Backblast, Candace Irving [i love reading books .TXT] 📗

wasn't Nabil Durrani lying on the deck, clinging to life.

It was his cohort, Tamir Hachemi.

4

Regan stared at the body of the Afghan translator who'd murdered her CID partner in a terror safe house in Charikar thirteen days earlier. Why was Tamir Hachemi even on the ship? Shouldn't he be stateside, well on his way to Leavenworth by now?

"Gangway!"

The owner of the deep, disembodied voice behind Regan didn't bother waiting for her to move. Instead, a pair of oversized paws clamped about her upper arms, physically hefting her up and carrying her three steps into the compartment before dropping her back down on her boots. Based on the camouflaged uniform and stethoscope hooked around the petty officer's neck as he passed, she assumed he was a corpsman. A shorter, wirier Navy lieutenant with matching camouflage and stethoscope—plus a bulging, stereotypical black bag—was a step behind.

To Regan's shock, Agent Riyad was not. The NCIS agent had spun around and was headed in the opposite direction—out of the space.

By the time Regan had refocused her attention on the crisis at hand, the ship's doc and hulking corpsman had converged on the translator's body, nudging the equally beefy pair of Marines out of the way as they took over CPR. The corpsman was at the translator's chest now, the doc at his head. Regan had learned enough from Gil to know the clear tubing Dr. Mantia retrieved from his bag would be used to intubate Hachemi. Once the doc had the translator's airway reestablished, the corpsman took over, working the attached airbag, steadily squeezing oxygen into Hachemi's lungs as the doc moved down to their remaining priority—Hachemi's heart.

From the frown darkening Mantia's face, it still wasn't beating.

Fortunately, another corpsman—this one a petite Filipina petty officer—chose that moment to barrel into the conference room and across the linoleum with a portable, suitcase-sized crash cart in tow.

Within moments, the doc had the defibrillator rigged and charged as the male corpsman parted the front of Hachemi's navy blue overalls in a single rip, exposing the translator's hairless chest. The doc brandished the paddles and, "Clear!"

A dull thud resounded through the compartment, followed by silence.

A good fifteen minutes and a steady slew of shocks followed with nothing in between but the ever-present creaking of metal and the near non-stop medical lingo that passed between Mantia and his assistants as the doc ordered a pharmacy of medication into the translator's veins. The doc finally reached out, staying the hand of the corpsman still steadily working the balloon. Mantia shook his head and sat back on his haunches, glancing past Regan's shoulder to meet Riyad's stare.

Until that moment, she hadn't realized the NCIS agent had rejoined them.

Resignation and defeat scored the doc's frown. "Time of death, zero seven fifty-eight. He's your responsibility now. Sorry."

The corpsman reached out to gather up the gear they'd used to try to resuscitate the translator.

"Stop." Regan jerked her chin toward the array of vials and expended syringes now littering the deck. "Leave everything exactly where it is."

At least until she'd photographed it.

She'd get started just as soon as everyone else cleared the room.

The doc nodded and stood. He glanced at his bag. "May I—"

"Yes." She pointed toward the defibrillator. "You can have that back, once I've arranged for disposition of the body."

Another nod. "I've got a ship-to-shore call to make. I'll return with a body bag."

Regan waited for the doc to clear the space. Both corpsmen filed out behind him, dejection in their every step. Hachemi might have been a traitor—and these sailors had undoubtedly known that—but it was always rough for medical personnel to lose the fight, no matter the patient. Especially when they'd invested so much of themselves in the effort.

Regan bristled as Riyad drew the Marine corporal aside. It was clear from his body language that Riyad intended for her to remain ignorant of the contents of their chat. Before she could cross the compartment, the NCIS agent ordered the corporal to the captain's cabin to brief the man.

Regan held her tongue as the kid complied. The corporal would return soon enough, and she could take his statement then.

She was itching to take Riyad's too. Where the heck had he disappeared to while the crisis was in full swing? More importantly, why?

Unwilling to grill him in front of the remaining Marine, Regan turned to study the compartment. As conference rooms went, it was unimpressive. Though there was plenty of room for the oversized U-shaped briefing table, most of the chairs were missing. The four that remained were skeletal metal numbers with unforgiving seats. The chairs were positioned in two separate groupings, with the first two facing her from the far side of the U at the head of the conference room. Both chairs appeared to have been thrown back from the table, as if their occupants had moved in haste.

The second two chairs were still mostly facing each other along the starboard bulkhead at one end of the U. Like the first pair, these chairs also appeared to have been thrown back from the opposite sides of the table. Despite the constant motion of the ship, two Styrofoam cups—one half full of black coffee, the other empty—sat on the table between the facing chairs.

Good Cop/Bad Cop?

If so, from the still glistening splatter of lightened coffee across the side of the table, as well as the upper right corner of the back of one of the chairs and a two-foot swath of deck nearest her boots, the time-honored interrogation technique had failed.

The evidence might mesh with Riyad's personality—especially bad cop—but he'd been below in the stateroom with her.

Chief Yrle was a possibility. The woman did carry a master-at-arms rating. She was, in effect, the warship's sheriff. But if Yrle had screwed up that morning as Riyad had so rudely asserted, would he have let the chief near one of the US government's most prized terror detainees?

Not likely.

That left the Marines as the most obvious choice.

Unfortunately, Riyad had sent the corporal on an