Her expression changed to dismay. ” ‘Things’? Autistics aren’t ‘things,” Mr. Stafford.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean the kids were things. I meant conditions such as autism, Down’s syndrome, problems like that.” He concluded that she must be pretty nervous to have snapped at him like that.

“No. We’re not equipped to deal with the special cases. And the school part of it is a supplementary schooling. We mainstream our kids as quickly as possible once we can determine a grade age for them. But most of them need a great deal of remedial work, both academic and emotional, as you might imagine.”

There were definitely noises coming from upstairs.

“Naptime is over,” she said, glancing up at the ceiling. “Mrs. Banning will be bringing them down soon. The littles have their lessons in the morning, then lunch, then naptime. In the afternoon we usually do a group project with the farm animals out in the barn.”

‘ ‘And Jessamine?”

“She’s in public school.” She rose.- “Why don’t I give you a tour?”

“Sure. But Mrs. Warren? Then you’ll tell me what this is all about?”

She eyed him warily. “If I think I can trust you, yes, I will.” She paused at the doorway, standing in a way that revealed the fullness of her figure. “That’s perhaps unfair,” she said. “Let me rephrase: If I think you can handle something that requires extreme sensitivity and discretion, and not act like some government cowboy closing hi on Ruby Ridge, yes. I know that’s perhaps impolite, but I don’t know you, and you do come from Washington.”

Stafford, taken aback by her vehemence, managed a game smile. “And neither of those things much recommends me, I take it.”

She did not return the smile. “That’s correct, Mr. Stafford. You’re in the north Georgia mountains now. People here have a low regard for Washington and all its works.”

Stafford nodded. “In my experience, Mrs. Warren, that’s a sentiment shared by more than a few people,” but I am a federal officer. My job is to ferret out fraud against the government, fraud committed by government employees, for the most part. In my small way, I serve the taxpayers. None of us in federal law enforcement, however, ever expects to mitigate the larger frauds perpetrated by the government”

She detected the exasperation in his voice. “I apologize if I’ve hurt your feelings, Mr. Stafford. But this matter involves a young girl who’s been through some very difficult times. I suppose what I’m saying is, I need to take your measure before I proceed with this. Please be patient with me, and I think you’ll understand.”

He felt like telling her to knock herself out; he had nothing else to do with his afternoon. And yet her-concern seemed genuine. She hadn’t asked him up here just to rail against the federal government and all its minions. Besides, she was interesting. He wanted to know more about her, the home, and what she was doing here. “As you wish, Mrs. Warren,” he said. “How about that tour?”

She took him through the lower floor of the house, showing him the classroom and the dining area, which was really just one big table rigged for small children in the kitchen area. There were play areas out on the left-hand porch, and a small playground outside, which he had not noticed when he arrived.

“What’s in there?” he asked, pointing to the closed double doors to the right of the main hall.

“That’s where I live, Mr. Stafford. I have a small suite of rooms on the ground floor, and that side of the porch has been blocked off.”

He nodded without comment She moved with unusual grace, and he found himself staring at the back of her neck as she turned away, the glimpse of smooth white skin beneath all that luxurious black hair stirring him.

At that moment a chattering group of children came flying down the main staircase, followed by an older woman who was telling them to walk, not run. They skidded to a stop, piling on top of one another on the last step when they saw Stafford. There were three boys and two girls, all somewhere between four and seven years old. Mrs. Warren made introductions.

“Kids, this is Mr. Stafford. He’s a federal investigator from Washington, D.C. Mr. Stafford, these are the kids. We use family nicknames here.”

She pointed in turn to each of the three boys. “That’s Crash, that’s Hollywood, and that’s No-No.” She then turned to the two girls, both of whom were trying to hide behind the boy known as Crash. “That is Too, on the left, and, last but not least, is Annie. And supposedly in strict control of this crew is Mrs. Benning, one of our teachers.”

Stafford nodded at them while putting a smile on his face. They all stared back at him as if he were from Mars. Mrs. Benning took charge and herded them all out the front door, where the noise level resumed at full volume. Mrs. Warren indicated they should follow.

“We have three elderly horses, six Nubian goats, chickens, some guard geese, and undoubtedly some other assorted creatures back in the barn,” she said. “The kids do projects out there in the afternoon. Mr. Jackson is the barn and grounds caretaker. He takes care of the animals and teaches the kids something about animal husbandry. We’ve found that caring for animals improves their chances for dealing successfully with people.”

He caught a faint scent of perfume as she walked in front of him. “And why do you suppose that is?”

“Because animals have personalities, needs, fears, and urges. They communicate these things, just not in English. By teaching the kids to be conscious of how the animals do communicate, they learn to pay attention to another being, to look for those manifestations I spoke about. If you catch them young enough, and they have the basic intelligence, they’ll eventually apply those same skills to humans, and if they do that, they’re more likely to succeed than people who don’t.”

“Which is most of us.”

“Well, you say you’re an investigator. I would imagine you pay attention, don’t you?” She said this with a hint of a smile, which softened her face. First the Iron Lady. Now a hint of the coquette? Was she flirting with him? He was confused, but he certainly was paying attention.

They walked around the side of the house and out toward the barns. The pond on the left was rippled by a small breeze stirring through the bright green limbs of the surrounding willows. “How many employees do you have here?” Stafford asked.

“We have four: Mrs. Benning is one of two full-time teachers; Mrs. Coney is the other. They alternate days, taking the kids through lunch, nap, and the afternoon activities. Mr. Jackson is only here in the early morning and i afternoons. Mrs. Hadley is our cook, but she’s only here f at mealtimes. They all have families down in Graniteville. We have a doctor and an LPN whom we can call. I live ; here except when I’m traveling on research trips.”

“Do you teach?”

“Yes. I take care of individual learning problems and run the home. It’s funded by the state, which pays a per diem allowance for each child under care. There’s a lot of paperwork.”

“I’m in the government, Mrs. Warren. You don’t have to tell me about paperwork. You mentioned travel.”

“Yes, I’m a doctoral candidate at the University of Georgia in Athens.

I’m studying indigenous American sign languages. And sometimes there are other trips.”

“Like the one where we met in Atlanta?”

She stopped by the gate to the barnyard area and looked ‘- across the field to the base of the mountain that rose behind the farm. “Yes. With Jessamine.”

She did not elaborate, so Stafford kept his silence while they watched the kids groom two of the horses under the direction of an elderly black man. She’d tell him when she was ready, or not tell him at all. He sensed there was no point in his asking any direct questions about the elusive Jessamine. The warm breeze molded her dress to her body, and he was a little embarrassed at how hard it was to keep his eyes off her. He imagined for a moment that there was a sexual tension growing between them, but then he immediately dismissed it as the product of an overaetive imagination amplified by prolonged abstinence. It had been ridiculous for him to think she’d been flirting with him. And yet … They had been standing there for a few minutes when a noisy yellow school bus ground its way up the hill out front and stopped in front of the driveway. A lone passenger got out, and the school bus roared away in a cloud of diesel exhaust, wearily pursued by a stream of frustrated cars and pickup trucks. Stafford watched as the girl came up the driveway, carrying her book bag like a baby across her chest. She was dressed in baggy jeans, a blouse, and a sweater. Stafford was unable to get a clear look at her features because of the distance. The girl waved tentatively at Mrs. Warren with the fingers of her right hand, then went directly into the house. , “That’s Jess,” she said.

“She doesn’t join the horse activities?” he asked. f “When the kids are done, she’ll come out to ride. She’s a teenager, Mr. Stafford. She doesn’t play with he little kids. Do you have children?”

‘ ‘Nope. I was married for several years, but we recently divorced. We never made time for kids.”

She nodded but, to Stafford’s great relief, didn’t say anything.

“What’s back there, Mrs. Warren?” he asked, pointing to a gap in the willows where a well-defined path paralleling the creek led back toward the mountain’s slope.

“Please, call me Gwen,” she said. “Back there is How ell Mountain and the national wilderness area. Fancy a walk?”

“Sure, and please call me Dave.”

The path took them through the tail end of the willow grove along the banks of the creek, with the pasture fence to their right. After fifteen minutes they entered a small gorge. The green bulk of Howell Mountain loomed up on both sides. He wondered if either one of them was properly dressed for a hike in the mountains, but it quickly became apparent that this was a regular exercise path for Gwen Warren. She led the way at a fairly brisk pace, without speaking. Stafford was suddenly glad he had been exercising, although he was having to control his breathing to keep from puffing out loud. He also had some trouble balancing himself with one arm stuck in his pocket.

After twenty minutes they reached a clearing next to a pool formed by a small waterfall. The view back down the gorge was spectacular. The air was cool and clean, scented with the aroma of leaf mold, wet stone, and falling water.

The path continued on up the gorge, although it looked to be much steeper. She paused and asked how he was doing.

“Fine,” he said, still trying to mask his heavy breathing. It hadn’t looked it, but they had climbed nearly two hundred feet. Only the top of the house was visible through the trees. “How far does the path go?”

“Up to the top of the gorge. There’s a bigger waterfall up there. After that, the federal wilderness area begins. Want to continue? I always ask, because some people are unused to climbing.” He explained about his balance problem, and she walked over to the edge of the path and found him a stick. She asked him what had happened to his arm.

“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said. “Couple of hopheads hit a convenience store and started shooting. I caught a ricochet in the arm. Sitting in my car, if you can believe it.”

“Did you shoot back?”

“No, this one came through the window. We’re not normally armed, Gwen.

I’m not a street cop. Most of what I do involves unarmed paperwork.”

She smiled. “Will you get it back?”

He took his hand out of his pocket and extended his arm slowly and very carefully. His right hand was somewhat pale in comparison with his left. He was barely able to make a fist, and his fingers trembled visibly.

“They tell me yes,” he said, trying not to show the strain he was feeling. “I do a series of rehab exercises, and I guess there is some minimal progress.”

He was surprised when she took his right hand in both of hers. Her hands were surprisingly warm. “Keep trying,” she said. “At our age, minimal progress constitutes victory.” Then she smiled at him again, released his hand gently, and turned to continue up the trail.

He took off his suit’jacket, loosened his tie, and put his hand back in his pants pocket while he followed her up the mountainside. It was harder going, with more rocks and ruts than before, but with the stick, he made better progress and was mostly able to keep up with her. He was content to enjoy the mountain scenery as well as the occasional glimpse of her beautiful legs ahead of him. Forty minutes later they reached the second waterfall, which was indeed much larger. The spray from the water chilled the air, causing him put his coat back on, even while he thought how nice it would be to plunge into the deep pool at the bottom of the falls. She must have read his thoughts.

“I sometimes come up here to swim,” she said. “Although that’s a lot colder than it looks. We’re nearly to the top of the pass; let’s finish the climb and then we can rest.””

He followed her again, this time on a path that snaked diagonally across the side of the mountain, whose top appeared to be nearly a thousand feet above them, until they reached another notch in the mountain. The path up this defile was steep and narrow, and he had to concentrate on keeping his footing. A couple of times he nearly went down on all fours to maintain his balance. Gwen, he noticed, was simply picking her footing more carefully than he was. After fifteen minutes, they reached the top, where she sat down on a flat benchlike rock. He stood by the rock for a moment to recover his breath. He noticed that she did not seem to be particularly winded, although the direct sunlight had brought out a sheen of perspiration on her brow. She hiked the dress back up over her knees, and extended her feet to stretch her legs. He looked away, not wanting to be caught staring at her again.

The view from the notch was well worth the climb. Willow Grove was clearly visible in the narrow valley below, bounded by intermittent patches of white concrete where the state road climbed the lower flanks of Howell Mountain. A church steeple and the clock tower of the county courthouse in Graniteville were visible across an expanse of trees, and the scarred, rocky shoulder of the gravel quarry rose up into the mountain air on the other side of town. The view through the notch behind them was even more magnificent, extending for miles to the north, east, and northwest, presenting a veritable sea of rolling tree-covered hills and rocky crags, all draped in a smoky blue haze. There were even larger blue-green shapes crouching on the distant horizon. A warm wind blew through the notch.

“That’s the tailbone of the Appalachian Mountains directly to the north,” she said. “That’s Tennessee to the left, North Carolina to the right. The area directly in front of us is part of the Chatahoochee National Forest. It’s all federally protected wilderness area, which begins right about here. The Willow Grove property comes to the top of this notch.”

“Wow. This is some prime real estate. I take it that your family has been here awhile.”

“Yes, awhile,” she said, looking out over the panorama in front of them.

A solitary hawk soared soundlessly in lazy circles above them. The breeze stirred the mass of black hair on her head, revealing the smooth line of her neck. She patted her hair back into place. He felt a sudden strong desire to touch her, an urge he quickly banished. Get a hold of yourself, he thought. She is not coming on to you.

“Anyone live out there?” he asked, pointing north.

“Officially, no. That is all a federal wilderness area. Nothing can be taken in or out of there, not even firewood. You can walk through it, but don’t get hurt, because any rescue will have to be done on foot. No helicopters, ATVs, or any sort of motorized vehicles can go back in there.”

“So no one would be allowed to live out there.”

“Not officially, no. When the wilderness area was created, the government moved everyone out. But some of the families had been there for two, three hundred years, Mr. Stafford. It wouldn’t surprise us if some of them hadn’t slipped back to the old ways and the old places.”

He nodded, picking up on her use of the word us. In other words, we locals know some things that you, an outsider, will never be permitted to know. What had Ray said? Black hats, long black beards, and moonshine? Then he noticed something else that made him ask another question. “And would some of the children who end up here in Willow Grove possibly come from out there?” ;

She turned to look at him, her eyes widening in surprise. “What prompted that question?” ‘ “The fact that the path keeps going,” he replied, pointing to the far side of the notch. The path indeed kept going, showing up again halfway down the opposite slope before disappearing into a stand of hardwoods halfway down the mountain.

She looked down the path for a long moment but did not reply. Then she got up and brushed past him, saying, “We should get back.” He again decided not to push it. He had to assume she was still making up her mind about him. The less he said, the better chance he had that she would come out with it.

As they came out into the clearing near the lower falls, he heard the sounds of hoofbeats coming up the path. Moments later, Jessamine appeared, mounted on a black horse. She saw them at once, reined in gently, and waited for them to approach. She was very slim, but surprisingly full-breasted for a teenager. She was wearing short boots, jeans, and a sleeveless white shirt. Her arms were tanned, and she had much darker eyes than Gwen had. Her face had the pinched look of someone struggling with a chronic illness. As Gwen drew near, the girl began to sign excitedly with her hands. Dave, not used to being around horses, remained a few steps back.

“She was getting worried when we didn’t come back,” Gwen said.

“Normally, I don’t take visitors beyond the lower falls.” The girl was looking over at Stafford, clearly expecting an explanation. Gwen introduced them. ‘ This is Mr. Stafford from Washington, Jess,” she said. “We saw him in the Atlanta airport, remember? When that man fainted?”

At the mention of the man fainting, the girl’s face froze for a moment.

Gwen immediately reassured her. “No, Jess, it’s all right. Mr. Stafford is a policeman. told you

I was going to invite him up here, remember?”

The girl gave him another frightened look, and then she began to shake her head slowly. She was clearly agitated now, and the horse was picking up on it and starting to dance around. With one hand on the reins, she managed another few seconds of signing, then pulled the horse around and trotted off, not giving Gwen a chance to reply.

“I assume that she’s not happy to see me?” Stafford said as horse and rider disappeared into the first of the willow trees below them.

“She’s scared,” Gwen said with a sigh. “Oh, this is so complicated. I don’t really know what to do.”

Stafford thought about that for a moment. “Is there someplace you and I can have dinner around here?” he asked. “Besides the Waffle House?”

“No, not really,” she replied, starting back down the path. “There’s a tourist lodge over in Galloway, but that’s a thirty-mile drive through the mountains—one way. Not good at night.” She paused. “Why don’t you stay here for dinner?” she said. “Mrs. Hadley is a competent cook, and what we have to talk about is going to take some time.” “I’d like that very much,” he said. “Let me get checked into the motel, and then I can come back, say, what, six-thirty, seven?”

“That’s fine. The house and kids should be settled down by then.” She looked in the direction the girl had gone. “Most of them, anyway.”

THURSDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 4:20 P.M. Carson received the first call from the Pentagon at four twenty in the afternoon. A Major Mason from something called the Security Working Group at Army headquarters was on the line, wanting to speak to the DRMO manager. His secretary patched the call to his office and then left for the day.

“This is Wendell Carson speaking.”

“This is Major Mason, Mr. Carson. I’m with the Security Working Group, HQDA. We’re a long-range study group trying to scope out better ways to apportion funds to secure logistical assets. I won’t bore you with our full terms of reference, but we came up with a question you might be able to help us with.”

“Sure, Major. Fire away.”

“Do you have a demilitarization facility at your DRMO?”

“Yes. We’re the only one with a full-scale demil facility in the Southeast.”

“And can that facility contain toxic by-products of the demil process?”

“Yes.”

“How toxic? And how completely are they contained?” Carson explained the thoroughness of the Monster’s digestive system.

Mason was silent for a moment as he made notes. “Okay,” he said. “Then if something went through your demil system, say a container with a CW residue, there would be no release of any by-products of that process?”

Oh shit, Carson thought immediately. They’re here.

“No. The system is completely contained. If something was radioactive, the residue would still be radioactive, but chemicals? No, chemicals are neutralized. Why? Do you think some CW has gotten into the DRMO system?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Mason replied quickly. “Better not be anything like that going on, right? No, I was just using that as an example of an extremely toxic substance.”

Carson thought he detected a whiff of anxiety in the major’s almost-too-quick reply, but he played along. “Damned right there had better not be anything like that getting into the DRMO pipeline. But the system is pretty safe. We have the EPA in three times a year to ensure we’re right and tight, and the by-product dealers, especially the bulk chemical feedstock companies, run tests on everything they buy from the derail process.”

“Okay, great. Thanks for your input, Mr. Carson.”

Carson thought fast. “If you have any further questions, Major, feel free to call. Oh, and may I have your number, please?”

“Sure,” Mason replied, and gave him a phone number.

Carson recognized the Virginia area code. He hung up and studied the number, which looked to him like a Pentagon exchange. HQDA, Mason had said. Headquarters, Department of the Army. Asking about the demil process and containers for chemical weapons. A tendril of apprehension coiled in 1us belly. If the Army had discovered that a cylinder of CW was missing, how would they go about tracking it down?

Carson knew his Army. They’d be extremely surreptitious about it. The Security Working Group. That could mean anything, or nothing. Then another thought whacked him between the eyes: Was this perhaps the real reason Stafford had shown up on his doorstep, apropos of absolutely nothing? Without warning from JDLA, other than that single “look out, here he comes” phone call? With some fanciful cover story about his being shit-canned out of headquarters? Jesus H. Christl Did they suspect him already?

He pushed aside his stack of paperwork and sat there in his office, mulling over the possibilities for almost an hour before finally picking up the phone and calling back the number Mason had given him. No one answered. He studied the number, then called it again, subtracting one from the final number to see if it had been an extension. The phone rang, but still no one answered. It was five thirty, so most of the Pentagon inmates would have escaped for the day. Then he had an idea. He got out his Department of Defense phone book and looked up the number of the Pentagon information operator. He gave her the number and told her it didn’t appear to be a working number. She tried it, and came up with a ring but no answer. He asked if he might have transposed a digit. She did some checking and then came back on the line.

“That number is a working number. It’s an extension in the office of the commanding general of the Army Chemical Corps,” she said. “Do you want to try the base number in the general’s office?” “No,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure I had the number right. I’ll try them again in the morning.”

He hung up the phone gingerly, as if not wanting to provoke a return call. Son of a bitch, he thought. The Army Chemical Corps. Mason had been lying.

So they knew the cylinder was missing.

And they knew where to start looking. They we’re tracking the shipment of environmental containers.

He got up and paced around his office. The bad news was that they had found out the thing had gone missing. The good news was that the only other person who had known that the cylinder was here had been “processed” out of the picture. Which left two loose ends: whatever investigation was going on about Bud’s house fire, and, possibly, but only possibly, Investigator Stafford, who was out of town for the day.

He went down the darkened hall to Stafford’s temporary office, which was unlocked. He switched on a light. All the DRMO reference binders were still piled on the desk. The blotter was covered with doodles and scribblings, a couple of phone numbers Carson didn’t recognize, and the names Lambry and Graniteville.

Graniteville? Why did that name ring a bell? He studied the blotter.

Then he remembered. The weird girl in the airport. Had Stafford gone to Graniteville? Was that why he had wanted a state map? He sat down in Stafford’s chair, thinking hard. If the Army knows, the Army is going to come here, sure as shit. I’ve got to warn Tangent. The deal has to go on hold for the moment. The thought of maybe losing his shot at a million dollars almost made him physically sick. But, he thought, this still might work out. If I can convince the Army that all the containers went straight through to demil, then they might take the easy way out—claim that the cylinder was destroyed, declare victory, and go home. That would leave the cylinder even easier to sell. Then the only loose end would be Stafford and whatever the hell he was doing up in Graniteville, and with whom. He went back to his office to retrieve the current 800 number for Tangent.

THURSDAY, WILLOW GROVE HOME, GRANITEVILLE GEORGIA, 8:30 P.M. Mrs. Hadley had proved to be more than a competent cook, and Stafford was comfortably replete as he sat down in one of the rocking chairs out on Owen’s private porch. There was a three-quarter moon rising over Howell Mountain, and he thought he could still see the spring colors in the willows and fields around the house. Gwen brought out a tray of coffee and sat down in the other rocker. She had changed clothes for dinner, wearing now a much more flattering dress. The kids had been fed .early and sent upstairs. She had been more animated during their own quiet dinner in the kitchen, telling him more about Willow Grove, how the state programs for orphaned children worked, and of the constant battle for funding. He told her about his own work with kids in the Boys Club program up in Washington, and how funding had become pretty difficult for that operation, too.

After dinner, she told him about the children and their origins. Crash, a four-year-old fast neutron who never quite seemed to make it arourtd corners and fixed objects without a collision, had been orphaned by a trailer fire. Hollywood was the oldest boy; his nickname arose from his fascination with video movies. His father had killed his mother in a drunken argument, packed his three children into the pickup truck, and then had driven jt into a mountain river at fifty miles an hour.

Hollywood, the only swimmer, got out and made it to the shore, where he was found curled up on a tree stump two days later by a deputy sheriff.

No-No came from less violent circumstances: He had been found hiding in a Dumpster up along the Tennessee border as a two-year-old—parents or relatives entirely unknown. For the first six months at Willow Grove, the only word he spoke was no-no.

Of the little girls, Too had been handed to the Department of Family and Children Services by her mother when her heroin addiction had closed in and she sensed she was dying. The child had been on the brink of death by starvation by the time the state intervened. Her nickname also arose from sorhething she said, which was most often heard at mealtimes, where she would hold out her hand and say, “Too,” meaning, they finally realized, “Me, too,” whenever food was handed out. It had taken her a year to understand that she wasn’t going to be starved anymore. Last, and saddest, was Annie. Annie was a crack baby, a bright, energetic, loud child who could learn anything —for two minutes. Then it was as if she had never even seen the person who had just taught her to tie her shoelaces. Annie was bound for special placement as soon as she was five, or as soon as there was an opening, whichever came first. Courtesy of her mother’s crack habit, Annie would never be able to learn and retain anything, although she would probably live as a ward of the state well into old age.

Stafford had wondered aloud if the children would make it into normal, mainstream life in America. “That’s our job here,” she replied. “I should say, That’s our objective. We have to bring them up from some deep negative number, get past zero, and into a positive mental and physical environment where they finally believe that what happened to them wasn’t their fault. Then we can proceed. Success after that is based -a lot on their native talent.”

“And the care they get here.”

‘ That, too. But the truth is, if their parents were dullards, and their parents were dullards, genius is not likely to manifest itself. There is no escaping one’s mental heredity.”

“Are they classified as emotionally disturbed?”

“Sometimes. I must confess to applying that label, although at the mildest classification. The per diem for the home is increased if there are emotional disturbances. We barely break even as it is. But we make do, and we do our best.”

“You make it sound so matter-of-fact, so, I don’t know, professional. I don’t think I could handle some of the emotional embers you must touch from time to time.” “Ah, yes, those,” she said, looking away for a moment. ‘ ‘Like when Hollywood goes sleepwalking, calling out for .his mama in a voice very much like Bambi in the Disney movie. Especially when he says, ‘Mama,” followed by ‘Sh h-h-h, Poppa’s comin.’ That’ll do it.” There was a special shine to her eyes when she told him this.

“Yes, I guess that would.” He was about to ask her about Jessamine, but then he decided to keep waiting. He asked Gwen instead about her coming back to Graniteville.

“It’s my home,” she said. “When you’re a southern woman and you’re no longer married, you either go far away or you go home. I was actually born and raised here.” “But you said you were a doctoral candidate at the university? At one time you’ve lived elsewhere.”

She nodded in the shadows. “Yes. Technically, my field of study is child psychology. I’ve discovered that there are different dialects of sign language practiced in the hill country, especially among children from some of the more dysfunctional families. Jessamine is an example. That’s not ASL she’s using; it’s her own.”

“Inbreeding is still a problem up here in the mountains?”

“That’s an indelicate phraseology, but the phone book is pretty revealing,” she said wearily.

“And you were married? To John Lee Warren?” “Yes,” she said softly. “For a while. We had grown up together through high school. He stayed behind here in Graniteville to work for the Sheriff’s Department when I went off to college. We got married when I came back home.”

‘ ‘Was that always in the cards? That you would come back here?”

I “My father insisted that I go away to college, but in my heart, I never left this town. Especially after Mom died while I was in college.

Graniteville isn’t such a special place, but this farm is, and so are these hills, although at I times they seem lonely, too, with all the people gone.”

She had shifted the conversation away from her marriage, so Stafford went with it. “As I said earlier,” he - noted, “I’m not so sure these hills are all that empty. Of people, I mean.”

She looked past him again but did not directly answer his question. She has that mountain secretiveness about her, he thought. He was utterly intrigued by this woman, by her physical grace and intelligence, all cloaked in a dignity that he had not seen in his world of Washington and government. He found himself wishing she were plain and uninteresting, because now it really was time to get back to business.

“So, Gwen,” he said. “The business at the airport. Jes’samine.” “Yes,” she said with a small sigh. “The airport. First, I have to tell you why we were at the airport. We were returning from Charlotte. I’d taken Jess to the Braden Institute there.”

“Which is?”

“A hospital specializing in young adult brain tumors.”

“Oh my.”

“Yes. She went to be tested. The good news is that all the scans were negative.” “That’s wonderful,” he said. “What on earth could be the bad news with a report like that?”

She turned to face him directly. “This is the part I need you to promise to keep to yourself,” she said. “I mean, you can know it, but I need to know that you won’t make it part of your official world.”

“I’m not following, Gwen,” he replied, equivocating a little.

“I know. But will you promise?-It’s for the child’s protection, not mine. I think you’ll understand when I tell you. But I guess what I’m saying is that even though you can know about it, you won’t be able to act on it. I simply can’t permit that.”

“Well,” he said, “I can promise to be discreet. And since you’re her guardian, if you won’t permit her further involvement, that pretty much settles it, doesn’t it?” But even as he said it, he knew that wasn’t true, either.

She thought about his answer for a moment, then nodded her head. “All right. As I said, it’s complicated. Jessamine —Jess—is, we think, a psychic.”

What did this have to do with the price of rice? “Oh” was all he could manage. , “Yes, ‘oh.’ Emphasis on the ‘we think,’ of course, because it isn’t all that cut-and-dried. And then there is the problem of her speech, or the lack of it. But I, for one, think it’s true. The question is, To what degree? And what to do about it? She appears to have the ability of presence telepathy.”

” ‘Presence telepathy,’ ” Stafford repeated. He stood up, suddenly needing to stretch his injured arm. All he knew about psychics was that a certain government agency had gotten its bureaucratic mammary glands in the media wringer recently over a program called Stargate. There had been quite a flap, with the press preaching indignantly about millions spent on questionable research, joined eagerly by a horde of self-righteous congresspersons. He remembered all the talk of so-called mind readers communicating with clandestine agents and seeing through walls in far-off places. Right.

“Do you know anything about the subject of psychic research?” she asked.

“No. I was just thinking about Stargate and the fiasco that caused.”

She nodded. “Yes, that was unfortunate, because there’s more to it than palm readers by the roadside. Believe it or not, there is a growing body of professional research literature on the subject, such as the Macklin study done at Princeton.”

Stafford struggled to be polite. “I suppose there is,” he said. “And a lot of charlatans in the field, as well.” “Oh, yes,” she said, sounding a bit defensive. “Except I’ve personally seen manifestations of it in this child.”

Stafford sat back down. “Look, Gwen, I’m basically a cop. I’ve been trained to see the evidence in front of me. I kind of have a problem with the whole concept of psychic powers, or whatever you want to call them. I’m not saying they don’t exist, mind you, just that I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling convincing proof of it.”

“How about those people who help the police? And aren’t most of them women?”

He couldn’t answer that one. He had read about enough of those cases to make him wonder, but he remained skeptical.

“So what can she do?” he asked. “Bend spoons, things like that?”

She froze in the act of lifting her coffee cup. Dammit, he thought, that was a dumb thing to say. ‘ ‘Forget I said that,” he said. “It’s just—”

She put down her coffee cup, her face a pale mask of annoyance, and for a moment he thought the evening was over, but then she surprised him.

“I understand, Mr. Stafford,” she said patiently. “I should have anticipated that. It’s not an … unreasonable reaction to this whole subject.”

So now it was back to Mr. Stafford. He tried again. “Look, Gwen, you asked earlier what I was doing down here in Georgia. Well, officially, I’m pursuing a longstanding fraud investigation that involves the auctioning of surplus government material. Unofficially, I’ve been sent—

or maybe exiled is a better word for it—to Georgia for committing some political indiscretions within my agency. Add to that the fact that my wife left me for another man a year ago, and add to that the loss of my right arm. I’m probably not the most focused government investigator you’ll ever meet. That said, I must tell you that I haven’t exactly uncovered the crime of the century down at the DRMO in Atlanta, either.” “What’s a DRMO?” she asked. He explained the term, concluding with the fact that Carson, the man who’d fainted at the airport, was the manager.

“If there is something going on there, I would have to look hard at the manager, Carson, because it would be tough to run the kind of scam we’re looking for without his knowledge or even participation. But so far, there is no real evidence of that. Right now, the only odd thing about him is what happened at that airport.”

She thought about that for almost a minute. Finally, she spoke.

“You asked what Jessamine ‘does.’ Well, what she does is a form of what most of us would call ‘mental telepathy.’ ” . ‘

“You’re saying she can read minds?”

‘ ‘Not exactly. I hate that term—read minds—because it provokes an image of science fiction.”

Or science fantasy, he thought.

“But the best way I can describe it is to say that she can apparently form a mental image—a picture, if you will—of what .another person is thinking, provided that person is in an agitated mental state. If they’re very angry, for example, or very afraid.”

That made him stop and think back to the airport. Carson had been staring at the girl when he passed out. Stafford was positive of that.

Had Carson been in an agitated mental state? He hadn’t seemed so, at least not after the incident. And yet, Stafford had-not been there before the man had fainted. Had Carson been scared witless there in the terminal because the DCIS was paying him a no notice visit? And if so, for what reason? Had the girl perhaps detected the reason?

“So you think maybe Jess ‘saw’ something,” life said. “Or received this mental image of some evildoing on Carson’s part just before he fainted?

Why do you think that?”

“Because he fainted,” she said softly. “That’s what happens when she sees something. It’s happened here in the home.

Twice. On the first occasion, one of the other kids, a child who is no longer here, accused her of taking one of his books. He was not very stable, emotionally, and he got really ugly with her, got right in her face with lots of shouting and name-calling, and then suddenly he just fainted. Jess looked around for a moment, then signed to me that the thing he was looking for was not a book, but a magazine, and that it was hidden behind his own bureau. I went and looked, accompanied by Mrs. Benning, by the way, who also saw this. The magazine was right where she said it was, taped to the back of the bureau. It was one of those porn things.”

“She could have already known that it was there,” he pointed out.

“Then why did the boy faint when he got into it with Jess?”

“Hyperventilated, maybe? Got so mad, he held his breath?”

She looked at him patiently.

“Okay, and the second time?”

“The second time involved a teenage boy who worked afternoons for Mr. Jackson in the barn. Jess was down there one day, getting ready to ride, when the boy came into the stall aisle. She looked at him, dropped the reins,” picked up a broom; and went after him. This time, she was the one who was extremely agitated. The kid just backed away, but she kept after him. She can’t speak, remember, so the only way she can express serious anger is by doing something.”

“Like beating him ip with a broom?”

‘ ‘Yes. Fortunately, Mr. Jackson was there, but as he ran to break it up, the boy suddenly fainted. Mr. Jackson had to restrain her physically from doing some real damage.” - “What had he done?”

She refilled their coffee cups. “This was a little more difficult to get out of her,” she said, “but apparently, when the school bus was late, Jess had been going directly to the barn and changing clothes in one of the stalls. The stall was next to the feed room, and the boy had a peephole and had been spying on her when she got undressed. He was very likely thinking some seriously impure thoughts when this episode erupted. He was fifteen, raging male hormones and all that, and she is, as you’ve seen, developed. We found the peephole, and there was evidence that it had been used frequently.” “Damn,” he said. “And what did the kid do when he woke up?”

“He was disoriented and embarrassed, in about equal proportions.”

Just like Carson, he thought. “Did you have any tests done in Charlotte in this area?”

“Not beyond a brain scan. She’d been complaining of headaches, and I suppose I thought …” She didn’t finish the sentence.

He remembered her comment about good news. “And the bad news was that you were hoping they’d find a physiological explanation for the two incidents you described?”

“Yes. I believe the thing at the airport makes three.”

Stafford finished his coffee. “As I recall the press reports on the Stargate program, they were trying to find people who could establish a telepathic relationship over long distances.”

“Well, you know more about that than I do. But if that was the case, Jess couldn’t have helped them. This phenomenon apparently happens only when she’s right in front of the other person, and that person is mentally agitated.”

“Or she is. Have you talked to her about it? I don’t mean the incidents, but the phenomenon itself?”

“Tried. We have the basic problem of having to use sign language, and my having to explain new terms to her. Plus, she went through a pretty horrific experience as a very young child. Talking about this phenomenon is very tricky, because any teenager, and especially Jess, is hypersensitive to any implication that there’s something different, or wrong, with them. I told you, Dave, this is complicated.”

It certainly is, he thought, although he wanted to know more about why Gwen was being so protective of the girl. On the other hand, that was, after all, her job. But assuming the phenomenon was real, what had the girl seen in Carson’s mind?

“Would you consider letting’me talk to her?” he asked. “With you present, of course; I can’t read sign language, so you’d have to translate. But I guess I need to know what she saw in the airport.”

Gwen had to think about that, and he gave her time. He could not imagine what the hell Carson could have going at the DRMO that might trigger one of the girl’s psychic episodes.

“That depends,” she replied finally. “On what you’re investigating at that place, and what would happen to her if you catch this Carson person because of something Jess saw.” “As I said, at the moment I don’t have any evidence that Carson is doing anything wrong. I don’t much like the guy, nor do his employees, but that’s neither here nor there. But if I had to wrap up and report to my boss right now, I’d say there’s very little going on at that DRMO.”

“Well, what I’m getting at is that I won’t expose Jess to some media circus over a case of stolen airplane parts. Maybe we should just drop this.”

He nodded thoughtfully. For his part, he could just see himself bringing in a report to Ray Sparks based on a fourteen-year-old’s—what, visions?

‘ ‘I could go along with that, Gwen. Unless she ‘saw’ a murder or something equally serious, that might be the best course of action.”

She looked at him for a moment. “You still don’t believe it, do you?” He sighed. “There are a lot of things in this world I don’t understand.

Understanding is different from believing. But like I said, I’m supposed to see what’s in front of me. I can’t see mental telepathy.”

She nodded. “Neither can I. But let me get something for you.”

She got up and went through a screen door. A light went on in her office and he could hear her looking for something. He got up and stood by the porch railing. Her side of the house faced away from the pond, overlooking the grove of sprawling, moonlit pecan trees. The scent of swelling greenery perfumed the darkness, and he could hear the first peeps of the nocturnal tree frog chorus. Gwen came back out onto the porch and handed him a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” he asked. It appeared to be a crude but detailed pencil drawing of a cylinder. In the background were several dozen small x’s, scattered randomly across the paper. No, not x’s. Crosses.

“I asked her to draw what she had seen when she encountered Mr. Carson in the airport. This is what she produced.”

He studied the drawing. A cylinder. So what? “And these marks? Crosses?” “She told me that the cylinder was filled with dead people. Thousands of them. Millions of them.”

“Terrific. What in the hell does that mean? I wonder.”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. She said the man was bad, but that this thing, whatever it is, was worse. Much worse.”

He studied the drawing again. The cylinder had knurled caps at each end, a detail he had missed the first time. “Can I keep this?” he asked.

“I’ll make you a copy.” He gave it to her and she went back into the office. He picked up the empty coffee cups and followed her.

“I still feel like I should interview Jess,” he said. “Although actually, I don’t know what I would ask.”

She smiled at him over her shoulder, and his breath caught in his throat for a second. “Your first instincts were probably correct. Here’s a copy. Perhaps it will make sense later.”

He took the drawing and folded it into his coa? pocket. He looked at his watch and said he should probably go. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t think of an excuse to prolong his stay. She smiled again and walked him to the door. He thanked her for dinner and said he would let her know if anything came of the drawing. She took his hand for a moment. Her fingers were warm and soft.

“Mostly, keep it away from us, will you?” she said. “Whatever it is?

This is a pretty fragile group of kids, despite appearances. Your world would not bring us anything good.”

“My world?”

“You’re a federal policeman, Dave. What’s in your world that’s good for kids?”

Absolutely nothing, he thought. He thanked her again, reluctantly letting go of her hand, and walked out to his car.

As he drove out onto the state road, he looked back at the big house framed by all those trees, but all the outside lights were already out.

He went down the hill toward tpwn, driving slowly on the unfamiliar road, thinking about Gwen Warren. There was so much he wanted to know about her. After the wreckage of his own marriage, the upheaval of the whistle-blowing incident, and his arm’s uncertain prognosis, he had pretty much put women out of his mind. Every attractive single or divorced woman he met in the Washington milieu looked or sounded like his ex-wife, so putting them out of his mind had been easier to do than he had expected. But Gwen was not like them at all.

As he drove into the town of Graniteville and turned right up the hill toward the motel, he became aware of headlights behind him. The car followed him, some distance back, almost all the way to the motel, until he turned up the driveway by the Waffle House. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw the car slow and then turn around. It was a police car. Now that’s interesting, he thought. He wondered if that might be Sheriff John Lee, minding the store.

friday, fort gillem drmo, atlanta, 10:30 A.M. Carson saw the two county arson investigators out the front door of the admin offices and went back to his own office. , The Haller woman had wanted some background on Bud Lambry, what his job had been here at the DRMO, and why he might have quit. Carson was pretty sure he’d deflected any further inquiries.

He’d told them Lambry had just gotten mad and quit. Man even took the derail control console’s keys with him. Damned inconvenient. The personnel records indicated the address in southeast Atlanta, no further family data, no prior criminal convictions or serious disciplinary problems, and certainly no motives for arson. He had asked Haller if it had been arson, but she hadn’t really answered the question, giving him instead some “We’re still investigating” IJS.

Fair enough. He’d seen the television news report. They’d need an aircraft accident investigating team down there to prove anything other than that a propane leak had touched off an explosion. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Hardly a surprise event in those dilapidated old houses down there.

He sat down at his desk and thought about his latest conversation with Tangent, who had been less than thrilled at the news that the Army might know the cylinder was missing. Carson had switched immediately to the offensive: They would come and check the place out; he was sure of it.

Once the Army saw the demil machine, however, they would assume the missing cylinder had been destroyed in its environmental container, and then Tangent would be buying an object that didn’t exist. Tangent hadn’t been so sure the Army would make that assumption, but Carson had pointed out that the Army would also be looking desperately for a reason, any reason at all, to cover up their screw up. He had suggested that they shelve the deal for a few more days. Tangent reluctantly agreed, but he wanted to be informed the instant the Army backed out.

Carson tapped a pencil on his desk. Now he just had to wait. He had not been blowing smoke; he was sure in his bones that the Green Machine would be here, and probably very soon. Maybe even today. He wanted to go get the records of the Tooele shipment, although he dared not. Anything he did now connected with the containers would raise suspicions. The shipment had come in and the containers had become Monster feed. That’s all. And nothing could escape the end processes of the Monster. Not metal cylinders, not toxic substances, not the mortal remains of Bud Lambry. And this had happened some time ago. He listened with some satisfaction to the muted shrieking of rendering metal floating across the tarmac from the demil building.

One million in cash. All he had to do was wait. And keep his cool. The only wild card now was Stafford, but there was no way he could know anything. And the cylinder was hidden well. He could and would worry about it, but his sense of the matter told him his secret was safe.

FRIDAY, THE DCIS REGIONAL OFFICE, SMYRNA, GEORGIA, 11:20 A.M. At Stafford’s request, Ray Sparks agreed to go to lunch with him.

Stafford had not wanted to discuss what he had learned at Willow Grove right there in the office. They went to a local chain restaurant, where he reviewed what had happened to date. Sparks was politely skeptical.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You have no direct evidence of any crimes at the DRMO. All you’ve got is a strange occurrence at the airport involving this guy, Carson, and a teenage girl from an orphanage, whose director claims the girl is some kind of psychic. The girl can’t physically speak, and all this woman can produce is the girl’s drawing of a cylinder and her impression that the cylinder is a bad thing. Right?”

“Not your basic winning grand jury package, is it?”

“Well, there you have it, Dave. I mean, I know you’ve barely scratched the surface at the DRMO. You’ve been there—what, two business days altogether? I think you ought to forget all this extraneous stuff and see if you can find out some way the guys at the DRMO could -fix the auction process and make some damn money.”

Stafford was silent for a moment as Sparks finished his sandwich.

“Trouble is,” Stafford said, “I’m beginning to think there’s something else going on. I know, I know, all I’ve got is a gut feel. And it’s not what I’m supposed to be looking for, but something else, out there at the edges.”

“Your trademark, as I recall,” Sparks reminded him.

Stafford grinned. “Yeah, but tally it up: that weird guy coming up to me and talking about immunity, and then telling me to find Bud Lambry. Next day, Lambry’s house has been blown up. The employees down there seem to have a hate-on for the manager, and they knew from the git-go that I was a cop and not some auditor down from DLA. The incident at the airport?

Well, who knows what that means? Except I’ve got a responsible citizen telling me that it’s happened before around this girl, accompanied by evidence that she was able to visualize what someone else was thinking.”

” ‘Evidence’?” Sparks said, looking at Stafford over the tops of his glasses. Stafford had trouble meeting Sparks’s eyes.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Sparks said. “What’s your ‘evidence’ tell you is going on?”

Stafford threw up his hands. ‘ ‘Beats the shit out of me. Maybe this is just a case of my trying to make this assignment into something, when we both know that it’s mostly a put-up job.”

Sparks tactfully did not reply to that, concentrating instead on stirring his sweet tea. Stafford was beginning to feel like a fool for even bringing up the psychic angle. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go back to the DRMO auction angle.”

Sparks grinned at him. “Was she good-looking? This Warren woman?”

“Up thine, as the Quakers say,” Stafford replied.

FRIDAY, THE PENTAGON, THE SECURITY WORKING GROUP, 3:30 P.M. Colonel Fuller was chairing the afternoon meeting when Brigadier General Carrothers came in and sat down. The Security Working Group space had been set up as a mini command center, with secure communications, status boards, a conferencing facility, and several PCs. Fuller gave Carrothers a quick recap.

“General, it’s now fifteen-thirty. The reaction team should arrive at Fort Gillem in. about an hour and a half,” he said. “Two semis, one with the troops and their gear, the other with the sensor pack and comms suite.”

“Plain vanilla trailers, right?” Carrothers asked. “No visual markings?”

“Yes, sir, that’s correct,” one of the majors said. His name tag indicated his last name was Mason. “Anniston is treating this as an exercise of their Civil Chemical Emergency Response Team. There will be one officer on the team who knows what this is really about. Everyone else on the team will think itls a routine exercise. We arrive about seventeen hundred to minimize contact with employees.”

“Good. What’s the procedure?”

“The trucks will go in as unobtrusively as possible, park, and take initial readings while the main team itself remains in containment. If there are no immediate sensor hits, the team leaders will determine where the Tooele containers are and then proceed to secure that area for individual inspection.”

“And if they’ve already been destroyed?”

“Then they’ll check the demil facility itself, and whatever by-product assembly areas are connected to demil.”

‘ ‘We expect the sensors to find nothing,” Colonel Fuller interjected.

“The cylinder is, of course, hermetically sealed. If the containers are still there, and if it’s in one of the containers, they’ll retrieve it and get out of there. If the containers have already been destroyed, they’ll have to run some tests on the demil output streams to see if there’s any residual evidence that the cylinder itself was processed.”

‘ ‘If it went through demil and contaminated that facility, what do we do then?”

“That’s not likely,” Fuller said: “This is Wet Eye we’re talking about.

If that hftd happened, we would have already known about it. The whole world would have already known about it.”

Carrothers thought about that and then nodded. He was about to ask another question, then stopped short. He gave Fuller a sign that he wanted to talk to him privately, and he left the room. Fuller came out a minute later, joining Carrothers in the empty hallway outside the room.

Fuller was General Waddell s friend, but he did not really know Carrothers. He kept it formal. “Yes, sir?”

“See if I have this right: The best outcome is that the environmental containers are all still there, we find the cylinder, get it out of there without anyone knowing it was there, and declare the ‘exercise’ successful, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the worst outcome is that all the containers have been destroyed, and we find no evidence of the cylinder, chemical or otherwise?”

“Not necessarily, sir.”

“Huh? Ambiguity is not in order here, Colonel.” :

“It might be, General,” Fuller said, pausing while a staff officer walked by them. He walked Carrothers through the container demil scenario, being careful to highlight the assumptions. “Yes, we’re pretty sure we lost one. No, it did not get loose. The screw up is an internal matter, which we deal with internally.

Shoot some guilty bastards and close the records.”

“That’s the mother of all cover-ups you were talking about.”

“Yes, sir, sort of. But what purpose would be served by admitting we lost one, if no harm was done?”

“Colonel, what worries me is that there’s always the possibility someone found the cylinder and kept it.”

“To do what?”

“To sell it, of course.”

Fuller looked both ways up and down the hallway before answering. “We feel-that’s a highly unlikely possibility, General.”

” ‘We’?”

“General Waddell and I,” Fuller replied smoothly.

“Carrothers gave him a long look. He started to object, but the significance of that-“We” was beginning to penetrate. A “right answer”

was developing here.

“Okay,” he said. “Have the team leader report the moment they find something, or when he has concluded it’s not there.”

M FRIDAY, FORT GILLEM QRMO, ATLANTA, 4:45 P.M. Carson’s secretary knocked once on his door, opened it, and announced that a Mr. White and a Mr. Jones were there to see him on urgent business. The fact that she hadn’t used the intercom, and that both Mr. White and Mr. Jones were standing right behind her, told Carson everything he needed to know. The Army Chemical Corps had arrived.

First, he needed to downplay their arrival so as not to alarm his secretary.

“Oh, yes, fine. Come in, gentlemen. That’s all, Mrs. Vonner. I’ll see you Monday.”

His secretary gave him an odd look, but she withdrew, shutting the door behind her. Carson indicated to the two officers that they should sit down, but they remained standing. They were dressed in civilian suits, but their physical bearing and haircuts gave them away at once. They flipped out their wallets and presented military identification cards.

The younger-looking one spoke first.

“Sir, I’m Captain White from the Anniston Army Weapons Depot in Alabama.

This is Captain Jones. We’re here to conduct a no-notice exercise of the Army’s Civil Chemical Emergency Response Team. We understand that a shipment of chemical weapons environmental containers was shipped here recently, originally from Tooele, Utah?”

Carson pretended to think. White and Jones. Right. “I’d have to check our records, Captain,” he said. “We move a lot of things through this facility. Tooele, Utah, did you say?”

“Yes, sir. One thousand containers for chemical ammunition. Aluminum and composite construction, with external umbilicals for total environmental containment. They’re not large—maybe four feet long, four point five inches in diameter. Originated in Tooele, transshipped through the Anniston Depot.”

“Interesting. Unfortunately, you’ve come just after quitting time. Let me go down to our Records Department. Feel free to. wait right here.

This won’t take long. Have some coffee.”

He left them standing there and went down the hallway, where the last of the admin office employees were leaving for the day. He went into the Records Department and sat down at one of the PCs. Ordinarily, this would have taken some time to make a database search, but in this case, he knew precisely where the records of the Tooele shipment were. In a minute, he had them printing out in his secretary’s office. He walked back and collected the readout.

“These are the records of the container shipment,” he said, handing them over to Captain White. “As you can see, they went directly to demil.

Head of the line, so to speak. Nobody wanted to fool with those things.” “Very good, Mr. Carson,” White said. “What we want to do is to run the team and its gear through a survey of the demil building and surrounding areas.”

“Sure. You’ll want to survey the assembly areas and the end-product warehouse, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir, those, too, if you don’t mind. And can we see a system diagram, please?”

“Mind, Captain? Hell, I don’t mind. What I’ll mind is if your guys find something.”

“Not likely, Mr. Carson,” Jones said.

“Why’s that, Captain?”

“If there’s anything to find, you’d all be dead, sir.”

Carson smiled back at him. “Well, then, chances are that this is going to be a dull exercise, right?”

“Only kind there is, sir,” White said. “Exercise, that is.”

“We’re not running a demil shift this evening,” Carson said. “If you’re going to need my people—”

“No, sir. The team is totally self-contained. The exercise calls for us to gain access and conduct the sweeps. We prefer it when there’s no one around. Keeps rumors under control. We do have a Public Affairs officer with us; she’ll deal with anyone who happens to show up and ask questions.”

“Okay, let me show you a process diagram, and then I’ll show you the demil area.”

Dave Stafford drove up to the DRMO a little after five thirty p.m. He had gone back to the office with Sparks for two hours after lunch to update his case file on the DCIS computer system. He had then headed back toward the DRMO, only to get mired down in the world’s worst traffic jam out on the Atlanta Perimeter road. It was like being back in Washington. The admin office windows were all dark when he arrived, and he realized he did not have a key. Now what? he thought. Maybe there was a late shift and someone could let him in. He had been hoping to find Carson still there, especially since Carson’s government pickup truck was still parked out front by-the rail siding. He decided to walk around through the truck park to see if he could get into the lay-down area.

He walked around the corner of the admin building and then down a dark alley between the first warehouse and the facility’s chain-link fence.

He passed three commercial semitrailers parked on their jack stands. As he came around the last trailer, a spaceman stepped out in front of him, startling the hell out of him, especially since the spaceman was holding an M16 rifle at port arms. The hooded figure was saying something to him through a large respirator mask. It was then he noticed the cordon of ropes strung between sawhorses across the entry drive into the lay-down area, and the U.S. Army logo on the spaceman’s suit. The spaceman was asking for his identification.

Still getting over his surprise, Stafford pulled his credentials with his left hand and handed them over to the soldier, who began talking into a radio mike that appeared to be inside his headgear. Beyond, out on the tarmac, Stafford saw two large unmarked tractor-trailer trucks parked by the demil complex. There were several other spacemen moving around purposefully in the dusk, under the glare of halogen lights. He thought he caught a glimpse of Carson talking to two civilians up by the cab of one of the semis. The lights looked ominous in the early-evening light.

“So what’s going on?” he asked the guard.

“Lieutenant Roberts is on her way out, sir,” the soldier replied. “She’s PAO. You’re requested to wait here, sir.”

The guard had made it clear he was not going to be allowed back into the DRMO working area until he had talked to the PAO.

Lieutenant Roberts came over a minute later. She was a tall, good-looking blonde wearing Army dress greens, and she was carrying a notebook and a small tape recorder.

She looked very much out of place among all the other personnel wearing chemical protection suits, but the purposeful expression on her face indicated a professional press liaison officer.

“Mr. Stafford, is it?” she asked, offering her hand. He took her hand in his left hand. “I’m Lieutenant Roberts, Army Public Affairs? How can we help the DCIS tonight?”

“Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant. You can start by telling me what’s going on here.”

“This is an Army exercise, Mr. Stafford. What you see here is the Anniston Depot’s Civil Chemical Emergency Response Team. The Anniston Army Weapons Depot is a CW ammunition depot.”

“Good Lord! Has something happened?”

“No, sir. This is an exercise. We deploy the team from time to time as if there had been an accident involving CW. We like to do it on Army facilities, usually after hours. We picked this DRMO because there was a shipment of CW environmental containers sent here from Utah recently. We practice securing an area, surveying it for toxic substances, and then doing containment and cleanup. It usually takes about six hours; then they pack up and go.”

“And do they usually bring a press officer?”

“Absolutely. Sometimes people see what’s going on, and we need to assure them that it’s just an exercise. Or sometimes people just drop in,” she added pointedly.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been working here this week, quasi undercover as a DLA auditor, but I’m actually investigating a long-term case involving the DRMO auction system. The manager, Mr. Carson, can vouch for me.”

“Quasi-undercover?”

“That means I’ve been announced as a DLA auditor, although I’m afraid the work force here has figured it out that I’m a cop.”

“Can’t imagine why,” she said, giving him an amused once-over.

He ignored her comment. “May I speak to Mr. Carson?”

“I’ll ask him, but I’m afraid we can’t let anyone into the containment area. Is there somewhere you can wait?”

“That’s what I need Carson for. I failed to obtain an after-hours key to my office. Or to the building, for that matter.”

“I’ll go talk to him. If you’ll wait right here … ?”

He watched her walk back toward the tracks, enjoying the view. He then observed the operation out on the tarmac for a few minutes under the watchful eye of the guard. He felt like commenting on the lieutenant’s fine walk, or commiserating with the guard about being suited up, but the guard appeared to be concentrating on his job. Carson came over a few minutes later, his identification tags hanging from his coat pocket.

‘ ‘They give you any warning of this?” Stafford asked him.

“Nope. But apparently they don’t let people know they’re coming.”

“But what the hell’s a CW outfit doing here?”

“They’re drilling some kind of emergency response team. There was a shipment of CW containers that came through here a short while back for demil.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that. But chemical weapons? Here?”

‘ ‘No, no, not the weapons, just the environmental containers. They call ‘em ‘coffins.’ The weapons went to Too ele, Utah, from Anniston, Alabama, for destruction. Then they sent the empty containers here. I’m assuming it’s because we have the Monster. They said they’d be done in five or six hours.”

“Damn. Scary visitors in the night. But what I need right now is a key; I forgot to get one.”

“Oh, sure. Come with me. We’ll have to go around.”

As they walked back to the admin office’s front door, Carson asked casually how Stafford’s day trip had gone. Stafford demurred, saying something vague about the local DCIS in Smyrna and some internal liaison work. Carson didn’t pursue it.

He got them into the admin office, found Stafford a spare key, and gave him a keypad combination card in case he came in after hours when no one was there. Stafford went to his office, and Carson went out through the back door to watch some more of the exercise.

Stafford waited ten minutes, then went down to the back door. He cracked it slightly to see what he could see. The two big trucks were still out on the tarmac, but most of the people had disappeared. He saw that the doors to the demil feed-assembly warehouse and the demil building itself were open, and that there were lights on in both buildings. He could see into the end of one of the trailers, which appeared to be a mobile operations center. What the hell, he thought, everybody looks pretty busy.

He stepped quietly out onto the tarmac. The sound of portable generators assaulted the evening quiet from atop the trailers. He hung his credentials from the pen pocket in his suit coat like Carson, then walked casually over to the open trailer. He stood on the tarmac outside the operations trailer for a few minutes, watching what was going on inside. Just beyond the ramp, there were five soldiers suited up in CW gear sitting at consoles of some kind, surrounded by status boards and bright lights. Another soldier stood behind them, filling out a form on a clipboard. If they were communicating with the people inside the warehouses, Stafford could not hear them over the noise of the generators. There was no sign of Carson or the pretty PAO lieutenant, or the two civilians.

As he was about to give it up, the soldiers at the consoles got up from their seats, grabbed gear bags of some kind, and came down the ramp, accompanied by the supervisor. They paid no attention to him as they went around the truck and into the demil building. Stafford was tempted just to walk up the ramp and look around, but he thought that might be pushing it a little. The PAO had told him to stay out of the area. A moment later, he was glad he’d hesitated, because an extremely fit-looking young man with a military haircut came around the corner and stopped short when he saw Stafford.

“Stafford, DCIS,” Stafford announced immediately, j turning his badge so the officer could see it. “I’m observing with Mr. Carson.”

The officer shot him and his credentials a quick look, nodded, and then went on up the ramp and into the trailer. Stafford stepped away, pretending to stare out into the tarmac area, but then he eased back to the ramp so he could see inside the trailer. The officer was sitting at the end console, nearest the ramp, and speaking urgently into a microphone headset. Stafford still couldn’t hear anything over the generator noise, but there was a lot of head shak j ing and gesticulating going on as the officer’s hand flew ‘ over the console’s control buttons. When he saw what came up on the monitor, Stafford stopped breathing momentarily.

There, in living color, rotating slowly in three dimensional motion, was a stainless-steel cylinder with a knurled cap at each end. It was almost identical to the drawing Gwen Warren had given him in Graniteville, except for the decals with bright red lettering running the length of the cylinder. There were warning banners down both sides of the screen, but all Dave could make out were the words Top Secret at the top.

A little voice in his head told him to beat feet out of there, and for once in his life, he listened.

SATURDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA 12:45A. M. From the edge of the tarmac, Carson watched the two semis grind their way out of the DRMO parking lot. It had gone perfectly; in fact, almost amusingly, as the Army team tried to pretend this was just some scripted exercise. But he knew better. They had examined the feed and product streams for the Monster in clinical detail, but apparently they’d found nothing. How could they? The cylinder was still sealed. The fact that it had been hidden right in front of them added to his sense of victory. Now Wendell Carson was safe, although he knew he was making some assumptions about what the Army would do next. From his own days in the Quartermaster Corps, he was pretty sure he knew what that would be. Give the Army an opportunity to cover something up and all those eager-beaver, forward-leaning, team-playing general staff officers would positively sprint with it.

He went back into the demil complex and shut off all the lights and reset the door locks. It was too late to call Tangent. But first thing in the morning, he’d give him the good news, then agree on a date to transfer the cylinder. Sunday was still good: There’d be nobody here, and now that the Army had come looking for it, he had a better argument than ever for not moving the cylinder off the DRMO premises. He let himself in the back door of the admin office and walked down the hall to his own office— where he found Stafford sitting in his chair. He had to work hard to catch his breath.

“That wasn’t an exercise, was it, Carson?” Stafford said, folding his hands under his chin and looking up at him very much like a cop.

“What?” Carson barely managed to keep his voice from squeaking as he pushed the office door shut.

“That team being here tonight. That wasn’t an exercise, was it? They were looking for something. Something I think maybe you’ve got.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What are you doing sitting at my desk?”

“Waiting for you. I’ve had a sense about you since I came here, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. DRMO auctions. That’s small potatoes.

Maybe steady beer money, or Vegas money, but nothing to shout about. But CW? That’s different. Wa-a-a-y different, Carson.”

“What the fuck are you saying?” Carson shouted. He was trying not to sound scared, but he sensed he wasn’t succeeding. “You accusing me of something, you come right out and say it. Then I’ll. go get a lawyer and you can say it to him, and then we’ll sue your ass and your agency for harassment. You think you can just waltz in here like—”

Stafford put his hand up for silence. He got up and started walking around the room. “So tell me: What really happened to Bud Lambry?” he asked.

Jesus, where the hell did that come from? Carson wondered. His knees felt buttery, so he went around his desk and sat down. “Lambry?” he said. “What’s Lambry got to do with anything? He quit. I told you that.

Good riddance. Guy was a pain in the ass.”

“Must have been. One of your guys talks about Lambry, and then his house blows up. Did he know something he shouldn’t have? Like about the cylinder?”

For an instant, Carson thought he felt his heart stop. What had Stafford just said? The cylinder1?

Stafford had stopped pacing and was looking at him. “That’s right, the cylinder. Let’s see: stainless-steel, a few feet long, maybe—what, three, four inches in diameter? Sound about right? Containing some grotesque CW shit?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carson squeaked. Even to himself, he sounded scared. There was just no fucking way …”Oh, I think you do. I think you and Mr. Lambry found something in that shipment of containers the Army press lady out there was talking about.

I think that’s the real reason the Army is suddenly down here conducting some kind of bullshit exercise. Something’s missing.” “You’re whacked out, Stafford,” Carson said, shaking his head. He needed to stop this, stop this right now. He decided to attack. “Totally whacked-out. This the kind of shit you were doing up in D. C., got you thrown out of town?”

He saw that it was Stafford’s turn to be surprised. He stood up behind his desk. “Yeah, that’s right. I checked up on you, Pal,” he said. “I know some people who know some shit up there in D.C. So before you go making any more wild-ass accusations, you better think about why you’re here in the first place.

The way I hear it, you make any impolite noises, the DCIS isn’t exactly going to jump right on it. Now just get the hell out of my office.”

Stafford gave a crooked smile and walked over to the office door. “Nice try, Carson,” he said. “But I don’t have to convince my people back in Washington. All I’ve got to do is convince the Army. Tell them I think it’s here and that you’ve got it. I’ll bet they’ve got some seriously mean bastards who might want to come talk to you. Think about that, smart guy. Because I think you’ve made a huge mistake. I can’t prove it—yet—but if I tell them, maybe I won’t have to. Happy Trails, Carson.”

Stafford hurried to his car, anxious to get out of there in case Carson had a gun stashed somewhere. The DRMO manager had been white with either fury or fear when he’d slammed the door on him back there, and there was no telling what he might do. As he drove away from the DRMO, he thought about Carson’s reaction: That had been a direct hit if he’d ever seen one. The man had all but pissed himself when he’d said the word cylinder. Son of a bitch stole it, and I’ll bet he’s going to try to sell it. Damn, he thought: Could it be the girl was for real? He tried to think of what to do next. And how the hell had Carson found out about his problems in D. C.? Whom had he been talking to? Sparks? Had Ray been playing him along all this time? He didn’t want to believe that. He really didn’t want to believe that. He hit the state road and sped down through the wasteland of trucking terminals. He’d been bluffing about calling the Army, of course, and about telling anyone else: How could he, when his only “evidence” was a supposedly psychic child’s drawing?

He could always claim that Dillard had told him, but of course he hadn’t, and Dillard was hardly reliable witness material. But if he was right about the cylinder, Lambry might not have just quit. It might yet be determined that Lambry’s remains had been dragged off into the bushes by the rail yard dogs after that explosion.

And maybe he was all wrong about the Army’s little exercise at the DRMO.

Except you weren’t wrong about what you saw in living three-dimensional color on that monitor, he thought. That thing was a perfect match to the girl’s drawing.

Maybe the thing to do is to go to that team’s home base. Where is it—Anniston? Go to the Army installation at Anniston and see if anything is stirring. Surely if they had lost something like a chemical weapon, there’d be things happening, some visible undercurrents of a crisis. He was a Fed; he could get onto a military base.

And do what?

The interchange with the Atlanta Perimeter was visible up ahead. There was an all-night gas station on the right, and he swung the Crown Vie into the parking lot next to a fuel pump. The sign on the pump informed him he had to prepay at the money window.

He pulled out the government bag phone and called Ray Sparks’s home number. Sparks answered, and Stafford was relieved to hear the sound of a television in the background, which meant Sparks was still awake.

“Ray, this is Dave Stafford.” “Why did I know that, Dave?” Sparks said in a weary voice.

“Ray, look, I’m non-secure on a car phone. I think I’ve found out what’s going on at that DRMO. We need to talk.”

“Okay.”

“I mean we need to meet and talk. No phones.”

“Jesus, Dave. Now?”

“Yeah, now. It’s much bigger than simple fraud against the government.

I’m in southeast Atlanta, near the Perimeter. Can we meet somewhere?” Sparks sighed. The television sounds were not audible anymore.

“Okay,” Sparks said. “But this better be good, Dave.

And within the bounds of your current assignment, right?”

“Not even close, Ray. But definitely worth your time.” The store attendant was watching him through the bulletproof money window.

” ‘Not even close.’ Why did I know that, too? All right. You don’t know your way around Atlanta, so I’ll come down to your hotel. What are you driving?”

“It’s a white Crown Vie, government plates.”

“Okay. Park out front of the hotel. You’ll be reasonably safe downtown in a government car. I’ll be there in forty five minutes. And, Dave, no shit, you’d—”

“I haven’t done anything, Ray. Not yet. I’m bringing it to you first, all right? Just like I’m supposed to. Just get downtown, buddy.”

He hung up before Sparks could protest further. He got out and walked over to the window.

‘ ‘I need ten bucks’ worth of regular and a map of Alabama,” he said to the black man behind the glass.

SATURDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 1:10A. M. Carson sat in his office clenching and unclenching his fists. That god damned Stafford! How in the hell had he figured it out? How in the hell could he know what the cylinder even looked like?

Lambry. Fucking Lambry must have said something to that idiot Dillard before his little accident. Boss Hisley had mentioned that Dillard had been seen talking to Stafford. Shit!

The Army had come and gone. He still owed Tangent a call, but Stafford had thrown some serious shit in the game. Should he tell Tangent that Stafford knew? That could well and truly queer the deal. But if he didn’t, and Stafford did go to the Army, the deal might be queered anyway. They’d either come back and tear the DRMO to pieces, or—what?

He thought furiously, it all depended on how the Army was handling this thing internally. They’d be in an uproar if they thought some of their precious CW was missing, but they’d be just as terrified about their screw up becoming public knowledge. They might just tell Stafford to take a hike. What Wendell Carson needed now was some leverage, some serious Washington leverage.

Well, hey, how about Mr. Tangent?

Tangent claimed to be well connected. He’d tell him exactly what had happened and let him neutralize Stafford, especially since Stafford was already in bureaucratic disgrace. The original source of Stafford’s information, however indirectly, had to have been Lambry, but Lambry was Monster piss and his house was a blackened memory. If Lambry was indeed the source, Stafford was shit out of luck. And evidence.

A feeling of calm certainty settled over him. Only well dell Carson now knew where the cylinder was. Lambry was dead, so Stafford had to be bluffing. The Army had not found it, and they were probably even now breathing a sigh of relief in the fervent hope that it had gone into the demil process with the shipment of coffins.

So tell Tangent, he thought. Tell Tangent and ask him to poison the well there in D.C. Absolutely. Discredit Stafford badly enough and no one would listen to him, least of all the Army, who had every incentive not to want to hear it. Yes, they might have to put off the transfer for a day or so, but once Stafford was out of the picture, they’d be in the clear. Then all he had to worry about was getting his money without losing his skin in the process.

He picked up the phone and called the 800 number.

SATURDAY, THE PENTAGON, SECURITY WORKING GROUP, 2:00 A.M. Colonel Fuller rubbed the sides of his face with his hands as Major Mason concluded the briefing. “So, basically, nothing?” he asked. “No trace elements detected, the containers have all been cut into scrap metal, and the DRMO is clean?”

“Yes, sir. They gave the demil area and the compaction modules a very thorough sweep. The demil machine is, of course, designed to destroy toxic organics using multiple acid interactions. It’s a totally closed system, so even if the cylinder went into the machine inside one of the coffins, any release would have been contained anyway, and then neutralized.”

“Well,” Fuller said, stretching, “I guess that’s it. I’m going to recommend to the general that we take our packs off here.

Obviously, one of these things was overlooked during the unloading process at Tooele, then shipped back out with the containers to the DRMO. We’ll have to have a warm body or two swinging for that little screw up, but other than that, I think we’re done. You did say the manager at the DRMO confirmed that nobody inspected any containers?”

“Yes, sir. The CERT leader confirms that. The containers went right to demil just as soon as Receiving read the shipping manifest. The manager said they put them at the head of the line that very day.”

“That’s certainly what I would do with CW containers,” Fuller said, looking around the table for any signs of disagreement. Six eager staff officers were nodding back at him in total agreement.

“Right. So our official conclusion is that the cylinder was very probably destroyed in the demil process, and destroyed without a trace.

Agreed?” ;

More nods. No dissent. The general had picked his team wisely, Fuller thought. Probably why he was the general.

He got up and told them to disband the working group and resume their normal duties, warning them once more that silence was literally golden, careerwise. He didn’t have to say that twice. He walked down to the executive assistant’s desk, which was empty at this time of night, and, per General Waddelfs instructions, placed a call to his home. He gave his report and the official conclusions.

“Nobody disagreed?”

“No, sir. Unanimous. Basically, that demil machine saved our asses.”

“The guy who runs that DRMO—did he catch on to what the ‘exercise’ was really all about?”

“We don’t think so, General. They took along a good looking blonde from the headquarters Public Affairs Office with the team, with instructions to keep the manager’s mind off things chemical.”

“And nobody but the manager knows about the ‘exercise’?”

“There was a DCIS agent there when the team came in. He’s apparently working with the manager on some internal investigation having to do with auctions of surplus equipment.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, sir, we don’t think so. He apparently observed for a little while, then left. We have his name, and I’ve got one of the Security Working Group staffies running it down within DCIS channels, just to make sure.”

“Then we can declare victory and go home, you think?”

“Yes, sir. I assume you’ll hang some guilty bastards for letting it get loose, but otherwise, yes, I think we’re done. You might, um, want to have a word with General Carrothers. I’m not totally convinced he’ll be in agreement with our conclusions.”

“Not a problem. Lee Carrothers wants to be my replacement. Good night, Ambrose. And thank you.” “Yes, sir,” Fuller said, and hung up. As he went out into the hallway, he thought about the Wet Eye biologic simulation his people were running back at Dietrick. Should he shut that off? He stopped in the hallway and thought about it. No, let them proceed. It might be interesting to see what they came up with, even if the immediate problem was over.

SATURDAY, PEACHTREE CENTER HOTEL, ATLANTA, 2:15 A.M. A flare of headlights in the mirror announced the arrival of Ray Sparks.

Stafford unlocked his doors and Ray slid into the passenger seat. Two hotel security officers who had been giving Stafford’s government car the eye went off to do other things. One government car bore watching; two government cars meant problems, and the security guys wanted nothing to do with government problems.

“Okay, hotshot, lay it on me. From the beginning.”

Stafford walked him through the events of the past week again: his unfocused suspicions about Carson; the reportedly sudden exit of Bud Lambry, followed by the mysterious propane blast; his own visit to Graniteville. He trod carefully through the details of that visit, then reviewed its antecedents in the airport.

“Okay, right.” Sparks said. “And that the woman thinks the girl is a psychic.”

“That’s right. There have been two other witnessed incidents like that.”

Sparks was silent for a minute. Outside, the Peach tree Center plaza was empty except for a few passing pedestrians hurrying through the roseate light.

“Okay,” Sparks, said, “Let’s stipulate the girl’s a psychic and that she saw that cylinder thing in the drawing you told me about. What’s happened to get me out here at two in the morning?”

“Because two Army semis from Anniston, Alabama, showed up at the DRMO tonight,” Dave said. “Ostensibly to conduct a no-notice exercise of some kind of chemical response team.”

. “And?”

“And there’s apparently a chemical weapons ammunition dump at Anniston.

And during the course of this so called exercise, I happened to see the thing in the girl’s drawing revolving in three dimensions on a monitor in one of the Army semis while an officer appeared to be explaining something about it.”

Sparks opened his mouth to say something but then shut it.

Stafford went on to describe what the press officer had told him about it being just an exercise. “I don’t think that was an exercise, Ray. I think those guys were looking for something under the cover of an exercise. My guess is that the cylinder contains some kind of chemical agent: nerve gas, or something lovely like that. I think maybe one of those environmental containers shipped in from Utah j wasn’t empty, and Carson, probably with Lambry’s help, found it and concealed it. Carson was thinking about it in the airport when I showed up on an unannounced visit from the DCIS in Washington.” J “And you’re saying he had the misfortune to think about it in front of a passing psychic? A teenage girl who can’t speak?”

“She can communicate. And she can draw. She says—” t

“She says?” if “She can communicate, damn it! She uses sign language. And what she saw has been giving her bad dreams since they came home from the airport.”

“Why were they at the airport?” I ‘ They were coming home from Charlotte. Gwen had [ taken the girl there for some medical tests.”

“What kind of medical tests?”

Uh-oh, Stafford thought. “The kid has chronic headaches. Gwen wanted to make sure the girl did not have a brain tumor.”

 

//’

 

“Uh-huh,” Sparks said. “And Gwen is—”

“Gwen Warren is the woman who runs the school. Ray, she wanted no part of me or the DCIS, but she still felt compelled to call. Isn’t it obvious? Carson stole that cylinder. We’ve got to tell the Army before he sells the fucking thing.”

But Sparks was shaking his head. “No way, Dave. No way in hell. Look, the Army treats its chemical weapons the way the rest of the military treats nuclear weapons. They simply don’t lose that shit. And if they had, there’d be a full court press involving every federal law enforcement agency to find it.”

“Would there? This is the Army we’re talking about. The Green Machine. I think they’d cover it up like hell while they tried to recover it in-house. Like that little ‘exercise’ down at the DRMO, which just happened to have been the destination for the supposedly empty containers.”

“Yeah, but c’mon, Dave: a psychic, for Chrissakes? I didn’t say anything at lunch because it didn’t seem to make a shit, but this … Look, picture yourself telling DCIS headquarters this story. Picture my telling the colonel that you were coming in with this story. Based on the visions of a teenage girl living in one of those state homes for the sexually abused or otherwise mentally fucked up.”

“They’re not mentally fucked up, Ray. They’re just kids. They’re orphans, basically. This Willow Grove isn’t a loony bin for disturbed children. It’s a group home for wards of the state. They’re just kids from the north Georgia mountains.” But even as he said this, Stafford remembered Owen’s words about augmenting the state funding by including mild emotional disturbances in her charter. , 3;

Sparks was shaking his head even more emphatically. “No, Dave,” he said.

“Putting aside the physic bullshit, this is all supposition. I can’t have you roaring off into the night raising hell about a problem that doesn’t officially exist. Don’t you understand that this is the sort of shit that got you sent down here in the first place?”

Stafford sat back in the seat and took a deep breath.

Sparks grabbed Dave’s right forearm and then let go when he remembered.

‘ ‘Look at me, Dave. Listen to me. Besides the colonel, I’m probably the only friend in the business you’ve got right now. This assignment down here is your last chance, okay? The colonel made that very clear, at least to me. And to you, I think. You come yelling out of the fucking woods with your hair on fire about something like this and they’re gonna terminate your ass. It’s not like you have legions of defenders up there in D. C., right? An office full of people ready to go to the mat for you?

Do you? Do you?” Stafford said nothing but shook his head slowly. Sparks nodded. “You know I’m fucking right. Now tell me something: Do you have any admissible evidence that this guy Carson is running some kind of theft scam at the DRMO?”

“Nothing but the pattern we detected in D. C.” ‘ ‘But that was at another DRMO, right? Not this one?” Stafford nodded, staring straight out the window. Disaster, he was thinking. Again.

“Then I suggest you put your head down and see if you can develop some admissible evidence, Dave. Not from psychics, not from peeping into the back of Army trucks doing some kind of out-there exercise, and not about an emergency that does not exist. Work your brief, and nothing but your brief, because if you don’t, you’re going to be an unemployed civilian.

Hey, you didn’t go bracing Carson up on this by any chance, did you?” Stafford said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. Unmitigated disaster. I should have known.

“Aw shit, Dave. Goddamn it.” Sparks sighed and slumped in his seat.

“Okay, I’m not sure I can help you anymore. If Carson goes crying to his bosses in DLA, and they go to DCIS, this may be out of my hands. I think you better come up to Smyrna in the morning. Do not go back to that DRMO. You understand me? I want you in my office in the morning before the shit hits the fan.”

“And you will not even try to believe me?”

Sparks gave him what appeared to be a pitying look.

“On the word of a mute psychic teenager, Dave? Can’t we go for at least a mutant Ninja Turtle?”

“And on the word of a trained child psychologist who’s run that school for many years? Who does not want that kid involved in this?”

“I don’t know that and you don’t know that. For all I know, she wants to be a star on America’s Most Wanted. Is she a psychic, too, Dave? Look, I think you’re just overwrought. Go get some sleep. Then come into the office in the morning. Maybe if we can piss on this fire early enough, we can put it out, okay? Lemme make some calls, head this thing off.

I’ll tell ‘em you were whacked-out on your meds or something.”

Sparks slipped out of the car but held the door open. “Remember who your friends are, Dave,” he said.

“Yeah, right,” Dave said. “Both of them.”

‘ ‘Bingo. So get some sleep. Forget about goddamn psychics. That’s an order.”

SATURDAY, MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA, 10:00 A.M. Brig. Gen. Lee Carrothers rejoined his wife, Sue, out on their patio, where she was having coffee and reading the Washington Post. It was a glorious spring day along the Potomac, with the cherry blossoms and dogwoods competing with one another to set the woods ablaze in pink and white. Only the constant muted thunder of jets from National Airport marred the otherwise-pristine air along the river. He was decked out in shorts and a sweatshirt, having just mown their backyard.

“So what did Himself want?” she asked. “You don’t have to go in, do you?”

He sat down in a deck chair next to hers and took her hand. “You know that flap I’ve been dealing with all week? What I called the ‘Anniston problem’?”

“Yes?”

“Let me run something by you.” He then proceeded to tell her the story of the missing cylinder, ending with what the team had reported to the Security Working Group and what the group had concluded in its report to General Waddell. She was silent for a minute when he was finished.

“So,” she said finally, “they’re going to assume that thing was destroyed when the containers went into the— what’d you call it? The demil process?”

“Right.”

“And what if it didn’t? What if somebody heisted it?”

He nodded silently, looking out over the freshly mowed grass. They could hear the susurrations of Saturday morning traffic out on the G.W.

Parkway behind their backyard fence. His dear wife, Sue, was absolute hell on getting right to the heart of the matter, which was why he often consulted her, security or no security. Besides, she could keep her mouth shut.

“I asked that very question, early on, when we decided to send in a monitoring team to the DRMO at Fort Gillem, disguised as an exercise.

Got a ‘Who farted in church?’ reaction. Himself sort of made it clear that the right answer was going to be found there, at Fort Gillem, one way or the other. Either they’d find the containers, and the cylinder in one of them, or the containers would have been demiled, and we’d have to assume the missing cylinder was destroyed right along with them.”

“In other words, there were no other thinkable alternatives.”

‘ ‘Right. Losing a cylinder of this stuff was simply ‘not possible.”

Himself was calling to reiterate that sentiment this morning.”

“Why? Did you object to the group’s findings?”

‘ ‘Just to Fuller, that biological weapons guy from Die trick. I think maybe he had a word with Waddell. That maybe I needed my loyalty calibrated.” ;

She put the paper down. “Biological weapons guy? I thought we were talking CW here.”

“Oh, we are. As if that’s not bad enough. Ambrose Fuller’s an old pal of Waddell and keeps him apprised of what’s going on out at USAMRIID. He used to work the BW program before 1968. He’s a veterinarian. They used [ vets back then, and now, for all I know, to work the infectious disease vaccine programs there.”

“So why was Fuller pulled into this problem?” Carrothers had been thinking about that. Good question. “Because Waddell wanted him to chair the Security Working Group.”

“Lee?”

I “Yeah, right. Why a biological guy? Shit.”

I “What exactly was the good Herr General conveying this morning?” she asked. “That maybe your future as,; crown prince of the Chemical Corps was dependent on manifestations of right attitudes? Like he wants to see Chairman Hillary’s little red book prominently displayed in your breast pocket?”

(Carrothers laughed out loud. Sue knew how things worked. “Nothing quite so subtle,” he said. “This is Myer Waddell we’re talking about. He said to go along with the report, and to keep any doubts I might have until such Jl time as I was head of the Chemical Corps, at which time ‘ j I would be free to open fire on either one or both of my I feet as I saw fit.”

“Uh-huh. And meanwhile?”

“Meanwhile? Well, hell, they might be right. The Working Group, that is.

It is logical that the missing cylinder was left in a container. It’s also logical that all the ( containers went unopened into the demil process. Who the hell would go opening up a CW container?”

“Lee.”

“Lee’s not here. Lee’s away on TOY somewhere.”

“Lee!” : [ “Hush, Sue.

I’m going to have to think about this one.”

SATURDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 9:15 A.M. Carson had come into his office, even though it was a Saturday morning.

The DRMO, of course, was empty, and his pickup was the only truck out in the lot. He had told his wife that he needed to catch up on some paperwork, but the real reason was that he needed time to think. His latest conversation with Tangent had been nip and tuck.

In retrospect, he had probably done things backward. First he had told Tangent that the Army had come and gone—satisfied, he was pretty sure, that the cylinder had been destroyed in the demil machine. Then he had told him that the DCIS guy, Stafford, had tumbled somehow to why the Army was there, evidently because of something Dillard had told him.

Tangent had been worried about this sudden Army “exercise,” but he’d gone positively hermantile over Stafford’s accusations.

“He knows? He described the item?”

“Pretty close, he did. But look, he has no evidence. Lambry is gone, and I’ll guarantee you Lambry did not know where the cylinder is hidden.

Only what it looked like when he brought it to me.”

“I don’t know, Carson. We may have to dump this thing. What if Lambry’s in hiding somewhere, just waiting to testify? What if they have his ass?”

“Who? The Army? The DCIS? Is that likely? Stafford wouldn’t be running his mouth in my office if they had anything at all. They’d be all over this place waving warrants, and my ass would be in the slammer. They have nothing. Stafford was just trying to spook me, that’s all.”

Tangent thought that one over. “So where the hell is Lambry?”

“Who the hell knows? I think he got scared when Stafford showed up. He’s a hillbilly from Alabama somewhere. We’re not talking math major here, okay? Probably got scared and hightailed it back into the piney woods.

Left the gas on in his house in southeast Atlanta and burned the thing down.” ;-:

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, he did. Day after he failed to show up for work.” It had, of course, been more than one day, but Tangent didn’t need to know that.

“The arson cops came around, but they didn’t think it was arson. No bodies or anything. No insurance policy. He just cleared out.

Unfortunately, he must have leaked something to Dillard, and Dillard was seen talking to Stafford.”

“That’s what I’m worried about. Where’s Stafford now?” “Don’t know. But you said you had some influence up there. You found out his political situation. Why don’t we act on that? The Army’s come and gone; they’re not going to want to hear any noise about any missing CW cylinder. If you can neutralize Stafford quickly, after all that trouble he got in up there in Washington, then we’ll be home free.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“I’m thinking of complaining up my chain of command that Stafford is making wild-ass accusations. I’ll start it with a side bar to the local DCIS office in Atlanta. Make it sound like Stafford’s lost it—you know, become some kind of nutcase. You say you can make things happen up there. You get DCIS headquarters to pull him back to D.C. Get Stafford out of the picture. The Army’s already out of the picture. Like I said, we’re home free. Better yet, we’ll be dealing with an object that isn’t missing.”

“That’s probably going to be harder than it sounds,” Tangent said. “My people have no direct leverage on the DCIS.”

“Well, get some, goddamn it,” Carson said. “Stafford’s the only thing between us and some serious money, right? You said he was on a shit list up there. Pull the string with the people he burned. Didn’t you say he took down a Bureau guy?”

“Yeah, that’s right. The Bureau. There is an angle we can work with the Bureau.”

“Well, all right, then. I guess you have to wait until Monday.”

“No, I don’t. But you let us worry about that. From what I’ve heard about this guy, all it’s going to take is a few words that he’s running wild again, and somebody’ll step on his neck.”

“But it’s Saturday: Nobody—”

“Every department in government law enforcement has a duty officer, Carson. Which is even better: When the duty officer calls, the bosses react first, and then pulse their staffs on Monday.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing. Sit tight. Don’t call DLA. You’re right. This is the way to go. We’ll have this Stafford prick off the boards by Monday.”

“Okay, but then what? Should we sit on things for a week, let the dust settle?”

“I don’t think so. Stafford can be neutralized, but short of somebody shooting him, he can’t be silenced. No, if anything, I think we have to move up the transfer. Our clients are anxious, and we don’t want them to get wind of any shit brewing in DCIS circles. I want you to call me at six p.m. tomorrow, that’s Sunday.” He gave Carson another 800 number and hung up.

Carson thought about all that. So now it was hurry up and wait, while the Washington ballerinas did the monster mash on Stafford. Short of shooting him, Tangent had said. Well, if he gets between me and my money, I may have a go at that option.

He decided to go over to the demil building and make damned sure that no one had messed around with the roller casing. But first he would take a little stroll, make sure that bastard Stafford wasn’t skulking around the warehouses somewhere. He patted his windbreaker pocket as he left his office. His snub-nosed Colt felt reassuringly solid.

SATURDAY, ANNISTON, ALABAMA, 10:45 A.M. Stafford had taken a motel room at the Holiday Inn out on 1-20 after having a late breakfast at one of the ubiquitous Waffle Houses. After his meeting with Sparks, he had gone t up to his room in the hotel long enough to pack his stuff, get five hours of sleep, and then hit the interstate west out of Atlanta. It had taken him an hour and a half to get to Oxford, which was the turnoff for Anniston to the north I of the interstate. The motel room would provide a base of {operations with a land-line telephone and a local directory, and he would probably be staying overnight, depending on what shook out from his inquiries at the Army base. As long as he kept his government-issue cell phone off the air, Sparks could not know where he was, which should give him forty-eight hours of breathing room. Until Monday, that is, at which time Ray Sparks would expect him in the DCIS office in Smyrna. He smiled ruefully. What Sparks had actually said was that he expected Stafford in his office this morning, but Stafford had decided to misunderstand.

Forty-eight hours. On a weekend. Not much time.

He made a call to the local newspaper and talked to a harried-sounding female reporter who was about to go out to cover a local charity golf tournament. He identified himself as a freelance writer, gave a false name, and said he was looking for local interest stories in small-town Alabama. He said he’d heard a rumor that there was something big going on at the Army base, something to do with chemical weapons. She laughed and told him that there were always rumors about the CW depot, but the only news came when they made a shipment out west somewhere and the local environmental protestors did their bit along the railroad right-of-way. Because a lot of people in this town were dependent on the base, though, the protests never amounted to much. Otherwise, there was nothing shaking that she knew about, and she said she really had to get a move on. He thanked her and hung up.

He tried the same probe at the local radio stations in Oxford and Anniston, but everyone was out doing something called “remotes” at shopping centers or car dealerships. Nobody had heard about anything out of the ordinary going down at the Army base.

He sat back on the bed. This was going to be much harder than it had seemed last night. Somehow he had to find out whether or not the Army had lost a chemical weapon. If they had, what would they do? They’d initiate an internal investigation, both at this base and probably at the shipment destination point. He thought about the Army Criminal Investigation Command, what used to be called the CID. They were the investigatory branch of the Army military-police organization. If there were a big-deal investigation going on behind closed doors, the local CIC people would have heard about it, even if they weren’t involved. As a DCIS investigator, he could go into any CIC office in the country, ask for help in his current DRMO investigation, and, from there, make a casual inquiry about what was shaking at Anniston.

Unless, of course, Ray Sparks had already begun some damage-control efforts by alerting the duty office at DCIS Washington that Dave Stafford had, once again, wandered off the reservation. And if he’d done that, DCIS Washington might in turn be alerting their counterparts in the military services to be on the lookout for a Stafford, David, unit of issue one each, even as we speak. Shit.

It all depended on how fast Ray moved, and whether or not he would wait until Monday. Civil servants, even the police variety, almost never worked weekends, but there were duty officers at every level of the chain of command whose job it was to cover weekend contingencies. Hell with it, he thought. I’m going to go over to that base and talk to the Army CIC people. If I run into a white eyed stone wall, that in itself will tell me something.

The map provided by the motel showed Fort Mcclellan on the north side of the town of Anniston. He wondered where the hell they kept all the evil shit. He was very surprised when he turned in at the first gate he came to and found it unguarded. Fort Mcclellan was an open post? He drove down the road until he found a headquarters office, where he obtained a map of the post.

He finally found the provost marshal’s office, which was located in a headquarters area three blocks from the sprawling Chemical Warfare School. He parked the government car and went in, where he found the Army version of a police station desk area. There was a waiting room in the front, facing a railing with a gate in the middle that spanned the room. A young black man, who appeared to be a civilian, was sitting in the waiting room. To the left was a door marked cic. Bingo.

He walked up to the railing and waited for the female sergeant to get off the phone. He presented his credentials and asked if the CIC rep was in.

“No, sir,” she said, “It’s Saturday. I have a beeper number I can try.

Except—”

“Except?”

“Well, this weekend is the annual campground cleanup. Everybody’s going to be working up in north post. It’s a volunteer thing every spring. I don’t think he’s gonna be close to a phone. He’s already had one call this morning, and he hasn’t answered. Can I maybe help you with something?”

Stafford had to think fast. He had planned to ease into this question.

“I’m running an investigation in Atlanta, at a DRMO,” he said. “That’s one of those surplus sales offices. Yesterday a team from here went in and ran a CW exercise, and I wanted to talk to the CIC agent here to see if that exercise was possibly connected to my investigation.”

“A CW exercise? From Fort Mcclellan?” “Well, they said they were from Anniston. I assumed Fort Mcclellan.”

“They say they were from the Chemical Warfare School?”

“No. It was some kind of emergency response team.

They were all suited up, except for the officers who were in charge. Two big-ass trucks. About twenty people.”

The clerk thought for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s nothing like that here at Fort Mcclellan.”

“Is there anything going on here on the base that might initiate an exercise like that all the way up in Atlanta? Some big exercise? War games?”

She shook her head again. “No, sir, not that I know of. Not here. But maybe the team came from the depot.”

“The depot?”

“Yes, sir. The Anniston Army Weapons Depot. That’s not here. It’s a special weapons storage area, about ten miles west of here. They might have a CW response team like that. Fort Mcclellan doesn’t.” “I see,” he said. Now what? he thought. Wrong Army base? “Well, I guess I need to go over there, then. So there’s nothing going on here that might have emergency response teams running around Atlanta?”

“No, sir, it’s just a normal Saturday, far as I know. Fort Mcclellan doesn’t store weapons, sir. We’re mostly about schools here.”

“Okay. Let me leave a name and number for your CIC duty officer, in case he calls in for his messages. I’m staying down at the Holiday Inn, on the interstate in Oxford. Room number 405.” He repeated his name, then let her see the credentials again. She wrote it all down and promised to try the beeper a couple of times. He got directions from her to the Anniston Depot, thanked her, and left.

Her directions took him back into the center of Anniston, where he stopped by a Burger King for a caffeine fix. He then drove west out of town on Highway 202, which was a two-lane road that took him through open farmland and wooded hills, interspersed with clusters of trashy looking trailers crouching by the road. He kept looking for signs to the depot, but there was nothing marked. After ten miles, he stopped and asked for directions at a gas station minimart, and the lady pointed him to the next intersection. Sure enough, there was an inconspicuous sign up on a hillside announcing the presence of the Anniston Army Weapons Depot.

He turned right and headed down an extra-wide road. There was nothing on either side but pine woods. He had sort of expected razor wire, guard towers, and electric fences, but then, a CW storage area was probably not a favorite place for local deer hunters. After about a mile, the road crossed over what looked like a mainline railway, and then made a sweeping right turn down into an area resembling the assembly area in front of a ferry landing. There were several semis parked diagonally in waiting lanes, and ahead was a large reinforced steel gate that was closed. Beyond the gate, several large industrial buildings were visible. The buildings were constructed entirely of windowless concrete.

There was an expansive railroad siding area, with rail spurs running under closed steel doors into the concrete buildings. No humans were visible on the other side of the gate area.

He drove down the hill. An armed civilian guard came out of the gatehouse. Dave stopped and showed his credentials, hoping that his ID and the government car would get him in.

“This is a closed post,” the guard declared, holding on to Stafford’s credentials while studying them. “Unless you have a point of contact who’s there now and whom” we can call on the phone, we can’t let you in.” “No,” Dave said. “I don’t. I was hoping there was a CIC office here at the Depot.”

“Nope,” the guard said, still looking at the credentials.

“CIC’s over at Fort Mcclellan.” “Okay,” Dave said. “Is there a CERT of some sort based here? A team that might go out to do its thing in two big Army semis?”

The guard’s expression revealed absolutely nothing. “Don’t know anything about any teams, sir,” he replied, handing back Stafford’s credentials.

“This here is a special weapons storage area. Can’t let you in. You can back up and turn around right over there.”

Stafford thanked him and turned the car around. As he drove off, he could see the guard through the open door of the gatehouse; he was writing something down at his desk. Probably has to record the name of anyone coming, going, or refused entrance, Stafford thought. He wondered if that procedure might come back to haunt him.

He drove back to Anniston with the afternoon Alabama sun blazing in his mirror. Now what? he wondered.

SATURDAY, MOUNT VERNON, VIRGINIA, 5:00 P.M. “Lee, it’s the Pentagon duty officer,” Sue Carrothers said, handing her husband the portable phone.

“General Carrothers,” he said, frowning. Saturday afternoon calls were never good news.

“Sir, this is Major Mason, Chemical Corps duty officer. We’ve had a call from Fort Mcclellan. From the post operations officer. Can we go secure, sir?”

Carrothers handed the portable back to his wife and went into the study, where he initiated the secure link on his desk phone. The phone emitted a tone, and then the digital window indicated the line was secure. “Go ahead,” he said.

“Sir, this is in reference to the Security Working Group. A Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent by the name of David Stafford went to the Mcclellan provost marshal’s office this morning, asking to speak to the CIC rep. The clerk took his name and number and offered to beep the CIC rep, but apparently they’re all out in the woods doing some kind of base cleanup, so they don’t think the CIC guy ever called him back.”

“And why precisely do I care?” Carrothers asked.

“Because he was also asking about the CERT that went to Fort Gillem yesterday.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yes, sir. There’s more. She, the clerk, is an E-Five MP. She had never heard of any CERT, so she sent him over to the depot.”

“Oh shit squared.”

“Yes, sir. We’ve checked with the security people there, and he did in fact show up. He apparently tried, although not very hard, to get into the depot, and then he asked the guard about the response team. The guard blew him off, of course, but he wrote it all down, including Stafford’s badge info, and he called it in to the depot duty officer as an unusual gate event. The duty officer called the CO of the depot, and since they had dispatched the reaction team to Gillem in response to our orders, he called me.”

The chain of command, Carrothers marveled. Some, times it actually works.

“Who is this guy again?”

“A GS-Fifteen investigator named David Stafford, on assignment to Atlanta from DCIS Washington. We’ve checked him out with the DCIS duty officer, and he’s legit —sort of.”

“Sort of, Major?”

‘ ‘Well, sir, it seems he was a whistle-blower. Bit of an odd duck.

Senior investigator, good, if somewhat unorthodox, professional reputation in DCIS until he dropped a ‘dime on some SES-Two named Bernstein, as well as another senior guy at the FBI.”

“What was going on?”

“Standard Washington dance card, General. The guy I talked to said this Bernstein apparently was selling information to a congressional staffer—something about a sensitive DCIS case involving a big Defense Department contractor. The staffer would then have lunch with the contractor’s lobbyist, who in turn would feed the inside dope to the company, giving their corporate legal team a leg up. The company kept it sweet by making a campaign contribution sent in through the lobbyist to the staffer, who took a piece and also cut Bernstein in for a piece of the contribution as a ‘consultant.’ “

“Lovely. How did Stafford pick up that scheme?”

“Stafford pulled the string on Bernstein’s lifestyle. The word in the DCIS was that Bernstein had jumped in Stafford’s shit over some unorthodox gumshoe work, and Stafford was just getting back. But then this Bernstein apparently panicked and reached out to a buddy who was a senior guy in the FBI with a request to hassle Stafford. Once that shit started, Stafford got pissed and pulled in the IRS. Net result was the discovery of a whole grunch of undeclared income, and then the whole thing unraveled.”

“Bernstein go to jail?”

“No, sir. He was a political appointee. He flipped to the IRS side’against the Defense contractor and the FBI official, in return for a nolo contendere and the opportunity to write the IRS a big check and let bygones be bygones. The administration sent him overseas somewhere to a new assignment. The FBI guy got reprimanded but that was all.”

“That’s usually enough in the Bureau, which means Stafford’s on at least two shit lists. So what’s he doing in Atlanta?”

‘ ‘Technically, an investigation on possible fraud within the DRMO system, but the DCIS duty officer said he’d heard Stafford had been unofficially shit-canned. He had one other interesting piece of information: Apparently, the DCIS regional supervisor in Smyrna called in looking for Stafford within the past twenty-four hours. Stafford was supposed to have reported to the Smyrna office this morning, but he didn’t show.”

“Because he was snooping around in Anniston. Why did they want him?”

“The duty officer didn’t know, General. Only that if we knew where he was, the local DCIS office sure as hell wanted to know, too.”

Carrothers was silent for a minute while he thought. Something was way off the tracks here, and, of course, it would have to be on a damned Saturday. “Okay,” he said. “I’m really glad you had the duty, Major.

Good work all around. I’d better call General Waddell. I’ll get back to you.”

Carrothers called Waddell’s home in Alexandria, but the general was not in. He left a message requesting the general to call him, then hung up.

His wife was polishing some silver in the kitchen when he walked in.

“Fire somewhere?” she asked.

“In a manner of speaking. This is that matter we talked about this morning. I have this bad feeling it’s not going to stay buried.” “Should it, Lee? Stay buried, that is?” He sighed and looked out the window for a moment. “My gut instinct is to climb into my dress caitvas and get my young ass into the building.”

“Well, you’re always saying you should trust your instincts.”

“Yeah. I’m always saying that.”

“Just make sure you trust all your instincts, Lee. Our second star isn’t worth being a part of something that can’t stand the smell test.”

He stood there, his hands in his pockets. “Waddell as much as told me that my accession to the CG job depended on how well I handled this little tar baby,” he said. “This was my chance to demonstrate that I really knew how to play the game when the stakes got high.”

She put down the polishing rag. “And now?”

“And now I don’t know. think some bastard has stolen a chemical weapon.” fp>

“Wow. And the bigs don’t. want to hear that.”

“Too right.”

She leaned over and put her hand on his cheek and kissed him. Her fingers smelled of silver polish. “I still have my Realtor’s license,” she said. “You go do the right thing, Lone Ranger.” “I hear you, Mrs. Carrothers,” he said, shaking his head. ‘ ‘Sometimes I think we never learn a damned thing in the Army.”

“Your Monday uniform is rigged and ready in the closet.”

He was upstairs changing when General Waddell called back. They went secure on the phones and Carrothers told him what Mason had reported and that he, Carrothers, was on his way in to the Pentagon.

“DCIS, huh?” the general said. “Ambrose Fuller told me there was a DCIS guy at the DRMO when the team went in. Mason think this Stafford knows about the cylinder?’ ‘

“It sounds like he at least suspects something. First he was there at Fort Gillem when the team went in. And now he’s knocking on doors at Mcclellan and the Anniston Depot.”

“We don’t need this shit. The Mcclellan people know where he’s staying there in Anniston?”

“Actually, yes, sir, I think they do.”

Waddell was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “The MP school is there, right? That means there are at least five hundred MPs at Fort Mcclellan. Pick him up. Have them find him, pick him up, and hold him.

Now. And notify the DCIS once we have him.”

“Pick up a federal agent, General?”

“That’s right. His supervisor’s looking for him, right? He tried an intrusion at a special weapons facility. We can always say we were not convinced of his identity. Then when DCIS admits he’s theirs, we’ll hand him over, after they agree to pull him out and keep him out of our official hair.”

Carrothers tried to keep any hint of doubt out of his voice. “Yes, sir.

I’ll get right on it,” he said, but the general had already hung up.

SATURDAY, OXFORD, ALABAMA, 5:30 P.M. It was going on sundown when Stafford got back to the motel. He had stopped for a late lunch in Anniston, then spent a long time crawling through the Saturday-afternoon traffic getting down to Oxford. He parked the government sedan reasonably near his room in the fourth building and was unlocking the door when a voice behind him said his name. He whirled around and found a black man there.

“Yes?” he said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice. It was times like this that he really missed the use of his arm.

“I’m Kevin Durand. I was in the provost marshal’s office this mornin.”

Heard you asking’ if there was something’ going’ on ‘bout chemical weapons and shit. Heard you say you were a federal agent and that you were stayin’ down here.”

“Is there something going on, Mr. Durand?”

“Yeah, I think there is.” He looked up and down the line of doors, as if uncomfortable talking about it out in the open. Stafford decided to take a chance.

“Come on in then,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

Durand went in with him and sat down in the chair by the television. He told Stafford a story about his girlfriend, Specialist Latonya Mayfield, who was reportedly being held in the disciplinary barracks, which is why he had been at the provost marshal’s office that morning. The word Durand was getting through the grapevine was that she and some other enlisted were being held incommunicado because of some flap having to do with some missing materials over at the depot. He hadn’t succeeded in getting any answers.

When Durand had finished, Stafford asked him what Specialist Mayfield’s assignment was. When Durand told him, Stafford nodded thoughtfully.

Durand’s story had essentially confirmed one element of the puzzle: It really did sound as if the Army had lost something, and it was probably Durand’s girlfriend who had discovered it in the first place.

“Are you able to talk to her?” t “No, sir. I’ve tried to call, and I even went to the depot to see if I could get in. All’s I’ve had is one message from some elerk, who says she’s okay and for me not to worry about her. Says she’s on some special detail. But that’s not what I’m hearin’.”

“But you are worried about her, right?” “Yes, sir,” he said. “There’s definitely some kinda shit going’ down over there.”

Stafford thought about what to say next. He wasn’t sure he wanted to share what he knew—correction, what he suspected—with a civilian. Even though the civilian had had the grace to share what he knew with him, his conscience reminded him.

“Mr. Durand,” Stafford said, “I happen to think you’re right. I suspect they’re holding Specialist Mayfield until they get their problem sorted out, whatever it is. And somehow, this all ties in with something I’m working on back in Atlanta. Tell me, you have somewhere to go?”

Durand stared at him. “Say what? You mean like get out of town?”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean. Lower your profile. Take a short trip.”

“What about Latonya?”

 

“

 

“If what I suspect is happening is indeed happening, they’ve got much bigger problems than Latonya.”

“And you think I oughta just split!”

“Yes. Can you do that without too much trouble?” Durand smiled. “Can a black man disappear in Alabama? You kiddin’?”

“Okay. Then I’d get out of sight if I were you.” Durand shook his head.

“But what’ve I done?”

“Nothing, Mr. Durand. It’s what the Army thinks you might know that could get you in trouble.”

“But I’m a civilian!”

“Would you call this an Army town, Mr. Durand?” Durand pursed his lips and thought about that. He nodded. “Oh yeah. No doubt ‘bout that.”

“Well, then.”

Durand thanked him and then left. Stafford looked up the number for Ray Sparks’s office. He should be at home, he thought. It’s a Saturday, and it’s almost six o’clock, but I better check the office, just in case.

The phone was answered on the first ring. “DCIS, Sparks. We’re non-secure.”

“Ray.”

“Dave! Where the hell are you? You were supposed to come in here this morning.” Stafford thought he could hear someone else in the office, but then Sparks apparently hit the mute button on his handset.

“Thought you meant Monday, Ray,” Stafford said, trying to keep it light.

“Never knew you to work Saturdays.” “I said this morning. So where the hell are you?” Definitely key-set mode, Stafford thought. Sparks was having to press a key to talk, which meant he wanted to keep any background conversations in the office off the line.”

“Anniston, Alabama.” ‘ ‘Dave, Dave, Dave: I told you to leave that Army thing alone.”

“I know, but let me tell you what I’ve found out.” He went on to describe the essence of what Kevin Durand had told him, naming Durand only as a confidential informant. “They’ve lost a weapon, Ray. I just know they have. And. I’m willing to bet that slippery bastard Carson has it. We can’t just sit on something like that.”

There was a pause. Stafford wondered if Sparks was talking to someone else. “Where exactly are you in Anniston, Dave?” Sparks asked.

Stafford felt a chill. ‘ ‘Exactly? In a motel, Ray. Why?” I “Which motel, Dave? Got a number so I can call you back? A room number?”

“You sound like I’m a fugitive from justice, Ray. You getting some help with this matter?”

“Dave, don’t be cute. Where are you? Which fucking [ motel?”

; Stafford slowly hung up the phone and then stared down at it. What the hell is this? He thought for a moment

What had he told the clerk at the PM office that morning?

Enough, apparently. Durand had found him easily enough. Sparks wouldn’t be far behind.

He packed up as fast as he could with one hand, strapped his briefcase to his bag, and then got the hell out of there. He stopped at the door to the parking lot and scanned the area, but nothing out of the ordinary appeared to be going on. He walked as casually as he could to the Crown Vie and put his bags in. He looked around the parking area one more time, and then he got in and drove out of the lot. Diagonally across the four-lane highway was a Best Western motel. He drove down an access road to a stoplight, went across the road, and then drove back one block to the Best Western parking lot, turning so he could face the car toward the Holiday Inn, which was now diagonally across the state highway from him. He parked but kept the engine running.

Damn, damn, damn, he thought. What in the hell is going on here? He could understand Sparks’s earlier reluctance to believe his theory about a missing weapon, but when he called in with corroborating evidence, Sparks had acted as if he were setting up an arrest. My arrest, he realized. He recalled what Carson had threatened to do. Maybe Carson hadn’t waited until Monday.

Twenty minutes later, he saw what he had been waiting for: Three Army MP cars with flashing blue and red lights emerged from under the interstate overpass to his left and pulled into the access road across the way.

They sped into the Holiday Inn parking lot, and a dozen MPs in uniform spilled out and headed for the motel building. An Army sedan drove in behind them.

Dave didn’t hesitate. He backed up the Crown Vie, then drove it down the access road on his side to the intersection containing the ramps leading to the interstate. But then he had a thought. If Sparks is part of this, the MPs have to know what I’m driving, and they will expect me to be hauling ashes somewhere out on 1-20. So don’t do that. What I have to do is get rid of this very conspicuous car.

He thought fast, waiting for the light to change.

Where’s the last place they’ll look for me? Back on the base. Back at Fort Mcclellan, where there’s a base motor pool, and where maybe I can fake a problem with this car and get another one while the military police are out scouring the highways. He made up his mind as the light changed and he pulled out, turning left and heading north on the state road back into Oxford. He watched the red and blue police lights fluttering behind him in his mirror until the interstate overpass blocked them from view.

Thirty minutes later, in near darkness, he pulled into the base motor pool at Fort Mcclellan, thanking his household gods that the post gates were unguarded. He parked the Crown Vie in the lane nearest to the motor pool’s office. There appeared to be one person on duty in the small office. There were three lanes’ worth of trucks and sedans parked around him, probably because it was a Saturday night. He shut the car down and reached under the dash to find the fuse box. He discovered that the car had circuit breakers instead of fuses. Cracking the door, he scrunched down under the dash to read the labels by the light near the edge of the door. He found the breaker marked headlights and pulled the wires out of the breaker. Just to make sure, he used a pocketknife to cut them off where they disappeared into the fire wall.

He walked into the office and identified himself to the duty sergeant as a DCIS agent. He told him a story about his Fort Gillem car’s lights crapping out on him and said that he needed a replacement car right away. The sergeant insisted on checking out the problem with the lights, saying that he wasn’t sure if he could issue a replacement car, since this was Fort Mcclellan and the Crown Vie belonged to Fort Gillem. Dave blustered his way through all the bureaucratic objections. Fifteen minutes later, he was headed back out the southernmost gate in a very used black two-door Chrysler sedan.

He turned south on the state road and headed back through Anniston toward Oxford, watching for MP vehicles. Seeing signs for 1-20, he turned off me main drag onto Highway 78, which led him east toward another interchange. He did not fancy being in an Army car down near the Holiday Inn interchange, assuming they were still down there beating the bushes.

Once he got to the interstate, he headed east, back toward Atlanta, not exceeding the speed limit. He figured that this Army car would suffice for about one night. His plan was to go to the airport, park the sedan way out in economy parking, and then go into the terminal and rent a civilian car. He looked at his watch. It was an hour and a half to Atlanta, so he should be able to get to the rental car desks before they closed for the night After that, he had no idea of what he was going to do. At the very least, he had to warn Gwen Warren. Two people knew he had been to Graniteville. Sparks was one, and he knew why Stafford had been there.

Carson was the other, although he shouldn’t know about the girl, unless he remembered the airport incident and put two and two together.

He dreaded calling Gwen Warren after all his promises to keep the government away from the kids at Willow Grove, but he’d told Sparks about the girl, and now it looked like Sparks was working with the Army.

Would be tell them about the girl’s psychic vision of the cylinder? He swore as he thought about that. Gwen Warren would kick his ass for that.

The Army had to be going apeshit over the cylinder, the appearance of military police at a civilian motel was proof of just how desperate they were. Have to get rid of this car. He pushed it up to eighty, and watched for cops.

SATURDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D. C., 10:15 P.M. Brigadier General Carrothers sat in the Chemical Corps operations module of the Army Command Center, sipping his second cup of their notoriously noxious coffee. The Army Command Center, unlike those of the other services, had been constructed down in the basement of the Pentagon, presumably to protect it from enemy bombers. Despite heavy-duty air conditioning, the place smelled of mildew. The entire Pentagon building had been built on pilings in a tidal swamp; the state of the tide in the Po tomac could be determined by how far up the wall the concrete was sweating. Legions of bored watch officers over the years had marked the range of various tides on the wall in black Magic Marker.

Major Mason was on the phone, having a discussion with the duty officer at the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, when the module intercom sounded off.

“CW module, you have a call from Fort Mcclellan on line thirty-six, secure.”

Carrothers signified he would get it and picked up the STU-in handset.

The caller was the provost marshal, asking for Major Mason.

“No, this is General Carrothers. Did you pick that guy up?”

“Good evening, sir. No, sir, we did not. He wasn’t at the motel, and the local police report no sign of the Fort Gillem sedan in either Oxford or Anniston. We have the Highway Patrol looking. The sedan is distinctive: it’s a white GSA Crown Vie. If he’s out on the interstate, they should find him.”

“Is there any indication that he knows people want to find him?”

“Well, General, we called the DCIS regional office and spoke to his supervisor, a Mr. Sparks. He says he talked to Stafford this evening, but Stafford wouldn’t tell him where he was exactly. Only said he was hi Anniston.”

“Did this Sparks have any idea why one of his people was nosing around the Anniston Depot?”

“Sir, he got kind of coy when I asked that question. I got the sense that he wanted to get his hands on Stafford just as much as we do, so there’s a chance he does know what the guy’s up to. But if he does, he wasn’t going to tell me. I think we’ve got a pretty good chance. That vehicle is pretty distinctive.”

“If he’s still in it,” Carrothers said. “Where’s the last place you would look for that vehicle?”

The provost marshal thought for a moment. “Here, on post.”

“Yeah-And the local cops won’t look there, either. Get your post MPs out and take a look around. This guy may be smarter than we thought.”

Twenty minutes later, an embarrassed provost marshal was back on the phone, announcing the Crown Vic’s discovery in the motor pool’s parking lot. Stafford was now driving a black Chrysler sedan.

“And when did he engineer this little swap, Colonel?”

“This evening, General. While we were downtown rousting the Holiday Inn.

If he’s running to Atlanta, he’s there and then some by now.”

Carrothers hung up on him without reply. He had successfully suppressed the urge to yell, but he figured telephone rudeness would convey his displeasure. He back-briefed Major Mason.

“He’s a cool one, this guy,” Mason observed. “Assuming he figured out the MPs were on the way, that took some balls to drive back to the post and swap cars.”

“I’ve got this bad feeling that somehow this guy has figured out why that team showed up at the DRMO in a Atlanta,” Carrothers said. “His boss is obviously pissed 4 off at him, and yet he apparently went all cute when the provost tried to find out why DCIS wants him .back.”

Mason nodded. “Well, sir, the bad news is that we may have an intergovernment coordination problem; the good news is that the missing cylinder was destroyed with its container.”

Carrothers stared across the module at the major. Then faces were gray in the artificial red-tinged lighting. “You absolutely, positively sure of that, Major?” “Oh, yes, sir, General,” Mason said, putting a stiffly. sincere expression on his face. “General Waddell said that’s what happened, so that’s what happened. General, Sir.”

Carrothers treated Mason to a stony glare, but then he looked away. The screens on the Command Center communications consoles stared back him.

Waddell had made things very clear to him. The Army Chemical Corps could not have lost a weapon. It was simply not possible. And senior officers in the Chemical Corps who persisted in turning over rocks related to this unfortunate matter would do so at their professional peril.

But what had Sue said? Trust your instincts? All of them?

“Mason, here’s what I want,” Carrothers said, getting to his feet. “I want that Anniston sweep team reconstituted and reinforced. Four trucks instead of two. I want them sent back into that DRMO at Fort Gillem.

Tonight, like between zero one hundred and zero five hundred. I want them out of there before first light. Out of Atlanta beforei sunrise.

This time, I want them to search that whole place, not just the demil area. I don’t want anyone to know about this at the DRMO. I want an MP detachment from Anniston to go along to set up a discreet cordon around the DRMO so nobody intrudes while this is going on. If anybody does intrude, I want that person apprehended.” “Yes, sir,” Mason said, reaching for the secure phone.’; “I’ll get right on it. And General Waddell, sir?”

“I’ll handle General Waddell, Major,” Carrothers replied. “He’s got a social function tonight, and he’s leaving for a PACCOM tour on Monday.

One more thing: I want that DCIS supervisor, Sparks, on the horn after you get the reaction team in motion. Move out, Major.”

“Yes, sir. Moving out, sir.”

Carrothers walked through the main operations center and out the glass doors into the basement segment of the F-ring. He walked along the semidarkened corridor, which , was lined with forklifts and stacked pallets. The ceiling was cluttered with steam pipes and electrical cables serving the enormous building above. He walked along the silent corridor until he came to the escalator up to the ground level. It being a weekend evening, the escalator was turned off, so he sprinted up the seventy feet of steel steps to the [ A-ring. Then he did what he usually did when he needed ‘ to think about a problem: He walked around the five-sided A-ring at a brisk stride, his leather heels echoing in the empty corridors. I He was already way out in front of his friendly front lines with the orders he had just issued. The higher echelons of the Army obviously wanted this matter buried. j There would be some swift and meaningful retribution handed out at the lower levels in Anniston, or, more likely, at Tooele, for letting the thing get away, but if Waddell found out he was having the team go back into the DRMO, Carrothers knew he might join the various guilty bastards up on the scaffold. His chances for a second star and command of the Chemical Corps would vanish.

Luckily, General Waddell was going on travel again, which is why he wanted them in and out tonight, on a weekend, when there should be nobody there. He personally would call the commanding officer at Fort Gillem and tell nun that the last exercise had turned into a Lebanese goat-grab and that he was rousting the team out to do it again, until they got it right. Just one more exercise, if you don’t mind, Colonel.

No big deal.

But the crucial question remained: Had the weapon been destroyed, as everyone was hoping and praying? Or had it been found and stolen by someone at that DRMO? And if it had been stolen, what would the guy who found it do with it? Try to sell it? Or maybe blackmail the Army for money? Pay me off or I’ll tell the world you lost one? He didn’t even want to think about the other possibilities that a missing can of Wet Eye presented.

He couldn’t escape the conclusion that this DCIS agent, Stafford, had stumbled onto something relating to the missing cylinder, that Stafford had somehow discovered ‘ that the Anniston team’s first visit had not been an exercise. But there was no way he could know that—unless that was what he was doing down there in the first place.

He shook his head. No way. He was thinking in circles here. Just as he was walking in circles around the five sides of old Fort Fumble by the Sea. A propane-powered tractor rattled past him, pulling a wagon train of Xerox paper down the otherwise-empty corridor. He headed back toward the basement escalator.

Two issues to resolve, he thought. First, Fort Gillem: Revisit that DRMO, make damn sure there is no trace of a Wet Eye cylinder there. And, second, talk to the DCIS supervisor in Smyrna, find out what the hell his Washington agent was really doing at that DRMO in the first place, and why he had gone off on his own to Anniston. He’d have to think of a pretext for the call. Well, for starters, the guy had shown up at the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, where he had no business to be.

We fervently hope, he thought as he trotted down the escalator.

SATURDAY, SOUTHWEST ATLANTA, 11:30 P.M. Wendell Carson sat in the dark on his screened back porch, nursing a beer and considering the problem of Senior Investigator David Stafford.

It was unseasonably warm this evening. The trees in the backyard stirred uneasily in the humid night air, and heat lightning flared over Alabama on the distant southwest horizon. His wife was inside watching television in the bedroom while she painted on her nightly fright mask.

He could hear the awkward drone of the weekend fill-in concluding the local eleven o’clock news.

Stafford knew.

He knew why the Army team had really been there, and he knew what the cylinder looked like.

And he had said he was going to tell the Army.

Carson no longer cared how Stafford had found out. Bud Lambry had obviously confided in Dillard after all.

Maybe to protect himself, he’d told Dillard more than he had let on, and then that dumb ass had gone running his mouth to Stafford. Had to be.

Unless … A calf bawled in the darkness of the farmer’s field behind Carson’s property, and its mother lowed back reassuringly. Farther away, someone’s chained-up dog was barking neurotically in the distance, its persistent yapping noise annoying the stillness. The beer bottle was sweating in all the humidity, trickling cold rivulets across the back of his right hand. He felt himself zoning out, his perception collapsing to a cube of space right in front of his eyes, which were closed, almost against his will.

He had been having the recurring bad dream ever since the thing at the airport, the one where he was trapped in a river and headed for a waterfall. Now the waterfall image reappeared. Once again, he felt the deadly wet grip of that surging current, and then the stomach-levitating sensation of going over. And he was not alond. There were other people in the river with him, dead, every one of them, and yet looking at him, ten thousand distorted faces frozen in soundless screams. Superimposed on this frightening image was the face of that damned girl, scanning the back of his braincase with those obsidian eyes. The girl from Graniteville. Graniteville..

He opened his eyes with a start. Stafford had gone’to Graniteville.

Damn! Was there some kind of connection there?

He realized he was gripping the beer bottle hard enough to hurt his hand. He forced his fingers to relax. Stafford had gone to Graniteville and then had come back talking about a cylinder. Which he could never have seen himself, because it had been either in Carson’s possession or stuffed into that roller. Even the Army team, with all its sensors and experts, hadn’t been able to find it, hidden right in front of them.

Graniteville.

He had a sudden intuition that he should go to the DRMO. His entire future was that cylinder, and suddenly he was desperate to lay his hands on it, to make sure it was still there. But first he would need an excuse to get out of the house.

He finished his beer and pitched the bottle in the trash as he went through the kitchen. He went quietly out the front door to his Army pickup truck, where he retrieved his government-issue bag phone. He carried it into the living room of the house and turned it on. Once he had a signal, he called his home number on a roamer circuit and then laid the handset down. He stepped quickly over to the house phone and c’aught it on the first ring.

“I’ve got it,” he called down the hall, then pretended to have a brief conversation. He hung up and walked back to the bedroom.

“MPs have a problem down at the DRMO,” he said. “Somebody tried to break in. Kids, most likely. I’ll be right back.”

His wife, intent now on a rerun, nodded absently. He looked for a moment at that fat face covered in what looked like zinc oxide, then realized once again how important the cylinder and the money from its sale were going to be. He got a jacket in case it turned cooler later, picked up his bag phone, and went back out to the truck. At this hour, it would take only about forty minutes to get to Fort Gillem.

He had to see it again, to make sure it was still there. j. Then he would worry about any possible loose ends in Graniteville. If he was going to pull this deal off for really big bucks, nobody could know the cylinder even existed. The Army had to believe it had been destroyed, which left Stafford, and, just possibly, that girl hi Graniteville. The image of Bud Lambry disappearing into the Monster in a shower of blood and oil bloomed in his mind. He shifted one small mental gear, and Lambry’s face was replaced by

Stafford’s. He took a deep breath as he pulled out on the county road and turned toward town. In for a penny, he mused, in for a pound. For a million bucks, he would do whatever it took.

SUNDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D. C., 12:10A. M …1 jf .

“General Carrothers, sit, call on line thirty-five, non-secure. A Mr. Ray Sparks, DCIS, Smyrna.” “Thank you,” Carrothers said. He picked up the phone and asked Sparks to go secure. He nodded across the room at Major Mason, who picked up a muted handset to listen in. A moment later Sparks was back up on secure.

“Mr. Sparks, I’m sorry to roust you out at this time of the morning, but we have a little problem with one of your people.”

“That would be Dave Stafford?” .

“That’s right, Mr. Sparks. We’re trying to figure out why a Washington-based DCIS agent is knocking on the front door of the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, asking for the CIC office, which is not located there, which is something we have reason to believe he already knew. Any thoughts, Mr. Sparks?”

There was a perceptible pause. “Well, General, we’re not quite sure ourselves what he was doing there,” Sparks said. “He’s supposed to be on assignment to the DRMO at Fort Gillem on a fraud case. All I can think is that he was present when your chemical team arrived the other night and he wanted to find out what that was all about.”

Carrothers caught the unspoken question. “What that was about was a no-notice tactical exercise of a Chemical Emergency Response Team, Mr. Sparks. Now that we’re in the business of shipping chemical weapons to the national destruction site out in Utah, we keep one of these teams in readiness at each of the Army’s special weapons depots. We exercise them frequently. We send them to military installations, usually at night, to keep the civilian population from getting unduly alarmed. I guess my question is, Why would your guy care?”

“He’s not my guy, General. He’s on assignment from your fair city, in fact. But let me ask you something else: Is there any chance that your team went to Fort Gillem for something other than an exercise?”

Mason’s eyes widened as he looked over his handset at Carrothers. “Not that I know of, Mr. Sparks,” Carrothers said quickly. “We have a number of sites we send the teams out to. The ops center here randomly picks one and gives the go order. What prompted that question?”

“Something Mr. Stafford alluded to the other day, General,” Sparks replied. “But I probably misinterpreted it.”

“I’d sure like to know what he had in mind,” Carrothers said. “Any chance we can talk to Stafford?”

“Well, there’s a small problem with that, General. We can’t seem to find Mr. Stafford. Last contact we had was by phone from Ariniston, Alabama.

Oxford, actually. See, the weird thing is, I talked to the Alabama state cops. You know, I thought maybe he had had an accident out on the interstate or something. Driving in Alabama can be something of a blood sport sometimes. But anyway, they said funny I should ask, because there was a stop-and-hold warrant out on Stafford’s car, and it was the Fort Mcclellan military police who had put the want out.”

Can-others shook his head slowly as Sparks’s unstated question once again hung in the air. Mason was now busy writing notes and avoiding eye contact with the general.

“Once again, I’m cold, Mr. Sparks,” Carrothers replied. “Unless the base CO at Anniston thought maybe Stafford had been running some kind of perimeter security-penetration drill. I guess I’d better pulse our circuits, see what the hell is going on down there. How about this? You hear from Stafford, get him to explain what the hell he was doing, and why. Then call me back, if you would. In the meantime, I’ll get onto my field people and find out why they put out a stop-and-hold on a DCIS agent”

“Yeah, I’d be interested in the answer to that, General. We’re all on the same team here, I thought. You know? DCIS7DOD?”

Carrothers understood the implied threat: DCIS worked directly for the Department of Defense, which was senior to the Department of the Army.

“I quite agree, Mr. Sparks,” Carrothers said, anxious now to terminate this conversation. “Team play is very important.” As in, Why don’t you know where your guy is and what he’s doing, smart-ass?

Sparks ignored the gibe. ‘ ‘We’ll get back to you as soon as we hear from Stafford, General.”

“Thank you, Mr. Sparks. And I suppose it goes without saying that if there is something going on, we’d all profit from keeping it in-house until we can get our arms around it, don’t you think?”

“I understand perfectly, General. DCIS operates on that very same principle to the greatest extent possible. Good morning to you, sir.” .

Carrothers hung up the phone a bit more forcefully than he intended.

Mason raised his eyebrows at him.

“Damn,” Carrothers growled. “This thing is getting away from us. I can just feel it. You heard that question?”

“Yes, sir. And that last bit, about keeping things in house. ‘To the greatest extent possible.’ “

“Right. In other words, Sure, we’ll keep it quiet, unless we catch the Army at something really egregious, and then we’re gonna yell.”

“Yes, sir. But how in the hell could mis Stafford guy know what the team was doing there?”

Carrothers got up and began to pace. “How indeed? More important, where is Stafford now? I hope to Christ he’s not skulking around that DRMO, not with another inbound response team.”

Mason nodded. “Well, if he is, maybe we’ll get him this time. I think we’d be in a better bargaining position with DCIS if we had their guy in, um, protective custody.

He burned senior management in DCIS. There has to be an angle there we can work. Go over this Sparks guy’s head, maybe. Talk to the DCIS here in the building.”

“We might have to do just that. I need to think, Major. We’ve got to get this thing back in the bottle.”

SUNDAY, FORT CILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 12:30 A.M. Stafford opened his car window and poured the dregs of his coffee out onto the gravel of the truck park. He had backed his rental in between two large deuce and halfs in a line of transport vehicles parked across the railroad tracks from the DRMO, which positioned him to watch the entrance.

The run to Atlanta from Anniston had been uneventful. He had passed some state troopers lurking in the median . strip, but they’d seemed more interested in watching for real Hotlanta-bound speeders than in his nondescript Army sedan. He wondered when the Army would figure out what he had done with the Fort Gillem Crown Vie, but that was their problem.

It would put them on notice that he was aware of their interest, though.

Perhaps he should have done something a little less in-their-face. A pang of conscience had prompted him to mail back the keys to the Fort Mcclellan motor pool, along with the parking stub. That officious sergeant would probably get his ass handed to him.

So what’s the plan, Stan? He wasn’t entirely sure why he had come back to the DRMO, except that Sparks might be having his hotel hi Atlanta watched, and he couldn’t just show up in Graniteville at four in the morning. He was convinced more man ever that the Army had somehow managed to lose a cylinder of some seriously bad shit. The visit of the CERT, the military police showing up at his motel, and Ray Sparks’s entire demeanor were signs of real trouble. He wished he had not told Sparks what he suspected, because if Sparks and the rest of the DCIS went into the cover-up mode, he’d be out in the cold. Again.

He had also promised Owen Warren not to drag the girl into this mess, but by telling Sparks about the girl, he’d blown that, too. That, he really regretted.

A Fort Gillem MP car on night patrol came down the main street in front of the truck park and turned across the tracks into the DRMO complex.

After a minute, he could see the car’s headlights reflecting off the back buildings of the complex, and then the car emerged at the far end, crossed back across the tracks, and resumed its patrol. Stafford was pretty sure his car was just about invisible in the pocket of shadow between the two large trucks.

And then there was the problem of Carson. Stafford was equally convinced that Carson either had the cylinder or knew where it was. He had told Sparks he suspected Carson. The question was, Had Sparks told the Army, and what would the Army do about that? If they couldn’t even admit they’d lost the cylinder, would they be likely to move against Carson?

After seeing those military police at the Holidaytnn, he thought they might just be looking to pick his ass up and take him to the backwoods of the Anniston Depot. On the other hand, he wondered if today’s politically correct Army really had it in them to squeeze someone. He doubted it So all Carson really had to do was sit tight and not say anything, and he could do whatever he wanted to with the cylinder in due course, assuming the Army didn’t find it He rubbed his eyes with his left hand, around and around. So what was the plan? It was Sunday morning, so there shouldn’t be anyone coming to the DRMO until Monday.

Maybe go in and take a look around himself? He yawned as the caffeine wore off. Not much point in that, he concluded.

All those warehouses filled with stuff—it could be anywhere, or not even here at all. What he needed now was some sleep, and men he would head for Graniteville at daylight This time, he would talk directly to that girl, Jessamine: What a fascinating name. Then he fell asleep.

At twelve-fifty in the morning, Wendell Carson drove through the gates of Fort Gillem. He drove by the empty guard shack, up the deserted main drag, and then turned across the railroad tracks toward the DRMO parking lot The lot was empty, as was the rail siding. The nearest vehicles were a few dozen Army troop transports spotted across the tracks. He parked in his usual place and shut down to wait and watch for a few minutes. He wanted to be damned sure no one was watching the place, and he would prefer not to be unlocking the front door just as the night patrol came past, necessitating explanations he’d rather not give.

I After fifteen minutes, the night patrol did come by. Carson slumped down in his seat, but they did not appear to notice the Army pickup truck that had not been there the last time. When the MP car went back across the tracks, Carson got out and let himself into the admin office.

He left the lights off and went straight through to the back door that led into the auction warehouse. He stopped at the back door of the warehouse to examine the lay-down area through the window hi the door.

The tarmac was well lighted by rose-colored security lights mounted on all the warehouses, but all he could see out there were the darkened lines of palletized materiel. There were four flatbed trailers parked over by the demil building, but no trucks or other vehicles were visible anywhere hi the area. He noted the time. The MPs came around about every thirty, forty minutes, but they wouldn’t stop and check a building unless something seemed wrong from the outside or one I of the alarmed warehouses had signaled a problem.

He let himself out the back door and walked confidently across the lay-down tarmac. If someone was watching, he did not want to appear as if he was anything but the manager checking the place out. He went straight to the feed assembly building and let himself through the cipher locked door. Inside, the warehouse was dark except for two security lights. The stacked shelves were empty, as was the conveyor system leading next door to the Monster. He did a walk-through of the entire warehouse anyway, just to make damned sure. If someone wanted to watch the demil building, this would be a good place from which to do it, but the place was empty, with only the forklift battery-charging station displaying any signs of energy.

He went back outside, after once again surveying the lay-down area through the door window for a few minutes. Then he let himself into the demil building itself, carefully closing the door to make sure the cipher lock had reset. He walked through the darkened anteroom and into the control area. Here there were small security lights set high up on the wall, illuminating the great bulk of the demil machine, the open area in front of the Monster, and the conveyor belt coming through the wall from the feed building next door. The control booth was shut down and devoid of lights.

He walked over to the conveyor belt, took one last look around, and then put his hand down on the last roller before the feed aperture of the demil machine. I should have brought a flashlight, he thought as he counted back to the third roller from the aperture and squatted down to examine the bearing assembly and end cap in the dim light. It looked no different from the ones on either side.

He put his hand on the highly polished steel surface of the roller by the edge of the conveyor belt and was surprised to find that it was warm. He took his hand away and tried again, then compared the sensation by touching the rollers on either side. They were cold. The third one was definitely warm. He remembered thinking the cylinder had been warm the last time he touched it, too.

He removed his hand and thought about that. Why in the hell would it be warm? Some chemical reaction going on inside that cylinder? Could the thing be unstable?

He touched the roller again. No doubt about it. In marked contrast, he felt a cold tendril of fear stirring in him as he straightened up. Would it be safe to open the roller assembly to retrieve this thing? Suppose it was build big up pressure, or worse, about to burst or start leaking?

He almost didn’t hear the rumble of several large trucks outside, until one of them locked his air brakes, causing Carson nearly to jump out of his skin.

He ran to the anteroom of the demil building, but unlike the one next door, this front door had no window. He listened. Trucks, several of them. Large doors opening, the sounds of several people out there. A radio. A car door, maybe two. The clump of heavy boots and the scrape of equipment being moved.

He tried the door leading into the assembly warehouse, but it was locked. He swore out loud, realizing that he needed the operator’s key ring to open it After Bud’s demise, they had had to generate some spare keys, but they were now all in the security control room. He couldn’t go out the front door, and there was no fire door in the rear. He was trapped in the demil room.

If they came in here, how in the world would he explain what he was doing? And there was sure as hell no place to hide.

He looked around frantically as the noise level outside grew. There were definitely several people out there, making vaguely familiar noises.

Then he focused on the batwing doors through which material came from the feed-assembly building into mis building. He remembered the night Lambry had gone through those doors, how he had been unable to pull them open from the other side. But that was because they opened only one way, into (his side. From here he could open them!

He moved quickly to the conveyor belt and climbed up onto it. Hunkering down on all fours, he went into the safety cage and reached the two flap doors. There was a full inch of space between them, enough to get his fingers through. He pulled and they moved, but just barely. The hinges were obviously spring-loaded, but something else was holding them. He felt around in the darkness to see if there was a release of some kind, but there was only a line of small metal tabs on the edge of the conveyor belt. Then he understood: The tabs on the moving belt probably hit a detent button in the door assembly, which would allow them to open. He tried to move the belt, but that was impossible.

He had to get out of here. Whoever that was out there, they could find him in any building except this one.

He crawled back out onto the floor and ran to the control console. He hit the master power button, then found the controls for the belt. He couldn’t start up the Monster; that would make much too much noise. But he could energize the belt. He hesitated for an instant, then pushed the button to activate the belt. The belt began to move with a distant hum of large electric motors back in the feed assembly building. Hurry, he told himself, they’ll hear that in a minute. He ran back over to the belt and climbed on, crawling in the opposite direction of the belt’s travel. Behind him the feed aperture of the Monster, motionless steel teeth poised, waited in silence.

He crawled to the doors, and, sure enough, they were partially ajar.

They would probably open fully when the first article hit them from the other side. He reached for the doors and pulled them open; he was about to go through when he remembered the console would still be energized.

He swore, then slipped his belt off and tied one of the doors back against the safety cage. He turned around to crawl back out, but his pants began to fall down. He let go of the cage long enough to grab his pants, but not before the right cuff caught underneath the belt on something. He swore again and pulled, but the damn thing was stuck hard, and not only stuck; each succeeding roller was tightening the pants against his ankle. And he was moving.

He looked up, aghast. He was caught on the belt and being taken straight into the feed aperture of the Monster. The demil machine wasn’t running, of course, but those steel band-saw blades were right there, waiting to strain him into baby food. He fought hard not to panic, feeling each succeeding roller bumping his knees as he pulled against the fabric of his trousers. The grip around his ankle was getting very tight, and he was losing all sensation of feeling in his right foot.

Wait, he told himself. Just wait. The cuff will be released when it gets to the last roller. There were only five more rollers, then four, then three. He twisted his body around to jump off the belt at the last instant, then pulled as hard as he could when his foot bumped over the last roller, just one foot in front of the row of band-saw blades. But instead of coming loose, his foot was twisted savagely under the belt as it descended beneath the rollers and headed back toward the flap doors.

His body tumbled off the belt and he hung momentarily upside down, his right leg trapped up in the roller assemblies, his left leg frantically scrabbling for traction on the polished linoleum floor. For a terrifying instant, he thought he was going to be pulled back into the rollers, but then suddenly he was free, sprawling out onto the floor with a grunt. I He stood up, windmilling his arms because of the pain in his ankle. The noises from outside were getting louder. He had to shut off the belt and get the hell out of there. Pulling up his trousers, he limped awkwardly across the floor to the console and quickly shut it down. Then he hopped back across the floor, crawled up on the now stilled conveyor belt, and, banging his knees across every one of the rollers, reached the flap doors. He pushed his body through into the next building, then reached back through the opening to retrieve his belt. But then he stopped.

Would the damned doors slam shut and trap his hand? He let go of the belt and pulled himself through the safety cage into the feed-assembly warehouse and got down off the belt. He looked around and saw a stack of the plastic material trays in which small demil items were placed before being put on the belt. He grabbed one and climbed back into the safety cage, wedged the tray where the doors ought to meet when they closed, and released his belt. Sure as hell, the steel doors snapped shut, nearly trapping his hand as they squashed the flimsy tray. He pulled hard on the edge of the bowed tray and it popped out, propelled by the edges of the doors.

He scuttled back out of the safety cage, his heart pounding, and limped like a wounded crab to the front door of the feed assembly warehouse, discarding the bent tray in a trash bin. He took a look out onto the tarmac area. It was the Army again, only there were four big trucks this time, and a lot more people. A hell of a lot more people. Two of the trucks had big generators going, and there were some portable light stands blazing out on the tarmac.

Gotta get out of here, he thought, but not this way. The good news was that this warehouse had a back entrance. He got his clothes back hi order as he lurched toward the back of the warehouse. The even better news was that he was safely out of the demil building. He tried not to think about being trapped on that conveyor belt, pinned like a bug by that wholly uncaring web of industrial machinery. Almost like Lambry, only conscious, he reminded himself.

He got to the back door and stopped. There was an alleyway behind this row of warehouses, big enough for forklifts but not for trucks, and then a high chain-link fence beyond that. Once into that alley, he could go either way around the back of the whole complex and get back to his truck. He checked the door. It was a fire door, with a horizontal handle allowing someone to get out but not back in. He checked to see that it was not alarmed, then pushed the handle, opened the door, and entered the dark alley.

Once outside, he could hear all the noise from the other side of the building, which was good because it had probably masked the sound of the conveyor belt starting up. He went right, limping a little as he hugged the back wall of the warehouse. When he got to the end of the building, he peeked around the edge, toward the tarmac. Two huge figures dressed out in what looked like space suits were looking right back at him from about six feet away. One of them crooked his gloved hand at Carson.

Dave Stafford banged his left elbow on the steering wheel when he was startled awake by something. He rubbed his elbow on his thigh, then rubbed his eyes as he tried to figure out what had awakened him. He looked at his watch, realizing as he did so that there were some very bright lights on behind the admin building, in what had to be the tarmac area. He looked at his watch again: two-thirty in the morning. He could hear the sound of portable generators running, and there were also lights on in the admin building, across the tracks from where he was parked. As he stared into the lighted windows, he saw two figures in I full chemical warfare protection gear come out of one office and enter another.

What the hell is this? he wondered, sitting up in his seat. And then he quickly ducked down as an MP patrol car came by, this time very definitely going slowly enough to take a look at everything going on at the DRMO. The first car was followed by a second one, and then a third. Stafford waited until he was pretty sure all three cars had passed before peering over the edge of the door window. From the sounds of it, that chemical response team was back, this time in larger force, at two-thirty a. m on a Sunday, with the apparent full cooperation of the Fort Gillem military police. One more point. He took another look at the admin building and confirmed that the people moving around inside were in full protective suits. They’ve lost something all right, and it isn’t ajar of Grandma’s applesauce. Then he saw Carson’s truck.

Whoa, what’s this? That truck hadn’t been there when he fell asleep.

So the Army was back, and they’d called the DRMO manager hi to do—what, gain access to the warehouses? Should he just get out of the car and go over there, ask for the guy in charge, and tell him what he knew? He shook his head. He could just see himself trying to convince some soldier in a space suit that, according to his very own psychic adviser, there was a cylinder of something bad hidden in the DRMO and that Brothercarson there knew where it was. Right. Plus, even if the Army did believe him, they might not necessarily be nice to the messenger.

He ducked down as another vehicle came around the corner from the tarmac area. Looking just over the rim of the dashboard, he could see that it was a large olive drab Suburban with police lights mounted on top. As it passed in front of the lighted admin office, he caught a glimpse of two military policemen in the front seat, and one individual in the backseat. He sat up straighten The guy hi the backseat looked as if he was wearing a motorcycle helmet. Weird. Then there was sudden flare of brake lights on the Suburban, and all the doors were opening. Here they came, right toward his car.

His heart sank. Goggles. The guy in the backseat had been wearing night-vision goggles. Bastards had seen him on infrared. He unlocked the door and got out of the car.

[ SUNDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D.C. I 4:00 A.M. ; Carrothers was dozing in his chair when the Operations ‘Center duty officer called in with a secure phone call from I the Chemical Emergency Response Team’s leader at Fort f-Gillem. - .”

“This is General Carrothers.”

“Sir, this is Captain Mclean, CERT-Si. Reporting [ - negative results, General. No hits on any of the surveil6 lance monitoring equipment, and no visible sign of the missing cylinder.”

“You’re satisfied you gave the place a good search, Captain?”

“A good search, General? No, sir, not possible, not in I three hours.

No way, General. There must be thousands off items stacked on shelves and in bins or on pallets, as well ‘

as several tractor-trailer loads of stuff parked and waiting to be unloaded. We did a complete chemical-trace survey, at molecular sensitivity settings, inside each of the ware houses. We’ve got that new mark-seven nose. We followed that up by a sight survey of as much as we could cover in the buildings in three hours. You want to really take this place apart, we’d need a battalion and a couple of months to do it.”

Carrothers was silent for a moment. Damn. “Okay. Get I the team out of there and close the place back up. And make sure the local MPs keep their mouths shut. You used . the exercise cover story again?” {

“Yes, sir. The Fort Gillem ops officer was here; he’s handling the Gillem MPs. I told them the first drill was screwed up and that we’d decided to do it again. Nothing they haven’t heard before. There was one other thing, General: We did pick up that DCIS guy who’d been snooping around the Anniston Depot. One David Stafford.” I Oh shit, Carrothers thought. “What the hell was he doing there?”

“He declined to say, General. He was apparently already here when we got here. The Anniston, MPs caught him on a night scope, watching us from a car across the way from the DRMO. We also encountered the manager of the DRMO, one Wendell Carson. He, too, was apparently here before we got here. Two of our monitors caught him making tracks down a back alley.”

Carrothers sat up straight. “The manager was there? In the early hours of a Sunday morning? And he was running away?” “The MPs said he was trucking down a back alley behind one of the warehouses. Looked to them like he was trying to get out of there without being seen.”

“What did he have to say for himself?” “He said they’d been having some problems with someone stealing stuff on the weekends. He thinks it might be some of his employees. He says he decided just to come down in the middle of the night, see what he could see.”

“The Fort Gillem MPs know anything about that?”

“Haven’t checked, General. We’ve been real busy here. I asked him why he ran, and he said he wasn’t running.

Said he wasn’t sure what was going on and that he was only trying to get back to his office, on the other side of the tarmac.”

“Did he know that Stafford was there, too?”

“I don’t think so, sir. I went ahead and gave Mr. Carson the cover story, and he said he would just stay out of our way. To my knowledge, he just went home.”

“Okay. And what did you do with Stafford?”

“I decided to have our MPs take him back to Anniston, General. Our briefing was that any unauthorized personnel who intruded on this operation were to be held until we received further orders. It looked to me like the manager had every right to be here. Stafford didn’t, so I held him.”

“Exactly the right decision, Captain. I don’t want Stafford talking to anyone until we get someone from Washington down to Anniston. He is a federal officer, so treat him in a civil manner, no stockade cells or anything like that, but keep him isolated until you hear from me.” ‘

“Yes, sir, General. I’ll relay that to the depot operations center ASAP.

They’ll hold him until further orders from you.”

“Right. One more question: Any chance Stafford and Carson were there together?”

“Don’t think so, General. I would think Stafford would have said something when he realized we were going to hold him.” f

“Okay, that computes. Now get your collective asses the hell out of there.”

Carrothers hung up the phone. Major Mason had been listening on the muted extension and copying down the salient points of the conversation.

“Who’s going to go down there, General?” Mason asked expectantly.

“Three guesses, Major. And you’re going with me. Get us a jet out of Andrews—Priority One. I want to leave by ten hundred, and I don’t care if it is Sunday. File direct to the strip at the Anniston Depot via Atlanta. And get in touch with the FBI operations center here in Washington.

See if they can lend us a polygraph operator from their Atlanta office.

Get yourself relieved here as duty officer now, then go home and get packed. Have a car pick us both up.”

“Yes, sir. How long in Anniston, sir?”

“One day, max. If we can’t find out what we need to know by then, we’ll have bigger problems up here than . down there.” I SUNDAY, ANNISTON ARMY WEAPONS DEPOT; ANNISTON, ALABAMA, 2:00 P.M. Dave Stafford sat in a state of cold fury in a windowless room somewhere at the Anniston Depot.

They had arrived at the depot in company with the truck convoy just after sunrise. The response team’s trucks and the NIP vehicles had gone right through the main gate, past the parking lot still filled with a dozen or so semis, and then through the industrial area of windowless concrete buildings. The trucks had peeled off the base’s main road after a half mile or so, but the MP cars kept going until they reached what appeared to be the depot’s administrative area.

There was a small grassy square, surrounded by very old office buildings and some typical amenities of a military base, such as a post exchange, a medical clinic, and a small theater. Three of the MP vehicles had pulled into what looked like a motor-pool area, while the fourth, containing Stafford and two large MPs, continued on down yet another tree lined road farther into the depot’s ulterior.

The salient feature of the depot was the seemingly unending number of trees. Thick stands of pines lined every road, making it look as if the depot were a collection of small outposts scattered about hi a large pine forest. It was only after looking at it for a while that Stafford realized the trees were probably a screen for the real business of the depot, which had to be several thousand acres of ammunition bunkers lurking back in there somewhere.

And yet there were no fences visible or even signs indicating a security area.

His vehicle had taken him down a series of two-lane roads bordered by dense woods, until they arrived finally at what looked like an operations center of some kind. A large windowless building dominated several smaller workshops and truck parks. There were several complex antennas mounted on top of the big building, and what appeared to be a nest of air-nitration machinery mounted on one side. The vehicle Stafford was in descended a ramp on one side of the building. At the end of the ramp were steel doors, which opened as they approached. The vehicle drove directly through the doors and into a parking bay inside the building. Two more MPs were waiting when the doors closed behind them.

“This way, Mr. Stafford,” the shorter of them said when Stafford was let out of the backseat. Short was a relative term; they were all over six feet in height.

He had tried blustering, demanding to know why he had been brought there, demanding to see the commanding officer, and so forth. The MPs had ignored him as they fell in beside him, with the shorter MP leading the way and another guard right behind him. They marched through some more steel doorways and into the interior of the building. Stafford noticed that the steel doors all had heavy rubber hermetic seals. They had taken him down one long hallway, up a set of concrete stairs, and into another hallway before taking him into this room, which was about twelve feet square. It contained a metal table, four metal chairs, and a water fountain in one corner. A door on the back wall was partially open, revealing a washroom. The walls were painted pea green. There they had left him.

His initial anger had been with himself, for letting them catch him that way. He certainly should have thought about infrared sweeps. His warm upper torso contrasted with the otherwise-cold interior of the rental car would have shown right up as a heat source. They had taken him back into the DRMO complex, holding him by the side of the entrance to the tarmac area. No one had spoken to him, probably because the noise of the portable generators made conversation nearly impossible. He had observed that one of the trucks was a mobile operations center of some kind, just like the last time, but this time there was no pretty girl to make public explanations. He had seen one officer, not suited up, but dressed in what looked like Desert Storm fatigues, going in and out of the mobile command trailer.

At one point he had simply tried to walk away, which is when his two guards had put him none too delicately into the backseat of the Suburban parked between two buildings and locked him in. He hadn’t even tried to struggle. With just one arm, he was definitely out of the physical heroics business for a while. There had been no door handles in the back, and there was a metal screen between the front seat and the back, which told him all he needed to know about his real status. An hour or so later, the team had packed up. When his Suburban joined the convoy back to Anniston, he realized he might be in serious trouble.

He wondered then if Sparks had made some calls. Was this a follow-up on the little operation at the Holiday Inn in Oxford? This reinforced team had not seemed to be making even a pretext of doing an exercise this time. These people had been looking for something, and he had literally squirmed in the backseat of that Suburban thinking about what he could tell them. But after another hour of just sitting there, he had begun to take stock. Okay, so they knew who he was and they wanted to talk to him. Thank you, Ray Sparks. He also knew that one thing he had going for him was the fact that they had not admitted, and would probably never admit, that a weapon was miss

Ksf ing. In a way it was checkmate: As long as they couldn’t : admit they had a weapon missing, and as long as he kept his mouth shut about what he suspected, he should be safe. All of which assumed they were going to question him in a civilized manner and not take him out to a deserted rifle range somewhere for a meaningful physical experience. The down side was that if he kept his mouth shut, he couldn’t tell them what he suspected about Carson, either, for more reasons than one.

If his reasoning was correct, taking him back to the Anniston Depot might be something of a bluff on the Army’s part, which further reinforced his sense that he should play the role of the aggrieved civil servant, admit nothing, and try to put them on the defensive as fast as he could. The anger he was generating now was consciously contrived. He wanted to work himself up into a state of righteous indignation. He was positive that this was the right way to play it.

Provided that someone was actually going to come in there and talk to him. He was hungry and thirsty. He got up and tried the water fountain.

Nothing but air came out.

SUNDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, 8:00 P.M. Wendell Carson sat in his pickup truck outside a phone booth, waiting for Tangent to return his call. Carson had never called his contact on a Sunday, but the developments of the early-morning hours couldn’t wait.

Those Army bastards had come back, and this time with twice the people and twice the equipment. And they’d nearly caught him inside the demil building. He’d been lucky the officer in charge of the Army team had been a young captain and not some hard-boiled lieutenant colonel.

There was no getting around it: They had come back. Which confirmed they knew the thing was missing, and that it had ended up at the DRMO. This had to be Stafford’s work. He’d said he was going to tell them.

The phone rang. He got out of the truck and picked it up. “Yes?”

“It’s me. What’s the problem now?” Tangent sounded impatient.

Carson recapped the events of the night before. He finished with his conclusion that Stafford had to be behind the Army’s revisit. Tangent was silent for a moment.

“How could Stafford know that the cylinder is there?” he asked.

“He can’t, and that’s what’s bugging the shit out of me. The only guy who knew what this was all about was Lambry, and Stafford never talked to Lambry.”

“Do you know that? Do you know where Lambry went? Is there a possibility that he’s still in the area and that maybe Stafford found him?” “No, I don’t know it,” Carson said. He couldn’t let Tangent know the truth about Lambry. Stealing the cylinder was one thing; Lambry’s demolition was quite another. “Remember I told you Lambry had a helper,” Carson replied. “Guy named Dillard. But as far as I know, Dillard never actually saw the cylinder. He may have known Lambry swiped something, but not exactly what. And definitely not what it looked like. I’m stumped.”

Tangent disagreed. “You can’t know that, either. If Lambry caught on to what this thing might be worth, he could have told his buddy everything, or enough to cover his ass if you tried to stiff him. It was Dillard who talked to Stafford?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hell, there it is, then. You pulled the string with Dillard?”

“No. I figured let sleeping dogs lie. If I talk to Dillard, he’ll know something’s up. This way, everything just subsides. Nobody who works here has seen the Army teams.”

“You’re probably right; you know the guy and I don’t, although I’m getting a little more concerned about this Lambry’s unexplained disappearance. You sure he didn’t go to Baby Jesus when his house blew up?”

Carson gripped the phone harder. He had forgotten telling Tangent about that.

“I guess that’s possible,” he replied carefully. “Except the arson people said no one was in the house when it went.” Eager to get off this line of conversation, he asked Tangent what he was doing about Stafford.

“We’re working that. Why, you got something new?”

“I’ve been thinking,” Carson said. “We need to get all this heat off the DRMO, at least long enough to do the deal, you know what I mean? This shit is beginning to spook me. I just want to do the deal, turn this damned thing over, get my money.”

“My client doesn’t know squat. Yet So I’m all ears, you got some ideas.”

“Yeah, well, is there some way you can make the Army think Stafford’s got this thing? Which is why he’s running off his chain?”

There was a moment of silence on the line. “That’s rucking brilliant,” Tangent said. “It doesn’t even have to hold up for very long.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking. By the time the Army convinces itself he doesn’t have it, or even know where it is, we can be down the road and gone.”

“I like that. And, yes, I know just how to do that. The Army’s working this thing way offline. They have to be in a fucking panic. This fits hi with what we were going to do anyway, only this is much better. Look, you go back to your daily routine. Everything normal. No more night visits to the DRMO. Be thinking of how we’ll do the swap. How you want your money. Keep it simple. Think next forty-eight hours, max, okay?”

“I hear you.”

The line went silent as Tangent hung up. Carson put the phone back and looked around the exchange parking lot to see if anyone had been watching him, but he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Stafford with the cylinder, he mused. He smiled then. “Beautiful,” he announced to the ah-as he got in his truck. “Fucking beautiful.”

The Army Learjet touched down with two bruising puffs of blue smoke from its tires at almost exactly six pm. On board were Brigadier General Carrothers, Major Mason, and an FBI polygraph operator named W. Layon Smith. The plane had been delayed getting out of Andrews due to a movement of the presidential 747; Carrothers’s single star had not been enough to get them a ramp time before the field was locked up while Air Force One landed after a maintenance stint in California. Then they had been stacked up over Atlanta by the Sunday-afternoon business travelers’ rush hour, followed by more delays in getting Smith’s gear through airport security. None of this had unproved Carrothers’s attitude.

The jet pulled up to the ops building and shut down. Carrothers emerged first, where he was met by the depot’s commanding officer and his operations officer. They went directly to an Army staff car. Major Mason and Smith followed in a Suburban. The commanding officer, a full colonel, looked tired and drawn. Carrothers afforded him little sympathy. The investigation had narrowed the cause for this fiasco down to two possibilities: Either Tooele had screwed up the arrival transfer of the special weapons shipment in Utah or Anniston had screwed up the outgoing shipment here in Alabama. Until one or the other was proved, both commanding officers were good prospects for a general court-martial. The staff cars proceeded to the commanding officer’s office. Once there, Carrothers held a quick conference.

“You have this man Stafford in isolation?”

“Yes, sir, General,” the colonel replied. “Since this morning.” The operations officer nodded eagerly in confirmation.

“Okay, I have a one-hour-stay time here. We’re going to stage a little drama out in the tombs. Here’s what I want to do.”

They came for Stafford at 6:30. There were three of them, fully dressed out in Army chemical warfare protective gear: camouflaged full body suits, sealed gloves and black rubber boots, hoods and respirators. They did not speak, just motioned for him to follow them. They were not armed, but they were big enough for that not to matter very much.

It was dark when they took him outside, through a different door this time, to a waiting Humvee transport. They motioned for him to get in, one actually helping him; then two of them got in back with him, one on either side. The third got in on the driver’s side, and they rumbled off into the evening. They went down a long, straight two-lane road for about ten minutes before turning off onto another road, which had a rail line running down the middle of it. Stafford could see fairly well out the windows, but there wasn’t much to see other than the endless pine forest.

They finally arrived at a gate complex, which consisted of two gate towers flanking a fifty-foot-wide sliding double-gate assembly set into a thirty-foot-high double chain-link fence with razor wire at the base and on the top; there was a dog run in between the fences. Insulators on the wire strands indicated that the fence was electrified. There were sodium-vapor light fixtures mounted beneath the guard towers and every fifty feet along the fence, turning the dark green of the trees an ominous black where the fences curved into the forest. The rail line went under the gate and then turned to the right behind one of the guard towers. Stafford thought he could see what looked like a machine-gun barrel protruding from each guard tower.

The Humvee stopped at the gate and the driver communicated with someone in one of the towers. His voice sounded strangely clipped from inside the hood. Stafford could not hear a reply, but the outside gate rolled back, allowing the Humvee into the space between the fences. Then the outer gate closed behind them, and the inner gate opened. The Humvee drove over a vehicle-trap mechanism buried in the roadway, then turned carefully through four enormous concrete tetrahedrons planted in the road as crash barriers. The road continued straight through some more trees, with the rail line running right alongside.

They went about a half mile before turning off onto a cinder road. A spur from the rail line turned with them. They passed through about a hundred more yards of trees before coming upon the first of the bunkers.

Stafford sat up when he saw them; this didn’t look like a place where interviews would be held. Not polite ones, anyway. All his imaginative plans for righteous defrance looked less and less like a medium for success here.