Carrothers stared across the module at the major. Then faces were gray in the artificial red-tinged lighting. “You absolutely, positively sure of that, Major?” “Oh, yes, sir, General,” Mason said, putting a stiffly. sincere expression on his face. “General Waddell said that’s what happened, so that’s what happened. General, Sir.”
Carrothers treated Mason to a stony glare, but then he looked away. The screens on the Command Center communications consoles stared back him.
Waddell had made things very clear to him. The Army Chemical Corps could not have lost a weapon. It was simply not possible. And senior officers in the Chemical Corps who persisted in turning over rocks related to this unfortunate matter would do so at their professional peril.
But what had Sue said? Trust your instincts? All of them?
“Mason, here’s what I want,” Carrothers said, getting to his feet. “I want that Anniston sweep team reconstituted and reinforced. Four trucks instead of two. I want them sent back into that DRMO at Fort Gillem.
Tonight, like between zero one hundred and zero five hundred. I want them out of there before first light. Out of Atlanta beforei sunrise.
This time, I want them to search that whole place, not just the demil area. I don’t want anyone to know about this at the DRMO. I want an MP detachment from Anniston to go along to set up a discreet cordon around the DRMO so nobody intrudes while this is going on. If anybody does intrude, I want that person apprehended.” “Yes, sir,” Mason said, reaching for the secure phone.’; “I’ll get right on it. And General Waddell, sir?”
“I’ll handle General Waddell, Major,” Carrothers replied. “He’s got a social function tonight, and he’s leaving for a PACCOM tour on Monday.
One more thing: I want that DCIS supervisor, Sparks, on the horn after you get the reaction team in motion. Move out, Major.”
“Yes, sir. Moving out, sir.”
Carrothers walked through the main operations center and out the glass doors into the basement segment of the F-ring. He walked along the semidarkened corridor, which, was lined with forklifts and stacked pallets. The ceiling was cluttered with steam pipes and electrical cables serving the enormous building above. He walked along the silent corridor until he came to the escalator up to the ground level. It being a weekend evening, the escalator was turned off, so he sprinted up the seventy feet of steel steps to the [A-ring. Then he did what he usually did when he needed ‘ to think about a problem: He walked around the five-sided A-ring at a brisk stride, his leather heels echoing in the empty corridors. I He was already way out in front of his friendly front lines with the orders he had just issued. The higher echelons of the Army obviously wanted this matter buried. j There would be some swift and meaningful retribution handed out at the lower levels in Anniston, or, more likely, at Tooele, for letting the thing get away, but if Waddell found out he was having the team go back into the DRMO, Carrothers knew he might join the various guilty bastards up on the scaffold. His chances for a second star and command of the Chemical Corps would vanish.
Luckily, General Waddell was going on travel again, which is why he wanted them in and out tonight, on a weekend, when there should be nobody there. He personally would call the commanding officer at Fort Gillem and tell nun that the last exercise had turned into a Lebanese goat-grab and that he was rousting the team out to do it again, until they got it right. Just one more exercise, if you don’t mind, Colonel.
No big deal.
But the crucial question remained: Had the weapon been destroyed, as everyone was hoping and praying? Or had it been found and stolen by someone at that DRMO? And if it had been stolen, what would the guy who found it do with it? Try to sell it? Or maybe blackmail the Army for money? Pay me off or I’ll tell the world you lost one? He didn’t even want to think about the other possibilities that a missing can of Wet Eye presented.
He couldn’t escape the conclusion that this DCIS agent, Stafford, had stumbled onto something relating to the missing cylinder, that Stafford had somehow discovered ‘ that the Anniston team’s first visit had not been an exercise. But there was no way he could know that — unless that was what he was doing down there in the first place.
He shook his head. No way. He was thinking in circles here. Just as he was walking in circles around the five sides of old Fort Fumble by the Sea. A propane-powered tractor rattled past him, pulling a wagon train of Xerox paper down the otherwise-empty corridor. He headed back toward the basement escalator.
Two issues to resolve, he thought. First, Fort Gillem: Revisit that DRMO, make damn sure there is no trace of a Wet Eye cylinder there. And, second, talk to the DCIS supervisor in Smyrna, find out what the hell his Washington agent was really doing at that DRMO in the first place, and why he had gone off on his own to Anniston. He’d have to think of a pretext for the call. Well, for starters, the guy had shown up at the Anniston Army Weapons Depot, where he had no business to be.
We fervently hope, he thought as he trotted down the escalator.
27
Wendell Carson sat in the dark on his screened back porch, nursing a beer and considering the problem of Senior Investigator David Stafford.
It was unseasonably warm this evening. The trees in the backyard stirred uneasily in the humid night air, and heat lightning flared over Alabama on the distant southwest horizon. His wife was inside watching television in the bedroom while she painted on her nightly fright mask.
He could hear the awkward drone of the weekend fill-in concluding the local eleven o’clock news.
Stafford knew.
He knew why the Army team had really been there, and he knew what the cylinder looked like.
And he had said he was going to tell the Army.
Carson no longer cared how Stafford had found out. Bud Lambry had obviously confided in Dillard after all.
Maybe to protect himself, he’d told Dillard more than he had let on, and then that dumb ass had gone running his mouth to Stafford. Had to be.
Unless … A calf bawled in the darkness of the farmer’s field behind Carson’s property, and its mother lowed back reassuringly. Farther away, someone’s chained-up dog was barking neurotically in the distance, its persistent yapping noise annoying the stillness. The beer bottle was sweating in all the humidity, trickling cold rivulets across the back of his right hand. He felt himself zoning out, his perception collapsing to a cube of space right in front of his eyes, which were closed, almost against his will.
He had been having the recurring bad dream ever since the thing at the airport, the one where he was trapped in a river and headed for a waterfall. Now the waterfall image reappeared. Once again, he felt the deadly wet grip of that surging current, and then the stomach-levitating sensation of going over. And he was not alond. There were other people in the river with him, dead, every one of them, and yet looking at him, ten thousand distorted faces frozen in soundless screams. Superimposed on this frightening image was the face of that damned girl, scanning the back of his braincase with those obsidian eyes. The girl from Graniteville. Graniteville..
He opened his eyes with a start. Stafford had gone’to Graniteville.
Damn! Was there some kind of connection there?
He realized he was gripping the beer bottle hard enough to hurt his hand. He forced his fingers to relax. Stafford had gone to Graniteville and then had come back talking about a cylinder. Which he could never have seen himself, because it had been either in Carson’s possession or stuffed into that roller. Even the Army team, with all its sensors and experts, hadn’t been able to find it, hidden right in front of them.