Free Double Vision by Vicki Hinze Page B

couldn’t.”
    “Played dumb?” That, unfortunately, often worked. Can’t get blood out of a stone.
    “The naval inspectors weren’t sure he was playing.”
    “Someone had to have a hypothesis.”
    “They had no idea.” Forester shrugged. “The Navy didn’t have a 360-degree visual on the ships, but if anything was dumped off, divers didn’t spot it. What we know is that no cargo washed up on the shore.” He rubbed at his nape, pondering again, and his left eye started to flicker. “Douglas felt certain the crews were dumping and later retrieving weapons, anyway. Though he had no idea how they were doing it.”
    Kate rolled this all over in her mind, waiting for the puzzle pieces to find their proper slots and fall into place. When they had, huge gaps still riddled the puzzle. “Did any proof surface later? Anything that could explain the oddity?”
    “No.” Forester stood and began to pace. He’d apparently thought about this a great deal and that he couldn’t figure out what was happening frustrated him. “No hard evidence of anything we could attribute to any of the ships was located.”
    “Then whatever they dumped had to be liquid.” Which raised some pretty scary possibilities. Some chemicals never break down. The water would be contaminated, killing anything in it and they could get into the saline conversion systems that refined the water to make it potable. Drinking water would be a thing of the past; they’d have to import it.
    “I thought of that, too,” Forester said. “But we ran water samples and they came back normal.”
    Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “Then Douglas had to be right—unless they released air.” Which could also be laced with deadly contaminants.
    “Air samples were clean, too.” Forester paused near the center tent pole and looked back at her over his shoulder. “Douglas was monitoring another low-riding boat when he disappeared, Kate. I authorized it and signed the order.”
    “Oh, boy.” She could’ve condemned him, but from the look in the major’s eyes, he was slamming himself more than enough for both of them. “Why?”
    “Because of this classified information he had, Douglas considered it essential to the security of our troops. We have 150,000 men and women in theater, Kate. How could I refuse to authorize it?”
    She stared at him, long and hard. “You couldn’t.”
    He swallowed hard. “What if GRID does have him? After all you’ve told me about what they do, this doubling business…” He stopped and shook, before stuffing a tightly clenched fist into his pants pocket. “What have I done to him?”
    Kate searched for the right words, but concluded there weren’t any. It was the burden of every senior officer who sends those under his command into harm’s way. Responsibility. Fear for their safety. Guilt. More guilt. And still more.
    Such a bitch of an emotion, guilt. It doesn’t care where it hangs its hat. It’ll settle on anyone’s head that isn’t covered.
    “Commander, look—”
    “Nathan,” he said softly. “Call me Nathan.”
    “Okay, Nathan.” She walked over, clasped a reassuring hand to his biceps. “You did your job. Douglas is in a dangerous profession by choice. He isn’t a lamb you led blindly to slaughter. You need to remember that—and to believe that we’ll find him.”
    “But when we do, will it be him or one of GRID’s doubles?” Forester’s frustration escalated. “Hell, Kunz was in Leavenworth. Arrested, tried and convicted, and it wasn’t even him. How will we know Douglas is Douglas?”
    Kate scanned for a way. “We’ll use the bag of sand. Only Douglas would know he sent me the bag of sand.”
    “Unless he tells them.”
    Drug and mind manipulation therapy. He could tell them. “Remember the flirting?”
    Forester frowned.
    “We can use that. We can act as if Douglas and I have a thing. If he goes along with it, we know he’s not Douglas. If he doesn’t, then we’ll know he’s