Code 13 (15 page)

“Sorry, sir,” the skinny young staffer said. “But you've got a phone call I thought you may want to take.”

“Look, Louie,” Chuckie snapped, “unless you've got either Bill or Hillary or Obama himself on that line, it will have to wait until I finish polishing off Congressman Milk here. Got that?” He tossed the ball to Milk. “Your serve.”

“It's from a guy named Vinnie, Senator. He said Phil told him to call.” Chuckie turned around and, with bricks suddenly in his stomach, looked at his staffer.

“He called on your private line, sir. And since we know only a few people have that number, we assumed you gave it to him. He insisted that he talk to you. He said you would want to talk to him. But I can tell him you aren't available.”

“No. Hang on! Don't hang up.” He turned to Milk and held up his index finger. “Mackey, give me a minute.”

“Sure, Senator.”

“You got him on the phone now?”

“Right here.” The staffer held up the iPhone, wagging it in the air.

“Tell him I'll be right with him.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chuckie waited as the aide asked the caller to hold a second, then took the iPhone. He stepped outside of the racquetball court, leaving Louie and Milk inside, and walked into the congressional locker room.

Chuckie looked around to make sure he had privacy, then brought the phone up to his ear. “This is Senator Rodino. May I help you?”

“Chuckie!” The caller stretched out his pronunciation as if they
were lifelong bosom buddies. “This is Vinnie! What's up with all the formal ‘This is Senator Rodino' stuff? I thought we were best pals.”

“Vinnie.” He spoke in a hushed voice. “I told you never to call on this line.”

“Chuckie. Hey. What are friends for? I mean, a true friend reminds us of our roots, right? I mean, take our mutual buddy Phil. He said you would understand. He also said his uncle Sal said you would understand.”

Blood boiled in Chuckie's neck, and his stomach knotted into a twisted mess.

“Ya still there, Chuckie?”

“I'm still here. What do you want?”

“I need to see you face-to-face. Meet me in two hours. Hank's Oyster Bar on Pennsylvania Avenue.”

“Vinnie, it's eight in the morning. Bars on Capitol Hill don't open until later in the day.”

“It'll be open for you, Chuckie. It's a seafood bar. We got connections. Remember?”

The line went dead.

CHAPTER 9

OFFICE OF THE NAVY JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL

ADMINISTRATIVE LAW DIVISION (CODE 13)

THE PENTAGON

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

TUESDAY MORNING

P.J. sat at his workstation. At nine o'clock in the morning, his eyes were already burned into the screen of his laptop as he conducted more legal research on Fourth Amendment issues.

Which way to go?

Already he'd written two different drafts of his opinion letter, one with one result, one with the other.

Part of him wanted to get it over with already. He knew what they all wanted. They wanted him to buck his own conscience and rubber-stamp this thing.

Part of him hoped a case would come down from the Supreme Court that would give him enough legal cover to kill the project before it got started.

At the moment, he was studying a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion favoring the good guys. That is, if one defined the good guys as anyone interested in preserving the Constitution and opposing turning America into a police state.

But on June 25, 2014, the United States Supreme Court, despite an inconsistent, spotty track record on constitutional questions in the last
ten years, finally got one right. In
Riley v. California
, the high court ruled unanimously, in a 9– 0 vote, disagreeing with the Obama Justice Department, holding that police must get a warrant before snooping on people's cell phones.

What a rare, refreshing victory for the Fourth Amendment. The same justices who mucked up the Obamacare ruling in a divided 5–4 split were, finally, on the same page.

“Let's see,” he mumbled under his breath. “Could I cite this case to argue that random drone surveillance would require a warrant? I mean, nine to zero is a strong vote.” He moved his mouse over the court's opinion, copied it, and pasted it into his research file.

His desktop phone rang.

“Code 13. Legislation, Regulations, and FOIA. Lieutenant Commander MacDonald speaking. This is a nonsecure line subject to monitoring. May I help you, sir or ma'am?”

“Boy, that's a mouthful. Is that the way I'm going to have to answer the phone when I report for duty?”

Instinctively he looked over at Victoria, who sat in her cubicle about twenty feet away. Victoria's eyes shot over at him as if she knew who was on the other line.

With the final draft of this opinion due in less than forty-eight hours, the last thing he needed was a looming, hissing catfight on top of everything else. But what could he do about it? It wasn't his idea to station both at the same duty station with him, at the Pentagon, in the most elite, selective appointment in the Navy JAG Corps.

It
was
his idea to ask Victoria out to wine.

But the long kiss wasn't his idea.

But he'd done nothing to stop it either.

In fact, he'd very much enjoyed it, which at the moment compounded the gut-wrenching flood of guilt drenching his stomach.

“Well, whether you answer the phone like that depends on if you want to kiss up to the captain.”

She giggled. “P.J., you know I've never been much on kissing up. Especially not to a captain.”

“You got that right.” He glanced at Victoria, who thankfully
had turned her eyes back to her computer screen. “The Caroline McCormick I know never kisses up to anybody.”

She laughed again. He had almost forgotten how he enjoyed that velvety laugh of hers. “Hey, what are you doing around 1300 tomorrow?”

He checked his watch. “Same ole routine. I'll do lunch, probably grab something from the Center Courtyard Café and bring it back to the office, then maybe PT if I have time.”

“Did you get my text?”

“Ah . . . yes.”
Why do I have the feeling you could have been watching me just before you texted me?
“Sorry. I was going to respond, but one thing led to another.”

“Same ole P.J.” She laughed. “You're still using that old flip phone that gets delayed messages, aren't you?”

He forced a chuckle in return. “I know. But you know me. One of the last holdouts resisting the peer pressure to stick a minicomputer in my pocket.”

She laughed again. “Now, P.J. MacDonald, I thought for sure when you moved to Washington they would have made you move into the twenty-first century.”

“Not quite yet. I'm still rebelling because of all those people and teenyboppers who always keep their noses glued to their smartphones. Those things are turning us into a nation of sheeple. One of these days this old flip phone will wear out, and then they won't be selling them anymore. Because they'll all be obsolete, I won't have any choice. Heck, it was the last one in the store when I bought it.”

“Well . . . as a matter of fact, if you got my text, you know I'm going to be at the Pentagon tomorrow afternoon to see Admiral Brewer and then pop into the offices at Code 13 to say hi to everyone.”

“Super. I heard you might be stopping by soon.” An awkward pause. “So when are you officially reporting for duty?”

“Friday, it looks like. Unless Captain Guy has other ideas. I'll be in Section 134 handling Command Authority Issues.”

“Super. That's what I heard.”
At least they're not putting her over in Ethics with Victoria.

“But listen,” she said. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Oh really? What kind of proposition?”

“Well, you said you might PT later on. Think you could delay your PT to about 1300 and maybe take me out for a run?”

He checked his watch. “You said 1300? Well, the problem is I've got this legal opinion due to SECNAV in less than forty-eight hours.”

“Aw, come on, P.J. If I know you, you've already got the draft done of whatever you're doing, and you've probably already edited it several times and don't want to submit it before you have to because you want the final draft to be perfect.”

He chuckled. “You do know me, don't you?”

“Some things a girl doesn't forget.”

“I've got a feeling there's not much you forget.”

She laughed. “Okay, I'll stop by around 1300, say hello, then maybe we can go down to the locker room, change, and you can take me out for a jogging tour of Washington.”

P.J. glanced at Victoria's darting eyes. “Okay, that would be great. See you then.”

CHAPTER 10

AIRFLITE CORP

U.S. DOMESTIC HEADQUARTERS

OVERLOOKING THE SAVANNAH RIVER

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

TUESDAY MORNING

Richardson DeKlerk brought the glass to his lips, sipping his first spot of brandy for the day. He checked the clock on the wall.
9:30 a.m.

Normally he didn't start drinking until noon so he could get in a full morning's work without being under the influence. But the utter incompetence of both Jack Patterson and Bobby Talmadge had driven him to an early-morning swig. He drained the liquor down his esophagus and thought some more.

Perhaps Jack wasn't all that incompetent. At least he had gotten a dossier on these Navy lawyers who were holding up his billion-dollar contract in the cryptic office in the Pentagon called Code 13.

Of course, Jack
should
have gotten the dossier on the obstructionist bureaucrat JAG lawyers for the hourly rate that he'd been paid. A thousand dollars an hour should have gotten more than a dossier. In fact, Richardson could have hired four or five private detectives to dig up the same information.

But in Jack's expensive defense, at least he got the job done. Information costs money. And in many cases, it costs a lot of money.

With another swash of the intoxicating brew, Richardson picked up the dossier, provided by Jack's firm today, and glanced over it again.

From: Jack Patterson, Esq.

To: Richardson DeKlerk, CEO AirFlite Corp

Subj: U.S. Navy Internal Legal Procedures for Approval of

Contract—Project Blue Jay

Classification: Confidential

a. You asked us to investigate internal U.S. Navy legal procedures for legislative approval of contracts and, in particular, the top-secret project known as “Blue Jay.” As a result, the following is provided:

b. Internal U.S. Navy regulations require full legal vetting of acquisitions contracts for major military systems to ensure full legal compliance.

c. Within the Office of the Navy Judge Advocate General, the legal division responsible for providing such advice is the JAG's Administrative Law Division, also known as Code 13.

d. Based upon reliance on strategic contacts in the Pentagon, we have learned that the action officer assigned to write the opinion letter to the Secretary of the Navy on the legality of the proposed deployment of drones under the contract is Lieutenant Commander P.J. MacDonald, JAGC, USN.

e. A graduate of the College of William and Mary and the University of Virginia School of Law, LCDR MacDonald has been instructed to provide an opinion letter to the Secretary of the Navy on the legality of the proposed usage of the drones under the contract, if approved by Congress.

f. Principally at issue, and under consideration by LCDR MacDonald, are (1)
posse comitatus
implications of the
Navy overseeing the drone project for use by domestic law enforcement (Homeland Security) over U.S. territory, and (2) Fourth Amendment sustainability under the federal government's self-declared Constitution-Free Zone.

g. LCDR MacDonald has been ordered to clear up these issues in anticipation of libertarian and Tea Party opposition in Congress to the project, with the expectation that opposition may be raised on these grounds.