Chapter 1 - The Salvage Dock
"You stole from a Navy wreck."
Commander Peter Vale said it as he upended Morgan Hale's dive bag onto the wet deck of the salvage dock. The bag was a heavy canvas duffel, government issue, stenciled with her name and her rate and her command. It hit the deck and split open and everything inside came out — her dive watch, her spare mask, a folded towel, a ziplock bag of energy bars, a paperback novel with a salt-stained cover, a small plastic bottle of lens defogger, her logbook, her father's dog tags on a chain, and a small brass nameplate that clattered across the deck and came to rest at the toe of Vale's boot.
Morgan Hale did not move.
She was thirty-six years old. She was a chief petty officer in the United States Navy, a master diver assigned to the Naval Sea Systems Command's salvage detachment at Naval Base San Diego. She was still in her dive undersuit — a dark neoprene shell that she had been wearing under her dry suit for the three-hour dive that had ended at 11:40 that morning. Her hair was wet and tied back and her hands were still shaking from the cold water. She was standing on the wet steel deck of the salvage dock with her arms at her sides and the gray Pacific light coming off the water behind her and the cranes of the salvage yard rising up against the sky.
The dive crew had gathered. There were six of them — five men and one woman — and they were standing in a loose half-circle at the edge of the dock with their helmets in their hands and their faces careful. A Navy investigative agent in a dark jacket was standing at the back of the half-circle with a folder under one arm and a recorder in her hand and a face that gave nothing away.
Vale bent down and picked up the brass nameplate.
He turned it over in his fingers. It was small, no bigger than a man's palm, and it was corroded green with salt and time. It had two holes in the top corners where it had once been screwed into something. It was engraved, in careful block letters, with two initials and a date.
T.H. — 04
Vale held it up.
"What is this?" he said.
Morgan did not answer.
"What is this, Chief Hale?"
"Sir," Morgan said, and her voice came out steady, "that is a brass nameplate."
"I can see it is a brass nameplate. What I want to know is what it was doing inside your dive bag."
"Sir, I recovered it from the wreck."
"You recovered it from the wreck." Vale's voice was flat. "Chief Hale, the wreck that this detachment was tasked to dive this morning is the wreck of the Sarah K, a commercial fishing trawler that sank off Point Loma in 2018 with three crew members aboard. The Sarah K is the property of the United States Navy for the purposes of this salvage operation. Anything recovered from the Sarah K is the property of the United States Navy. Anything recovered from the Sarah K is required to be turned over to the salvage officer — that is me — at the end of the dive, in a sealed bag, with a recovery log, so that it can be catalogued, photographed, and entered into the official inventory. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then why is this brass nameplate in your personal dive bag instead of in the recovery bag on that table?"
Morgan looked at him.
"Sir," she said, "because I wanted to bring it to you myself."
"You wanted to bring it to me yourself."
"Yes, sir."
"Why?"
"Because when I found it, sir, I recognized it."
Vale's face did not change.
"You recognized it."
"Yes, sir."
"Chief Hale, are you telling me that you recognized this nameplate from the wreck of a commercial fishing trawler that sank in 2018?"
"No, sir. I am telling you that I recognized the initials on it."
The dive crew had gone very still.
The investigative agent had not moved. She was watching Morgan with an expression that had gone, very slightly, from neutral to careful.
"What initials?" Vale said.
Morgan looked at the plate in his hand.
"T.H.," she said. "Those are the initials of my father. Thomas Hale. He was a chief boatswain's mate in the Navy. He went missing at sea on the fourteenth of October, 2003. He was serving aboard the destroyer USS Anzio at the time. His body was never recovered. His status was changed to killed in action in 2005, after a formal review. I was twenty years old. I have been trying to find out what happened to him for sixteen years."
Vale's hand had not moved.
"Chief Hale," he said, "I am going to ask you one more time. What is this plate doing in your dive bag?"
Morgan did not answer immediately.
Then she said, "Sir, when I found it — inside the hull of the wreck, in what used to be a berthing compartment on the starboard side — I read the initials. And I read the date. And I realized that the date — 04 — is the year after my father disappeared. And I realized that the initials were the initials of a man who was never assigned to the Sarah K and who could not possibly have been aboard her. And I realized that the Sarah K is not what we have been told she is. And I realized that somebody in this command has been lying to this detachment for a very long time."
Vale's face had gone very still.
"Chief Hale," he said, "do you have any idea what you are saying?"
"Yes, sir," Morgan said. "I am saying that the wreck we dove this morning is not the Sarah K. I am saying that the wreck we dove this morning is a United States Navy destroyer that was supposed to have been decommissioned and sold for scrap in 1997. I am saying that the destroyer is the USS Anzio. I am saying that my father's nameplate was inside the hull of the USS Anzio because the USS Anzio was never decommissioned at all — because somebody in this Navy sank her in secret in 2004 and left her at the bottom of the Pacific and told the families of the men who died aboard her that the men had been lost in a storm."
The dive crew had not moved.
The investigative agent had not moved.
Vale's hand had closed around the brass nameplate.
"Chief Hale," he said, "you are under arrest."
"Sir," Morgan said, "before you arrest me, I want you to look at the plate one more time."
"Why?"
"Because the number 04 is not the year, sir. It is the hull number. The nameplate was screwed into the door of a berthing compartment. The number 04 is not a date. It is the compartment number. And in a Navy destroyer, the berthing compartment is on the second deck, forward. In a commercial fishing trawler, there is no second deck. There is no forward berthing compartment. There is no compartment 04. There is no T.H. who ever set foot on a trawler that was built in a boatyard in Louisiana in 1989 and fished for squid off Point Loma for twenty-nine years."
She looked at him.
"Sir," she said, "the wreck we dove this morning is not the Sarah K. It is a Navy destroyer that was supposed to have been scrapped twenty-two years ago. I want to know what happened to my father. And I want to know why this command has been diving on a Navy wreck for the last three weeks and filing the recoveries as the property of a fishing boat."
Vale looked at the plate in his hand.
He looked at the dive crew.
He looked at the investigative agent.
He looked at Morgan.
"Chief Hale," he said, "you are under arrest."
He turned to the investigative agent.
"Special Agent," he said, "please take Chief Hale into custody."
The investigative agent did not move.
"Commander Vale," she said, "my name is Special Agent Diane Reyes. I am a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. I have been assigned to this detachment for the last two days. I have been observing this salvage operation because my office received an anonymous complaint six weeks ago regarding the recovery records of this detachment. I have been observing this operation because my office has been investigating the wreck of the Sarah K for the last three weeks. And I have been observing this operation because I do not believe that the Sarah K is the Sarah K."
Vale had gone very pale.
"Special Agent Reyes—"
"Commander, I am going to ask you to hand me that nameplate."
Vale did not move.
"Commander Vale," Reyes said, "I am going to ask you one more time. Hand me that nameplate."
Vale handed her the nameplate.
Reyes turned it over in her fingers.
She looked at the initials. She looked at the number. She looked at the corrosion. She looked at the screw holes.
Then she looked at Morgan.
"Chief Hale," she said, "this wasn't listed in the official inventory."
Morgan looked at her.
"Ma'am," she said, "no, ma'am. It was not."
"Then what wreck did we really recover?"
Morgan did not answer.
She did not need to.
The dive crew already knew.
The ocean already knew.
And somewhere in the files of a Navy that had spent sixteen years telling a twenty-year-old girl that her father had drowned in a storm — somewhere in those files — there was a document that said the USS Anzio had been sold for scrap in 1997, and that the man whose initials were on the plate had died a hero, and that the plate had never existed, and that the girl had never asked.
She had asked.
She had asked for sixteen years.
And now, on a wet steel deck in San Diego, with a green brass plate in her hands and a NCIS agent at her side and her commander standing three feet away with his face the color of the gray Pacific behind him — she was finally going to get an answer.
The answer was not going to be the one the Navy had told her.
May you like
It was going to be worse.
And it was going to be true.
