Targets Entangled (15 page)

“Shit,” Ferrin mumbled, slamming her desk drawer in frustration.

Jerry had already left for the bridge and no one else was currently in the radio room to stand watch. She weighed the odds of leaving but knew she didn’t have a choice. Nothing would get done if she didn’t have her damn glasses. She secured the hatch and quickly made her way through the corridors, hoping she could get back quickly before someone needed something and highlighted that the radio room was unmanned. Ferrin finally arrived at Daegan’s stateroom on the starboard side. She knocked on the hatch, hoping like hell he wasn’t asleep or that one of his teammates might catch her outside in the passageway.

“Couldn’t make it another hour without a kiss, little siren?” Daegan asked with a lopsided grin after he’d swung open the hatch. Ferrin couldn’t help but smile in return, images of them throughout the evening flashing through her mind. It also didn’t help her concentration that he was bare chested, wearing only a pair of cammies trousers. She’d set her alarm for eighteen hundred so that they would have a couple of hours to spend together. After a twenty-minute lecture on safety, to which she only half-listened considering she was one of the more safety cautious people aboard this entire ship, they also spoke at length about the radio frequencies that had been discovered a time or two. She honestly couldn’t give him an answer as to why they were on those settings, but she relayed that Chief Jackson didn’t seem too concerned since it hadn’t occurred again recently. Was she worried that the person who murdered Tami was still on board? Of course she was, just like everyone else—which was why she figured the sooner they got finished with this mission, the quicker they could return to the States where the federal authorities could figure out who committed such a heinous crime. “Or were you looking for a little more than that?”

“I’m looking for my glasses, knucklehead,” Ferrin countered with a laugh, ducking underneath his arm and walking over to his rack. “I can’t be gone long. Jerry is up on the bridge and I figure I have another hour before the crew starts showing up to make their personal calls back home. They should have shut those down when we went ECON earlier this week, but the captain says we need to give the trawler something to listen to other than our official traffic.”

“An hour?” The hope in Daegan’s voice was evident, but it would be to no avail. Ferrin was on duty and that’s where her concentration would remain. She saw her black-rimmed spectacles on the table and had picked them up before his arm wrapped around her waist and swung her around. “Didn’t you mention five or six minutes a few days ago?”

“That was when I was off duty and looking for a distraction.” Ferrin lifted an eyebrow to show him she couldn’t be swindled into anything at the moment. She placed one palm flat on his chest since her other held tight to her glasses. His skin was so warm and tempting that she had to force herself to keep her eyes connected with his. “I shouldn’t have even left the radio room, but I couldn’t do my job without being able to see.”

Ferrin tried to make light of the situation, when in fact it was rather bothersome. She never forgot things and lately it seemed as if Daegan’s way of life was rubbing off on her. She went into her shift yesterday without securing her hair at the back of her neck. That
never
happened. It had taken the stares from Jerry, Roger and Spivey before she realized why. Her hair was rather long and wavy when she let it hang down her back. She could just imagine what she looked like last night and hoped like hell it hadn’t come across as if she’d just had a ton of sex. That was unprofessional and if there was one thing she prided herself on, it was her proficiency.

“Is something bothering you?” Daegan asked in a soft voice, his eyes narrowing in question. Ferrin didn’t want to get into her confusion and dismay that her behavior was changing by being around him, so she shook her head and made sure she smiled with her cheeks. “You’ll tell me if something does though?”

“Of course,” Ferrin said nonchalantly, not wanting to go back to her shift thinking he felt that she was upset by something. This thing between them was to remain light and fun. If it were to take a turn, she was relatively sure that he’d walk away and she wasn’t ready for that quite yet. “I will take one kiss before I head back. It’s going to be a long night with our SatCom link to HQ down.”

Daegan’s left hand brought her closer as his right tangled in the knot of hair she’d twisted at the base of her neck earlier. Her concern for fixing it went by the wayside as his lips descended on hers and his woodsy fragrance enveloped her, carrying her away from reality for the moment. His moist tongue glided over her lower lip and she automatically opened for him, wanting his sweet taste to carry her through the remainder of the night. The thought of this ending with their clothes off and trying for that six minute quickie had her pulling away, albeit breathlessly.

“I’ve got to get back ASAP,” Ferrin whispered as she lowered herself from her tiptoes and rested her forehead against his chest. She felt him kiss the top of her head as he ran his hands up and down her back in commiseration. “Don’t tempt me any more than I already am.”

Daegan chuckled and then escorted her to the hatch. Ferrin didn’t like this part for two reasons. One, she didn’t like leaving the warmth of his arms and two, she was always afraid she’d run into someone. He opened it like it would bear no consequence if Starr were standing on the other side of the threshold while she held her breath and forced herself to walk out into the corridor. She looked both ways, seeing someone turning the corner and recognizing Diesel by his flank. The German Shepherd had glanced back, but not Trigger. She breathed a sigh of relief and then turned to go the other way around to the portside ladder she came down earlier. Daegan’s hand on her wrist stopped her short and yanked her back against him. She tried her best to smother her laugh, not knowing who could hear. He was constantly pushing boundaries and while she found it endearing, she didn’t appreciate the fact that it was also her ass on the line if they got caught.

“Behave,” Ferrin whispered after pushing him away and walking down the passageway, forcing herself not to look back. If she did, she just might take him up on his six-minute offer. She made her way back to the radio room with only a few run-ins and most of those were off-duty crewmembers who wanted to know the best time to show up to make ship-to-shore calls when there wasn’t a line. She finally made it back to the radio room and yelled out for her sidekick as she walked through the hatch. “Jerry?”

Ferrin had half expected him to answer since she knew Spivey had already spent a couple of hours up on the bridge trying to get the primary antenna array back up and online. That was odd. She was sure she had secured the hatch and it was unlocked when she had returned. All the key material was locked up and she always made sure that nothing classified was left out unless it was currently in use. She walked over to her desk and picked up her coffee mug, which she’d washed the night before at the end of her shift. She took one look at the coffee pot and cringed, knowing full well it had been stewing in there since half-way through the last shift. She quickly made another carafe that would last her a few hours and then slipped on her glasses before taking a seat at her desk.

“Radio room, Jerry.” Jerry’s voice echoed throughout the compartment. She unclipped the two-way Motorola radio from her belt but he spoke once more before she had a chance to reply. “Ferrin, are you there?”

“Copy.”

Ferrin waited patiently for Jerry to respond. She stood, knowing that it most likely had to do with testing the array he’d been working on. She made her way toward the SHF radio racks, not bothering to take off her glasses since she’d be looking at jacking into the proper antenna array, pairing it with the SHF radio receiver she would be using for the test on the patch panel.

“Can you run a few tests for me? I need you to run some VSWR tests and give me the readings on the forward and reflected power.”

Ferrin spent a good fifteen minutes running antenna-matching tests on the good secondary array and the suspect primary. Everything seemed to be back in working order and just as she went to radio Jerry, something caught her eye. She leaned back from the unit she was standing in front of, trying to look down the length of the rack. What the hell was sitting on the back of the transmitter two RT slots down the standard nineteen-inch communications rack? That space should remain uncovered in order for the heatsink to wick off the heat generated when the radio was in operation and everyone was well aware of that requirement.

Ferrin took a step closer and bent down to see what had fallen inside the RT rack and froze in front of it. Shit. Her brain scrambled to make sense of what she was seeing and the vision in front of her didn’t change even though she blinked several times. A package that couldn’t be anything other than a bomb was counting down from twenty-one minutes and fifty-three seconds on a digital display. She tried to wrap her mind around the reality of the red numbers and a maniacal laugh came over her, much to her dismay. She tried her best to clamp down on her fear as she gently pressed the Push-To-Talk (PTT) button on her portable and spoke slowly.

“Um, Jerry? Relay to the captain that he’s needed in the radio room ASAP—and I mean now!” Ferrin didn’t touch the device, knowing full well she could set it off just from some type of tamper device. The ship’s buoyancy ruled out the use of mercury switches, however a transfer of static electricity was more than enough to trigger a detonator, she guessed. Whatever Jerry came back over the radio with didn’t make an ounce of sense through the rush of blood pounding through her ears. She pressed the PTT button, needing to state her case most dramatically. “Now, Jerry—both of you. As fast as you can. It’s an emergency.”

Ferrin backed away slowly, as if that would do anything that the ship wasn’t already doing. She couldn’t allow anyone in the radio room beside the captain and Jerry, but she figured neither one of them would know how to stop something of this magnitude. But there was one person who could. She turned and ran for her desk, practically slamming into the metal side. She ignored her trembling hands as she picked up the phone and dialed Daegan’s stateroom. She felt a sob rise up within her when he didn’t answer. She slammed the phone down and lifted the radio to her lips.

“Jerry? Now!” Ferrin didn’t want to say over the two-way that there was a bomb on board the ship. That would create panic, but Chief Jackson needed to know. She changed the channel selector and headed back to where the explosive device was positioned. Twenty-one minutes and four seconds. “Chief, this is the radio room. Over.”

What the hell was taking everyone so long to answer? Ferrin glanced to her right but no one entered the room. She looked back at the red numbers counting down and saw it go below twenty-one minutes. Perspiration coated her skin and her heart pounded in her chest. It had crossed her mind that this was some sort of prank, but no one would go to these lengths, especially after she’d been the one to discover Tami. This was real and they could all very well end up dead.

“Report,” Chief Jackson’s deep voice boomed over the radio, vibrating Ferrin’s already numb fingers.

“You’re needed—” Ferrin broke off when she finally heard the hatch open. She tried her best to keep her panic at bay as she met Jerry’s concerned gaze as he walked her way. “Your presence is required in the radio room immediately.”

“Hewitt?” Captain Hensel walked up behind Jerry with his eyes filled more with irritation than worry. She forgave him since she figured he thought her situation could not possibly surpass what he needed to be doing on the bridge and honestly she didn’t care what he thought at the moment. “What is it that you need?”

“We’re in trouble, sir,” Ferrin announced, proud of herself for keeping her voice so steady. “We have a bomb aboard
The Promised Land
.”

‡

D
aegan, Doc, and
Stick had been shooting the shit for the last few minutes. The two men had knocked on Daegan’s hatch within seconds of Ferrin leaving with her glasses in hand and he wasn’t so sure that was by accident. She might think they were keeping things low key, but it was hard as hell to keep something secret with the whole team quartered in the same compartment even though they had separate staterooms. He knew damn well that the bulkheads weren’t soundproof and Ferrin wasn’t all that quiet.

The three of them had ended up in Stick’s stateroom, trying to figure out what all was happening aboard
The Promised Land
. The discussion highlighted each of the incidents that had occurred on board since their departure and they all finally agreed to request from Starr any evidence Lieutenant Irvine had collected. It was pointless to waste the hours they weren’t spending on their upcoming mission when they could be assisting in apprehending whoever had murdered Tami McDaniel.

“We need Trigger on board with this,” Doc said, standing up and walking to the stateroom hatch. “Starr’s going to say there’s protocol and that our focus should be on the rescue, but it won’t matter if all these events are connected. Shit, I don’t like being closed in with a damn killer on the loose.”