Conduct Unbecoming

"Busy." She had her phone in her hand. "You?"

"Fine," he said. A few months before, he would have elaborated but after realizing she stopped listening beyond the third syllable, he kept it short.

She nodded, and looked away from him as her phone pinged. Whatever was on it held her attention in a way that he hadn't in months.

He watched her for a moment - the softening expression moving across her face - then he placed his plate on the drying rack as she wordlessly left for their bedroom.

He thought about his packet going through another round of scrutiny at Fort Knox. About McCord's quasi-order to tell a woman about a future they seemingly no longer shared.

He said nothing.

He went to bed at ten-thirty and stared at the ceiling in the dark. She came in at eleven, after the texting session on her phone that had absorbed her and made her smile before he turned in. She entered the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Then she got in beside him, saw he was still awake, and automatically pressed her lips against his, a kiss that began and ended in less than a second, perfunctory, final. Then she turned onto her side away from him, pulling the duvet up around her shoulder.

He knew enough to know that reaching for her would not be met with the warmth and welcome that had typified them before. She would be tired, or she would have an early showing, or simply look and sound so irritated and put-upon that any desire he felt would simply vanish.

He had told himself it was the weight of the failed attempts, that it would pass, that all relationships went through such rough patches and after four years together, they were due.

He'd believed it, and used that as his reason to not tell her about his packet at Fort Knox and a move to Alabama. It would simply add uncertainty and more strain when - Danny McCord's weighty recommendation notwithstanding - his being selected was still far from certain.

Until he found the pills. The week before the Grafenwohr rotation. It had been so mundane a thing. Her car had been muddy that Saturday morning as he came back from his run. So, while she lay in, he'd taken her key off the hook and driven it to the car wash outside the base.

Remembering she kept gummies in the glove compartment, he'd opened it and found the paper bag with 'Apotheke' on it. The tablets were helpfully pre-arranged in an organizer for every day of the week. The accompanying prescription and receipt for a month's supply of 'Belara' for 'Miller, Brenda' was dated for the same month. The prescribing doctor and pharmacy were from two towns away.

He had been in the middle of the wash cycle in the car, silent as a weight blossomed into being and settled in his chest even as he tried and failed to find an explanation for what he was seeing.

Fate had not been done with him quite yet.

He was driving back from the car wash when he saw an Air Force Technical Sergeant parked by the side of the road with her hood up. He knew her from a joint briefing and he had stopped to see if she needed help.

She had asked for jumper cables. He had bought a set for each car and he had opened his wife's trunk. He had noticed the gym bag immediately and paused for a moment before bringing out the cables.

They'd connected batteries and started the airwoman's car, and she had smiled and thanked him before driving off.

He had gone back, put back the cables and opened the gym bag. Because it was not her gym bag - he knew her gym bag.

The lingerie inside was still wrapped in the paper from the store. Designed to accentuate and display and then be hungrily taken off or shifted aside. Three sets, tags off, exactly his wife's size.

That he had never seen before.

He'd sat quietly in the driver's seat afterward - the shape of things becoming unmistakably clear, the weight in his chest growing as his pulse raced.

She was still in bed when he returned, and instead of facing her, he had hung her key back on the hook, taken his own and headed off to the flight line.

Outside, a car passed on the street below. Through the floor came the faint murmur of a neighbor's television.

He lay awake and listened to his wife's breathing become steady and deepen beside him as she fell into a guiltless and peaceful sleep.

Then he also turned away. It took a while. But he eventually slept.

________________

The officers' mess was busy enough at lunch that two women at a corner table attracted no particular attention.

Kay had asked Diane to meet her without explanation. Diane had looked at her once in the corridor outside and asked no questions. They had joined the lunch line, surrounded by other officers in blues and OCPs, and carried their trays to the corner and sat down. They said nothing for the first three minutes, just settling down, picking up cutlery, acknowledging the greetings of juniors and superiors alike.

Then Major Diane Russo put down her fork and looked at her. "Okay. What's going on?"

Kay took a breath and told her.

She kept her voice level and delivered it all like a briefing. She told Diane about the GPS tracker for her cat and the blue dot going nowhere near Baumholder.

About the rental car and following the dot to Bernkastel-Kues and watching through the restaurant window. About following her husband and another woman on foot afterward to the bed-and-breakfast he had taken her to. She described standing on the opposite pavement while her husband openly kissed another woman on a public street in a way that told her it was far from the first time.

She told her about Graham coming home the following evening with a story about the subcommittee meeting running long and an overnight at the BOQ at Baumholder. She told her how she had sat across the table and listened to him deliver it and had said nothing at all.

Diane listened to it all without interrupting. Around them the mess hall moved through its ordinary lunch hour rhythm - trays, conversation, the scrape of chairs.

When Kayleigh finished, Diane was quiet for a moment.

"How long ago?" she asked.

"Four days."

"And you haven't said anything to him?" Russo leaned forward. "Or to anyone else?"

"No," Kay said. "You're the first."

Diane looked at her steadily. "Okay." She picked up her fork and put it down again. "Do you know who she is?"

"No," Kay answered. "But I have a picture."

Diane's expression shifted. "Can I see?"

Kayleigh took out her phone and opened the camera roll and slid it across the table. Diane picked it up and looked at it.

The photograph showed a man and a woman stopped on a street. The man's face was turned away from the camera. The woman's was not. Tall, blonde, beautiful, her face turned up toward the man she was leaning into, her expression open and entirely readable.

Diane looked at it for a long moment without speaking.

"She looks familiar," she said.

"I don't know who she is."

"No - I mean I think I've actually seen her. Around the KMC." Diane frowned at the screen. "German, I think."

"I don't care who she is."

Diane looked up. "Could be important."

"What matters is what I can do about it." Kay took the phone back and put it in her pocket. "Walk me through the legal picture."

Diane sat back and looked across at her for a moment, contemplative. "Are you sure you want to go there?"

Kay nodded, aware that her eyes were watering. "Yes."

Diane took a breath. "Adultery is a violation of Article 134," she said, her voice dropping below the ambient noise of the mess. "Chargeable if it's prejudicial to good order and discipline or brings discredit to the armed forces."

"Both apply."

"In theory." Diane paused. "You have one photograph of a woman whose face is visible and a man whose face is not. Taken from a public street at night. That does not open a formal investigation, Kay. It barely opens a conversation."

"I can get more."

Diane looked at her. The mess hall moved around them. Someone laughed loudly two tables over. Neither of them looked up.

"Before we talk about what you can get," Diane said, "we need to talk about who he is."

Kay knew exactly what she was talking about.

Her husband's father had retired with four stars on his shoulders. His grandfather had retired with three. Graham had inherited institutional relationships that spanned over seventy-five years and forged plenty of his own.

Kay pushed the broccoli around on her plate. "You think the Army would protect him."

Diane's lips pressed together, but she nodded. "And there's politics involved. Walter Marsh was at your wedding." Diane reminded her quietly. "If this gets messy - any formal complaint, any investigation, anything that puts Graham Palmer's name in a document with the word misconduct attached to it - lots of flag rank people will be getting calls. Including folks in blue. That... that's not speculation."

Kayleigh said nothing.

"Your next promotion board convenes in a couple months," Diane said. "Your record is clean and competitive. A contested separation from a Palmer, with everything that would follow from his side - I cannot tell you that would have no effect. Because I don't know that it wouldn't."

Kay's hands clenched into fists.

Diane took a sip of water. "Then there's Andy's application to West Point. Still in process?"

Kay took a deep breath. "Yes."

"A Palmer with a grievance and a powerful senator's direct line..." Diane left the rest of the sentence where it was.

Kayleigh looked at her tray. She had eaten very little of her lunch. Across the mess hall the room continued its ordinary business, indifferent to the two uniformed women in the corner.

"So my husband is having an affair," Kayleigh said, "and my options are to do nothing or burn down my career and my brother's future?"

"I'm telling you what the landscape looks like." Diane's voice was careful and direct. "I'm not telling you what to do with it."

"What would you do?"

Diane looked at her for a long moment. "I'd wait. Look at the big picture. Get my promotion. Wait for West Point. Then leave clean."

"And keep sleeping with him, knowing what I know?"

Diane shrugged, smiled slightly. "I can do it. I'm a cold calculating bitch."

Kay almost laughed. It felt good after four days of the hateful weight in her chest.

"Look," Diane said at last. "I don't know what I'd do in your situation. And I think anyone who tells you they know is lying to you."

Kayleigh looked at her. Then she picked up her water and drank what was left of it.

They finished what remained of their lunch, mostly in silence. Then they carried their trays to the return station and walked back out into the corridor. Kay put on her cover as Diane did the same and fell into step beside her, a message in itself.

Less than a minute later, Kayleigh's phone buzzed against her hip.

She unclipped it and looked at the screen. She stopped walking and answered the call.

She listened for twenty seconds as Diane stood beside her, eyes curious.

"Yes, sir," she said. "On my way."

She clipped the phone back and looked at Diane.

"Emergency joint meeting," she said.

Diane looked at her. "We're not done."

"No, Ma'am," Kayleigh said, stiffening to attention. "We're not."

Diane nodded, reached out to squeeze her shoulder and continued on toward the JAG offices.

Kay turned and walked in the opposite direction. The weight in her chest was still there. But her face was composed, her pace military sharp and even.

________________

The briefing room belonged to the Army, in the 405th's corner of Ramstein. Kayleigh was familiar with it. Work and lunch with Graham had brought her over on more than one occasion.

Unbidden, the memory of him bending her over his desk, her skirt up and her struggling to keep from crying out as he rode her sprang into her mind.

It had been a cherished naughty memory. Now the images in her mind featured another woman. Blonde and long limbed, her supermodel's face stored on her phone.

She pushed the thought aside and focused on the results from the new network penetration detection agent Lieutenant Kenley was showing her.

The room was a standard secure facility - cipher lock on the door, no windows, a projection screen at the front and rows of chairs with a center aisle. Two coffee stations had been set up, one on each end of the room.

She came in with Lieutenant Colonel James Osmond and two members of her cyber team, Lieutenant Kenley and Staff Sergeant Dominguez. They took seats on the left. The Army element was already seated on the right, six personnel in OCPs, quiet and waiting.

She set her notebook on her knee, uncapped her pen, and looked at the screen.

The door opened twice more. Two Army officers - O-5s - in AGSUs entered and took seats at the front. A civilian in a dark suit sat in the back corner, silent, keeping to himself.

At exactly 1400 hours a full colonel in Air Force blue walked to the front of the room.

"Good afternoon. My name is Colonel Bannatyne. Needless to say, what's discussed in this room stays in this room. Nothing leaves without authorization from me or above. That applies regardless of branch, rank, or clearance level. Clear?"

The room answered. "Yes, sir!"

"Good." He nodded to someone at the back. The lights dropped and the screen came alive.

The first slide showed a map. Eastern European theater, the Baltic periphery, a corridor Kay recognized from her own operational work. She leaned forward slightly.

"Twelve days ago," the colonel said, "an individual with access to signals intelligence within a non-NATO adjacent government made contact through back channels. He is indicating willingness to provide information about a coordinated infrastructure attack being planned against three NATO member states." He nodded slightly toward the silent civilian. "His information has been assessed at the highest levels as credible and time-sensitive."

Next slide.

"This individual will only deal with Americans and only in person. He will not travel to an embassy. He will not use digital channels beyond the initial contact already established. Whether as a matter of exigence or preference is immaterial. He has given us a window and a location and that window is closing."

Another slide. A satellite image, a road junction, coordinates.

"Simultaneously, we have a separate but related problem." The colonel clicked again. "Two days ago, an unmanned reconnaissance asset conducting collection operations in the same corridor went down. We assess it was shot down - quietly, deniably - by a technical element connected to the same government our contact works for. Someone on that side knows we were listening. The asset contains collection hardware and software that cannot be allowed to fall into hostile hands."

"The asset was equipped with a self-destruct sequence. It did not execute on impact. We assess the shoot-down involved a signal intrusion that corrupted the destruct architecture before the asset went down. They didn't just shoot it down. They took it down intact deliberately. They know what it is, what's on it and they want it all."

He indicated a point on the map several kilometers from the road junction.

"These two objectives will be executed simultaneously by a single joint element. Sequential operations are not an option or our contact's safety would be compromised. You will have each other and your respective capabilities and you will make it work."

He looked around the room.

"The Air Force cyber element owns two objectives. Remote destruction of the downed asset's collection systems before the hostile technical element reaches it. Establishment and maintenance of a secure communication channel with the contact through his exfiltration route. Both simultaneously if required."

"Forward positioning puts your station below their detection threshold. Standard long-range architecture is not an option in that corridor - they are monitoring the spectrum continuously and they have demonstrated the capability to act on what they find. The contact's communications equipment cannot reach standard relay architecture. He comes to you. You don't go to him."

He let that sit for a moment.

"The Army aviation element provides mobility, security, and tactical execution of the physical extraction. They'll move in and exfiltrate the contact from his last reported position when he reaches the extraction zone and provide security for the cyber team's forward position throughout."

He clicked to the timeline slide.

"Departure in seventy-two hours. Staging at a forward location in Romania for forty-eight hours before moving to the operational area. Full mission window is one to two weeks depending on contact timeline and asset recovery. You will be living in close quarters with personnel you have not worked with before. I expect and demand the utmost professionalism and inter-service courtesy." He paused. "Questions on the broad strokes before breakout sessions?"

A hand went up on the Army side. "Rules of engagement, sir?"

"Covered in the breakout." The colonel nodded. "Anything else?"

Silence.

"Air Force cyber, room three with Colonel Hollis. Army aviation, room two with Colonel Weir. Reconvene here at 1500. Move."

Chairs scraped. The room reorganized. Kayleigh capped her pen and stood.

Osmond touched her elbow. "Hold a moment."

She waited while the room emptied around them. Across the aisle the Army element was filing out, their own CO, Lieutenant Colonel Haskell, pausing to speak briefly to the colonel at the front. The civilian in the dark suit had already gone.

Haskell crossed the aisle with the colonel and Osmond stepped forward to meet him.

"Jim." Haskell extended his hand.

"Mark." They shook. "Good to work together again."

"Likewise." Haskell looked at Kay.

"My cyber lead," Osmond said. "Captain Palmer. She owns both air force objectives."

Haskell nodded at her. "Captain. Your equipment footprint is going to drive our security positioning at the forward location. I'd like time before 1700 to go over requirements."

"Of course, sir," Kayleigh said.

Haskell turned back toward his element still moving through the door and raised his voice slightly. "Miller."

The soldier who stopped and turned back was in OCPs, a Staff Sergeant's insignia on his chest, just under six feet so she had to look up slightly. He came back into the room at a measured pace and stopped beside Haskell.

"Sirs. Ma'am," he said, saluting.

"Nate's my maintenance and ground security lead," Haskell said. "He'll need your team's equipment list and power requirements for the forward position setup."

"Captain Palmer will see it gets to you," Osmond said.

"Staff Sergeant," she said.

"Ma'am." He looked at her directly - attentive, level.

"I'll have Sergeant Dominguez coordinate the equipment list with you before 1700," she said.

"Appreciated, ma'am."

Haskell looked between them. "Good. We'll sort the rest in the breakout." He moved toward the door and Miller fell in behind him without being asked.

Kayleigh watched them go and then turned back to Osmond with a raised eyebrow.

"Haskell's solid," Osmond said. "Two combat deployments. He runs a tight ship."

"Yes, sir."

"This is a small element, Kay. Fourteen people in close quarters for up to four weeks." He met her gaze. "Ever done this before?"

He knew the answer, but she answered anyway. "Not in the real world, sir."

He tilted his head. "But you'll make it work."

"Yes, sir," she confirmed, confident.

"Attagirl."

She rolled her eyes.

He grinned.

They moved toward room three.

The breakout session ran ninety minutes. Lieutenant Colonel Hollis walked her team through the technical parameters of the asset destruction protocol, the communication architecture for the contact's exfiltration channel, and contingency sequencing if either objective encountered interference. Kay asked nine questions. Kenley asked five. Osmond asked only two. Dominguez filled four pages of shorthand.