“Get me a flashlight,” he told the old man.

“What for?”

“Just get me one.”

Moving his head this way and that, trying to avoid throwing a shadow onto the box, Harley peered through the crack in the lid, and when Richter slapped a flashlight into his hand, he pointed the beam into the box and put his nose to the wood.

“God will punish you for what you’re doing.”

But Harley wasn’t listening. Although the crack was very narrow, he caught again a glimpse of something glistening inside the box. Something that glinted like a bright green eye.

Like an emerald.

“The dead oughta be left in peace,” Richter solemnly intoned.

On general grounds, Harley agreed. Still, it didn’t mean they got to hang on to their jewelry.

“What did you see in there?” the Old Man asked, finally overcome by his own curiosity. “Was it a native or a white man?”

“Can’t tell,” Harley replied, snapping off the flashlight and leaning back. “Too dark.” Nobody needed to know about this. Not yet. “Get me a tarp,” he said, and when the old man didn’t budge, he went and got one himself. He threw it over the box, then lashed it in place with heavy ropes. “Nobody touches this until we get back to port,” he said, and Richter conspicuously crossed himself.

Harley climbed the slippery stairs to the deck level, then up to the wheelhouse, where Lucas was still holding the course as ordered. But with Harley back, he couldn’t hold his tongue any longer.

“St. Peter’s Island,” he warned. “It’s less than a mile off the starboard prow. If we don’t steer clear of the rocks right now, they’re gonna rip the shit out of the boat.”

Harley took off his soaking gear and resumed his chair. In the pale moonlight, the island loomed like a gigantic black skull rising up out of the sea. A belt of fog clung to its shores like a shroud.

“Take us ten degrees west,” Harley said, and Lucas spun the wheel as fast as he could.

“What was that thing in the nets?” he asked, as the ship was buffeted by another crest of freezing water.

“You worry about the course,” Harley said, staring out at the dark sea. “Leave the rest to me.”

“I was just thinking, if it’s salvage of some kind, then it has to be reported to—”

The ship suddenly juddered from bow to stern, shaking like a dog throwing off water, and from deep below there was the sound of metal groaning. Lucas nearly slipped off his feet, as Harley clung to the control panel in front of him.

“Ice?” Harley said, though he already knew better. Lucas, wide-eyed and white with fear, said, “Rocks.”

A second jolt hit the ship, knocking it to one side, as waves swept the deck and the crab pots swung wildly in the air. One of them hit the Samoan, who, windmilling his arms in an attempt to regain his balance, was carried by the next surge over the side. Farrell and Kubelik were clinging desperately to the mast, the crane, and the icy ropes.

“Jesus Christ,” Harley said, groping for the hand mike.

Lucas was draped across the wheel as if it were a life preserver.

“Mayday!” Harley shouted into the microphone. “This is the Neptune II, northwest of St. Peter’s Island. Man overboard! Do you read me? Mayday!”

From belowdecks, there was another grinding sound, like sheet metal being crumpled in an auto yard, and the engineer, Richter, was bleating over the intercom. “The bulkhead’s breached! You hear me up there? The pumps won’t handle it!”

“We read you, Neptune,” a Coast Guard voice crackled over the mike. “You have a man overboard?”

“Yes,” Harley said, “and we’re taking on water!” He rattled off their position, then tossed the mike to Lucas, as he slipped off his stool.

“Don’t leave me here!” Lucas said, his voice strained and trembling.

“Handle it!” Harley shouted.

“Where the hell are you going?”

“Down below!” Harley answered, as he lurched toward the gangway. “To check the damage!” And something else.

As Lucas clung to the wheel, Harley scrambled down the steps. But he could tell already, just from the tilt of the deck and the terrible racket in the hold, that the ship was lost. He’d be lucky to escape this night alive. They all would.

Maybe Old Man Richter had been right about that damned box, after all.

Chapter 3

For a court-martial so hastily convened, Major Frank Slater thought things were moving along pretty smoothly.

Seated beside his Army-appointed lawyer — a kid with a blond crew cut and the look of someone who had seen more action in a Hooters than he had on any battlefield — Slater had nothing much to do besides sit there in his nice clean uniform and listen to the damning testimony that he neither denied nor apologized for.

Colonel Keener, whose duties in Afghanistan had been deemed too important to send him back to D.C. for the court-martial, testified against Slater by Skype. The computer monitor had been set up on a trolley in front of the panel of five military judges, and Slater and his attorney, Lieutenant Bonham, listened closely as the colonel related the various crimes and infractions that the major—“an epidemiologist,” Keener explained, as if he were labeling him a child molester, “who has no more business being in the Army than my dog does”—had committed in Khan Neshin.

Assaulting a superior officer — which fell under Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Slater learned — was a slam-dunk for the prosecution. After Colonel Keener had made his initial statement, he was asked to stand by while corroborating evidence was supplied. That, too, was easy. A nurse had happened to be down the hall in the med center, and although she had been too far away to hear what the colonel had said to Slater just before the altercation, she had been flown back to the States to testify that she had indeed seen the major throw the punch that had decked the colonel.

“Just one punch?” the head judge, a retired general, asked.

“That’s all it took,” the nurse said.

Slater thought he saw a tiny smile crease the general’s lips.

“And then I called the MPs,” the nurse went on.

“And you have no knowledge of what transpired just before?” the judge asked.

“I found out later on,” she replied. “The little girl had died in the O.R., and the doctor — I mean, Major Slater — just lost it.” Hazarding a sympathetic glance at the defendant, she added, “It seemed like a really momentary thing … like he’d tried so hard to save her, and then, finding out that it was all for nothing, it just sort of tipped him over the edge.”

The general made a note, and the four other judges, all officers, followed his lead and did the same. Because it was a general court-martial — more serious in nature than either a summary or special trial — all told there were five officers deliberating, including three other old men and a woman who looked as if she’d swapped her spine for a ramrod. The prosecutor offered into evidence an X-ray, taken at the med center, of a fracture to Colonel Keener’s jawline. When it was shown to Slater for confirmation, he said, “It’s a good likeness.”

“What was that?” the general asked, cupping his ear.

“My client,” Lieutenant Bonham cut in, before handing the X-ray back to the bailiff, “says that he does not contest this exhibit.” Then he shot Slater a murderous look.

But once the assault and battery charge had been duly noted and the evidence entered into the records, the court moved on to what was considered — from the Army’s point of view — the even more serious charges. While punches got thrown all the time, especially in war zones, it wasn’t often that a commissioned officer issued an order that he knew to be a lie, and in so doing jeopardized a helicopter and its crew. When Slater had called in the mission from the rice paddies, he had not only made a False Official Statement (Article 107 of the code) — punishable with a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for a period of five years — but he had put military property and personnel at risk. (Article 108, among others.)