Code 13 (5 page)

As the singing died down, Catherine heard, “To our captain!”

“Hear, hear! To our captain and our skipper.”

Glasses were raised in the air. Alcohol flowed.

Caroline sipped her red wine, then took another sip. As the wine lightened her head, his eyes found hers again.

Somehow she knew he had gotten his way. He would always get his way.

CHAPTER 3

OFFICE OF THE NAVY JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW DIVISION (CODE 13)

THE PENTAGON

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

MONDAY AFTERNOON

The Pentagon, the nerve center for the most powerful military machine ever assembled in the history of civilized mankind, had been built in the middle of World War II, of Indiana limestone, on what amounted to swampland by the banks of the Potomac River.

In addition to its five equidistant sides, making it the most recognizable building in the world, especially from the air, the massive building had five “rings” and five “levels.” The rings were associated with the order of prestige and rank. The most prestigious, the outer E-Ring, housed the Secretary of Defense and many four-star flag and general officers.

Just inside the E-Ring, separated by several feet of open-air space, was the D-Ring, which housed a lot of three-star officers. The C-Ring housed two-star officers. Inside the C-Ring was the B-Ring, and inside that, the A-Ring.

Each of the Pentagon's rings had its own exterior walls, and with the exception of the E-Ring, the exterior views outside the windows of each ring were only the exterior walls of the ring just inside of it or outside of it. Not much of a view. Only the E-Ring windows, which
overlooked the Potomac, Arlington Cemetery, or the snaking turns of the Shirley Highway, allowed anyone to see outside the entire building.

All the rings were connected by interior covered walkways radiating inward, from the E-Ring all the way to the A-Ring. The five inner walls of the A-Ring surrounded the open-air courtyard known as Ground Zero, so named because it was the bull's-eye target of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles during the Cold War and then of savage Arab terrorists during the War on Terror.

Ground Zero featured an outdoor food court, the Center Courtyard Café, where Pentagon employees would congregate for lunch during nice weather in the spring and fall, but which could be an open-air oven or a cold wasteland at other times.

Part of the mystique of the Navy JAG Corps' elite Code 13 was its location at the Pentagon, giving its officers easy access to the Judge Advocate General, the Secretary of the Navy, and even the Secretary of Defense.

But what remained unsaid, indeed unknown to the rest of the Navy JAG Corps, which looked upon the mysterious Code 13 officers as the super elite, was that the work spaces assigned to the crème-de-la-crème were among the dumpiest in the Navy.

Yes, they were the most powerful, the most influential, the brightest of the Navy JAG Corps, but their work environment sure didn't show it.

The problem was that they were in the Pentagon, which, for the midgrade officer on a military career path, was the plumiest of assignments. But the Pentagon was also home to more high-ranking brass than any other place on the planet. And a lieutenant commander, or even a captain or a commander at the Pentagon, would always take a backseat to the officer wearing stars on his collar.

Lieutenant Commander P.J. MacDonald, JAGC, United States Navy, had, before coming to Washington, been accustomed to receiving salutes, to having subordinates come to attention for him, and to sometimes having the waters parted for him, all because he wore a gold oak leaf on his collar.

All the attention had been kind of nice. Rank had its advantages. No problems waiting in line.

But he left all that behind in San Diego, a major working naval base, where something like 90 percent of all naval personnel ranked below him.

But P.J. MacDonald would never forget the day he first arrived at the Pentagon. He had parked his car way out in the hinterlands of the parking lot, walked across the asphalt for what seemed like a mile, passed what seemed to be about ten thousand cars. But when he arrived at the sidewalk by the entrance of the building, he witnessed a sight he would never forget.

A tall U.S. Air Force officer stood in the bus line, holding his briefcase, waiting for a public bus to Northern Virginia.

At first P.J. didn't think about it.

But as he walked past the officer, he realized his mind was now registering a delayed reaction.

Wait a minute. Had he seen that right?

Surely that had to be the silver oak leaf of a lieutenant colonel on the officer's epaulette. Why else would he be standing in the bus line?

P.J. stopped, turned around, and took another look at the officer.

His mind had told him it had to be an oak leaf, because an officer wearing a star would never be holding his own briefcase at a military installation. But the oak leaf, on second glance, really was a single silver star!

And when P.J. realized he was witnessing a one-star brigadier general standing in the bus line at the Pentagon, holding his own briefcase, waiting for a bus, reality hit him.

On any other military installation in America, any one-star flag or general officer, whether a brigadier general in the Air Force, Army, or Marines, or a rear admiral, out in the open would be the recipient of spit polish and brass, ruffles and flourishes. A star on an officer's collar, even a single star, usually meant the sounding of military band trumpets, a red-carpet rollout, and fanfare. Even without the trumpet call, when a general or an admiral entered the building, everyone jumped to strict attention, not breathing until the “at ease” command was given.

In the fleet, a general or admiral would have an entourage surrounding him wherever he went. Usually a junior aide would carry a flag officer's bags and take care of menial matters, while a senior aide took care of correspondence and more substantive matters. Then there would be an enlisted man serving as the admiral's driver, for the flag or general officer always had his own personal staff car, complete with flapping blue-and-white flags on the hood above the headlamps, depicting the number of stars on the officer's collar.

When a general or admiral's car pulled into a military installation, others, not part of the official entourage, would swarm around, trying to get face time with the high-ranking officer and to ingratiate themselves with the seat of military power.

Against this backdrop, and understanding the awe and reverence for a star on the collar out in the “real” military, P.J. found himself immobilized.

An Air Force one-star.

Standing in the bus line.

Carrying his own briefcase.

P.J. watched as the general stepped onto the bus and disappeared among all the other passengers. Then he thought about the gold oak leaf on his own collar, signifying a full three ranks below the general, and remembered the words of those around him when news broke of his assignment to the Pentagon.

“You'll be making coffee for the admiral. You'll be getting the admiral his toilet paper and taking him his lunch.”

Well, it hadn't been that bad. Officers at Code 13 did, in fact, handle some of the most top-secret military matters confronting the Navy.

But in terms of the space where he had to work, it was that bad.

They put Code 13 down in the basement of the D-Ring, four decks below the office of the Judge Advocate General, Vice Admiral Zack Brewer.

Most people didn't even know the Pentagon had a basement, but for the Pentagon insiders, if anything resembled a dungeon in the building, this was it.

The sight of all kinds of creatures crawling about on the unpainted
cement floors in the huge underground corridors circumventing the D-Ring of the Pentagon had a certain symbolic relevance. Midlevel officers, like Navy lieutenant commanders or Marine Corp majors or Army captains, all wielded about as much power in this great citadel as the rodents creeping about on the bottom floor. The midlevel and junior officers here were accustomed to the classic “low man on the totem pole” treatment.

Incandescent lights hanging from the ceiling cast a dim glow in the basement corridor. One could see, but there was always a bit of an adjustment period stepping out of the brightly lit office spaces into the large, darker corridor.

P.J. had walked down the corridor and up the steps to the main deck, then stepped out into the courtyard for a few minutes, trying to clear his head. After enjoying five minutes of sunshine and taking in the breeze, he finished his bottled water and headed back into the building.

He was on his way back to the Code 13 spaces when a huge gray rat crawled right in front of him, so close to his feet that he almost kicked it.

Like a schoolkid traversing a crosswalk, the rat took its time, undaunted by the presence of a human, as if it had legal, proprietary rights to the basement and could file an injunction if anything got in its way.

They were arrogant creatures, these river rats of the Pentagon basement, bold and fearless of the humans intruding on their spaces.

P.J. watched the huge rodent as it crossed from the left bulkhead to the right bulkhead, then squeezed its fat body into a small hole, its six-inch tail still protruding out onto the floor.

As ugly as these creatures were, somehow they proved mesmerizing, and something always made P.J. want to stop and watch. Maybe it was because he was one of the few people in the world who got to witness one of the Pentagon's best-kept secrets.

Rats in the basement.

One would have thought the airplane that exploded into the building on September 11, 2001, would have incinerated them all. But after the blast, it seemed that the cockroaches and rodents not only survived but actually thrived.

P.J. waited until the rat's black tail disappeared into the hole in the plastered wall, then walked up the concrete passageway to the next bend in the Pentagon.

No more than fifty feet beyond the rat, a simple blue-and-white sign over a door along the left interior corridor proclaimed “Navy JAG Code 13 —Administrative Law.”

Time to get back to work.

He punched in the security code, waited as the locking mechanism hummed and electronically unlocked the steel door, then stepped into the spartan work space.

Under bright fluorescent lighting and with a blue Astroturf-like carpet on the floor, the JAG officers of Code 13 shared adjoining workstation-cubicles in a largely open room. Only the division commander occupied an enclosed office.

Altogether, twenty-one JAG officers composed the JAG Corps' most elite operations: five officers in each of the four subdivisions, plus one Navy captain, Captain David C. Guy, also a JAG officer, who served as the division commander.

Many of them would be deep selected by the next officers' promotion board, meaning they would be promoted to the next rank at least one year before their peers. All of them were virtually guaranteed to make captain. At least one of them, probably, would one day become Judge Advocate General of the Navy.

Because of their elite status, they were often referred to by other JAG officers in an under-the-breath manner with several half-envious, half-sarcastic nicknames.

“The Chosen Twenty-One.”

“The Lucky Thirteeners.”

“The Bright Boys of the Basement”—a rather sexist moniker, because not all of them were male.

Together, these twenty-one JAG officers made up the legal brain trust of the entire United States Navy, whose bases and ships were scattered to the four corners of the earth.

P.J. had been assigned to Section 133, which handled legislation, regulations, and Freedom of Information Act requests.

“Welcome back, Commander,” said the cute, new, redheaded lieutenant in the Ethics Division. “How was your walk?”

“Not bad. Only saw one in the passageway on the way back.”

“Gross. I don't want to hear about it.”

“Well, I think we're safe in here. But if you need an escort in the passageway, I'm your knight in shining armor.”

“My hero.” Lieutenant Victoria Fladager smiled, beaming those magnetic green eyes at him, a delightful split-second distraction before returning to his dilemma.

P.J. turned away from her, sat at his sparse cubicle, leaned back in his chair, and held the written directive he'd received that morning up against the fluorescent light.

How had he gotten into this?

The Secretary of the Navy and Captain Guy wanted his legal opinion, and no matter what opinion he rendered, it could potentially end his career.

After rubbing his eyes, he started reading it again:

From: SECNAV
To: Lieutenant Commander P.J. MacDonald, JAGC, USN (133.3)
Via 133
13
001
01
Classification: Top Secret
Subj: Request for Legal Opinion—Project Blue Jay

1. Project Blue Jay is a project proposed by Commander, U.S. Naval Air Forces, which, if congressionally approved, will begin a massive drone surveillance program of the coastal regions of the United States, including all of the U.S. East Coast, all of the U.S. West Coast, all of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico coastal regions, and the coastlines of Alaska and Hawaii.