23 The Navy Captain Blamed Me For A Disaster In Front Of The Whole Crew — He Didn't Know My Chief Still Had The Original Recording

The story came out over two cups of coffee in the ship's cryptologic spaces, with the door locked and the lights down.

Ben Ortiz had enlisted in 2003. He had been a cryptologic technician, like Maya, and he had been good at it, and by 2008 he had been assigned to a ship that was doing things in the Gulf that were not on any public schedule.

There had been an incident. A petty officer had reported something she saw. She had been right. She had been investigated. She had been told, by a lieutenant commander she trusted, that her report was "unsubstantiated" and that she should "let it go."

Ben had been in the room. He had been twenty-six years old. He had watched the lieutenant commander destroy a good petty officer's career and he had not said anything, because he had believed he did not have the standing to say anything, and because he had believed that if he said anything, he would be next.

He had been wrong about both things.

The petty officer had been forced out of the Navy three years later. She had gone back to her hometown in Ohio. She had worked at a car dealership. She had raised her daughter alone. She had died at forty-eight of a heart attack, and Ben had found out from a Facebook post, and he had sat in his kitchen for an hour and not been able to get up.

He had promised himself that if he ever found himself in the same situation, he would not let it happen again.

"Here's the thing about a cover-up," Ben said. "It's not one lie. It's a hundred small lies, all of them maintained by people who each only know one piece of the truth. If you pull one lie out, the whole thing doesn't collapse. You have to pull all of them out at the same time."

"How do we do that?"

"We don't do it. We hand the lies to people who can pull all of them at once." Ben counted them off on his fingers. "The deck log. The transcript metadata. The recording. The informant file. The watch officer's testimony. The contractor who marked the transfer complete. We put all six of those things in front of the right people, at the right time, and we don't stop until they can't be ignored."

"The right people being—"

"NCIS. The IG. The Senate Armed Services Committee. A reporter who is not going to fold." Ben looked at her. "And a JAG officer who is not going to be scared."

"I don't have a JAG officer."

"You're going to." Ben reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. "Her name is Aisha Patel. She's a lieutenant commander at the Region Legal Service Office in Norfolk. She's been there four years. She has a reputation for not being scared. And she owes me a favor."

"What kind of favor?"

"The kind of favor a chief can call in." Ben handed her the card. "Call her tomorrow. Tell her I sent you. Tell her everything."

Maya looked at the card.

"Chief," she said, "I need to tell you something else."

"What?"

"Last night, I did something stupid."

Ben's face did not change.

"What did you do?"

"I called a reporter."

"Which reporter?"

"A woman I went to college with. She's at the Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch now. We've stayed in touch." Maya looked at the table. "I told her I had a story. I told her I had a recording. I told her I could prove that a Navy commodore ordered a delay that got a civilian killed."

Ben closed his eyes.

"Chen," he said.

"I know."

"Chen, if that reporter talks to her editor, and her editor talks to somebody at the Pentagon, and somebody at the Pentagon talks to Sloane's detail, Sloane is going to know you leaked a classified recording. That's not an accusation. That's a court-martial."

"I know."