The Humvee drove down between two lanes of bunkers, which were much bigger than he had expected. They were nearly a hundred feet long and about thirty feet in width. They looked like concrete Quonset huts that had been partially submerged in the red Alabama clay. There were sodium-vapor lights mounted at each end of the bunkers, illuminating concrete ramps descending to steel doors. Branches from the rail spur went down the ramps to the steel doors of each bunker. He looked out both sides of the vehicle. The bunkers stretched in endless rows and lanes, looking like some kind of industrial mausoleum. This depot must be enormous, he thought.

They finally stopped in front of one of the bunkers, and his escorts got out. There were more suited figures waiting by a second Humvee under the lights by the entrance, and Stafford could now see that this bunker’s steel doors were open, although he could not see inside the bunker because of the painfully bright lights. His escorts invited him to step out, and he did, cautiously, wondering why he was the only one out here not dressed out in protective gear. He was taken down the long concrete ramp to the front of the bunker, where one of the guards motioned for him to wait. Two of the hooded figures were taking readings from an electronic monitoring panel mounted beside the external doors.

They waited. There was no sound other than the raspy inhalations and exhalations from the soldiers’ respirators, and the occasional squawk from one of the Humvee radios. He tried to see into the bunker, but saw that there was a second set of steel doors, which were still closed.

They appeared to be hydraulically operated, as there were four large hydraulic cylinder arms reaching from concrete pylons to the middle of the doors. Everyone waited some more, and Stafford remembered the old Army adage about hurry up and wait.

Carrothers finished suiting up, leaving only his hood and gloves off before getting into the mobile ammunition carrier. He thought about what he was about to do. He had studied Stafford’s bio sheet on the plane ride down. David W. Stafford, senior investigator for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service. Forty-three years old. Formerly with the Naval Investigative Service and, before that, seven years as a private investigator for a law firm after having been a police detective with the Norfolk, Virginia, metropolitan police. Four-year enlisted hitch in the Navy before that. Solid citizen, and a professional investigator.

There was nothing in the bio about any whistle-blowing incident. He thought about the little maneuver with the Crown Vie. Heads-up ball, that.

The question was, What did he know? General Waddell would be all for locking Stafford up at the depot until they found the cylinder.

Carrothers Was not so sure about that option. The elephants, as the three-and the four-stars in the Pentagon were known, were starting to panic, which meant that lesser beings like brigadier generals now ought to be reviewing their own political escape routes. Waddell had made it clear that Carrothers’s second star was riding on getting this ball of snakes back into its box. And yet … If someone had stolen a cylinder of Wet Eye, that constituted a genuine national emergency. Maybe Waddell was right: Whatever it takes, do it. But find it. Get it back. Which was why he was trying this little stunt.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go.”

After about fifteen minutes of just standing there, Stafford heard something coming. He thought it might be another Humvee, but he saw instead an enclosed vehicle of some kind coming down the rail spur, powered by nearly silent electric motors. The vehicle had a passenger compartment forward, and what looked like twenty-foot-long dual enclosed cargo bays behind the passenger compartment. The interior of the passenger compartment was red-lighted, giving the vehicle a menacing buglike appearance, an image reinforced by two whip antennas mounted above the cab. The vehicle clicked along the rail spur, slowed, and then turned left and descended into the bunker alley in front of the steel doors, where it stopped with a squeal of hydraulic brakes. Stafford saw that everyone around him was now standing at attention, as best they could manage in their suits. The doors of the cab opened upward like gull-wing flaps, and a tall figure, also dressed out in a chemical warfare protective suit, got out of the right side of the cab and walked over to where Stafford, who was trying not to reveal his apprehension, stood.

“Open the inner doors,” the tall figure ordered, his strong, commanding voice overcoming the acoustic masking effect of his respirator. Two men went to separate control panels mounted on either side of the inner doors. They If each put a key into a lock, put their hands on two separate II switches, looked at each other, nodded their hoods once, turned the keys, and depressed the switches simultaneously. There was a loud hiss as the partial vacuum inside the bunker was broken, and then the hydraulic arms began to retract, pulling the steel doors open on steel tracks embedded in the concrete. Lights came on inside the bunker, and the tall figure motioned with one outstretched hand for Stafford to precede him inside the bunker. I Reeling almost naked among all the suited figures, Stafford willed his feet to start walking while he stared into the bunker. Inside were stacks of bombs. The bombs were massive, painted olive-drab, and about six feet long and three feet in diameter. They were girdled with two steel reinforcing rings around their circumference. The tail-fin assemblies were missing, and there were shiny fuze ports blanked off at each end. Each bomb was resting in a wooden cradle, the wood smashed down under the crushing weight. There was white stenciling on each bomb case, indicating a hang weight of two thousand pounds. There was a bright yellow band painted around the midsection of each bomb’s nose, and some more letters, which were unintelligible to Stafford.

The tall figure motioned for him to go farther into the bunker. Stafford noticed that none of the others followed them in. He had to be careful of his footing, because the rail line came all the way into the bunker.

There was an ammunition-handling crane positioned all the way at the back of the bunker, and a gantry track running along the arched concrete ceiling. The figure stopped when they had reached the ammunition crane.

Dave turned to face him.

“Mr. Stafford, do you know why you’re here?” the figure asked. His voice had a hiss to it, but there was still no mistaking the authority in it.

Stafford could not make out a face behind the goggles above the respirator mask, only piercing eyes. He had to struggle to find his own voice; the atmosphere in the bunker was very dry and filled with the peculiar smell of very old metal.

“No, I don’t. Who are you? And why am I being held this way? What is this place?”

“This is the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, Mr. Stafford, as you well know. It is a depository for special weapons —chemical weapons. This is a CW storage bunker, sometimes known as ‘a CW tomb.’ These are two thousand-pound gravity bombs. They contain substance VX, which is a nerve gas. These bombs are almost fifty years old. In theory they are not leaking. Our monitoring instruments tell us they are not leaking.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that,” Stafford said, trying to put some sarcasm in his voice. “Seeing as I’m the only one not in protective clothing.

Why have I been brought here?”

The figure stared at him, as if waiting for Stafford to realize something. Then he leaned forward. “Mr. Stafford, we want you to understand something, and understand it very clearly. The substance in these bombs is one of the most lethal compounds ever devised by man. One cubic centimeter volatizing can paralyze simultaneously the central nervous systems of a thousand human beings. One of these bombs exploded upwind of a medium-sized city would extinguish very nearly the entire human and animal ‘ population in a matter of a very few minutes.”

Stafford just looked at him. The figure leaned even closer, to the point where Stafford could smell the rubber of his suit

“Mr. Stafford, you should understand that while these bombs are extremely toxic, they do not contain the most toxic substances in die arsenal. There are some substances which do far more horrible things than VX does. There are substances that cause human blood to boil. There are substances that cause the arteries in human lungs to swell and rupture. There are substances that consume human skin. There are substances for which we have no names, only numbers.”

Stafford swallowed hard. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked in a strained voice. The smell in the bunker seemed to be getting stronger.

The tall figure stepped back away and looked around, as if listening for something. Then he turned back to Stafford. “These are the most lethal man-made substances on the face of the earth, Mr. Stafford. We are experts in containing and handling them, and we are terrified of them.

Nevertheless, we feel very strongly that we do not need your help or anyone else’s help with any aspect of these weapons. Any aspect at all.”

He paused for a moment. “Unless, of course, you know something we do not, Mr. Stafford. Unlikely as mat seems to me, we felt it only appropriate to ask. Once.” The figure stared down at him. “Well?” it said.

Stafford was tongue-tied. Do it, his brain screamed at him. Tell them what you know. But he couldn’t do it. He was afraid. This was a part of the Army he had never seen, and there was a ruthless edge to the tall figure’s voice. He did not want to end up being held incommunicado out here, and his instincts were to keep his mouth shut. First get free.

Then regroup, find some way to warn them. From a distance.

“Just so, Mr. Stafford. The Army appreciates your cooperation in conning here tonight. We have one last detail to attend to with you, but for right now, you may return to your vehicle.”

The figure pointed Stafford toward the entrance to the bunker. Dave had to resist the impulse, a very, very strong impulse, to bolt. He had not missed the sarcasm about his cooperation. As if he had had any choice in the matter, which was, of course, the point the man was making.

Mustering as much dignity as he could, his useless arm stuck in a pocket, he picked his way among the huge bombs, nearly twisting an ankle and losing his balance when he stepped into the indentation of the rail line running down the center of the bunker. When he reached the inner doors, the guards motioned for him to proceed to the Humvee. He got back in, as did his escorts, and the vehicle doors were closed. They drove back out to the service road between the line of bunkers. The last image he had of the bunker was a small crowd of suited figures silhouetted in the lighted entranceway of the bunker, all looking his way as the Humvee, pulled away. V

General Carrothers pulled off his hood and mask once he was back inside the ammunition transport carrier. Beside him, Major Mason did the same.

The car operator, isolated in the control cab of the car, remained suited up as they proceeded back toward the main gates, following the route taken by the Humvee containing Stafford.

“Did it work, General?” Mason asked.

“I’m not entirely sure. He should have been scared shitless in there.

Instead, I think he was processing. He was a little scared, of course, but I had the impression he knows more than he’s telling. He even tried to bluster a little bit He may be too cool a customer for what I have in mind. Don’t forget that little caper with the car from the motor pool.”

“Do you think he’s in a suitable mental state to be fluttered?”

“I don’t know. The FBI guy is supposedly set up and waiting for him right now.”

“Suppose he refuses to take a lie-detector test, General?”

Carrothers’s face hardened. “Then I’ll let him spend a couple of nights underground in one of the bunkers. One of the really old mustard gas bunkers.”

Mason shivered involuntarily. “Christ,” he said, glancing over at the control cab. “I’d go out of my mind, and I know these weapons are safe.

But a lie-detector test wouldn’t be worth much after an experience like that, sir.”

“I don’t really give a shit about the results of the test, Major. I’ve given Smith the two questions I really want answered, and he’s salted them into a laundry list of CW related questions. The only truth I’m after is how sensitive he is to those two questions. That will tell me what I want to know.”

Mason glanced again at the back of the driver’s head as the transport approached the security gates and was switched out onto the main rail line. “And if he does know? Do we just let him go?”

“Actually, yes. We have no legal justification to hold him, although we don’t have to let Stafford know that. If we get an indication that he knows something, turning him loose might be to our advantage: My guess is he’ll try to find the cylinder. If in fact someone’s taken it, an individual investigator like Stafford might be more effective than I we are.” I “Sir?” I “Because we can’t admit we’re looking, Major, that’s why.”

. “Yes, sir, I understand that. But if he’s loose, he can ; talk.

Complain to his superiors. Maybe go public.” i “General Waddell talked about that possibility when j we first found out about DCIS snooping around that : DRMO. The general has been talking to the head of DCIS. , This Stafford apparently has made some significant ene-I mies up in D.

C. General Waddell said DCIS can be neutralized if necessary, although I’m not sure how that would be managed.”

Mason was perplexed, and Carrothers caught the expression on his face.

“See, Major?” he said. “Even brigadier generals don’t know everything.”

Mason snorted. “Only second lieutenants know everything, General,” he.

said.

Carrothers laughed. “You’ll go far, Mason.”

“You want me to what?” Stafford exclaimed. “No fucking way!”

The stumpy lieutenant colonel standing in front of him nodded patiently.

They were back in the windowless room again, accompanied by two more oversized MPs. This time everyone was back in regulation working fatigues. The lieutenant colonel had identified himself as the Anniston Depot’s provost marshal. He had just asked Stafford if he would submit to a polygraph test. The provost marshal had made it sound as if he was asking him to have a cup of coffee.

Stafford was getting tired of all the games. He knew instinctively that the little seance in the bunker had been intended to intimidate him, although to what exact end, he wasn’t entirely clear, and he really wanted to know who that tall guy in the chem suit had been, especially after watching everybody come to attention when he’d first arrived. But even more importantly, these people had no legal authority to hold him in the first place, much less to ask him to take a lie-detector test.

“What’s your name again, Colonel?” Stafford asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the lieutenant colonel said, even though his name was spelled out in black letters right there on his shirt. Stafford pressed on.

“Because my business is law enforcement, Colonel,” Stafford said, his voice rising. “Federal law enforcement. Right now I am planning to file charges of kidnapping, illegal search and seizure, attempted intimidation of a federal law-enforcement officer, and obstruction of justice against every officer in the chain of command at this post between you and the CO, you included. I work for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service—Defense, as in Department of Defense—which organization is senior to the Department of the fucking Army, in case you’ve forgotten.

Now I want a vehicle to take me back to Atlanta and I want it now. And then you and your cohorts here need to go find a good lawyer.”

The lieutenant colonel looked at him impassively. “And if we don’t?” he asked.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t get you that vehicle. Don’t let you out of here. Don’t tell a fucking soul that you’re here. On a restricted special weapons reservation. Where nobody comes unless we let them. What then, Mr. Big-Deal Federal Agent with One Arm?”

“Then my boss will find out I’m missing, and he’ll tell every cop in Atlanta that another cop’s gone missing. They’ll end up here at your front gates eventually.”

“That boss being one Mr. Sparks?”

Stafford tried to keep the sinking feeling from showing in his face.

“He’s the local supervisor,” he said. “He’s not the one who sent me down here in the first place.”

The lieutenant colonel pulled a notebook from his pocket. The two MPs looked on with interest, admiring then-boss at work. “That would be Colonel Parsons, AUS, retired, am I right? Selected for one star, elected to take early retirement for the DCIS job? That Colonel Parsons?

Troy Parsons?”

Stafford just looked at him. The message was pretty clear. Parsons may be DCIS now, but he was one of us long before he was one of you. The lieutenant colonel closed his book.

“Look, Agent Stafford,” he said. “Here’s how we think things shake out: You’re off your reservation. You were not assigned to stick your nose in here or anywhere other than into a fraud case at the DRMO in Atlanta.

Your local supervisor is apparently eager to have a little chat with you about that, by the way. We, on the other hand, are interested only in the national-security aspects of your attempted intrusion into the depot here and into a restricted Army exercise in Atlanta. The polygraph operator is a civilian from the Atlanta office of the FBI. You take the test, we’ll give you back your ID card, get you that car, and you’re free to go anywhere you want.”

“And if I don’t?”

“C’mon, Stafford, that was my line, remember? You don’t have that option and you know it. We’re not afraid of all your threats. Put it another way: Where chemical weapons are concerned, my generals can beat up your colonel. Or better yet, we can make a deal to keep a shit storm from happening, you being such a popular guy up there and all.” He put his notebook back in his pocket. “Hell, you’re a big agent now,” he said, clearly mocking him. “Haven’t you ever secretly wanted to see if you could spoof a flutter?”

Thirty minutes later, Stafford sat rigidly in a straight backed chair at a small table in yet another windowless room. The polygraph operator, who had introduced himself as a Mr. Smith from the FBI, looked like every Bureau technician Stafford had ever encountered: quietly competent. The operator was sitting behind him at a second table with his equipment.

“Remember,” he said. “Only yes or no answers. One word, each question.

Yes or no. Ready? Say yes or no.”

“I guess so,” Dave said deliberately.

Smith sighed. “Yes or no, Mr. Stafford. You can do it. I know you can.

Here we go. First question: Is your name David Stafford?”

“Yes.” Dave was very conscious of his breathing and his heart rate. Even so, he imagined that the instruments, wires, and cuffs attached to his skin were somehow hardwired to his lungs and heart. And his nerves.

“Are you an agent of the DCIS?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a GS-Fifteen grade in the civil service?”

“Yes.”

“Is your height five feet ten inches?”

“Yes.” The man was obviously reading data from his credentials. Stafford knew enough about polygraphs to recognize the calibration procedures.

“Are you of Chinese descent?”

“No.”

“Are you Caucasian?”

“Yes.”

“Are you presently located at the Army Anniston Weapons Depot?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what CS is?”

“No.” But I have an idea, he thought.

“Do you know what VX is?”

“No. Yes.” The bombs in the bunker. The tall man had told him VX was nerve gas. There was a scratching on the paper behind him.

“Do you know what VX is?” the operator repeated.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what cryptosporidium is?”

“No.”

“Do you know what anthrax is?” ‘

“Yes.” Cow disease. Cryptosporidium? Anthrax? These weren’t chemical weapons. Those sounded like biologics. “Do you know what Wet Eye is?”

“No.”

“Do you know what botulinum toxin is?”

“No.”

“Have you seen it?”

Dave felt his heart jump and mentally cursed. Seen what—the cylinder?

Damn it! That needle must be going s all over the place. But he had not seen it. She had.

“No.”

There was a pause, some more rustling of paper. Then the list of questions started all over again.

“Is your name David Stafford?”

“Yes.” :’ ‘

The man went through the same initial questions. This time, when he got to the one asking if he’d seen it, Stafford had himself under much better control. The man kept right on going this time, without the ominous pause of earlier.

“Do you know the kill density per cubic centimeter of substance G?”

.”No.”

“Do you know the visible signs of a mustard gas attack?”

“No.”

‘ ‘Do you know the chemical constituents of phosgene gas?”

“No.”

“Can you name the four agents known as ‘blood boilers?’ “

“No.” .’—

“Do you have it?”

Another surprise. But he was almost ready for it. “No.” The operator then shifted gears and asked him fifteen more questions about chemical weapons, each one increasingly more graphically specific as to its effects on the human body. Stafford answered no to every one of them.

“Okay,” the man said. “From the top. Is your name David Stafford?”

They went through all the same questions again, including the two Stafford figured had to do with the missing weapon. Then the man did something that caused his trace machine to begin what sounded like a print session while he stood up and began to remove the sensors from Stafford’s body.

“That’s it, Mr. Stafford. I’ll go get the provost: I think you’re all done here.” The way he said the word done made Dave wonder if it was meant innocuously, but Smith’s face revealed absolutely nothing.

“Did I pass?” Stafford asked, struggling to get his right arm into his shirt. Smith had gathered up a long roll of trace paper and was at the door.

“Pass, Mr. Stafford?” The technician stopped in the doorway. “There’s no pass-fail in a polygraph test. Just questions and answers, truth tellers and liars. Simple, really. Like saying yes or no.”

Stafford did not reply as the man closed the door. Twenty minutes later, he was in the backseat of an Army staff car, speeding through the Alabama countryside, headed back to Atlanta. He was in the dark, literally and figuratively.

Carrothers sat in his chair in the executive cabin of the Learjet, listening to Smith debrief the polygraph session. The flight crew was making final checks for departure, and one engine was already running.

Major Mason stood beside him, taking notes. Carrothers pursed his lips when Smith had finished.

“So, in your opinion, he does know something about the item in question?” he asked.

“His answer indicated a lie, especially on the ‘Have you seen it?”

question. He was able to damp down the reactions on the repeat runs, but the anomalies were still there. Since I don’t know what ‘it’ is, I couldn’t branch down the questions.”

Carrothers nodded. “Yes, I understand. In this case, Mr. Smith, ignorance is truly bliss. We thank you very much for your help. We’ll be launching for Atlanta directly.”

The FBI technician nodded and withdrew to the middle cabin. Mason remained behind.

Carrothers rubbed his eyes and then fastened his seat belt. “I love working with the FBI,” he said. “Nobody knows when to shut his trap like an FBI man. Okay. First thing tomorrow, I’m going to reconstitute the Security Working Group, only this time it will consist of you, me, and Colonel Fuller. Second, we need to take this Stafford fella off the board. I’ll need General Waddell’s help with that. Third, I need to know that our fluttermeister in there is going to keep his mouth shut about this little excursion.”

‘ ‘I think he will, General. I briefed the whole thing to him as an internal Army CIC effort to trap a dirty DCIS agent. I told him that Stafford was a whistle-blower who burned some people in Washington, including a Bureau man, but now we think all that was done to cover up his own game.”

“In other words, payback. The Bureau guys are into payback. He Buy it?”

“The Bureau does not love whistle-blowers. He sincerely wished us luck.

Said he was glad to help.”

“But he’ll have to report it, right?”

“Oh, yes, sir. I told him to contact us if his bosses had any further questions. Full cooperation. We owe them one, that sort of thing. I’m hoping the SAC Atlanta will just put it away in his favor bank.”

“Okay, let’s rock and roll. And Major?”

“Yes, sir?”

“As far as General Waddell is concerned, this thing has been destroyed, just like you said. So all we’re doing now is making sure there are no loose ends. Like Stafford.”

The hatch closed with a bump and a hiss. Mason frowned, looking worried.

Well he should be, Carrothers thought as he watched Mason’s face. He was proposing to go behind the commanding general’s back, with the major’s connivance. It would be interesting to see if Mason remained loyal to him or to the CG.

“With respect, General,” Mason replied, “is there a new ‘right answer’ to what’s happened to that thing?”

Carrothers rolled his eyes as the aircraft began to taxi. “Go get your seat belt on, Major. Tray tables and seat backs in the upright position, and all that.”

SUNDAY, PEACHTREE CENTER HOTEL, ATLANTA, 9:30 P.M. Dave parked the rental car on the street a block from his hotel and walked in through the front plaza area, looking for signs of surveillance or unmarked government cars. Then he realized they might just park in the underground garage and wait inside. Like in his room. He went up to the front desk and asked for the night manager.

A prosperous-looking young man came out of a back offfice, wiping his chin with a handkerchief as if he’d been interrupted at dinner. Dave identified himself as a federal agent, presented his DCIS credentials, and asked if a Mr. Sparks from the DCIS had gained access to one of the hotel’s rooms that afternoon. The manager blinked and said that yes, he had. Dave thanked him and walked away before the manager could ask any questions. He headed for the mezzanine lounge bar.

He took a table, ordered a Tanqueray martini, and then asked for a table phone. He called his room number and let it ring. After ten rings, the phone was picked up. “Ray,” Stafford said. “I’m in the mezzanine bar.

Lemme buy you a drink.”

There was a brief sigh, and then the phone was hung up. A few minutes later, Sparks walked into the lounge, with two of the local DCIS agents behind him. Sparks motioned for them to take a nearby table, and then he sat down across from Stafford. When he saw the backup men, Stafford slipped his left hand beneath the table, doing it in such a way that they would see him do it. His useless right arm remained on the table.

“Haven’t lost your touch, Dave,” Sparks said. Stafford managed to lift the index finger of his right hand and point to his own drink while raising an eyebrow, but Sparks shook his head. He gave Stafford a searching look before asking the burning question. “What the hell have you got yourself into now?”

Stafford kept his left hand under the table and stirred the ice in his drink with a finger. He tried to keep it casual, but his right hand still trembled when he lifted it. He smiled. “You guys here to pick me up, Ray?”

“You bet your ass we are. Washington is suddenly very interested in what you are doing and why, and, oh by the way, you’re to knock it off, as of yesterday, if not sooner.”

Stafford leaned forward, the smile gone. “I’ve been shanghaied once today, or rather, last night. I’m not going to be taken anywhere by anybody for a while, not tonight, not anytime soon.” “Really,” Sparks said as he returned Stafford’s stare and casually unbuttoned his suit jacket, allowing the butt of a government-issue 9mm a little breathing room. Stafford saw the other two follow suit as they moved their chairs to, face in his direction.

“Yeah, really,” Stafford said. “What, you proposing to have a gunfight in the lounge of one of Atlanta’s most expensive hotels?”

“Takes guns on both sides to have a gunfight, Dave,” Sparks said. “I don’t recall issuing you a weapon. You’re not armed.”

“That something you know, Ray? This is Georgia: They sell guns at the church socials down here.”

“You’re bluffing, goddamn it. Now give this shit up. We don’t want to get civilians into a deal here.”

“Your call, Ray. Or you could relax for a few minutes, go into the receive mode, maybe learn something you need to know. Don’t you think as regional supervisor you ought to know where I’ve been lately? Hell, Ray, don’t you even want to know? Just a little? You used to be an investigator, remember?”

Sparks flushed, his lips tightening. But then he sat back and rebuttoned his jacket. He gave a little shake of his head, and the backup men relaxed, although they did not change the position of their chairs.

“Okay, so talk.” Sparks said.

Stafford took him back through it, right from day one at the airport and all the subsequent events relating to the cylinder. Sparks listened patiently, having heard a lot of this before, until Stafford got to the part about the MP sweep on his motel in Oxford.

“They did what?”

“Hell, Ray, I figured you’d sent them. You were sure as hell interested in knowing precisely where I was, as I recall.”

“Fucking-A, I was. But that was for my information.” He paused, seeing, the look on Stafford’s face. “Okay,” he admitted. “I was gonna come get you, but not because of the fucking Army.”

“It gets better,” Stafford said, and then described the events of early Sunday morning.

“They picked you up? Arrested you? The Amzy? Did you show them ID?”

“Hell yes, but they knew who I was and they obviously had orders in place to pick me up. Now let me tell you where they took me.” “Wait a minute,” Sparks said. “I think I want that drink now.”

Dave signaled a waitress with his head. While they waited, Sparks got up and went over to his two cohorts. After a minute of earnest discussion, they got up, although they seemed reluctant to leave. Sparks was insistent, and they left the lounge. When his scotch arrived, Sparks took a substantial hit and then indicated for Stafford to continue. His.

expression grew angrier when Stafford told him about the bunker, and then the lie-detector test. He drained his drink when Stafford finished.

“This is fucking outrageous,” Sparks declared. “Just fucking outrageous.

The Army has no damned jurisdiction.”

“That’s not what’s important here, Ray,” Stafford said. “Yeah, what they did is outrageous. But they wouldn’t have done it unless they were panicsville. They’ve lost a weapon. But they’re stuck—they can’t tell anyone.”

“But why the hell did they just let you go, then? You obviously know about it. ‘Have you seen it?’ and ‘Do you have it?’ Unless you think you beat the flutter?”

“I doubt it. The flutter tech was a Bureau man. They don’t hire amateurs.”

“A Bureau man?” Sparks looked around the lounge carefully. It wasn’t crowded, given it was a Sunday night.

“You’re telling me the Army and the Bureau are working together? That is seriously disturbing news. And it might explain why I’m getting sudden heat from DCIS Washington to get your ass back on the reservation.”

“The whole fucking thing is disturbing, Ray. Especially if whoever has the weapon is trying to sell it. Think about one of the wacko militia groups armed with a cylinder of blood boiler.”

“Blood boiler? Jesus H. Christ. Where’d you pick up a term like that?”

‘ ‘During my little seance with the high pooh-bah in the bunker; whoever he was. I’m telling you, Ray, this thing is real. And I don’t know who the hell to tell..Especially if the Army won’t even admit it’s missing.”

“What were you planning to do?”

“First tell me where we stand, Ray. You and me. Where’d your two buddies go?”

Ray nodded and rattled the ice in his drink. He put down his glass. ‘ “We came down here to take you back to Smyrna. I have orders from Colonel Parson’s boss, Mr. Whittaker, to get you under government control, as he put it. But that’s before I’d heard this Army shit.”

“Whittaker? He replaced Bernstein, right? SES-Two type?”

“That’s right. Senior Executive Service. Political appointee. Came over from the Justice Department. Still wired directly into the Justice Department. Connected. Seriously connected. He’s starting to talk bent-cop talk. I don’t bring you in, I’ve gotta explain why, and not necessarily to my friends.”

“Where’s the colonel on this one?”

“In the dark, like the rest of us.”

Stafford nodded. “Okay, I can see that. Let me propose something: You tell them I never came back to the hotel. You don’t know where the hell I am. Then request the electronic net be activated—you know, I use my government gas credit card or my government phone, Visa card, whatever, the system alerts. I’ll use those cards so you can quote/unquote track me. You give me one day. I’ve got to go to Graniteville, warn those people there’s a shit storm brewing. They trusted me, and now I can’t protect them.”

“Why can’t you just call them?”

“Because I want to see that girl again.

I want to question her myself. I’ve got to know if this is real or if it’s bullshit. The first time, Gwen Warren wouldn’t let me. This time, she might, after I tell her what might be coming down.”

“And then?”

“And then I come back to Atlanta. This is Sunday night. I go up there tomorrow. I come back into town— what, Tuesday? Or wherever you want me to go.”

Sparks gave him an appraising look. Stafford leaned forward. “Ray, think about it. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve stumbled into something that could be fucking huge. A missing chemical weapon. It’s probably right here in Atlanta, Georgia. The Army is breaking all the rules, detaining some of their own people illegally, sending CW emergency teams into the city at night, detaining federal agents. I don’t care if the whole government gets into the cover-up—this is going to come out. You want to be on the side of the angels when it does, Ray.”

“There’s nobody up in D.C. who’d consider you to be one of the angels, Dave.”

“If I’m trying to find this thing while everybody else is trying to cover up the fact that it’s even missing, anybody who’s my ally is going to dodge a bullet. You don’t have to get out front, Ray. Let me do that—I’m already expendable. You be my agent in place, within the system. I think it’s this Carson guy who has it, or knows where it is.

Give me a day to warn the people up in Graniteville, then let me come back here and work this bitch.”

Sparks ran his fingers through his hair while he thought about it. “What I still can’t figure,” he said, “is why he Army let you go.”

“Maybe it’s because someone wants me to find the fucking thing. If they can’t admit that it’s lost, then they can’t really mount much more of an operation to recover it than they have. That would explain the session in the bunker. Why treat me to a scary-monster Kabuki drama if they just wanted to put me in a box? Plus, they don’t know what I know about Carson.”

“From a psychic.”

Stafford hesitated. “Yes, that’s true. But Ray, that thing I saw on the monitor was identical to the kid’s drawing. How else can you explain such a thing?”

“I do not fucking know,” Sparks said. “I do not fucking know. And I don’t like all these wheels within wheels here.”, “You mean you know your government too damned well. Will those two guys keep their mouths shut about tonight? The fact that you and I had a meet?”

“Yeah. They will, unless it means their jobs. You’re asking a hell of a lot, Dave.”

“But you know I’m right, Ray. Give me thirty-six hours. Then I’ll come back to town, and we can meet offline somewhere and work the Carson angle. All I need is thirty-six hours. I may be a loose cannon, but I’m not a bent cop. Besides, what the hell can happen in thirty-six hours?”

Sparks snorted. “With you in the game? Shit!” He looked across the table at Stafford for a long moment. Then he sighed. “Fuck me,” he said. “If this isn’t a Dave Stafford special, I don’t know what it is.”

Dave got up. “I’m going upstairs, and I’m going to try to get some sleep. Look at it this way, Ray: If this is all bullshit, you can cut me loose. It’s not like anyone in DCIS would blame you.”

Sparks shook his head and signaled the waiter for another one as Stafford left the lounge.

MONDAY, GRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 11:15 A.M. Dave Stafford drove into Graniteville a little after eleven on Monday morning, suppressing the umpteenth yawn. He had not slept well at all.

He had vague memories of disturbing dreams, courtesy, no doubt, of his late-evening excursion to the field of tombs at the Anniston Depot.

In contrast, this Monday was bright and sunny, and the north Georgia mountains had greened out into their early summer colors. He wasn’t looking forward to his upcoming talk with Gwen Warren. She would be horrified to hear that they had been swept up into something that was probably going to get worse before it got better. He had left a message on the office answering machine to say he was driving up to Willow Grove, calling early enough to be pretty sure he would get the machine and not Gwen Warren.

He drove down toward the square, where the streets were busy with Monday-morning traffic. A noisy line of gravel trucks from the quarry passed him going the other way, leaving clouds of black diesel smoke and white dust in their wakes. There was no sign of the sheriff as he drove around the courthouse square, but he was grateful to be in a nondescript rental car this time. He decided to proceed to the Waffle House for a late breakfast of “strangled and smothered,” or whatever they called it, and then call Gwen. Throughout the morning drive he had resisted the temptation to call Ray Sparks to make sure he still had an ally; now that it was Monday morning, things might have changed. He had duly used the government gas card to fill up the rental halfway up to Graniteville.

There were clearly some things going on behind the scenes in Washington that were being aimed right at him. Ray had revealed that Bernstein’s replacement was going around making not so subtle hints that Stafford might be a bent cop. And the Bureau had been present for the polygraph in Anniston. If Washington pressed Ray Sparks hard enough, he might not have thirty-six hours, so this had to go right, or else he might have to execute his one remaining option.

He drove into the diner’s potholed parking lot and parked among the usual collection of dusty pickup trucks. His rental was the only sedan there. He took a corner booth away from the door and ordered a breakfast platter. While he was waiting for his breakfast, he got up and placed a call to Willow Grove, holding the phone pinched between his chin and his shoulder while he dialed. He again reached the answering machine. He left a message that he was at the Waffle House in town and needed to speak to Gwen, that it was urgent, and that he would call back in an hour.

He was just finishing breakfast when the sheriff pushed through the glass door, spoke briefly to the cashier, looked around, and came over to his table. Stafford indicated that he should sit down, and the big man obliged.

“Morning, Sheriff,” Stafford said.

“Mr. Stafford. Gwen called me, said you called her and that it was urgent. She asked me to come down here, see what this was all about.”

The waitress brought Stafford some more coffee, along with a cup for the sheriff. Stafford wasn’t quite sure how to handle this. He really wanted to talk to Gwen Warren, not to the sheriff, but it seemed that Gwen had made the sheriff her gatekeeper for the moment. Besides, it might be a good idea to tell his story to the sheriff before the Army told theirs.

“I need to meet with her,” Stafford began.

The sheriff gave him a long look over his coffee cup. “So she said.”

“I’d be happy to do that with you present,” Stafford continued. “But there’s a chance she may not want you there once I tell her what this is about.”

The sheriff smiled, but there was little humor in it. The crow’s-feet around his eyes were pronounced. “This is a very small town, Mr. Stafford. For that matter, it’s not a very big county, either. There aren’t any real secrets among folks up here. This still have to do with Jessamine?”

Damn, Stafford thought. Had she told him? His surprise must have registered, because the sheriff was nodding unit’, derstandingly.

“Mr. Stafford, lemme ask you something. You’re a federal agent. And yet here you are, all by yourself. I’ve never in, all my years in law enforcement seen a fed operating alone, lessen he was undercover. Any chance you’re flying solo on this? See, you were driving a government car the last time. White Crown Vie, Army plates, as I recall. Now I see a piece-a-shit Atlanta rental in the parking lot. Surely your office gave you a cell phone, but the cashier told me you called Gwen on the pay phone here. See what I’m sayin’ here, Mr. Stafford?”

Local he was, dumb he was not, Stafford acknowledged with a mental smile. “You don’t miss much, do you, Sheriff,” he said. “They pay me not to,” the sheriff said patiently.p>

Stafford nodded. “This is complicated, and possibly very dangerous. And I am absolutely flying solo. Let me ask you to trust my judgment, at least temporarily. This does involve Jessamine, and it also involves Gwen Warren, as well as the U.S. Army, my service—the DCIS—and probably the FBI before we’re all done. The problem isn’t here, but it has the potential to bring federal trouble down on Gwen and the girl, and my ability to prevent any or all of that is diminishing with time.

So I really need to talk to Gwen, and now I think I really want you there.”

The sheriff’s face had tightened when Stafford mentioned federal trouble. “This something you did, Mr. Staf ford?” he asked in a tone of voice that made it clear Stafford had better say no.

“No, no,” Stafford replied. “This is something I stumbled onto, just like Gwen and the girl did. But I believe it’s real trouble, and I believe it may come up here.”

“What the hell’s this all about, then?” the sheriff asked, his voice rising. His tone of voice and expression caused the two men in the next booth to finish their breakfast prematurely and get out of there.

“Time is of the essence, Sheriff,” Stafford said. “Right now we’re wasting it.”

The sheriff stood up slowly and looked down at Stafford in the manner of a hawk calculating the range to a rabbit with its foot caught under a rock. A cone of silence began to spread through the diner.

“Okay, mister,” the sheriff said, “let’s get to it.”

Stafford wasn’t quite sure if that was an invitation to a gunfight or to the sheriff’s car; judging from the stares around the room, it could have been either. He fished out a ten-dollar bill and left it on the table. Then he followed the big man out of the diner with as much dignity as he could muster, which was not a lot.

He followed the sheriff’s car to Willow Grove. Gwen was waiting for them on the front porch. She was wearing a simple skirt and blouse, with a light sweater thrown causally over her shoulders. Dave felt the familiar surge of interest when he saw her as they got out of their cars and walked up to the porch, but she was somewhat distant in her greetings to both of them. “The children are in class,” she announced. “Therevsome coffee out on the porch.”

When they were settled on Gwen’s porch, Stafford thanked her for seeing him again and then launched into a recap of the whole story, beginning with the incident at the airport. He couldn’t be sure how much of this the sheriff already knew, but John Lee Warren was paying very close attention. Stafford told them everything, excluding only the political background on why he had been sent down to Atlanta.

“My conclusion is that by some incredible incompetence or bad luck, or both, the Army has managed to lose a chemical weapon. I think that’s the object the girl ‘saw’ after encountering Carson in the airport. I think Carson has or knows about the weapon, and that he’s trying either to steal it or sell it, or both. I suspect it’s hidden away somewhere at that DRMO, which, by the way, is an exceptionally good place to hide something.”

“And what exactly is this weapon?” the sheriff asked.

“I don’t know its name. Some kind of chemical weapon.”

“We talking poison gas of some kind?”

Stafford described some of the things the tall man in the chem suit had told him in the bunker.

“Dear God!” Gwen exclaimed when he finished. “Americans built these things?”

“Following the lead of our European ancestors. The way I understand it, our possession of chemical weapons has been the only real reason no one has used them against us since World War One.”

“But what’s going on, Mr. Stafford?” Gwen asked. “You’re a federal agent, and you’ve reported the possibility of a serious crime. Why aren’t the federal police forces investigating your allegations?”

Stafford got up and began to pace around the. porch. “Because I think there’s a humongous cover-up being laid down on this problem, probably orchestrated in my very own hometown. I suspect the Army can never admit they’ve lost a weapon, which makes any allegations, especially ones based on the input of a psychic child, somewhat moot. Meanwhile, they’ll be quietly tearing up the countryside looking for it, and anyone who happens to stumble into that little effort will be snatched up and held incommunicado, like those soldiers at Fort Mcclellan, until they either find it or decide they’ve successfully buried the whole issue.” “Anyone?” Gwen asked. She had a strange expression on her face; Stafford couldn’t tell if it was one of fear or anger.

“Yes,” Stafford said, looking right at her. “Anyone. That’s why I’m here. To warn you.” Stafford hesitated. This was going to be the hard part. “My boss knows about Jess. I’m pretty sure Carson knows I came to Graniteville that last time. Right now, he probably thinks that I found out about the weapon based on something this guy Dillard said.”

“So why would Carson come here?” the sheriff asked.

Stafford kept looking at Gwen. “Because, Sheriff, he was the guy who fainted at the airport during a one-on one with Jessamine.”

An anguished look passed over Owen’s face, prompting the sheriff to take her hand. “Gwen?” he said. “What is it?”

“He’s right, John Lee. It is Jess. When she … intrudes into another mind, the person passes out.” “Great God Almighty,” the sheriff said softly. “I forgot that.”

Gwen leaned forward in her chair. “Does Carson know about Jess?” “You tell me, Gwen,” Stafford said. “Is it likely he would remember what happened to him at the airport?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “There’s very little that we know about her … abilities.”

“And he knows you came up to Graniteville,” the sheriff said. “That’s just damn wonderful.”

Gwen put her hand on his. “7 called Mr. Stafford, John Lee, remember? At the time, there was no way he could have known why.”

Stafford sat back down. ‘ The cylinder in her drawing meant nothing to me until that response team showed up at the DRMO,” he explained. “And I saw that same cylinder on the PC monitor in one of their trailers.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair, rubbing that big mustache with his fingers. The bucolic tranquillity of the yard outside was in stark contrast to the tension on the porch. Stafford massaged his aching right arm; he had not done his exercises for a couple of days. “What happens next,” he said, “will depend on what some badly frightened people in Washington set in motion.”

The sheriff absorbed that thought for a moment. “Well, maybe I’m just a dumb-ass country sheriff,” he said, “but I guess I don’t understand why everybody who knows about this isn’t jumping out of his hide trying to find the weapon, instead of all this cover-up stuff.”

“Cover-up is the hallmark of effective government these days, Sheriff,” Stafford replied. “You need to know something else. I’ve already told Gwen this, but let me tell you the real reason I was sent down here in the first place.”

MONDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D. C., 11:30 A.M. “Where the hell did this come from?” General Carrothers asked, waving a piece of paper in the air. Major Mason’s face was grim.

“From Army Criminal Investigation Command, General. I just called them to verify it. They got it from the FBI intelligence division.”

Carrothers examined the spot report again. The first paragraph contained the usual warnings and caveats about protecting sensitive intelligence methods and sources. It was the second paragraph that had his attention, the one reporting that word was circulating among the clandestine international arms network that an individual by the name of Stafford had put feelers out into the market regarding the possible sale of stolen chemical ordnance, for which he was reportedly asking a million dollars. No further identifying data on subject Stafford. The FBI was investigating, and requesting any available corroborating information about missing chemical ordnance from the Army.

Son of a bitch! he thought.

‘ ‘I assume the implied question there is whether or not we’ve had any weapons stolen,” Mason said.

Carrothers nodded slowly. “Not so, implied, is it, Major? And the technically correct answer is no, we have no reports of stolen chemical weapons. Tell them that at once. Then hopefully they won’t come asking if we’ve lost any CW ordnance. Jesus H. Christ, Mason, if this is true

…”

 

“Yes, sir. Understood, sir. That name, Stafford—”

“No shit. How many Staffords have we encountered recently? And there’s the matter of his evasions on that lie-detector examination. Damn it.

Maybe I fucked up. We should have held him.”

A front-office clerk stuck his head into the general’s office. “A Colonel Fuller is here, General? Shall I have I him wait?”

“No, send him in.”

Colonel Fuller came into the office and shut the door behind him.

“Morning, General, Major Mason,” he said. Then he saw their faces.

“We’re reconstituting the Security Working Group? Has something happened?”

“After a fashion, Colonel,” Carrothers said.

Fuller looked from Carrothers to Mason and back. ‘ ‘Does General Waddell know about this?” Carrothers said nothing, and Fuller nodded slowly.

“All right,” he said.

“Let me guess: You don’t think that thing went into that demil machine, do you?”

“Colonel Fuller, I have a question for you,” Carrothers said. “Why did General Waddell pull you into this thing?”

“Well, Myer Waddell and I go way back,” Fuller began, but Carrothers raised his hand.

‘ ‘No, I mean why you, a BW expert?

Colonel Fuller sat down in a chair and pulled at his shirt collar. He glanced over at Major Mason, but Carrothers indicated that Mason was staying.

Fuller nodded. “Right. The problem is I have specific orders from General Waddell not to discuss this with anyone, including you, sir.”

Carrothers turned on the frost. “Care for a little temporary duty out on Kwajalein Island, Colonel? I can have you on a plane this afternoon.”

Fuller smiled, then put up his hands in mock surrender. “The Wet Eye weapon is a hybrid, General. It contains a biologic component. An unstable biologic component, if my information is correct.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Carrothers muttered.

“Unstable how, Colonel?” Mason asked, making notes.

“Unstable in that the biologic component may mutate in the absence of the environmental controls provided by its coffin.”

“In other words,” Carrothers said, “we don’t know what the hell might be going on in that cylinder?”

“That’s correct.” Fuller paused, as if he was about to amplify that, but then went on. “Let me give you some history, General.”

Fuller described hqw the United States had come into possession of the weapon, and what the biological weapons program had decided about Wet Eye all those” years ago.

“So this wasn’t even one of ours?”

“No, sir. And this is all archive information on the offensive BW program. That’s all gone now. All we do out at Dietrick now in BW is on the defense side. We develop vaccines to inoculate our troops against the BW programs of the Saddam Husseins of the world, you know, all those upstanding countries who won’t sign the treaties banning this stuff.”

Carrothers got up and started pacing behind his desk. “Major,” he said, “tell Colonel Fuller about that FBI intel report.”

Fuller listened carefully and then shook his head. “Not likely, General,” he said. “The group’s information was that Stafford got there after the containers had come in from Tooele and been destroyed. We checked with DCIS when he popped up at the first response-team insertion.”

‘ ‘What did they tell you about him?” , “That he blew the whistle on an SES-Two, which, of course, did not endear him to senior officials in DCIS. They hinted pretty strongly that the guy had been shit canned. But they did say he was a first-class investigator. Just has no political sense.”

“In other words, not the kind of guy who’s likely to steal and then try to sell stolen chemical weapons to, say, the Iranians.”

“No, sir. He’s an ex-cop and now a GS-Fifteen federal agent. That’s too much of a reach.”

Carrothers pointed to the intelligence report. “Then what the hell’s this all about? Where’s it coming from? And if this guy Stafford knows something, why in the hell hasn’t he come in to talk about it?”

Mason cleared his throat. “He did, General. In a manner of speaking, that is.” This comment earned him a quick glare from Carrothers. Mason squirmed uncomfortably.

“If we refuse to admit we’ve lost a weapon, where else could the guy go?” Fuller asked.

“To his boss, goddamn it!” Carrothers said. “Major, get that guy I talked to the other night—I think his name was Sparks—on the horn.-He’s down in Smyrna.”

Mason got up and left the office. Fuller was shaking his head. “And tell him what, General? We’ve lost a chemical weapon and we really need to talk to Stafford?”

“Of course not. I’ll tell him we’ve received this report and we wanted to know if It’s credible.”

“By definition, it’s not credible. We aren’t missing a weapon. As long as we can’t admit this, it seems to me we shouldn’t go talking to anybody.”

Carrothers started to reply but then sat back down at his desk. Fuller was right. What he really wanted to do was talk to Stafford, this time without the atmospherics of the tombs at Anniston. But he was not so sure he wanted to tell this slippery colonel what he was really thinking. Fuller was still Waddell’s man, and Carrothers knew he was on thin ice with what he was doing visa-vis Wad dell’s orders.

“What you say is true, Colonel. But I think we have a responsibility to make damn sure this weapon isn’t still out there somewhere, especially if there’s an unknown biological capability hatching out in that cylinder. I think Mr. Stafford knows more than he’s letting on.”

‘ ‘Based on what, General?”

Carrothers started to tell him, but then he thought better of it.

Waddell did not know about his little excursion to I Anniston. Fuller is Waddell’s man, he reminded himself again.

“I just do,” he said. “A hunch, I guess.”

Mason came back into the office. “DCIS regional office, Symrna. Mr. Ray Sparks, regional supervisor. I have the number here.”

“Get him on secure.”

As Mason left the room, Fuller asked Carrothers if he’d like to see a video on Wet Eye he just happened to have.

MONDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, ATLANTA, NOON Carson’s secretary came in with a yellow message slip. “Another losing bidder, wants to complain,” she said, handing him the slip. He nodded and went back to the paper he was working on tfhtil she left the office.

He glanced at the 800 number. Tangent. Good.

He waited fifteen minutes and then told her was going to lunch. Ten minutes later he was standing in a phone booth out on State Road 42. He had to close the door because of all the truck noise. The booth immediately began to cook in the bright Georgia sun. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about how to make the transfer.

“Carson,” he said when the phone was picked up.

“Right. We’ve dropped a little nugget into the FBI’s intelligence system. Stafford should now be in deep kimshii.”

“How in the hell did you manage that?”

“The FBI pays confidential informants to report interesting rumors in the international arms markets. A lot of it’s total bullshit, but sometimes they get lucky. We’re one of the informants.”

“Jesus, that’s playing with fire, isn’t it?”

“Not really. You want to hide from the FBI, do business with them right out in the open. They tend to make everything they do really hard.”

“Won’t DCIS find out about it?”

“Very probably, but we didn’t identify Stafford as a government guy.

Just used his name. But because we said chemical weapon, the Army will probably get a call from the Bureau, and they’ll know exactly which Stafford. That way we get one government agency leaning on another one.

They’ll get all wrapped around the axle over jurisdiction, and we, in the meantime, will get a window to do this thing. You ready?”

“Yeah, but all this other shit’s been distracting the hell out of me.

But I’ve decided one thing: I want the money in cash. Greenback dollars.

Hundreds.”

“You do know you’re talking ten thousand hundred dollar bills, right?

That’s a stack of hundreds about ten feet high.”

“That’s a footlockerful. And that’s how I want it. I don’t know anything about diamonds or any of the rest of that stuff. And I really think we ought to do it here, at the DRMO. Now that the Army’s looking, I don’t want to move that thing.”

Tangent was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I suppose we can do it there. My client is nervous about our going onto a federal facility for this kind of transaction, that’s all. Some gate guard searches the vehicle, finds the money, it’d be tough to explain.”

“There aren’t any gate guards here at Fort Gillem. It’s an open post.”

“Okay. How’s about the ‘when’ question?”

Carson was ready. “This is Monday. How soon can you have your people here in Atlanta? With the cash?”

“Hell, logistically, we’re ready now. To get down it there, get set up, eight, twelve hours.”

“Okay, here’s how I want to do it. I’ll assume your people can be ready by midnight tonight. That’s twelve hours from now. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours after that, I’ll call them at a number that you designate and tell them to come to Fort Gillem. They get here, there will be instructions on what to do and where to go next.”

“Don’t make this too complicated, Carson.”

“I’m trying to make it safe. For me. A million in cash is a tempting amount of money.”

“How do we know you won’t stiff usl”

‘ ‘What else am I going to do with this thing except sell it, huh?” Carson asked. “It’s not like I want to own it.” Especially, he thought, after I found out it might be cooking.

“Okay, that works for us. I’ll call one more time to confirm all this.

In about two hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

MONDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D. C., T2:20P. M. “I’ve got Mr. Sparks’s office on secure, General,” Major Mason said from the doorway.

General Carrothers picked up his handset.

‘ ‘This is Brigadier General Lee Carrothers, deputy commander of the Army Chemical Corps,” he announced.

“This is Leslie Smith, General. I’m the regional DCIS office manager in Smyrna. As I just explained to the major, Mr. Sparks is not available to speak to you, sir.”

“He’s not there? When will he be available?”

“He’s not available to speak to you, General,” she repeated patiently.

“I can’t say when he will be available, sir.”

Carrothers frowned. “You telling me he won’t talk to me, Ms. Smith?”

“I’m just telling you what Mr. Sparks told me to tell you, sir.”

Carrothers held his temper. She wasn’t being disrespectful; she was merely doing what her boss had told her: that he wouldn’t take this call. - , “Okay, Ms. Smith, I understand. Do you have a secure fax number? I need to send something down there that might make Mr. Sparks change his mind.”

She gave him the secure fax number. He thanked her and hung up.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “This guy Sparks won’t take my call.”

Colonel Fuller gave the general a bemused look. “You practically arrested one of his people,” he said. “Held him for a day on a closed post, made him take a lie-detector test, and then turned him loose without so much as a by your-leave, and his boss won’t talk to you?

Unusual boss, this day and age.”

“Maybe. Although I don’t think Stafford knew who I was.”

“He knew it was Army Chemical Corps hassling him, General.”

“Yeah, well. Mason, send a copy of this spot report to this number,” he ordered, handing Mason the paper. “Addressed to Mr. Sparks. Make sure my name and secure drop are on the cover sheet.”

“Yes, sir. Right away.” Mason left the office.

“And Colonel Fuller, when he’s done, I want you and Major Mason to sit down and design a special response team that would be capable of recovering and decontaminating, if necessary, a Wet Eye exposure incident. From both the CW and the BW perspectives.”

Fuller nodded slowly but then frowned. “I can do half of that, General.

The CW side should be pretty straight forward. The chem team and their transport vehicles MOPPed up to the max. Standard decontamination procedurescurrent MOPP gear will protect the troops against the chemical agent. But as I told you, we can’t know what the bugs ‘are doing in there. Or what kind of toxins they might be generating. What granularity, for instance vis-avis the respirator filters.”

Carrothers considered that. “What’s the only absolutely, positively surefire method of eliminating biologic toxins, Colonel?”

“You just said it, General. Fire. Serious fire. As in napalm, thermite, carbon-arc fire, atomic weapons fire.”

“So if I thought a cylinder of Wet Eye was hidden in a building?”

“I’d incinerate that building. I’d bring up a flame throwing tank and burn the bastard into lampblack. Think Waco, Texas. Burn it to a smear.”

“That’s a bit extreme, Colonel.”

“So’s a Wet Eye exposure event, General.”

Colonel Fuller left the office, closing the door behind him. He looked around for Major Mason. The clerk told him the major was down the hall using the secure fax station. Fuller stood there thinking for a moment.

He asked the clerk where General Waddell was.

“He’s on the West Coast, Sir.” . “Do you have a phone number for him?”

“We can reach the general, sir,” the clerk replied warily. “General Carrothers has asked Major Mason and me to reconstitute the Security Working Group. We’ll need that secure conference room again. And I need you to get a ‘discreet message to General Waddell to call me immediately. And I mean me, not anyone else. Understand, Sergeant?” He looked meaningfully at General Carrothers’s closed door. “General Waddell and I are longtime personal friends, and I need to talk to him very privately and very soon. You can word that anyway you want to, as long as it goes out in the next five minutes or so.”.

The clerk was writing this all down. “Got it, Colonel. I’ll let you know as soon as I reach the general, sir.” MONDAY, CRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 1:00 P.M. Stafford asked to use the phone in Owen’s office, where he called Ray Sparks. Ray’s secretary put him on hold for a minute and then came back on the line.

“Mr. Sparks wants to know if you have your portable with you,” she said.

“Yes. It’s out in the car.”

“He said to get it and then call back in secure. Quickly.”

Stafford hung up and went out to get his computer. The sheriff asked him what was going on. ‘ ‘Gotta make a secure call to the local DCIS office, Sheriff.”

“That looks like a portable.”

“It is; there’s a secure telecomm function built in.” The sheriff followed him back into Gwen’s office but withdrew when Stafford gave him an “excuse me” look. As he dialed the Smyrna secure number, he saw the sheriff and Gwen exchange a few words on the porch, and then the sheriff was picking up his hat. Gwen came over and stood in the doorway. He decided to let her stay and listen. The secure link came up with the Smyrna office. Sparks came right on, and Stafford put him on the portable’s speaker.

“Dave. There’s something you need to know about. It was faxed down here from the Pentagon by a brigadier general in the Army Chemical Corps.

It’s an intel spot report, according to which, a subject named Stafford has gone into the arms business.”

“Ducky. What is this Stafford Communist supposed to be selling?”

“A chemical weapon. He’s asking for a million bucks.

This general wanted to talk to me this morning, but I stiffed him.”

‘ ‘And who originated that report?”

“Three guesses.”

Stafford thought about that for a minute. ‘ ‘It was a Bureau guy who fluttered me at Anniston.”

“Bingo. So we definitely have the Army and Bureau working a problem together.”

‘ ‘Right. All over a weapon that isn’t missing. You feeling a little better about this, Ray? Like ‘maybe I’m not totally crazy?”

“Let’s not leap to assumptions, Dave,” Sparks said with a nervous laugh.

Stafford felt a surge of relief to have Ray back in his corner, but it was short-lived.

“Dave, you do know I’ve got to forward this to DCIS Washington, although, now that I think about it, they may already have it. And I’m going to have to tell Colonel Parsons what the hell this is all about.”

“Damn, I wish there was a way around that,” Stafford said, very much aware of Gwen in the doorway. “At least the part about the people here in Graniteville.”

“I can try. Give them the old confidential informant bit. But it’s all going to come apart anyway when the colonel closes the loop with the Green Machine, and they hunker back down and say, ‘What missing weapon?”

The thing I can’t figure out is where the hell this intel report came from. I mean, I know the FBI intel division is the source, but who’s feeding them this shit?”

“Somebody who wants to put the heat on me and take the heat off of him.”

“You mean Carson?”

“He said he had friends” in D. C., and he’s the guy who knows where this thing is.”

“You suspect.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t, Dave. You don’t know. You suspect. You know when you can present evidence. Proof. Witnesses. Documents. The little girl with the crystal ball doesn’t count.”

“For Chrissakes, Ray, she doesn’t have a goddamn crystal ball,” Stafford said, louder than he had intended. He was now painfully aware of Gwen standing in the doorway, and she was giving him a peculiar look. There was an awkward silence on the line. 1 “Who exactly sent this fax to you?” Stafford asked.

“It came from the office of a Brigadier General Lee Can-others, the Pentagon.”

“And you refused to talk to him?”

“Hell yes. This is interdepartmental. If anyone’s going to start talking to the Army headquarters, it’s got to be DCIS headquarters. As in Colonel Parsons or higher. This general undoubtedly anticipated that. He wants me to pass it up the line.”

Sparks the ever-obedient bureaucrat. “How about giving me that general’s phone number?” Stafford said.

“Negative, Dave. Let Parsons or Whittaker handle this. You’ve warned those people up there in Hicksville, or wherever you are? Then you’re done up there. Come back to Atlanta. I want you here in Smyrna when Washington starts sending cruise missiles down to Georgia. You know DCIS is going to go snake shit.”

Stafford thought fast. He had promised to go back. But he suddenly did not want to do that. “Okay. I’ll wrap it up here and get back,” he said.

“Good, you do that,” Sparks said.

Stafford hung up before Sparks could say anything more. He didn’t want to tell Ray any more lies than were absolutely necessary. Gwen looked as if she wanted to say something, but Stafford held her off by raising his hand. Then he typed in another number on the secure autodialer.

“Pentagon secure operator.”

“I need the secure drop for a Brigadier General Lee Carrothers, U.S. Army. He’s in the building. And request a patch, please, operator.”

“Stand by.” Dave motioned for Gwen to sit down. The sheriff was nowhere in sight.

“General Waddelfs office, Sergeant Clifford speaking, sir.”

“Sergeant, this is David Stafford, DCIS, calling for Brigadier Carrothers.”

“Stand by one, sir. I’ll see if the general is available.”

Stafford put his thumb over the microphone spot on the portable. “I’m going out of channels, Gwen. I’m going to try to point these people at Carson and still keep you and the girl out of it. Can’t promise—”

“This is General Carrothers.”’

Stafford thought he recognized the voice behind the mask at Anniston.

“Hello again, General.”

There was brief hesitation. “Hello again, Mr. Stafford. I was actually hoping you might call.”

‘ ‘Do we have something specific to talk about yet, General? Or are we going to dance some more?”

“You tripped on two questions in your test, Mr. Stafford. You remember which ones they were?”

“Yup. And the true answers are yes, I’ve seen it, and no, I don’t have it, no matter what the Feebies are telling you. But I think I know who does have it. You need to get your hands on the manager of the DRMO, one Wendell Carsont And you probably ought to do that sooner rather than later, General.”

“Very interesting, Mr. Stafford. Will you tell me where you saw it?”

“On a PC monitor in one of your response team’s trucks, General, the first time you had them go to the DRMO. A cylinder. Three feet long or so. About three, four inches in diameter. It looked like a CAD-CAM view, revolving slowly on the screen in three-D. Or am I mistaken here? Maybe that was just a screen saver?”

The general never missed a beat. “That’s exactly what you were looking at, Mr. Stafford. A screen saver. I guess I’m disappointed. I thought you might have something substantial for me. Something real.”

“And I thought you guys were missing a chemical weapon, General.

Something substantial, something real.”

That brought a moment of silence. Then the general asked another question. “Why were you there at that DRMO, Mr. Stafford?”

“I was sent there, General. That’s usually how it works in DCIS. I was there to investigate a possible fraud case. DCIS had uricovered a pattern of evidence that someone was rigging the auctions of surplus military material. We actually picked the Atlanta DRMO at random to test the pattern theory. We don’t really have a case on any person or persons yet.”

‘ ‘Well, then, Mr. Stafford, I guess we’re still dancing. I think you’re not telling me something. I need more than your say-so to go after this Mr. Carson.”

“I’m protecting a confidential informant,” Stafford said, looking over at Gwen, “who, interestingly enough, saw the same thing I saw. All I can tell you is that somebody really, really needs to go back to that DRMO and get his hands on Carson. Maybe do to him what you did to me. Before this thing that isn’t missing gets any more missing.”

“Where are you now, Mr. Stafford?”

“In Atlanta, General,” Stafford lied. “I’m calling you on a secure comms PC.”

“If I need to talk to you again, where do I call?”

‘ ‘The DCIS office in Smyrna, General. Leave the message with Mr. Sparks.” He gave Carrothers the number; “Mr. Sparks wouldn’t talk to me this morning. He hurt my feelings.”

- “Mr. Sparks has a good nose for trouble, General. It’s nothing personal, you understand.”

Stafford thought he heard a small chuckle. “Goodbye, Mr. Stafford”

He secured the computer. Gwen was watching him carefully when he turned around. “Now what?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I promised Ray I’d go back to Atlanta. But I don’t really want to go back there.”

She looked momentarily relieved. “Why?” she asked. “Will something happen?”

“It shouldn’t. That fax was just an intelligence spot report—one grade better than rumor. Not even the Bureau arrests people on rumors, or they didn’t used to, anyway. Either way, that spot report’s going to stir up a fire at the DCIS headquarters as soon as the Army talks to them. There are people there willing to believe anything about me.”

“And what would they do?”

“Recall me to Washington, which might be why that spot report was generated. My guess is that Carson has the thing they’re looking for. He may be in the process of selling it to someone, and that someone has connections good enough to start this crap.”

Owen looked down at the floor. ‘ ‘You work in a strange world, Mr. Stafford. Are you telling me that the only way you could convince your bosses, or that general, is to have Jess corroborate your story?”

Stafford shook his head. “I actually don’t think that would do any good.

And it would definitely turn into a circus, as I think you already know.

No. I’ve made the best use of her … faculties that I can. The Army has to be desperate to find that thing. I’ve given them a new target. My guess is they’ll take a shot at it, one way or another.”

She persisted. “But didn’t you say Carson knows that you know? Does he know how you found out?”

“Initially he’s going to think it was one of his own people. But if he goes back and thinks about everything that’s happened since I entered the picture, he might guess. We were all there in the airport, Gwen.

You, Jess, Carson, and me. Carson’s a run-of-the-mill civil servant who’s probably operating way out of his depth right at the moment. But he’s not stupid. I guess it depends on what he saw or experienced when Jessamine saw what she saw.”

“In the two prior cases, they appear to remember nothing.”

“Well, then, that might work in our favor.”

“Do they know where we are? All these people—the Army, the DCIS, the FBI, or even this Carson?”

Stafford stopped to think. Sparks knew that he had come to Graniteville.

The Pentagon could probably trace back the secure phone call he had just made. The FBI probably did not know, but they also weren’t looking yet.

And Carson? Did Carson know about Graniteville? Had he mentioned Graniteville to Carson in the car that day?

“The government agencies can find out,” he said finally. “I don’t know about Carson. But if someone in Washington is helping him, someone with connections, then, yes, he might be able to find out.”

“Then we should tell John Lee about your call this morning, don’t you think?”

“Yes. But unless the Army goes after Carson, he probably won’t do anything. Unless—”

“Unless what?” Her hands were folded in her lap, but he could see the tension in her fingers.

“Unless Carson does recall what happened at the airport. Then he might consider the girl a witness. A stolen chemical weapon would be worth a ton of money in certain quarters, but not if there’s a witness.”

“So now Jess is a witness.” She sighed. “And from what you say, only the bad guy will believe her. That’s rich.” She looked across the room at him, her eyes pleading. “I really wish you could stay here. Until we know.”

He smiled. “I’m definitely thinking about it. My bosses probably won’t see it that way, of course. It’s going to depend upon what the Army does with my phone call.” He rubbed his temples. “I’m getting the mother of all headaches. I need to take a walk or something.”

“Let me make a quick check on how the afternoon’s going. Then I’ll join you.”

MONDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, 2:30 P.M. Carson began his preparations after lunch. First he made a walking tour of the entire DRMO to see that everything was operating normally. He walked through all of the warehouses, the tarmac area, the receiving building, and even the demil assembly and product lines. He did not detect any unusual vibes from the employees; even Corey Dillard gave him a cautious nod of recognition. He looked for any signs that the Army teams had left behind some covert surveillance equipment but found nothing.

He had the man in die security control room walk him through the closed-circuit television surveillance systems that covered the high-value military equipment warehouses, the tarmac, and the entrance to the demil complex. He paid attention to the camera-viewing angles and got a feel for what the displays showed and did not show. This office was manned up during normal working hours, but all the budget cutting had forced them to go to intrusion alarm-activated tape after hours. His plan for the transfer

? included use of the television cameras, so he made sure he H had the current cipher-lock code for the control room.

” He ended his tour in the demil assembly building, where Boss Hisley and his crew were building up the feed run for the Monster. Hisley gave him his usual blank face and kept the crew going despite Carson’s presence. Carson walked around the assembly area,-looking at everything, trying to figure out where and how to set the thing up. The key was going to be the closed-circuit TV system. He did not bother going into the demil building. If this worked, nothing was going to happen there, except for the small matter of a trunk with a million bucks in it. He walked [; casually back to his office across the tarmac, trying hard not to look at his watch. He wondered if Tangent’s team was in Atlanta yet.

He’d told Tangent they could get the go order anytime after midnight tonight. He planned to make the call at twelve-fifteen. In the meantime, he had some more preparations to make.

MONDAY, THE PENTAGON, WASHINGTON, D. C., 4:10P. M. The clerk knocked once on the door of the conference room and stuck his head in. “Colonel Fuller, sir, there’s a call for you from your office.”

“So patch it in.”

“Uh, sir, I can’t patch that particular line.” Fuller turned around in exasperation and then saw the look on the clerk’s face. “Oh, Okay. I’ll be right out.” “Trouble?” Mason asked, his desk cluttered with old microfilm prints on the Wet Eye weapon.

“Something from USAMRIID,” Fuller muttered. “You know, budget time.” He went out to the clerk’s desk. The clerk pointed him over to the couch on the other side of the office, where a secure phone extension was blinking. He picked it up.

“Colonel Fuller,” he said.

“Ambrose?”

“Yes, sir. We have a problem.” In a low voice, and with one eye on General Carrothers’s closed office door, he brought General Waddell up to speed on what Carrothers had reported. The general swore and then asked Fuller what might be happening in the cylinder.

“That’s the bad news, General,” Fuller said. “My people have finished the simulation run. Based on that, they’re predicting an exothermic reaction in the cylinder, capable of blowing the end caps off in thirty-six hours, plus or minus four hours.”

“Damn. Which would release what, exactly?” :

“That’s just it, General, we don’t know. The heat might kill the bugs, or they might mutate to something truly virulent. Either way, the underlying chemical agent would still be present. That thing lets go in the right place, we could have us a real situation.”

There was long silence, which Fuller knew better than to interrupt.

Finally, Waddell spoke. “Okay,” he said. “Thirty-six hours. We keep coming back to that DRMO in Atlanta. I take it there’s no point in searching the damn thing again.”

“No, sir. A DRMO is basically a warehouse complex. Thousands of things on shelves. You’d have to—”

“Yes, yes, I understand all that. Carrothers is having you plan another sweep with the Anniston team?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Forget that. This problem has reached zero-option status. I’m going to call General Roman, and then I’m going to task a Special Forces team from Fort Mcpherson, which is right there In Georgia. I’ll have them at Fort Gillem by 2400. Get the Anniston team there by 0100, reinforced, just like the last time.”

“Hell, Myer, there’s no point in—”

“I know that, Ambrose. But we’re not going to search that place again.

You had the right idea. The snake-eaters will have a Humvee full of thermite bombs. I want that DRMO incinerated. The whole fucking ball of wax, right to the ground. I want the Anniston team there to secure the perimeter, test the smoke, probe the ashes.”

Fuller was aghast. ‘ ‘But, sir, if the cylinder is there, that smoke might—I mean, Jesus, we’re talking metro Atlanta here. We have no idea—”

“It’s a stainless-steel cylinder, Ambrose. Any external fire hot enough to rupture it is hot enough to burn anything that comes out of it.

Especially any living organisms. And with Wet Eye, shouldn’t we have a fluorine organophosphate residual after combustion?”

Fuller thought for a moment, trying to recall the baseline modulus on Wet Eye. “Yes, sir, I think we would. It would be molecular concentrations, though. Pretty damn faint signature.”

“Our new mark-seven gear can detect at that concentration. Now, patch me back to my clerk. I believe it’s time to share my thinking with General Carrothers. And Ambrose?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Close-hold on the mutation problem. That’s between you and me until I tell you differently.”

‘ ‘Even General Carrothers?”

“Especially General Carrothers.”

“Understood, sir,” Fuller said, hitting the patch button. Share my thinking, he thought, his throat suddenly dry. He swallowed. Suddenly, he was glad the general hadn’t asked him about whether or not the Army’s chem suits could hold off a mutated agent.

MONDAY, WILLOW GROVE HOME, GRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 5:30 P.M. They hiked only as far as the first waterfall this time, mindful of the setting sun. Along the way, Gwen made her case for Stafford’s not going back to Atlanta. Her biggest fear was for the little kids, coming as they often did from horrific circumstances. The prospect of government interrogation teams, or, worse, the media, might set them back for years. Jessamine, she said, was particularly vulnerable. She was a teenager, with all the emotional baggage that that entailed, who had witnessed a terrifying event as a very small child.

He remembered her saying that before. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Gwen hesitated, then answered, “I’d rather not, actually. It involved an incident with her mother.” Stafford nodded, then asked about Jess’s speech disability.

“She has been mute from childhood. I know she seems pretty competent now—goes to school, rides her horse, picks up after herself. But underneath, there’s a lot of cracked emotional glass. I just can’t have her exposed to some media feeding frenzy, which is the main reason I’m asking you to stay for a while.”

Stafford didn’t really have to be convinced to stay, but he would have liked to hear some evidence that she wanted him there for a reason besides protecting the kids. He asked her if the sheriff couldn’t protect them from undue public scrutiny. ‘ ‘John Lee would just get himself in trouble, I’m afraid. He’s an old-school Georgia county sheriff. It wouldn’t occur to him that someone might disagree with what he ordered, much less try to run over the top of him.”

“If the FBI comes, they will absolutely run right over the top of him and everybody else,” he said. “They’ll go through the motions, but they’ll do it their way. And the Army? God only knows what those guys will do.”

“John Lee would probably get the deputies out and start shooting or something. He’s a tough old bear.”

They started back toward the house. “You sound like you’re still fond of him, at least a little,” he said.

She turned and smiled. ‘ ‘In a way, I am. Is that such a bad thing? Give me your hand. No, your right hand.” He did, and she took it gently, returning to the path. “John Lee had an affair. He was so sorry for what he did, but once I found out, well …”

“I know that feeling,” he said. “It’s a kick in the teeth, no matter how it’s presented.”

‘ ‘My very words. I could no longer be married to him, so the only option was divorce. Everyone in Graniteville was pretty upset. At him for doing what he did, and at me, for not forgiving him. ‘Good ole boys make mistakes, Mizz Warren; ain’t nobody perfect.’ “

“Nobody ever promises to be perfect. Just to love, honor, and cherish.”

She squeezed his hand. “So now he comes around,” she said. “Looks after us, does things for the school and the kids, smoothes the way with the state when we need it. He helps. He hopes, I think.”

As she held his right hand in her left, he did not feel like a cripple for the first time in months. “And so he never remarried?” he asked.

“No, he did not. Neither did I. How about you, David Stafford? Will you remarry?” Her question startled him. “Never again,” he said too quickly, but then he wondered if he really meant that. ‘ ‘I mean, hell, I don’t know that.

Just about every aspect of my life has come apart lately—my career, my marriage, this useless damn arm.”

“Not so useless a damn arm right now, is it?”

He grinned. ‘ ‘No, now that you mention it. I rather like holding hands with you, Gwen Warren.”

She stopped, released his hand, and looked over at him. Her face was partially in shadow, and he couldn’t read her expression. “Then please,” she said softly. “Please stay here with us. I’m afraid of your world and what might happen it if it comes here.”

He remembered Ray’s warning. “If I do that, Gwen, I might be an unemployed ex-cop.”

“Would that be so bad? Is your career going all that well right now?”

He looked down at the ground. The lady had a point there. “You know, as unbelievable as this might sound, I’ve never considered leaving the business. Even after all that’s happened. Maybe I should.”

He looked around at the forest. They had walked almost to the edge of the willow grove. The sounds of the little kids at the barn were filtering through the mass of greenery. “It’s just that I feel I didn’t do anything wrong. Politically dumb, maybe, but not wrong. Not up.

there, nor down here with this Carson thing. I’ve tried to do the right thing.”

“And do your superiors value that ethic?”

“I thought they did, but now I wonder. I guess I’ve never thought that through. Been too busy being sorry for myself.” -;..

“Think about it now, Dave.”

One of the kids saw them through the willows and began to call her name.

He wanted to continue their little talk, to explain how he felt about her, but the moment had passed, and she was already moving, calling back to them. He still wasn’t sure: Did she feel something for him? Or was it more a case of her needing him to help them with what might be coming toward their little world? He followed after her, exploring in his mind for the first time the prospect of not being a cop, of doing something entirely different with his life.

He had dinner that evening with Gwen, Jessamine, the little kids, and Mrs. Benning in the communal dining room. They had spent the rest of the afternoon watching the afternoon activities at the barn. Later they had another chance to talk, he of his, life and experiences in law enforcement, she of her many years of building up Willow Grove while pursuing knowledge about the way castoff children communicate with a world that has rejected them. He gained the sense that while she was smart enough to fill her days with commitments, at heart she was a lonely person, a woman who had never quite gotten over the hurt ,. of her husband’s betrayal. He followed her lead in the i-conversation and did not try to steer it toward how he felt about her. Either she had not noticed or there was nothing there but his wishful thinking.

At dinner the kids were cute, but hardly angels, and the supervising adults had their hands full. He watched Jessamine covertly during dinner, wondering if she could really read minds, if she was reading his mind now. But then he remembered that the person being probed supposedly had to be extremely agitated. He still found it tough to believe. And yet the police literature was full of documented cases where so-called psychics and profilers had led an investigation right to the perpetrator’s front door, and usually after the cops had run into what seemed like a stone wall. This girl looked like every fourteen-year-old girl he had ever seen—a bit awkward, insecure, feigning utter indifference to what was going on around her while simultaneously being keenly interested in how she was being perceived. He wondered what it might be like to peer into someone else’s thoughts, emotions, or memories, and he decided that it might not be so terrific. Such an ability would be the ultimate infraction of the old Washington rule: Don’t formally ask a question if you can’t stand all the possible answers.

After dinner, he found himself alone at the table with Jess while the two women took the little kids upstairs for the nightly battle of getting them to bed. He was finishing a cup of coffee and wondering when Sparks would call. She made a pretense of reading a book, but she was watching him when she thought he wasn’t looking. On an impulse, he asked her how she liked school, forgetting for a moment that she did not speak. She signed briefly, then pulled over a pad of paper and a pen and began writing. “Boring,” she wrote. “They think I’m stupid.” “The kids, or the teachers?” he asked.

“Some of both,” she wrote. “I’m not dumb.” He almost asked her why she did not speak, but then he remembered what Gwen had said about her background. It occurred to him that here was his chance to ask her something he really did want to know.

“Jess,” he said, “do you remember the man at the airport?”

She frowned and did not immediately respond. But then she nodded.

“Gwen told me you sensed that he was a bad man. That he frightened you.”

She was watching him very carefully now. Another slow nod. ; ..

“Can you write down for me why you think he was a bad man? Did he do something bad?”

She began signing to him, then stopped when she remembered he could not understand. She picked up the pen, put it down, and then picked it up again. The sounds from upstairs were diminishing. Dave wondered what Gwen would do or say if she knew this conversation was going on.

“Killed someone,” she wrote. Then she shivered.

Lambry? He wondered. “Is that the only thing he did?”

She shook her head, and started to write a reply, then stopped. She took out another sheet of paper, scrunched up her face in concentration, and then began to draw instead. From across the table, he was able to recognize the cylinder immediately. She drew confidently, quickly, almost expertly. It was as if the image on the monitor in the Army trailer was reappearing right here on the dining room table. She pushed the drawing across to him, then signed again.

He took the piece of paper and looked at it. This drawing was a hell of a lot better than the one Gwen had shown him. She tapped the pen on the table, and he pushed the paper back across to her. “Very bad thing,” she wrote, and then underlined that several times.

“Yes, you’re absolutely right, Jess,” he said. “It’s a weapon. An Army weapon. I think that man stole it. I’m trying to get it back.” This drawing is almost perfect, he thought. So where the hell had that crude drawing come from? Jess was already scribbling another question.

“Is something coming?” she wrote.

He felt a chill when he read that question, but he was saved by the sounds of Gwen coming back down the stairs. The girl put a finger to her lips, grabbed the piece of paper, and hid it in her book. She had turned around in her chair by the time Gwen came back into the room.

Stafford finished his coffee while trying to clamp down on a feeling of apprehension. He didn’t know which bothered him more: her question—”Is something coming?”— or the fact that she had asked it. Damn!

MONDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, 10:00 P.M. Carson sat at the control booth in the security control room. He was wearing slacks, a business shirt without a tie, tennis shoes, and a light windbreaker. He hadn’t been able to wait any longer, and he had gone ahead and made the call. The man at the other end of the line had obviously been waiting. Carson had given Tangent’s man directions to the DRMO, then told him to park out front and look for an envelope on the front door of the admin building.

He warned the man about watching for patrolling MP cars. He suggested they come just after midnight.

Now he had to wait. He reviewed the rest of the plan in his mind: The envelope on the door would direct them to drive back through the truck alley, where he had unlocked and opened the main gates into the area of the receiving bay. They were to drive out into the middle of the tarmac and look for a pallet of airplane propellers, which should be distinctive enough. There would be a second envelope there, which would direct them to warehouse four, where they would find a third envelope, taped to the side of the building. This one would instruct them to go to the feed-assembly building. To get each envelope, they would have to stand in a cone of light, at which he had aimed one of the surveillance cameras. He wanted to get a good look at these people before proceeding.

The final envelope instructed them to take the money into that building and wait for instructions, which would come by phone. He felt reasonably confident that he would be able to watch their every move. If one or two of Tangent’s people drifted away into the darkness, possibly to set up on Carson when he tried to leave, he wanted to be able to see that. All these envelopes and the resulting scavenger hunt would probably piss them off, but for a million in cash, too bad. Carson-was a party of one; Tangent could send as many people as he .wanted. Should have specified something about that, he thought.

Once Tangent’s people were in the feed-assembly building, he would remotely disable the front door’s cipher lock from the security control room, which would effectively lock them in. Inside the assembly area, they would find the conveyor belt running. He would call them on the building phone and instruct them to put the money into some demil containers and send them into the demil building, where he had repositioned the surveillance camera there to focus directly down onto the belt. Once he was confident they had put money in the containers, and not newspaper or bricks, he would kill all power to the demil assembly building. This would leave them in the dark, except for the battery-operated fire lights. He would call them again and tell them that he was going to retrieve the money, and that he would call one last time to tell them I where he was leaving the cylinder, which he had already hidden in the outside toolbox on one of the semis parked down in the truck lane. He would then let himself into the demil building, verify that the money was real, pack it into two prepositioned duffel bags, then go out the back fire I door of the demil building, across the alley to the fence, and get to his truck.

He had parked his pickup truck in an old fire lane that ran parallel to the DRMO perimeter fence a hundred yards away. Between the fire lane and the fence was a dense stand of brush, small trees, and high weeds. He had cut a man-sized slit in the chain-link fence at the end of the truck and trailer parking lane. His plan was to drive off the post, I and when he was at least a mile away, call the DRMO automatic exchange from his car phone, dial the extension for the feed-assembly building, and tell them how to bypass the cipher lock to get out and where to find the cylinder. By then he would have disappeared into the streets i of southeast Atlanta, with a million bucks in cash, and with that damned cylinder off his hands once and for all.

After that, well, he was making no plans. Tangent’s team, of course, wouldn’t know any of this until they arrived and began the process of envelope hunting. They might be annoyed at being locked up in the feed-assembly building, but, again, that was tough. He had warned them J he would be taking precautions.

He had also made provisions for the two most serious problems he could think of. The first would be if they m brought counterfeit money. This certainly was a possibility, since it all was going to be in brand-new hundreds. He had obtained four new one-hundred-dollar bills from a bank so he would have something to compare the prize money with. About the only test he had een able to devise was to cart a desktop copier machine into the demil building. If the bills were real, they would not copy properly; he’d tried it with the real ones and certain elements of the engraving had not come through. If Tangent’s bills did make an exact reproduction, then they were probably fakes.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if that happened. Probably the safest thing to do would be to go retrieve the cylinder and put it with the fake money back on the conveyor belt, fire up the Monster, and destroy it. If he couldn’t sell this damn thing to Tangent, then he probably couldn’t sell it to anyone, and the game would be over. Let the demil system shred the fake money and the cylinder, and at least there would be no evidence left behind. And if by chance a whiff or two of whatever was in the cylinder made it back into the feed-assembly building —if he cut all the power again just as the Monster was starting to chew things up, for example—well, that would be justice, wouldn’t it?

The second problem would be if Tangent and his crew brought real money but then tried to get it back once the transfer had been made. He assumed that if this was their plan, they probably wouldn’t want to make their move until they knew where the cylinder was, which was why he had set up the transfer in pieces: Unless they brought a whole lot of help, it would -be next to impossible for them to set up some kind of an ambush. But what if they did bring lots of help? Assuming he would be able to detect this fact through all the surveillance cameras, he’d go to plan B, which was to go get the money but not try to leave the DRMO.

Instead he would lock himself in the demil building, call them as planned, tell them how to disable the cipher lock, and give them a false location for the cylinder. When they left the feed-assembly building, he’d go through the interbuilding aperture into the feed assembly room, and from there he’d make his way back through the connecting warehouses to the other end of the DRMO while they scrambled” around outside looking for him. There were many places he could hide in the warehouses until morning, by which time they would have to leave when the employees came back to work. Those semis in the truck park weren’t scheduled to go anywhere for a week, so he could retrieve the cylinder, toss it into the demil run for that day, and leave with the money whenever he wanted to.

And just to be sure, he had positioned forklifts across all the entrance doors in the rest of the high-security warehouses, and more forklifts next to each connecting doorway.

But he knew that, in a sense, plan B was all wishful thinking. This thing had better go right, or life was going to get really complicated.

He looked at his watch: 10:10 p.m. Two more hours. He scanned the bank of televisions screens, but all the gray-and-black images shimmering silently on the monitors were lifeless. There was one other nagging thought hanging just out of reach in his mind, something about the cylinder itself, but he could not summon it. He waited.

MONDAY, WILLOW GROVE HOME, GRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 10:00 P.M. Stafford took his coffee mug and walked with Gwen through her parlor and out to the side porch facing the pecan grove. There was just the bloom of the moon showing above the peak behind the house, and the tree frogs were out in full strength wheh she sat down beside him on the porch swing. He noticed that she had fixed her hair and put on a touch of perfume. He put the coffee mug down on a table, unsure of his left hand’s trustworthiness not to spill on a moving swing.

“I’m a little surprised Ray Sparks hasn’t called,” he said.

“Oh, he did,” she replied. “Just before dinner.”

“Really.”

“Yes. He wanted to know if you had left. I told him not yet, that I had invited you to stay for dinner with the kids. I asked if there was any message, but he said no, thanked me, and hung up. I hope you won’t be mad at me for not telling you.”

“So he didn’t want to talk to me?”

“Apparently not.”

Stafford didn’t say anything at first, and then he said, “That’s a good sign. I think.”

“You’re sure you’re not angry? It had been such a pleasant afternoon. I didn’t want to spoil it.”

“No, not at all. I’ve been thinking about what you said up there on the trail. You pointed out something that I should have seen. I could walk away from the DCIS tomorrow morning, and nobody would care. In fact, news of my resignation would probably brighten several peoples’ day.”

“How about your pension, things like that?”

“I’ve got a 401-K,” he replied. He turned to look at her. “I haven’t the foggiest idea of what I’d do next, but whatever it might be, it’d be better than what I’m doing right now.”

“It’s something to think about, then, isn’t it?” she said. “In the meantime, you could stay here for a while. My father’s old room upstairs is our official guest room, and there is something you could contribute here, something that I can’t do-These kids have either never had a father or have had a monster masquerading as a father. You said you’ve worked with kids in the Boys Clubs. You could do that here.”

She really is quite beautiful, he thought. He resisted an impulse to reach out and touch her hair. “If I did stay,” he said, “it wouldn’t be just because of this Carson mess.”

She looked away, and he wondered if he had made a mistake. He felt himself blushing a little, and he was glad that it was dark on the porch.

“I think you would be very good for the kids,” she said, still avoiding eye contact. “Beyond that, I think it might do you good to get away from your world for a while. It doesn’t seem to be doing you much good these days.”

“That’s for damn sure,” he replied, following her lead, grateful to talk about something else, but also a bit disappointed.

They talked for another half hour about the school and the kids. When he sensed the evening was running down, he got up to go. She walked him to the front porch. He had told her he would go to the motel for the night and then return in the morning. He added that he would have to call Sparks in the morning. She nodded, then seemed poised to say something else. He waited.

“Everything’s not as it seems up here, Dave,” she said finally. “There’s … history. Family history. I sense that you are interested in me—as a woman. You need to think about your future, and not about me.” She gave him a sad smile, squeezed his hand, and went back into the house. He stood there for a moment, feeling like a disappointed teenager, and then went down the steps to his car..

Well, he thought to himself as he drove down the drive, there’s your answer. Why in the hell should he have assumed she saw anything desirable in him, a one-armed civil servant whose career was on the rocks, along with his marriage, not to mention this little imbroglio with Carson and company? He turned on the car radio and brought up a country station, where a singer was wailing on about love and tears.

Perfect, he thought. Just fucking perfect.

TUESDAY, TRANS-AMERICA TRUCK STOP, I-20, 12:45 A.M. Brigadier General Carrothers rendezvoused with the An niston team at a large Trans-America truck stop near the intersection of the Atlanta Perimeter and Interstate 20. The Anniston task unit consisted of four Army semis and six large Army MP Suburbans bristling with whip antennas and police lights.

Carrothers had been waiting at the truck stop for half an hour, sitting in thejdarking lot in a black government sedan requisitioned from Dobbins Air Force Base in northwest Atlanta. His driver, an Air Force sergeant, was a smoker. He was standing outside the car, puffing away anxiously among all the diesel fumes. Carrothers had come down on an Army Learjet by himself. The only other officers in the task unit would be the Anniston Depot operations officer and two Chemical Corps captains to supervise the decon sweep teams. Major Mason and Colonel Fuller had remained behind in the Pentagon to man up the CW operations room.

Carrothers had not wanted Fuller there, but it had become obvious that Fuller had had a talk with his old friend the CG. “

General Waddell’s sudden return to the Pentagon had been unpleasant, to put it mildly. The commanding general had also been very busy on the flight back from the West Coast. Waddell did not care for surprises, and Fuller’s back-channel revelations had come as a very unpleasant surprise. Ominously, Waddell had not indulged in any sort of shotting match. Instead, he had summoned Carrothers into his office and had him stand at attention in front of his desk.

“General,” he said, his face grim, “I thought we had a mutually agreed ‘right answer’ to this little problem, but evidently I was mistaken. And now we have some outsiders in the game. Is it your position that this missing cylinder might in fact be hidden somewhere in the Fort Gillem DRMO? That it did not end up in the demil machine?”

“Yes, sir, that might be the case, General. But—”

‘ ‘Don’t want to hear any damn mights or buts. The only butts I have a long-term interest in have two t’s in their spelling and they are destined for some chain-saw surgery for disobeying my orders. That’s a problem we will discuss at some length later, as well as your future in this organization. Right now, however, I propose to take some direct action, and you are going to feature prominently as a co-conspirator in the effort to put this incubus back in its box, assuming you want to keep that star.”

‘ ‘General Waddell—” Carrothers began.

“Be quiet, General,” Waddell interrupted. “As far as I’m concerned, we had this mess contained, and you have managed to uncontain it. Now, I have spoken to General Roman, and he agrees with my assessment that we are at the zero-option point. He has authorized me to proceed with some fairly drastic action. For the good of the Army and for the larger purpose of ensuring the national security, you are going to incinerate that DRMO.”

His instructions had been very specific: “You will go to Georgia and run this thing personally. You will destroy the Fort Gillem DRMO by fire.

General Roman has made available a team of Special Forces people, who will go to Fort Gillem. You will establish two perimeters: Anniston MPs on the outside, the Anniston CERT on the inside. The Fort Gillem MPs will be engaged in investigating a faked breakin at the Army-Air Force Exchange Service warehouse on the other end of the base when the action goes down, courtesy of the Special Forces team. The’ snake eaters will arrive early and will hide out at the abandoned airfield.

While they’re waiting, they will disable the firefighting water supply to the DRMO complex and sabotage the fire alarm systems. When they get the go order, they will go through that DRMO with thermite bombs. I want them in and out of there in fifteen minutes.”

The Gillem military police would be lured away to the other end of the base by the breakin alarm. Once someone noticed the conflagration at the DRMO, the Fort Gillem fire engines would respond, but by then, all the buildings would be fully involved. The’firefighters would be delayed at the scene when none of the hydrants worked. Then someone would tell them there might be explosives in the warehouses. The Fort Gillem post commander, who would be cut in on the plan, would make the decision to hold back the Gillem firefighters, on the premise of not risking lives trying to save obsolete military equipment.

When Waddell had finished, Carrothers tried to object again. “Do not argue with me,” Waddell interrupted. “It’s not like we’re destroying valuable government property. Those warehouses are fifty years old. All of that stuff is there because it’s obsolete or otherwise surplus. The dollars we lose in not selling it are far outweighed by the possibility—a possibility regenerated by you, as far as I’m concerned—that some lunatic fringe might get their hands on a can of Wet Eye. You know about the biologic component.”

“Yes, sir, I do. Now.”

“So give this plan the Washington Post test: If it ever does come out that the Army torched five or six warehouses full of surplus junk in order to make damned sure that some germ-warfare stuff didn’t get loose into the renegade international arms market, who’s going to fault us?”

Carrothers could not deny that. The DRMO was on a remote part of a partially shut-down post, out at the end of a disused runway, surrounded by concrete aprons, and at least a mile away from the civilian population in all directions. Even with a fire that size erupting in the middle of the night, the worst that might happen off the base would be a grass fire. The post-fire investigations would be done by the Army CIC, whose report would be carefully managed by Army headquarters. A Pentagon public relations team was probably already being positioned to brief the press. No one at Fort Gillem below the level of the post commander would know the real genesis of the fire.

“You started this shit with this DCIS guy,” Waddell concluded. “Now you go put an end to it. General Roman has already conferenced with the head of DCIS, and he confirms this guy Stafford is a squirrel. They’ve ordered the regional supervisor to reel him in and get him back to D.C.

General Roman has assured them that Stafford’s allegations against the DRMO manager are total bullshit.”

“But what if they’re not? What if this Carson actually does have it?”

“That’s the final part of your mission: When the DRMO goes up, the Fort Gillem duty officer will notify Carson. When he shows up, take him into custody. Bring him back to Washington. We’ll let another government agency take him out to a safe house in the Virginia woods to see what he knows or doesn’t know. Now, one further thing.”

Waddel had stood up behind his desk. Carrothers remembered the look on the older man’s face only too well. “The Army chief of staff has been fully briefed on this problem. He is in full concurrence with our taking such drastic action. I can’t emphasize this enough: The Army did not lose a weapon. Is that clear, General? We did not lose a chemical weapon. The Army Chemical Corps is in the fight of its budgetary life with this damned quadrennial review, and the Chemical Corps cannot begin to stand a hit like this. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“Good. So you go down there, and you incinerate that place. Burn it to a fucking shadow, along with any trace of that damned Wet Eye. And while you’re at it, give some consideration to where you’re going to retire.

You had your chance, General Carrothers. As best I can tell, you’ve blown it. That’s all.”

Carrothers had spent the rest of the day coordinating the planning for the operation from the Army Operations Center in the Pentagon’s basement. Now he stood by the lead Suburban under the white sodium glare of the truck stop’s light towers and rubbed his face. He was tired, disappointed, and very apprehensive. He could well understand the three-stars’ fear of the missing Wet Eye becoming public knowledge, and burning the DRMO would yield an almost 95 percent probability of destroying the cylinder, assuming it was still there. But what if it wasn’t? What if Carson did have it but had stashed it somewhere else?

And how in the hell had this Stafford found out about it? Or that Carson had it? There were too many loose ends here, and, given that, he hated executing this operation, especially when he knew the whole thing was inspired by panic at the higher echelons of the Army. He knew that somehow he had become a pawn in the Army’s cover-up, and that bothered him most of all. The scenes from Fuller’s video kept coming back to him.

And then, of course, there was Waddell’s parting shot: the fact that Carrothers should start planning his retirement. Well, the more he thought about that, the less that prospect bothered him, unlike what they were about to do tonight.

TUESDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, 12:20 A.M. Carson watched Tangent’s crew arrive on a television monitor in the security control room. They were driving a large, dark four-door sedan.

For another five minutes nothing happened. Then there was the glow of the interior light in the car, which quickly went out as the headlights of the Gillem MP patrol flared briefly in the roadway. Three more minutes after that, they tried again. Four men got out, their faces indistinct in the black-and-white image. One went to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and pulled out what looked like a Navy seabag.

The car’s trunk shut sound-I lessly, and two of the men carried the duffel bag between I them as they approached the front door of the admin build-ting. Carson lost sight of them as they neared the front door.

Okay, he thought. Four of them. One guy in charge, three helpers. Not too bad. He waited, visualizing the seconds passing as they read the envelope. They’d be pissed f off to have to lug that bag back to the car and then drive around, but that wasn’t his problem. He needed to get them off the road and back into the tarmac area, away from patrolling MPs. One of the men went back to get the car; ninety seconds later, he saw it emerge from the darkened space between the warehouse buildings where he had left T the gate open. The car came out onto the tarmac with its ‘ lights off. Good, he thought. There’s plenty of lighting there.

They found the pallet of propellers and stopped. This time, only one man got out, and he picked up the envelope. He read it, then walked across to the warehouse with the large numeral 4 painted on the end.

I should have made a provision here to close that truck gate, Carson thought. If they have unseen helpers, they’ll have a free shot to the tarmac. He scanned the outside perimeter monitors, some of which he had repositioned, but there was nothing going on. He looked back at the car, which was just sitting there on the tarmac. Then the driver was walking back to the car. He opened the door and leaned in. They all got out again, looked around, extracted the bag, and this time dragged it over toward the feed assembly building.

Carson studied them in the patch of light at the entrance f to the assembly building, keeping his finger on the cipher lock’s release button untifhe had them all in the light. Four white men, thirties, forties, in decent shape, all wearing slacks and unzipped windbreakers.

The windbreakers meant they were carrying, he thought. Fair enough. So was he.

He hit the button, and four heads in the monitor turned to the door in a blur of white faces. One man pushed it open, two others dragged the bag through the door, while the fourth watched their backs on the tarmac.

Carson turned toward the monitor that showed the inside of the feed-assembly area as all four came through the door. He could see the conveyor belt off to the right of the image as it proceeded slowly into the screened hole in the far wall. He picked up the handset and made the call. One of the men walked out of camera range, and a moment later the phone was picked up.

“Put the money into those open boxes by the belt. When you’ve got it all boxed, step back to the front door,” Carson ordered.

The man did not reply, simply hung up. Carson watched as they dragged the bag over to the belt line and began unloading it. Unwittingly, or perhaps on purpose, they positioned themselves between the camera and what they were doing at the belt, three working, the fourth watching the rest of the room, his hand inside his jacket. Carson could see that they were dumping something into the carrier boxes, but .the belt was too far away from the camera for him to tell it if was money. They seemed to take a long time, until he realized they probably had to pack the money into the boxes to make it all fit. Then they were done, and they stepped back from the belt, looking around.

Okay, he thought. He called the number again. The same man walked over to the phone and picked it up.

“Put the boxes on the belt. When it’s in the next building, I’m going to stop the belt. When I’m satisfied that the money is real, I’ll call you back and tell you where I’ve put the item. Until then, I’m disabling the cipher locks. Don’t try to leave.” “How long?” the man asked. It sounded like Tangent; Carson was pretty sure he recognized the voice. He could not, however, see the man’s face on the monitor. “Fifteen minutes,” he replied, hitting the button to disable the lock. “The item is prepositioned.”

“How do we know you won’t just take off?”

Yes, that was Tangent. “We’ve been through this. The item is worth nothing to me. It’s of use only to you and your ultimate customers.

Believe me, it’s not something I want to keep.” He hung up then, not wanting to waste any more time talking.

He watched them upload the boxes onto the belt. They stood together in a group, watching the belt slowly carry the boxes through the interbuilding aperture. He switched monitors, focusing on the boxes as -they came into view in the demil room, into the lighted area between the aperture and the intake of the Monster. When all four boxes were visible, he walked over to the emergency firefighting control panel and remotely opened the circuit breakers for the conveyor belt. He could reset them if he needed to once he got to the demil room itself. Then he studied the image of the demil room on the monitor. The security cameras inside the building could not zoom down, as they were only there for intruder detection and filming, but it looked like money: stacks of bills crammed into the boxes, each stack bound in a narrow paper wrapper.

Show time, he thought. Time to go see if it’s real or if it’s Memorex.

Before he got up, he took one last scan of the entire monitor bank: the tarmac area, the individual warehouse surveillance cameras, the feed-assembly room. The men were still all there, sitting now on upturned boxes, almost invisible in the dim lights of the battery-operated fire lights. One of them was smoking a cigarette, the glowing tip unnaturally bright in the grayish low-contrast display. The demil room, with the boxes in clear focus under the ceiling light. The admin building, with its empty corridor. The admin parking lot—empty.

Not empty.

He froze halfway out of the chair, staring at the image. All the way at the back of the parking lot, deep in the shadow of a line of parked boxcars, he could see the grille of a car. A big car. That’s all he could see. Nothing of the interior, just the grille. The rest of the car was in deep shadow.

So where in the hell did that come from? Has it been there all along?

“I don’t think so,” he intoned to himself. He scanned the other monitors again, looking hard for any other changes, especially in the cameras pointed out onto the tarmac area and the truck lane. The truck lane.

There were four trailers parked in a row on their jack stands. Next to them were two tractor trucks, in one of which he’d planted the cylinder.

He looked hard. Something wrong with the image of the trailers. There.

The last trailer on the line was sporting some extra tires, smaller tires, about halfway back along the frame on the far side.

A car there. Or was it two cars? Son of a bitchl Tangent had brought help. Lots of help, from the look of it. In the time it had taken to get them into the feed-assembly building, at least three vehicles had moved into position. Waiting for what, a signal of some kind? There was no camera looking into the approach to-the truck lane, but he was willing to bet there was another car there, too. Damn, damn, damnl

So move your ass. Time for plan B.

He smacked the switch to turn out the lights, grabbed the empty briefcase, and slipped out of the control room. He walked quickly to the back door of the flea-market warehouse and looked through the window out onto the tarmac. His original plan had him walking across the tarmac to the derail building. He thought about those three cars. The one out front of the admin building could not see into the tarmac area. The one hidden behind the trailers also had its view blocked, although there might be watchers positioned behind those big truck tires. But if there was another car in the approach to the alley, they would have an unobstructed view of the tarmac, at least once he stepped out into the open area between the last lane of pallets and the demil building.

He took a deep breath. Tangent and his crew had seemed relaxed in the feed-assembly building. I’d be relaxed, too, if I had eight, ten more people outside, he thought. They probably weren’t planning to do anything until they had the cylinder and he had the money. Which meant that his walk to the demil building would be the get-ready signal to them, but they’d have nothing to gain by moving on him yet. By carrying a briefcase, he hoped they’d think he had the cylinder with him. Since they didn’t know what the cylinder looked like, they could not know it wouldn’t fit in a briefcase. He was counting on that.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead, took another deep breath, and put his hand on the door release. Okay, then, let’s do it.

He stepped through the door and walked directly out across the tarmac.

The night air was colder than he had expected, and his footsteps on the tarmac echoed off the sheer metal walls of the warehouses. He resisted an almost overwhelming urge to look left, down into that truck alley. If they saw him looking, the whole thing might kick off prematurely. They obviously planned to make the swap and then get their money back. Well, he had provided for that little contingency.

He walked down the nearest lane of pallets to the one containing the propeller blades, then past Tangent’s car, and across the seemingly endless open space between the car and the demil building. The skin on his face felt unusually warm in the night air, and he briefly imagined night scopes tracking him from unseen watchers at either end of the tarmac. He felt like the original sitting duck out here.

Twenty feet.

Ten feet.

Could they hear him next door, in the feed-assembly building? Almost there. Stay cool.

He reached the demil building, punched in the code, and let himself into the anteroom. He dumped the briefcase and walked quickly into the control room, which housed the Monster’s control console. He’d earlier placed the console in standby mode, so all the buttons were lighted. He found the button that placed the demil building’s access devices in local-operator control and shut down the cipher lock on the front door.

It was a heavy steel door, so it wasn’t like someone could just kick it in.

He walked over to the conveyor belt and examined the boxes. It looked like real money. Tightly wadded packages of hundred-dollar bills were crammed into the boxes. He pulled the first of two duffel bags he’d positioned near the conveyor belt and began unloading the money. It was packed very tightly, right up to the top of each box, so he had to pry at the edges of the top layer to get to the rest of the money. The second layer down looked and felt just like the first layer. All right!

He pocketed several of the banded packages from the top layer in case something went wrong. If they had put counterfeit in, it would be deeper in the box; the top layers were probably real money.

Next he had planned to test it. He wished he could get one more look at the monitor bank to see if anyone was in motion out there. But he had the sense that he was running out of time. So far, they had followed his orders. But for how long would they be so cooperative? Tangent was obviously preparing to double-cross him. Okay, then; they simply wouldn’t get the cylinder.

You’re out of time. Move it. Make the call.

He shoveled the rest of the money into the duffel bags and zipped them up. Then he picked up the extension phone on the control console and called next door. One ring. Two rings.

“Yes.” Yes, that was definitely Tangent.

“The item is in my office,” Carson lied. “On top of the bookshelf. You go across the tarmac, into the warehouse one, and go through that building to the admin building. The doors are unlocked. Turn left, down the hall, last office on the left.”

“How do we get out of here?”

“You’ll find a sledgehammer next to the door you came in. It’s in an empty cardboard box right by the door. Knock the hinge pins off and then you can push, the door straight out.”

“Okay.” There was a pause. “Carson.”

“What?”

“Our association doesn’t have to end here, you know.”

“Yes, it does. You brought too many friends with you tonight. Otherwise, it was nice doing business with you.” I probably shouldn’t have said that, he thought as he hung up the phone, grabbed the two duffel bags, and walked over to the conveyor belt. Now they’d know he was onto them.

He got up on the motionless belt and scuttled into the safety cage, dragging the two bags, until he reached the steel batwing doors of the interbuilding aperture. He listened, and sure enough, he could hear shouts and the banging of the sledge on the front door in the feed assembly building. He also thought he heard a car engine somewhere outside. He waited impatiently, and then suddenly there was a banging and hammering noise coming through from the demil building’s front door.

They’re heee-e-re, he thought irreverently. Then, to his surprise, someone started hammering away on the connecting door between demil and the feed-assembly room. Unlike the front door, the connecting door was aluminum. That damn thing wasn’t going to hold very long.

Shit! Now what? He began to panic, especially when he became aware of someone on the other side of the aperture doors. He backed away from them as they were pushed in toward him, held only by the belt cogs. He could see through the side of the cage that whoever was using the sledgehammer on the connecting door had battered the middle of the door into an ominous bulge and was now going after the hinges. The guy in front of him was pushing and shoving, and, slowly but surely, the crack between the aperture doors was widening. He was trapped.

At that moment, he caught a glimpse through the crack of a single baleful eye in a straining red face. Almost instinctively, Carson kicked out at the doors, catching the man on the other side full in the face with the edge of the door. There was a grunt and the pushing and straining stopped.

Carson had forgotten about the belt cogs and their locking effect on the aperture doors. He had to start the conveyor belt again in order to escape. He scrambled back out of the cage and ran for the console, very conscious of what was happening to the connecting door, and of the sounds of vehicles and shouting from out in front of the demil building.

He smashed down on the button to start conveyor belt, but nothing happened. Then he remembered he had opened the breakers. Panicking now, he ran across the room to the wall that had all the breaker panels.

Frantically, he searched for the right breaker, straining to read the labels. Then he kicked himself mentally: Look for an open breaker! He finally found it in the fourth panel, reset it, and bolted back over to the main control panel. He hit the button again and the belt cranked into motion. Then he realized that they would hear the belt, which might bring the rest of the crew back into the assembly building to aid the man on the belt, whose inert form was even now pushing through the aperture doors.

Got a cure for that, he thought, hitting the main power switch for the Monster, which came to life with a reassuring roar of pumps, motors, blowers, and steel teeth. Keeping an eye on the disintegrating connecting door, he ran to the belt and hauled the two bags of money off. He waited a couple of seconds for the man’s unconscious body to come past the edge of the safety cage. Whoever he was, he was middle-aged, still red in the face, especially with that nasty gash across his forehead where the door had taken him out. He was also wearing some kind of shoulder rig.

Carson was about to haul the man’s body off the belt when the top .hinge of the connecting door came flying off in a loud crash, pinging down onto the concrete floor between his feet. Carson didn’t hesitate. He jumped onto the moving belt and crawled against the direction of the belt’s travel and through the now-unlocked aperture doors. He stopped just inside the cage on the other side, marking time on his hands and knees against the movement of the belt, until he saw another man thirty feet away complete the destruction of the connecting door and step through. The instant the man was out of sight, Carson scrambled out of the safety cage with his bags, jumped off the belt, and ran for the back of the feed-assembly room. Over the noise of the Monster, he heard one prolonged scream and then the sounds of more vehicles roaring down the tarmac with what sounded like several sets of brakes screeching to a halt. He had just about reached the very back of the feed assembly room when someone yelled from the front doorway for him to halt.

Halt, my ass, he thought as he rounded the partition of the coffee area at the back and went through the steel fire door into warehouse four, encouraged by the sound of a bullet ricocheting off the door frame. He dropped the bags, slammed the door shut, and then rolled the forklift he had prepositioned against the fire door, snubbing the back right wheel tightly against the door’s bottom. He grabbed up his bags and walked quickly, not running now. That forklift was going to buy him all the time he needed. He trotted down the first row of multitiered shelves stacked up to the ceiling. Behind him someone was banging on the fire door.

By the time he reached the door into warehouse three, he knew he was going to pull this off. All the doors were blocked from the inside. He could get out of any building, but they would need some heavy equipment to get in. Even with that crowd out there. One more warehouse and he could duck out into the fire lane, and from there into the woods outside the fence. He had decided to cut the fence in two places, one down near the demil building, the other at the opposite end of the warehouse line.

He was still furious about Tangent’s betrayal, but what the hell—he had the money, and Tangent wasn’t going to get his precious cylinder. He’d have to figure out how to dispose of that thing later. He was sorry about the guy on the belt, although the other guy should have reached him in time. That scream, however, didn’t augur well.

He hurried through the door into warehouse three and was in the act of rolling the next forklift into position when he heard the unmistakable earsplitting roar of a chain saw starting up down at the far end of the warehouse, followed by a terrible screeching noise as someone obviously started to cut through the far metal wall of the warehouse. He couldn’t see through the forest of steel shelving towers, but he could sure as hell hear it. What the hell was this?! Had he miscalculated? They had chain saws?

He grabbed the bags and zigged to the right, instinctively heading toward the fire doors on the rear wall of the warehouse. These rear doors all led into the back alley, his escape route to his truck. As suddenly as it started, the chain saw went silent. He stopped ten feet from the fire door and crouched down behind a shelf tower. He peeked between two shelves in time to see a large man wearing a helmet and oversized goggles about two hundred feet away down the aisle, trotting toward him between the shelving tiers, casually throwing things into the lanes as he came. And then the shadows behind the man erupted into dazzling sun-bright light, accompanied by a whoomping sound and then the roar of fire. Stunned, Carson saw other blooms of incredible fiery radiance exploding in the warehouse to the right and left of the lane where the helmeted man was still coming, each succeeding blast of the incendiaries throwing every detail of the high metal roof beams and trusses into stark relief, even as clouds of bright white smoke billowed above the shelving tiers.

Carson finally moved when the helmeted man was only sixty feet away.

Scrambling on his hands and knees, he pulled the bags with him, desperate now to reach the end of the shelf tier and the fire door before the helmeted man got there and threw one of those things at him.

Keeping low, he pushed backward to open the fire door with his feet, even as one of the incendiaries clattered up against the back wall in the next lane down to his right and then exploded in a blinding wash of incredible light, producing a wave of heat that singed his cheek as he rolled through the fire door into the alley behind the building. He kicked the door shut just in time. As he got to his feet, there was that terrifying whoomp behind the door and then the cracks around the door turned arc-light white, and the door vibrated as if the Devil himself was behind it and badly wanted out.

He dragged himself and the bags across the alley to the fence, staying low, skinning his knees on the concrete; then he got up and started trotting down the alley toward the nearest cut in the fence, which was behind the derail building. As he ran, he felt, rather than saw, that each of the warehouses was being racked by internal explosions, the gable vent screens of each building now etched in bright white light as the old steel shook and rumbled from the , sudden release of energy inside. Glowing white clouds of smoke were starting to pump out of ridgeline ventilator cowlings.

When he got to the cut in the fence, he dropped the two bags and then began to pull apart the chain link. But then he stopped. He was right behind the demil building, which apparently had not been fired yet.

There were clear sounds of shouting and vehicles on the other side of the demil building, but no one had come around back. He could just see the snout of the semi where he’d hidden the cylinder, maybe forty feet away. There was a loud roar as warehouse three’s roof lifted off, releasing a huge bolus of yellow-and-red flame into the night sky.

Christ, he thought. I was just in there.

He made his decision. Leaving the bags, he sprinted down the back wall of the demil building, reaching the truck in a few seconds. He climbed up two steps to reach the outside toolbox and cracked it open. There was pandemonium going on around the corner out on the tarmac, a cacophony of shouting men, vehicle engines, and the , rising rumble of a major fire.

Incendiaries exploded inside i the demil building, sending a sheet of flame into the alley as the rear fire door opened momentarily.

The cylinder was right where he had left it. He grabbed it and ran back to the fence, barely avoiding the sheets of white flame howling out around the deformed fire door, only to find that the two sides of the cut fencing had sprung back together again. He pushed the cylinder through the cut in the fence, then started to struggle with the obstinate fencing.

“You!” thundered a voice from behind him “Halt! Freeze!”

He looked over his shoulder and was stunned to see two uniformed men pointing shotguns a{ him from the corner of the demil building.

Soldiers! As he stared in shock, the demil building’s back wall began to shake like a single sheet of steel, and then the back edge of the roof opened like a loose sail and belched out a sheet of flame from one end of the building to the other. Some of the roof truss ends were snapped off and there was a sudden rain of hot steel and rivets clanging all along the alley. The two men jumped back around the corner of the building to avoid the hail of hot shrapnel, at which point Carson threw his whole body through the opening and then turned to grab the bags, but the damned fence wire had sprung back again. He grabbed the cylinder, but the bags jammed in the wire when he tried to pull them through. A great sucking sound from the demil building just then caused him to look up, and he saw that the whole back wall was bulging toward him, about to come crashing down into the alley. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the two soldiers again, still pointing their guns at him, but he wasn’t waiting for them anymore.

He turned to jump down into the bushes, even as the demil building collapsed along its full length in a horrific crash. Something lashed the skin of his back as he bolted through the high weeds, which he realized were now on fire behind him. He raced along the path to the truck, pursued by the crackling and snapping sounds of a brush fire.

He got to the truck, opened the door, threw in the cylinder, and climbed in. He was barely able to get it started and get out of there before the roaring brush fire was up on him. Yelling in fear, he flattened the accelerator and drove blind, careening through the smoke and flames until he shot out onto the gravel road that ran along the back perimeter fence of Fort Gillem. Behind him, the whole world appeared to be on fire.

Carrothers had staged the Anniston team out on the abandoned runway about five hundred yards from the darkened shapes of the DRMO. The trucks. were parked in military order, in line abreast. The Suburbans were parked in front of the trucks. A six-man perimeter of Anniston military police was stationed out in the darkness along the edges of the runway. Carrothers stood by the right-front fender of one of the Suburbans. It was a clear, dark night, with little wind, which was fortunate. The lights of Atlanta to the northeast suffused the night sky with a faintly orange glow.

He had ordered everyone into MOPP gear, including himself, but he’d relaxed head hoods until the operation got under way. The protection suit wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t comfortable, either, and he was already itching. He didn’t really believe there was any risk from the cylinder, but he wanted his people to remember why they were there and why they were going to destroy a government facility in the middle of the night.

When the Special Forces team radioed in the code word indicating they were in position along the side walls of the first two buildings and that the DRMO appeared to be clear of personnel, he had given the “go”

order himself. The lead Suburban had moved out quietly to the airfield end of the DRMO complex to the team-extraction position.

Nothing happened for a minute, and then the sound of chain saws erupted at the far end of the DRMO, sending their characteristic buzzing howl into the quiet night air for about twenty seconds before going quiet.

Another sixty seconds of silence, and then he thought he heard the first incendiaries igniting in a series of dull thumps. The first signs of fire became visible a minute or so after that, starting at the far end and working toward his trucks. He gave the order to complete dressing out, pulled on the rest of his hood assembly, and then got into his Suburban. The fires were going pretty well by now, with one building really burning and a lot of multicolored white smoke climbing into the sky. He nodded at the driver and they pulled out, -heading down the runway toward the DRMO complex. As they arrived, he could see several figures converging on the extraction vehicle, getting in, and then that Suburban was accelerating off to his right, -away from the DRMO.

Good, the team’s out. He looked behind him as the rest of the Suburbans fanned out along the DRMO fence on the airfield side to set up the exclusion perimeter. The big semis were still back where he’d parked them. The sweep teams wouldn’t come in until the buildings had all gone down. He wondered what the troops were thinking. He had given everyone a quick brief as to why the Army was having to do this, that foreign terrorists might have hidden a chemical weapon in the complex and could be planning to move it to then-target area tonight. The DRMO was too hard to search; therefore, the decision to destroy it had been made.

He’d put as much drama into it as he could, knowing that everyone would have to be debriefed back at the depot to ensure security. One of the warehouse roofs fell in, masking the words as his radio spat something at him.

“Say again?” he said.

“Vehicles sighted in the tarmac area,” reported the excited voice. It sounded like one of the captains, but the hoods made it hard to tell.

“There are civilians running around out on the tarmac.”

“Civilians? Oh shit, he thought. “How many?”

“Maybe a dozen, sir. Looks like they were trying to get into the big building at the end. But that fire’s gonna get ‘em pretty quick.

There’re four cars out there on the tarmac, and their tires are smoking.

Whoever they are, they’re going apeshit out mere.”

Son of a bitch! Four cars? What the hell was this? Had the Fort Gillem security people screwed up? He gave the signal to his driver to move forward, right up to the fence.

“Can you drive through that fence?” he shouted to the driver. The noise of the fires was much louder than he had expected, even in the hoods.

The snake-eaters had done their job very damn well.

The driver’s hood nodded and he headed the big vehicle toward a center section of the chain-link fence, accelerating. Carrothemtalmost got his seat belt on over the MOPP gear before the big vehicle left the edge of the runway with a bang, fishtailed a couple of times on dirt and gravel, and then hit the fence at about forty-five miles an hour. The fence didn’t give; instead, it slid up over the hood and then the windshield as the Suburban plunged ahead, audibly ripping off wipers, police lights, and antennas on the way. Carrothers could hear the stuff snapping off as the fence clattered overhead, and then they were through. The driver brought the vehicle to a screeching halt at the edge of the tarmac, unable to get it over some concrete barriers lining the edge of the open area.

Carrothers piled out into a scene from a war zone. All of the DRMO buildings except the demil building were fully engulfed hi fire, and it was starting to bulge ominously. The heat and the noise were nearly overpowering. He was grateful he was in a chem suit, because those poor bastards out on the tarmac were probably starting to barbecue. There were four sedans out there, now clustered in a circle among the pallets.

There appeared to be about ten men out there, hunkering down behind their cars and under some of the larger pieces of palletized equipment to escape the rain of flaming debris and sparks. He yelled to his driver to summon the other vehicles, and then he ran toward the men on the tarmac, stumbling awkwardly in the chem suit as he tried to get through the lines of pallets while avoiding small fires on the ground. The heat was very much stronger than he had expected, and he had to duck his Plexiglas mask away when the near end of the admin building bulged out and then collapsed in a wall of flame. Behind him, the back wall of the demil building came crashing down, sending a wave of flame across the tarmac.

He could see that the fields behind the fence were also on fire.

One of the men crouching behind a pallet of propellers saw him when he was about fifty feet away and stood up. Carrothers waved at him to come ahead, waited to make sure the guy understood and was going to get the rest of them, and then began to back out of the tarmac area, very conscious of the thumps and crashes of objects coming down out of the burning sky. The Plexiglas of his mask was beginning to singe his cheeks in the intense heat, and he could see that the running men were having trouble breathing as all the oxygen at ground level was sucked into the conflagration surrounding them.

There were two more Suburbans nosed in at the uprooted fence by the time the running men converged on Carrothers. The MPs had piled out of the vehicles to let the unprotected men climb in. A minute and a half later, they were all back out on the runway, where even at five hundred yards there were bits of flaming debris raining down out of the spark-filled smoke cloud boiling overhead. Carrothers could hear the faint sound of distant sirens as he pulled his hood off. He yelled at one of the captains to execute the chemical perimeter operation, then walked over to the first of the other Suburbans, where some of the civilians were opening doors and looking cautiously out. Their faces were smudged with soot, and they all seemed to be having trouble getting their breath back. Out on the tarmac, the first of the cars’ gas tanks let go in an orange blast, followed immediately by another one.

Carrothers signaled two large MPs to come with him. They wordlessly assumed covering positions with twelve gauge military riot guns held at port arms across their chem suits. A couple of the civilians froze when they saw the shotguns.

As Carrothers walked up, a fiftyish man looked around. He was bent over, coughing his lungs out, while trying to wipe his glasses with a handkerchief. Behind him the DRMO roared into fiery extinction.

“I’m Brigadier General Carrothers, U.S. Army Chemical Corps,” Carrothers announced over the noise of the fire. “Who are you people and what hi the hell were you doing in there?”

The man tried to speak but then erupted into another fit of coughing that bent him almost in half. When he had control of himself, he pulled out a leather credential case. “Special Agent Frank Tangent, FBI,” he wheezed, showing Carrothers his credentials. “Did you say Army Chemical Corps?” ‘

“Yes, I did.” The agent wiped his forehead and looked back over at the destruction going on behind them. “Well, sir,” he said, coughing again, “I guess you and I need to talk.”

TUESDAY, 1-85 REST STOP, 3:30 A.M. Carson pulled off the interstate into a rest area at a little after 3:00 a.m. He was about fifty miles out of Atlanta on Interstate 85, which ran northeast toward Greensboro and the Carolinas. He had been having trouble keeping his eyes open as the adrenaline finally wore off. He parked the pickup at the far end of the parking area, backing it hi to conceal the government license plate, and shut it down. He leaned back in the seat and immediately sat straight back up. He put his right hand between the windbreaker and the back of his shut and felt the large wet stain across his back. Jesus, he thought. This is all I need. The damned fence wire must have gotten me.

He carefully peeled the windbreaker off to see if it was stained through, and it was, but only on the inside lining. He felt his back again, and this time his hand came away with blood on it. Shit, he thought. Then he noticed the hole in the side of the windbreaker. He grabbed it, stared at it, and then turned the jacket over and found another hole on the other side. It hadn’t been the fence. Those two bastards had shot him.

He opened the truck door and got out gingerly, because now his entire back was really hurting. He slipped the jacket back on, then reached into the backseat of the truck for his trip kit, a small bag containing toiletry articles and a hand towel to use at rest stops. He locked the truck up and walked over to the facilities, which at this hour of the morning were empty. He went into a stall and took his jacket and shirt off and then his undershirt. The undershirt was soaked with blood, and the shirt was only in marginally better condition. He went back out to the sink, turned around, looked at himself in the mirror. There was a long red furrow cutting across the top of his back at a slight diagonal.

It did not appear to be very deep, but it was red and angry-looking.

Even as he watched, a thin trickle of blood seeped out on the left-hand side.

He got out the towel and tried for some hot water, but only the cold faucets worked. He wet the towel, considered putting some soap on it, decided against that, and then folded the towel into a long bandage and draped it over the cut. The stinging was intense, but then it subsided.

The towel didn’t reach around to his chest, so he put the shirt back on, trying to hold the towel in place with the shirt. He put the bloody undershirt in the trash can. He thought about that for a moment, fished it back out, and flushed it down a toilet. It took two tries before it disappeared. If they were hunting him, there was no sense in making it easy. He put the jacket back on, adjusted the towel under it all, and went back outside.

A large van had pulled in next to his truck, backing in just like Carson had done. The driver, who appeared to be a fat man with a huge mountain-man beard, was already asleep in his seat, his mouth partially open and his snores audible outside the van. Magnetic stick-on signs on the van announced an Atlanta-based heating, plumbing, and air conditioning company.

Carson got back into his truck and tried lying sideways on the front seat. His eyelids felt like lead, but sleep would not come. He kept seeing the holocaust at the DRMO. He imagined he could still feel the intense heat of the flame wall in the brush as he escaped. But he had escaped, at least for now. There had been MPs at the front gate when he drove out, but they were on the incoming side and had waved his government truck right through. The cylinder was now stashed out in a toolbox in the back of the pickup. The bags of money were undoubtedly long since toast.

So Tangent had been planning to double-cross him all along. A million bucks. He should have known. They’d probably planned to take him to some dark alley hi south Atlanta and donate him to the city’s nightly body count. The real question was, Where in the hell had those other guys come from, the guys in helmets and goggles, throwing incendiaries into all the warehouses? Certainly that hadn’t been Tangent.

Despite his fatigue, his eyes opened as the answer came to him. Those had been Army guys. Soldiers. The Army had sent a team in to destroy the DRMO!

Fucking Stafford had talked.

He put his head back down on the seat and closed his eyes again. The packs of hundreds he’d put into his pants pockets dug into his thighs, but he was too tired to care. The rumble of idling diesels came through the partially opened window as he tried to figure out what had happened tonight. The Army had gone there twice to search the place. But there was no way in hell you could search a DRMO, not in under a year’s time.

So someone very important had elected to burn the whole damn thing down and, hopefully, the missing cylinder with it. That fire would have done the job, too. He was amazed at the scope of the Army’s reaction. They must be some desperate sum bitches indeed, he thought.

He tried to think clearly, to overcome the drugged feeling that was seeping into his brain. A dull, throbbing pain was pulsing in his upper back. He would have to get that cut cleaned up and disinfected pretty soon. He wondered what had happened to Tangent and his little crew. Had the Army sent some kind of Special Forces team, or had there been lots of Army hidden out there in the dark on that airfield? If so, had they captured Tangent? That would be interesting.

He wondered now a Washington arms dealer was going to explain what the hell he and a dozen accomplices were doing there hi east bumfuck Atlanta, Georgia, in the middle of the night. Even the Army would have to make a connection between Tangent and the missing weapon.

He shuddered. If the Army was sufficiently upset about the cylinder to Burn down a government installation, they probably wouldn’t have a whole lot of trouble getting information out of a bunch of civilians. And if Tangent was singing, then the Army had to know by now that he, Carson, had the cylinder. None of them would know, of course, that he’d lost the money, although those two soldiers might have seen the bags, and seen the back wall collapse on top of them. But probably not. They’d fired at him all right, but then they would have been shagging ass.

The big question was, What would the Army do about this new situation?

If they were ready to admit the cylinder was missing, then he was screwed. Every law-enforcement agency in the country would be looking for him. But if they weren’t, well … He still might have a chance to get away. He knew he must have a couple thousand dollars in cash in his pockets. And a government-issue pickup truck.

That woke him up. Here he was, sitting in a public rest stop in an Army-green government pickup truck, complete with a government license plate and a bunch of U.S. Army serial numbers stenciled on the doors.

Need to do something about that. He heaved himself up, looked out the window, and saw the magnetic signs on the van next door. Those signs would cover up the stencils on his doors. Steal his license plate, too.

Hell, put the government plate on the van, throw some shit in the game.

Fully awake now, he grabbed a screwdriver out of the glove compartment and slipped out of the pickup truck. His back let him know it wasn’t pleased with that maneuver. He went around to the back and stopped to look and listen. Behind the parking area was a dense stand of loblolly pines. He could hear occasional traffic beyond that, out on the interstate. The rest stop was well lighted, but he was in shadow behind the truck and the van. The nearest vehicle was parked on the other side of the parking area. He listened. The man in the van was still snoring away. He bent down and removed his plate and switched it with the van’s plate. Then he stood up,- looked around again to make sure no one was walking to or from the rest rooms, slipped between the van and his truck, and lifted off the magnetic sign, which he transferred to the door of his pickup truck. He went around to the other side and took that one, too, which he slapped on the driver’s side of his truck.

He got back into his truck, careful not to lean back, and started the engine, watching the snoring man through the window on the passenger side. The big man never even twitched. Carson drove out of the rest stop in his newly commercialized pickup truck, which in Georgia made him practically invisible. He got back on the interstate and drove for twenty minutes before realizing that he was poking along at fifty-five in a seventy-mile an hour one. This won’t hack it, he thought, with a mighty yawn. I’ve got to get some rest.p>

Ten minutes later, he rolled up to a budget motel and rang the bell for the night attendant. An aroma of curry accompanied the sleepy young Pakistani man who took his money through a sliding glass door and handed him back a key. He drove around to the back wing of the motel and parked. He got out and looked around. Almost all the parking spaces in the lot were filled, with every vehicle’s windows made opaque by a heavy dew. There was a low drone coming from several climate-control units. He debated with himself about what to do with the cylinder. Take it in or leave it in the truck? He decided to leave it.

He went into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, exhausted and depressed by the night’s events and his escape from Atlanta. Everything he had worked for was gone now. The DRMO was gone, the money was gone, he was wounded, and his fancy Washington fence was probably singing to the military police, which meant that the government would be looking for Wendell Carson gangbusters in very short order. That fucking Tangent.

Okay, so he still had the cylinder, but what the hell could he do with it? Tangent’s arms-sales channel had” been his best and probably only bet for making something of the cylinder, but now … tired. Too damn tired to think. Get some sleep. Figure out what to do in the morning.

What to do and where to go. Maybe he could approach the Army somehow, sell them back then-precious little horror. His last thoughts were of Stafford, that interfering son of a bitch who was behind all this somehow. However this all came out, he knew he had a score and a half to settle with Special Investigator David Stafford.

He lay back on the bed, cried out, and rolled quickly over to his side.

He’d forgotten about the wound. You need to clean it, he thought. You need to go take a hot shower, get some soap on that. I will, he thought.

In just a minute. And then he was asleep.

TUESDAY, FORT GILLEM DRMO, 4:00 A.M. Carrothers sat slumped in his chair inside the traveling command center, waiting for the conference call from Washington. He was still wearing the body part of his chem suit, minus the gloves, hood, and mask. The back doors of the trailer were thrown open to let in some cool air, but everything in the area of the operations trailer still stank of smoke.

Except for the communications console, manned by a Spec-4 in fall chem gear, the rest of the consoles and monitors were unattended. He could hear the murmur of radio conversation outside on the airfield concrete as the monitoring team made final reports from the fire perimeter. He could not see the remains of the DRMO because the trailer doors were pointed away from the wreckage, but the destruction had been complete.

Carrothers was trying to keep his emotions in neutral. He was tired and barely able to think. No eating or drinking had been permitted because of the possibility of chemical contamination in the air, which meant he had had no coffee. He was waiting for General Waddell to come up on a secure satellite conference net.

The Fort Gillem firefighters had been allowed into the fire perimeter after two hours, giving the chem sweep team time enough to test the atmosphere surrounding the fire site. The DRMO was gone. The only vestige of the installation left standing was the chain-link fence. All the brush and trees over on the back side had gone up, giving them all some anxious moments as it spread toward the main fence of the base, but a quick-thinking fireman had taken a truck outside the fence and started a backfire. Of i the buildings, there was nothing but rectangular piles of red-hot ashes. The partially melted remains of the demil machine crouched in the ashes like some blackened fossil.

A helicopter, presumably from one of the local television stations, had buzzed overhead toward the end of the conflagration, but the Fort Gillem post commander had a professional briefing team set up. to handle those people. Carrothers could visualize it: Yes, big fire, lost all the buildings, but there was no danger to the surrounding community. Army fire-investigation team enroute. Several weeks before any findings. No, not valuable property. Just warehouses storing surplus and obsolete military material. j No injuries. Employees being told to take two days off, with pay, of course, while post officials sort things out. Blah, blah, blah. He wished the upcoming call would be that innocuous. They had found not one trace of the weapon.

“General, we have a circuit,” the comms specialist announced through his mask.

“Put us on the speaker, soldier, and then you may stand down.”

“Yes, sir. Patching.”

There was a hiss of static, a tone burst of the security systems synching into the trailer’s satellite dish, and then silence.

“This is the Army Command Center, calling for Brigadier Carrothers,” the speaker announced. The comms operator got up and left.

“General Carrothers present. This node is secure.”

“Stand by one, sir.”

“This is Major General Waddell. General Carrothers, you there?”

“Yes, sir, General.” He noted the formal address.

“Very well. What is the status of the DRMO?”

“The DRMO is destroyed. The perimeter has been maintained. The sweep is concluding now. Unfortunately, we have no detections.”

“Nothing? Not even a trace?”

“No, sir. Nothing. It was a hell of fire, General. A zero trace detection was always one of the possible outcomes of the fire. As is another possible outcome, which is worrying me even more.”

“Meaning the cylinder got away, I presume. Is there press interest yet?”

‘ ‘Absolutely. Our press team is preparing to do a tape for the local morning news segments, but General, there is something else. We weren’t the only government agency down here at the DRMO tonight.”

There was a pause on the net. “I don’t think I want to hear this,” Waddell said.

“You’ll be seriously pissed when you do, General. In the process of destroying the DRMO, we’ve captured ten FBI agents.”

“What? What did you say?” Can-others sighed. “It seems,” he said, “that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a sting operation running, for severat years, actually. The guy in charge of the FBI team that was here tonight is one Special Agent Frank Tangent. He’s been running a back-room cell in Washington that has been paying inside thieves at various DRMOs around the country for military components, mostly military electronics and software. Then they’ve been turning that stuff around, after the FBI lab altered it a little bit, so it doesn’t work quite like it’s supposed to, and selling it to some major-league foreign arms dealers in Washington and New York.”

“The FBF s been doing this?”

“Yes, sir. They’re apparently big into sting operations these days.

Their objective was to build an intelligence database on the international arms market, and thereby see if they could catch some big-time bad guys, but they had to have real stuff from the DRMOs to make it look like they themselves were real.”

“All right. But why Atlanta?”

“Because one of their pet thieves was here, one well dell Carson, the manager of this DRMO. It seems that Mr. Carson called awhile back and offered to sell them what he believed to be a chemical weapon.”

“Great God! And they didn’t inform us?”

“No, sir, they did not. At first Tangent said they didn’t really believe the guy. Now, General, it’s been a long night, and an unpleasant couple of days, so when I corralled Tangent and his crew down here, I started speculating to the air about having a six-pack of MPs throw his ass back into the coals, and then he told me the real reason.”

“Which was?”

“Which was that he personally was trying for a ‘coup,’ as he called it.

He was gonna come down here, buy back the cylinder with a hundred thousand of real money laid on top of about million bucks in counterfeit, and then grab up Carson. Then the plan was to stage a press deal to show how fucking good the FBI is. It seems that Bureau management has been putting a lot of heat on the worker bees to generate some good news about the FBI, instead of all the flak they’ve been taking recently.”

Waddell groaned out loud. “Not to mention making the Army look like king-sized assholes for losing the cylinder in the first place.”

“Well, General, if the shoe fits … Anyway, that didn’t seem to matter very much to Tangent and company, although I got the impression his supervisors may not have known about this particular operation.”

“Judas Priest,” Waddell said. “And where was that DCIS guy in all of this?”

“In the cold. Somehow he stumbled onto what Carson was doing. Tangent panicked, figuring Stafford was going to blow away his cover, so it was Tangent who generated that intel spot report we saw. He was trying to discredit Stafford and get Washington to pull him back. Of course neither the Bureau nor DCIS had any idea we were going to come down here and burn this place down. And, oh, by the way, they lost an agent in there tonight.”

“How?”

“Seems he got caught up on some kind of conveyor belt just as they were about to arrest Carson. The belt took him into the derail machine—literally. We’ve got some pretty shocky agents out there on the tarmac right now. They got to watch.”

“My God,” Waddell said again, as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“Yes, sir. It’s a full-blown cluster fuck. The really bad news is that we think Carson got away with the cylinder. Two of the perimeter MPs tried to stop a guy going through the back fence just as the last building went up. One of them took a shot at him, but apparently he missed. The guy got away.”

“Did he have the cylinder? Was it Carson?”

“Unknown to both questions, sir. But Tangent said he and Carson had already traded the money, and they were about to trade the cylinder when the first Ranger started throwing thermite. After that, it was pandemonium. It’s so totally rucked up, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, except that We may now have some desperate sumbitch on the run with a can of Wet Eye under his arm.”

“Great God,” Waddell said. Carrothers had never heard Myer Waddell at a complete loss for words; it was a bad sign.

“Where’s this Tangent guy now?” Waddell asked finally.

“He’s right here at Fort Gillem, along with his crew. I gave him a satellite-link call to his headquarters in Washington. If they truly didn’t know about this, that will be an interesting phone call. Either way, General, I think it’s time for the elephants to get into this one.

If we’re going contain this thing now, it’s gonna take more stars than I’ve got.”

“Yes, you’re absolutely correct. And cover it we will. I’ll call General Roman right away, and get a line of communications opened to the Bureau.

The only thing we have going for us is that both agencies will have every reason, to cooperate in smothering this little PR disaster hi its crib. And find Carson. You wrap things up there at Fort Gillem, and keep the command trailer set up. We’ll be back to you. My God, Lee, this is about the worst screw up I’ve seen in thirty-five years in the Army.”

“Roger that, General. Carrothers off net.”

TUESDAY, GRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 7:15 A.M. Stafford was awakened by the shrijl ring of the motel telephone. He sat up in the bed, momentarily disoriented, I squinting at his watch. f”

“Yeah?” he mumbled. What had he been dreaming about? Something about a waterfall. And Gwen Warren.

You’re pathetic, he thought to himself as he rubbed his eyes.

“This is John Lee Warren, Mr. Stafford You seen the news yet this mornin’?”

“No, Sheriff. I just woke up.”

“You ought to have a look The NEC channel from Atlanta is on 41. Then I think you’n me ought to meet for some breakfast. Say eight-fifteen?”

Dave looked at his watch again. Seven-fifteen. “Yeah, fine, Sheriff. Let me get my heart started here, okay?”

“Watch the news. That’ll do it.”

Stafford hung up and sat up straighter, looking for the TV remotk He found it after some searching and flipped on Channel 41. Helicopter shots of the Fort Gillem DRMO came up on the screen. He unmuted and then listened with fascination as the newscaster described a disastrous fire at Fort Gillem, just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, with die complete destruction of the Atlanta DRMO. “Complete destruction” about describes it, he thought, looking down at the rectangular outlines of blackened ashes. And men the scene shifted to a makeshift press conference set up at what looked like the main gate of Fort Gillem, which he noticed was now crawling with MPs. A tall hawk-faced brigadier general decked out in Desert Storm-style cammies stood in front of a makeshift podium. The man, identified on the screen as Brig. Gen. Lee Carrothers from Army headquarters in Washington, was reassuring the whole world that there had been no personnel casualties and that the damage had been restricted to some warehouses full of obsoleted and surplus military gear, a lot of which had been already slated for destruction.

Yeah, right, Stafford thought. And I wonder if you’ve told the reporters you’re Army Chemical Corps there, General.

The general stated that initial theories included a malfunction in the demil complex, where the possible explosion of combustible waste products might have started the fire. He said it would be several weeks before the cause could be pinpointed with any accuracy, given the extent of the destruction. And then came the kicker: The FBI had been called in to locate the manager of the DRMO, one Wendell Carson, who was missing.

Carson was wanted for questioning in connection with reports of safety violations at the DRMO, and about problems that had surfaced recently in a Defense Criminal Investigative Service inquiry about the auctioning of defense materials.

Stafford sat up straighter when he heard that little announcement, but there was no further explanation given. A snappy-looking colonel followed the general to entertain questions, but no one pursued the matter of the DRMO manager.

He switched the TV off and went in to shower and fj: shave. Standing in the shower, he speculated about the fire and its origins. It had happened sometime the previous night, and yet there was already an Army brigadier down there. The same brigadier he’d spoken to in Washington as late as yesterday afternoon. The same brigadier, he was pretty sure, who’d shanghaied one David Stafford to An nistpn, Alabama, and subjected him to a lie-detector test about what might or might not be lurking at that DRMO. He began to wonder if maybe the Army itself had burned the damned place down. That would sure be one way of - eliminating the DRMO as a hiding place. And now they were searching for Carson, based in part on a DCIS investigation? How very interesting. And then it hit him: This was the one contingency that threatened Gwen and Jessamine: Carson, on the run.

TUESDAY, QUALITY FIRST MOTEL, 1-85,8:30 A.M. Carson jumped in his sleep and then opened his eyes. He was lying on his side on the bed, still fully dressed. He felt a surge of cold panic.

Something had awakened him,, something bad or threatening. His breathing was rapid and his heart was beating like a jackhammer in his chest. He rolled his feet over the edge of the bed and tried to sit up, gasping as a sheet of pain ripped across his upper back, taking his breath away.

There was bright sunlight streaming through the crack in the curtains, and he could hear the sounds of the maids’ carts outside. He looked at his watch and saw that it was almost eight-thirty. His back was really hurting now.

It took him several painful minutes to peel his shirt off, and he knew he had torn parts of a clot when he did it. He got the rest of his clothes off and got into the shower, starting it on warm and increasing the heat as much as he could stand. He gingerly washed the wound first with his hands and some soap and then with a washcloth. He did it all by feel, watching the runoff turn pink at the bottom of the tub. Then he turned off the hot water, running only cold, in hopes of reducing any swelling and to accelerate clotting. When he got out, the wound looked redder in the mirror, with a pink discoloration blooming in the skin all along the length of it.

Gotta roll, he thought, although then he realized he had no idea of where he was going to run to. Or, for that matter, if anyone was even looking for him yet. He held one of the bath towels across the wound as he searched for the television remote. Finding it, he switched on the television, punching through several stations, looking for anything about the fire. He finally found a report running on one of the Atlanta stations. He watched the overhead shots taken from a helicopter, amazed at the level of destruction, and then a press conference where some Army general was putting out a line of bullshit about the cause of the fire.

And then came that one-liner about himself. And the FBI. And the DCIS.

He sat back down on the bed as a wave of fear washed over him. The FBI.

And it wouldn’t just be the FBI; it would be every law-enforcement agency in the state. The country, maybe. Safety violations and problems with the public auctions? DCIS inquiry? Bullshit! They knew. Whatever Tangent had told the Army and the FBI, that fucking Stafford must have corroborated. He could understand Tangent squealing to save his ass, but that fucking Stafford had put the nails in his coffin.

The urge to bolt was very strong, but he forced himself to slow down and think. There was no point in getting out on the highways, even in a disguised pickup, until he had somewhere to go and a reason for going there.

Keeping the damp towel over his shoulders, he went back into the bathroom and shaved, which helped him to wake up. The guy in the rest stop might or might not have noticed by now that his signs were gone and that his plate had been switched, but eventually he would, which would give the authorities an indication that Carson had been out on the northbound side of 1-85. Okay, so now he needed to get it off the interstate. He counted the packs of money and found that he had a little over six thousand in cash that he’d taken from the bags before losing them in his escape. Assuming the hundreds weren’t counterfeit, he had enough money to go to ground somewhere, maybe in one of those cabins up in the north Georgia mountains.

First he needed to get some meds for this wound, and then he needed to think. Right now, the only thing that counted was that he had the cylinder. They couldn’t be absolutely, positively sure he had the cylinder, but they would be acting on that assumption. Which meant that the cylinder was a powerful bargaining chip: The Army desperately wanted it back, and just as desperately, wanted to keep the whole deal secret Good news and bad news there, he thought as he put his clothes back on.

They might be willing to bargain with him, or they might just put out orders to kill him, justifying such an order on the basis of how dangerous the cylinder was. So, first, meds. Then he needed to hide.

He got dressed again, stuffing the bloody bath towel inside the shirt to act as a temporary bandage. He put on his windbreaker and, leaving the key on the bed, went out to his truck and got in, resisting the urge to check the toolbox to see if the thing was still there. He drove out of the motel lot and onto an access road that led back to the interstate interchange, passing a Waffle House diner on the right. He was hungry, but he was too near the interstate. It’d be just his luck to stop for breakfast and have the Highway Patrol pull in for coffee. That reminded him: He needed to get rid of those magnetic signs. Maybe he’d stop in Kmart somewhere and get some green spray paint to take care of those serial numbers on the door. And one of those Styrofoam coolers and some ice—the cylinder was definitely cooking, and that was really beginning to worry him.

The interchange consisted of an overpass for a state highway that ran north-south. He paused for a moment at the stop sign. South would take him back down toward I20 and the approaches to Atlanta. Lots of places to hide, lot of people. Also lots of cops. North would take him into the Georgia and Tennessee mountains. Fewer people, fewer cops, but the more remote his surroundings became, the more he and the truck would stick out. He made his decision: Go north, get a cabin, hide the damned truck, and regroup. He turned left to go over the interstate, then headed north toward the mountains, visible as blue-green lumps on the distant horizon. As he cleared the niter change, a sign announced the miles to three towns, Dorey, Blairsville, and Graniteville.

Graniteville. Why did he remember that name? But then he was coming into the outskirts of Dorey, where he saw a Kmart in a shopping plaza. Good enough for government work, he thought. Get some real bandages, an ointment of some kind, and some Advil. And green spray paint. Don’t forget the paint. And some ice for Baby back there.

TUESDAY, THE WAFFLE HOUSE, GRANITEVILLE, GEORGIA, 8:30 A.M. Stafford found the sheriff ensconced at his usual table. “Guess there’s no way around it,” Stafford said, sliding into the booth and putting his computer down on the floor. “I’d better call Atlanta.”

The sheriff was inhaling his usual cholesterol extravaganza. He nodded but kept eating. “Use my office, you want to,” he said finally. He kept eyeing Stafford, as if waiting for something.

“Okay,” Stafford said. “That fire has to be connec d to this business.

My guess is, the Army torched the place.” He explained why.

“No shit?” the sheriff said. “Burned down a government installation?

Just like that?”

‘ ‘You never burn a problem out up here in the hills, Sheriff? I’ll bet you have.”

The Sheriff gave him a speculative look. “Mebbe,” he said.

“Well, think of it as a matter of scale. Yeah, it’s drastic, but it’s in their power to cover it up. Remember, that’s an operational consideration these days in government. My question is, Where’s Carson?

They said at that press conference that they’re looking for him.”

The sheriff nodded again. “I can tell you the whole damn state is looking for him,” he said. “We’ve had ten telexes on him this morning.

He’s supposedly driving a green pickup truck, government plates. Suppose Carson took that thing, whatever it is. Where would he go? What would he do with it?”

“Don’t know,” Stafford replied. “That’s why I feel obliged to call in.

Otherwise, I’d sit back and await developments. One of the leads the Army will want to pursue now is how knew about the weapon.”p>

The sheriff finished -his breakfast. “The Army knows about Gwen and the school?” he asked. “About Jess?”

“No, but my boss does. I suspect the Army has told the FBI some kind of story about Carson. They can’t tell the truth, so they’ll say he’s a foreign agent or some shit like that. The FBI is, if nothing else, thorough. They’re going to go to Ray Sparks probably sooner than later.

Probably right about now.”

The sheriff gave Stafford a long, searching look. Then they walked out of the diner together.

The sheriff’s office was in the county courthouse. It was not a large affair: a reception desk, a bull pen for admin and communications, a hallway that led back to the holding cells, and an office for the sheriff himself. Inside Warren’s office, Stafford plugged the phone line into his portable.

“I’m going to put this on speaker,” Stafford said. “We’ll be secure, but I think you should hear this.”

The sheriff nodded once, acknowledging the professional courtesy being extended, and went to his desk.

“Defense Criminal Investigative Service. We are secure. May I help you?”

“Ms. Smith, this is David Stafford. Is—”

“Oh! Yes. Just a minute, Mr. Stafford.”

“Think they want to talk to you?” the sheriff asked innocently.

Stafford grinned. “Bet they’re running a trace while we wait.”

The speaker erupted with the voice of Ray Sparks. “Goddamn it, Dave, why aren’t you here? Where the hell are you?”

“And good morning to you, too, Ray. I’m on speaker here in the sheriff’s office in Graniteville. Sheriff’s name is John Lee Warren, and he’s in the room. Heard you had a fire last night down there in Atlanta?”

“Wait a minute. Don’t go anywhere, you hear me?”

“Waiting right here, Ray.”

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and sipped some coffee. “Boy sounds put out,” he said.

Sparks came back on the line. “Dave, you there?”

“Right here, Ray.” Sparks sounded slightly less agitated. “Had to close my door. Christ, it’s been a bitch of a night. I’ve had the Army and the FBI and the Atlanta cops and our own Washington headquarters down my neck since zero dark thirty this morning. I take it you heard about the DRMO?”

“Yes, I saw it on the news. What the hell happened down there?”

“It’s a stone-cold mystery is what it is. The Army’s got the scene clamped down like a bell jar and nobody’s talking a whole lot. I thought you were coming back here yesterday. You weren’t involved in that fire, were you?” ‘ “Nope. Been right here in Graniteville. Scout’s honor. And Ray? I’ve decided to stay here. To protect my confidential informant.”

“Headquarters thinks otherwise, Dave. Headquarters—” “Ray?” Stafford .

“Don’t interrupt me, Dave, because—”

“Ray. Put a sock in for a moment. I’ve decided to resign. As of right now. You’re technically my immediate supervisor, so you have been duly informed.”

There was a’moment of stunned silence on the line. “Well, shit” was all Sparks could manage.

“One of the reasons I’m doing that is so I can stay up I here in Graniteville. So I can protect my erstwhile confidential informant. You know who I’m talking about, Ray?”

Sparks had to think about that for a moment. “Oh. Right. Her. Well, look, the Army’s got a brigadier general down here, and there’s a senior FBI guy from the Atlanta office riding shotgun with him, although there’s something odd about that arrangement. They really, really want to talk to you. It seems that Carson guy has disappeared, and they think you might know something.”

“Not about Carson, I don’t. But I’ll bet I know why they’re still agitated. And I’ve met the general (before. In Anniston.” ; “He’s the guy?”

“I think so. The voice is the same.”

“You talked to him? The guy that called me?”

“Yeah, Ray, I did. Somebody had to point them at Carson before it was too late. You wouldn’t do it, remember? Especially after somebody planted that IR on me? I’m guessing they moved on Carson but that he got away. Now he’s on the run, with the weapon, the one that isn’t missing.”

Sparks’s voice became quieter, as if he was trying not to be overheard.

“Okay, that computes. You think he has it with him?”

“Yes, I do. That weapon is the biggest, most valuable thing he’s ever stolen. If they’d found it in the ashes, they wouldn’t be coming to see you.” “Well, look,” Sparks said, “it’s like I said: Nobody’s telling me shit about that fire. So far, everything I know about this, I’m finding out from you, which is probably why they’re really serious about talking to you. I guess that means you can either come back here or I have to tell them where you are. In Graniteville.”

“Ray, what have you told them about my source?” Stafford asked.

“Nothing—yet. Just that you had a CI and that’s how you backed into this situation, whatever the hell it is. Now listen, Dave, the colonel has ordered me to put you together with these people. You want to protect someone in Graniteville, wouldn’t it be better if you did it here?”

“I don’t work for him anymore, Ray, remember? Besides, if I return to Atlanta, can you guarantee that I’ll be free to walk out of there when we’re done?” Sparks did not reply. Stafford looked across the desk at the sheriff, whose expression said, You have your answer.

“Look, Ray,” Stafford said, “I’m more worried about what Carson’s going to do than what the good guys are going to do.”

“Why? You mean he’ll go there? To Graniteville? Why would he do that?”

“Because as long as the Army won’t admit there’s a weapon missing, he’s got some maneuvering room. Unless somebody else knows about it, that is.

And somebody else does.”

“Oh, you mean her. But how would he know to go to Graniteville?” “Because I think told him that’s where the woman and the girl were from, back on day one. Back before I knew , any better. Now he might not make the connection. But if i he does, I want to be here and not in some sweat room at FBI headquarters.”