train-sama must open his eyes. Hiroshi says Kyoko is interfering old woman. Hiroshi says-“
“Hiroshi says good night.”
There was the barest hint of a smile on the old man’s lips.
“Hiroshi says good night, Train-sama.”
Train smiled to himself as the old man closed, the double doors behind him. Kyoko had been after Train to get a wife for’about ten years now, and old Hiroshi had probably been threatened with severe chastisement if he failed to pass along her message about Karen. Not that sad. He chuckled.
Then he put in the diskette and forced his weary eyes to focus on the screen. He had to enter a standard NIS access code and then his personal security identifier code before the file would open.
The file began with a biographic history. John Lee Sherman. Lee and Sherman, now there was an interesting apposition of last names. Born in San Diego, California, January 1967. Parents William Taggart Sherman, Marcia Kendall, aka Beth Sherman. There followed a laundry list of residences tracking the admiral’s duty stations, and a schools list, which terminated in 1986 With graduation from Washington -and Lee High School. A homeboy. Right here in the Washing I ton area.
The military service section picked up the bio. Enlisted in the Marines at Quantico, Virginia, on 5 December 1987.
Four months of basic at Parris Island, three months of advanced infantry training at Lejeune, and then joins the recon battalion. Well, well, well. The recon battalion was the Man . the Corps version of Special Forces troops. Kid must have done exceptionally well to be picked up right out of the training pipe. When Train had been in the Corps, you couldn’t even apply for recon until you’dserved successfully in the Fleet Marine Force for at least a year. And yet his father had said the kid got into the Corps via what the recruiters euphemistically used to call “a judicial referral.”
That didn’t square with the elite recon assignment. So, young Jack must have had either a unique skill set or a unique personality. Train was ready to bet on the personality. He scrolled down to the discharge info.
Hello. A bad conduct discharge in January 1990. That meant a special courtmartial and something relatively serious.
He scrolled up and checked out the last physical description in the bio: five-seven, black hair and brown eyes, 155 pounds. That was still pretty accurate, even now, except for that scraggly beard. He yawned and hid to blink his eyes to keep them focused. Got to get some sleep.
The physical description dated back to Jack’s graduation from boot camp.
A little guy, by Marine Corps standards.
And yet his pack and-gear would have weighed more than one-third of his own body -weight, so a. very strong little guy. Little was the wrong word; wiry better described it. He paged down to the section on criminal records, which was in two parts, preenlistment and then the subsequent civilian entries. Sure enough, there was his teenage track record, with three arrests, one for breaking and entering, one for drunk and disorderly, one for possession. But no convictions. Three arrests in two years, but no convictions. A snitch maybe? His father said he ran with bad company.
Maybe a gang. He windowed further into the arrest record and looked for adjudication codes. PB-plea bargain on the last arrest, the B and E beef. Off to the county boot camp.
the police boot camp to the Marine boot camp, which explain why he had done well. Already knew how to say, “Sir, yes, sir!” at the top of his lungs, “What’s the right answer, maggot?”
“Sir, anything you say it is, sir!”
A genius-level recruit by Corps standards.
He sat back from the screen. A high school grad, but with marginal grades. Three arrests, lowlife punk type, goes to police boot camp.
That in itself was a little strange, given his age, which had to have been around nineteen. Then he gets into the Corps. Thirty years ago, he could have accepted that on face value. But this had happened in 1987, and things had become a whole hell of a lot more selective by 1987. Even with his old man pulling a few strings, this just didn’t sound like the kind of guy the Corps -wanted.
He screened up the military record. the Page Thirteen showed assignments and promotions. Boot camp. Advanced training. He had joined the recon battalion in the fall of 1988. Promoted one pay grade June 1989. BCD seven months later. The Page Thirteen had an entry listing the special courtmartial but not the charges and specs. JAG records ought to have that. Maybe Karen could get them on He thought about it. If a guy didn’t work out in the rec force, he’d be shipped back to the FMF until his hitch was up. But this had to involve more than just a misfit. A special courtmartial, and a poisonous discharge paper that he would carry around for the rest of his life.
And there was the post-enlistment civilian arrest record.
Possession of marijuana. DUI and speeding on a motorcycle.
A second DUI charge that was later dropped due to contested evidence. An assault charge, dropped because the complainant had failed to appear in court. Regular pond slime, our boy Jack. But all low-level stuff.
Train considered the current address. Most of the Cherry Hill area overlooked the Potomac, separated from the river itself by the main north-south line of the railroad that serviced Washington.
He closed the file and shut down the PC. He rubbed his eyes and then looked at his watch. It was well after eleven.
Suddenly, he was very sleepy. He tried to conceptualize a pattern out of the file on Jack Sherman, but nothing surfaced. The admiral had told them he divorced his wife in 198 1, when Jack would have been just entering high school.
Mother a drunk, kid in the full emotional flame of male adolescence, and Pop bails to save his career. Good recipe for producing a bent kid.
Yeah, like you know anything about. Still, Sherman had achieved the pinnacle of his profession, admiral’s stars, while his wife ended up eating a gun and his only son was probably hustling pot to the riffraff who hung around the main gates of the Quantico base. And even those brand-new stars hadn’t saved Sherman the moment there was a whiff of scandal. That exclusive club he’d been dying to join for so many years was apparently ready to deep-six him.
Or were they? Carpenter had assigned Karen Lawrence and Train von Rensel to run some cover for him, or at least until Karen’s abduction. The tasking had become ambiguous, as if Carpenter was suddenly scared of something more than just bad press for the Navy. Now Sherman was apparently missing, but Carpenter and company didn’t seem very concerned about that. There had to be something they knew-some bits of privileged information flickering around that, famous flag-protection circuit-that Carpenter, for some odd reason, wasn’t going to share with them.
He stared at the glowing embers in the fireplace while Gutter snored quietly in the comer of the study. The hot coals swam in and out of focus. This whole case was being expertly steered into a box canyon of some kind. Surely Mcnair and the Fairfax police had access to the same kinds of information NIS did. So why hadn’t they found Jack?
Who was telling them to back out, and why were they so willing to go along? Local cops hated federal
