Sweepers

“A SEAL.”

“Indeed. Here’s the waitress.” They both placed their orders, having to speak up to be heard in the general hubbub. When the waitress left, Train asked if this was an appropriate place to talk. Johnson shrugged.

“It’s crowded and noisy. Tough place to eavesdrop, really. Did someone tell you to call me?”

Train shook his head. “No. I’ve been given some politically adroit tasking, so I decided to pull a string or two on my own. I was hoping you might be able to enlighten me with respect to a certain Marcus Galantz, ex-hospital corpsman, USN, ex-SEAL, and current MIA.”

Johnson nodded slowly again, still looking slightly bugeyed through those windowpane-sized glasses. “Never heard of him,” he said finally, giving Train a friendly stare.

Train smiled and looked away for a moment. He could not imagine Johnson being an operational agent himself, but he could very well imagine him as a controller. “Let me rephrase that,” he replied. “Would you perhaps like to tell me a story?”

“Ah, yes, that I would,” Johnson said immediately, then paused as the waitress whizzed by to drop off Train’s beer and Johnson’s iced tea.

When she had gone, Johnson sipped some tea.

“Once upon a time, in a faraway place,” he began, “a certain organization had a need to recruit people with certain talents. There was concurrently a fair-sized military action in progress, and this organization was tangentially involved in certain peripheral, perhaps narcotics-related operations, which operations said organization would just as soon forget about. After a while, the organization in question discovered that occasionally certain persons would become available for recruitment, sometimes through rather unconventional circumstances.”

“As in Americans who might have ended up in Saigon jails under questionable, perhaps even embarrassing circumstances. “

“That was one way, yes. There were conditions, of course, to such recruitment.”

“One being that old identities disappeared and new ones were created. “

“Or that there be no identity at all, you see,” Johnson said. “That could be even more useful, depending on what the individual was being recruited to do. Or become.”

Train sampled his beer. “Were the people who might have been recruited in this fashion being considered for particularly dangerous work?” he asked.

Johnson pursed his lips as he thought about the question.

“More often, they were being recruited to place other individuals in danger, rather than themselves. Remember, the operations in question may have involved the heroin business. Disputes in that business tend even to this day to invoke fairly rigorous sanctions from time to time.”

“I love it when you talk double. What was that lovely expression back in the sixties? Terminate with extreme prejudice?”

“Something like that. Or so I’m told. This may all be apocryphal.

The waitress appeared again with their lunch. Johnson waited until she was gone before resuming his little homily.

The place was noisy enough now that they both had to lean in across the table even to hear each other.

“That’s an interesting concept,” Train said around a bite of his BLT.

“But if you recruit and train a guy like that and then employ him in that or in related lines of work, how do you keep control of him? In the event that he gets out of control, I mean. Especially if he doesn’t exist in the first place? And given that the United States government has publicly and frequently disavowed the use of such individuals? I mean, what if he goes freelancing: What sanctions do you use on him?”

Johnson looked up and mimed clapping his hands in silent applause. “Very good, Doctor,” he said. Then he addressed his soup for a moment. “That, of course, is the heart of the operational problem with the individuals I’ve been describing,” he continued. “What the Roman emperor was always wanting to know: Who guards the guards?” Then he paused, staring at Train, a spoonful of soup in midair. The light from the main chandelier reflected off his glasses, obscuring his eyes. “That particular control problem requires a very special individual indeed. And that requirement has some relevance to your initial question, if you follow.”

Train sat back in his chair, a chill washing over him. So Qalantz wasn’t just a wet-work mechanic. He was a sweeper, a very special operative whose job it was to go after a mechanic who was no longer under effective operational control.

“Oh,” he said.

“Yes, indeed, oh,” Johnson replied.

And then the full import hit him-why Johnson of the FBI had agreed to meet with him on an hour’s notice. There must be a serious flap on within the operational arms of the intelligence community, serious enough for the FBI to have gotten wind of it. If Galantz was indeed behind two murders out in the civilian community, then his employers had a genuine crisis on their hands. It was one thing for an agency hit man to jump the traces; it was quite another if a sweeper did it. He thought momentarily of Karen and the whispering voice.

He looked back up at Johnson, who was watching him work it out. Johnson arched his eyebrows, nodded at him meaningfully, and then went back to his soup. Train had suddenly lost his appetite.

“I’m a little confused about one thing,” Train said finally.

“Only one thing. How felicitous for you.”

Train ignored that. “I should think,” he said, “that warnings would have been passed along by now, from their graybeards to our graybeards. As in, ‘butt out.’ “

“Quite so. Although your own personal graybeards at MS aren’t involved.

This is well above NIS’s pay grade.”

“I’m not at NIS. I’m on loan.”

“On loan? To whom, precisely?” Johnson had the beginnings of a worried look on his face, as if he might have said too much, depending on where Train was parking his car these days.. “I’m seconded to the Navy headquarters staff. I’m working for an Admiral Carpenter. He’s the Navy JAG. The bad guy we’re talking all around may have iced two civilians connected to one of the admirals on the Navy headquarters staff. The cops came to see the JAG.”

“Now this really begins to tie together,” Johnson said, relief evident in his voice.

“Why so?”

“Because it’s my understanding that the Navy has indeed been told to butt out,” Johnson said. “Most emphatically, they have been. Via the Director of Naval Intelligence.”

Damn, Train thought. The DNI. Had he alerted Carpenter? And,. if so, why hadn’t Carpenter told him this? Johnson sensed his vexation. “Somebody holding back on you, Doctor?” Johnson said gently. “You might want to think about why they’d do that. “

Train went back to his sandwich, chewing mechanically while thinking about what Johnson had just told him. “Can I assume that interested parties in the other organization are not just sitting around on this problem?” he asked.

“You most certainly can. VVWCH is how we lesser relatione in the FBI came to know about the problem-especially since your bad guy is operating domestically. The with the problem are not supposed to operate do mestically, a rule we both know they don’t always observe so scrupulously.”

Train snorted. “Yeah, right. Look, these homicides have brought in the Fairfax cops. What about them?”

“I give up. What about them?”

“They’re investigating two homicides.

Their boss is starting to talk about a serial killer. Maybe bringing in you guys even. “

Bringing us in,” Johnson murmured. “Now that would be “a lovely twist.”

“Anyone told them who or what they might be up against?”

Johnson smiled. “Probably not. But my information is that they’re up against one Rear Admiral W. T. Sherman,” he said. Train put his sandwich down and looked across the table at Johnson. He’d known all along about the murders and their own so-called investigation. Which meant that the FBI was already in the game. What the hell was going on here? He thought back to the meeting with the police the night before, and the way that homicide lieutenant had been looking at Sherman. Their request for him to open his personal accounts-that was a standard FBI tactic.

“I guess that’s my problem, then,” Train said. “I’m supposedly tasked to determine if Sherman is clean or not. Actually, I’m supposed to help another JAG - division investigator do that-one who has no idea of what she’s really getting involved in.”

“Then conform to your tasking,” Johnson said. “Like you said, Sherman is your problem. Sherman is not their problem. “

“But finding their problem is the best way to clear Sherman,” Train pointed out, half-knowing what Johnson would say next.

“Let me tell you something, Train,” Johnson said. “You stumble across their problem, you or your partner-Commander Lawrence, is it? You pull the bushes aside and come face-to-face with this particular Gorgon, you may find yourself dead, understand? He’s the kind of predator who can tear your throat out with one swipe of his paw before you realize you’re looking at a tiger. These guys, and there are very few of them, have layer upon layer of cover and resources all prepositioned against the day they are called into action. You have a reputation for being a stand-up guy. But you’re way out of your league if you’re thinking of trying to track down a sweeper.”

“I can’t just sit around. He’s already made a move against my partner.”

I Johnson shook his head. “Consider Sherman from the IRS perspective.

Right now, he’s suspected of being guilty.

Prove him otherwise. Let the people who conjure up monsters like this in a basement cauldron somewhere deal with their problem. You definitely don’t want to encounter their problem.”

“You sound like even they’re scared of him.”

“Any normal human being would be,” Johnson said.

“Given the organization in question, that means we’re talking about ten percent of them being scared at least. Maybe fifteen. One has to be optimistic.”

Damn, Train thought. Damn. Damn. Damn. And the FBI even knows all the names. “Like I said, Commander Lawrence may already have attracted this guy’s attention,” Train said. “‘Then you make my point,” Johnson answered. “Circle the wagons. Protect yourselves, especially Sherman.”

“Does the FBI have people looking?” Train asked.

Johnson smiled and looked around, as if concerned for the first time that someone might be listening. “One would. think so, wouldn’t one?” be said. “But right now, I’m not so sure. I am just a research scientist, as you know. Nobody talks to me.”

“Much. But you have an impression, no doubt?”

“Well,” Johnson said modestly, “I have the impression that there is some very senior FBI management addressing this problem, or at least watching it unfold.”

Train changed direction. “What’s the relationship between you guys and these other people these days? It hasn’t always been terrific, has it?”

Johnson smiled again. “Officially? Let me see, how does the latest presidential policy memorandum put it?”Both organizations shall strive to achieve the maximum coordination of assets, planning, and all-source information to best fulfill their mutual mission of protecting the national security of the United States.’ “In other words, armed truce.”

Johnson smiled but said nothing, concentrating on his soup.

“Because what occurs to me,” Train continued, “is that the grand dragons in the FBI might be wrestling with a strategic question. Like whether to help, or to seize a precious opportunity to allow those people to be well and truly embarrassed-again.”

Johnson looked as if he was trying hard to control his face. “Anything’s possible, Train,” he said, wiping his mouth. “This is Washington, isn’t it? You still carry that Glock?”

“Yup.’ “Got it on you?”

“Not right now.”

“That’s not carrying. These are exceptionally good times to be carrying.”

Train needed to talk to Karen. He called her home number, but there was still only the answering machine. Now what the hell? he thought. Where is she? He asked the divisional yeoman if she had had any messages from Commander Lawrence. “No, sir,” she replied. “Oh, Admiral Sherman’s office called in, but they declined to leave a message for her.” Train asked the yeoman for that number and placed the call. The admiral was not available. In fact, the admiral would be out of pocket for the foreseeable future. The yeoman in OP-32 sounded a little uncomfortable.

He on temporary duty or something?” Train asked.

“Uh, no, sir, not exactly. Captain Gonzales said he’s on leave.”

“On leave?” Train frowned into the phone. “Was this scheduled? I was with him just last night, and he didn’t mention going on leave.”

“Uh, sir? You’re asking, questions above my pay grade, okay? The admiral’s on leave until further notice. I can take a message if you’d like. The admiral checks in.”

“Yeah, I’d like. There was a call from Admiral Sherman’s office to Commander Lawrence this morning. Did the two of them connect?”

“No, sir, not that I know of.”

“Okay, then I need some information from the admiral.”

He thought for a moment. “Ask him to call me at this number; I’ll be there in about an hour, okay?” He had given the yeoman Karen’s home number.

On leave, Train thought, as he walked down the hall. Now what? Damn, you suppose they’ve put him on administrative leave? Because of the police, investigation? Maybe the big boys had eased Sherman into bureaucratic limbo until this mess was cleared up, one way or another. He quickened his step. He felt a sudden urge to get out to Great Falls, not liking the fact that Karen wasn’t answering her phone.

Train got to Karen’s house at 2:30 and parked right in front of the walk leading up to the house, so she could see who had arrived. He waited for a moment, but no one came to the door. He stared at the front of the house, scanning the windows along the porch. And he saw Gutter’s face pressed against one of the windows.

Swearing out loud, he got out of the car and trotted up the steps to the porch. The front door was not locked, and he opened it to let the frantic dog out of the house. Gutter ran out onto the lawn to take care of business, then came back to Train.

“Where’d she go, Gutter? Where is she?”

At the sound of his voice, the dog immediately sat down.

“C’mon, then,” he said, and went into the house. With the dog at his heel, he made a quick search of the house, calling out Karen’s name several times as he went through both floors. There was no sign of a struggle or any other commotion. Everything was in order.

Where the hell was she? He was trying to figure out what to do next, like maybe call 911, when he heard her voice outside, calling her dog.

Gutter uttered a low growl. Train walked back through the hallway to the front door, surprising her.

“Sorry to bust in,” he said. “I couldn’t get you on the phone, and the front door was open and Gutter inside. I was worried.”

“Hi,” she said, pushing a lock of damp red hair off her forehead. She was dressed in tight tan jodhpurs and a sleeveless white shirt. “I decided to go for a ride. Just sitting in the house was beginning to spook me.”

“You should have kept Gutter with you,” he said, trying to keep an edge out of his voice.

“You said to keep him inside until he learned the outside perimeter,” she retorted. “I was afraid he’d run off or something. I took Harry along, though.” She looked down at the old Lab, who, having spotted the Doberman, was slinking under the porch. Train rolled his eyes. “I’m thinking the heavies have maybe made a move,” he said, and then he explained what the OP-32 yeoman had told him about Sherman being on leave, with no other explanation. ‘ “Those bastards,” she exclaimed, getting a bottle of mineral water out of the refrigerator. “They didn’t even wait for the cops to do the financial checks.”

Train went over to a stool and sat down carefully. “So you think they’ve put him in some kind of suspension?”

“Or sent him on temporary additional duty. Sounds like that to me. He called earlier with the data on Jack. He didn’t mention going TAD.”

“Let me call that data into the NIS, and then I need to fill you in on a lunch meeting I just had with an old FBI buddy.

He made the call to the database administrator and then told Karen the essence of what Johnson had said. Karen was walking around the kitchen, chewing on a knuckle when he was finished.

“Sweepers? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” she said.

“They sound like some kind of vultures.”

“I debated with myself about telling you any of that,” he concluded. She whirled around on him.

“What’s that supposed to mean? That I need to be protected from knowing the extent of the danger?” Train was taken aback by her sudden anger.

“Well, I guess to a certain extent, yes, that’s what I was thinking. You had a pretty good scare last night. I didn’t want to-“

She put up a warning hand. “I’m a big girl now, Train.

I need to know what’s going on here. lid appreciate it if you wouldn’t treat me like some kind of damsel in distress, okay?”

“Whatever you say, lady,” Train replied in a brisk tone of voice. He was getting a little tired of the mood swings.

She’s being emotional, he reminded himself, because she’s scared. Don’t go gettingall hurry. But Karen wouldn’t let it go.

“I hear that condescending tone in your voice, the one men use when they think they’re around a woman whose emotions are out of control. I just want to make sure we both know where things stand here. We are conducting an investigation. I appreciate your bringing a guard dog. I really do. But you can’t go holding out on me because you think I’m just a frail little thing who’ll fall apart at the first hint of physical danger, okay? I believe you were talking about my not sharing information with you just the other day, rights”

Train put both hands up in mock surrender. “I only felt that way because you’re a lawyer,” he said with as straight a face as he could muster.

“But that’s ridiculous! And besides, you’re a-oh, you bmtard!” But she was smiling again. “I’m sorry. I guess I am being emotional.”

He wanted to reach out and hold her hand. “It’s kind of like you stepped over a black snake,” he offered. “And then you find out the next day that it wasn’t a black snake, but a cobra. Anyway, I definitely won’t tell you what Admiral Carpenter said this morning. About keeping you safe being a big part of my mission in life.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “Did he say that?”

“I’m not going to tell you anything about that, remember? Yeah, he said that. There’s more. My FBI buddy told me that the Navy had been warned off the Galantz problem through intelligence channels. Carpenter, for reasons unknown to me, failed to tell me that, which I think means he wants us to stay in this game, at least for a while. He says it’s because Sherman deserves a chance to clear himself.”

She put the bottle of mineral water back in the refrigerator. “I should hope so. I can’t believe how they’re treating him. Just because he’s been accused-no, not even that, because he’s been sideswiped by two homicides. Hell, even the cops don’t think he did them.”

Train got off the stool and headed for the phone. “I don’t understand, either, but for now we press ahead, agreed?

Let’s see what the database termites can do with John L. Sherman.”

He called into NIS while Karen went up to change her clothes. He asked for an urgent open-filter screen on an individual and gave the terminal operator Jack Sherman’s name and Social Security number. He went on hold for two minutes. Then the operator came back to him.

“Okay, Mr. von Rensel. I can transmit all this to your PC over in the Pentagon, but they said you wanted a verbal right now, so here’s what I’ve got on this guy: bank records, credit -cards, home and work address, military service records-that’s admin, pay, and health-make and mod of vehicle, prior arrest records-that was as a juvie-sexual preferences, firearms purchases. for the past two years, and let’s see what else, here.”

Train was astonished. He hadn’t pulled a data dump from the NIS database for three years, not since the Malone case over at the Naval Research Labs. “Should I be calling you database or Big Brother?” he said. “Since when does NIS have this level of detail on a guy?”

“Since the government became a customer of the telemarketing data banks, just like everybody else is. Total access on demand. Shit, that’s not the half of it. You wanna talk about people who keep score, those sumbitches know everything, and I mean everything. Scary, isn’t it? You wanna know where he went for the past year? We’ll take a look at his gas credit cards. How about how well hislemme see, here-his Kawasaki Vulcan Eight Hundred runs since he’s owned it? He’s used a Visa card at the auto-parts store there in Triangle three times this year alone. Wanna know what he bought?”

Train just shook his head. “Orwell was right,” he muttered.

“Who’s this Orwell guy? You wanna see if he’s in the system?”

Train smiled. “That’s okay. Look, right now I need to know where Sherman lives, and, if possible, where he works.”

“Right. He lives in an area called Cherry Hill. Th#t’s near Triangle, Virginia. No property-tax records on him, so he’s a renter. Hang on one and lemme check something. Stand by. Yup, here’s a catalog listing. For guns, no less. Good deal, huh? Now lemme find out which delivery service delivered and when.” There was another minute’s pause.

“Right. The guy’s actual address is number four Slade Hill Road. He also has a PO box at the Triangle, Virginia, post office. Now, work address: the helicopter-repair activity at the Quantico Marine base.”

“What’s he do there?”

“Lemme get his tax return up here. Stand by. Okay. His most recent tax return lists his occupation as rigger. Hminm.

The W-2 doesn’t show a govemnwnt check. Not sure what a rigger is.”

“General roustabout job, usually on the flight line. If he’s in maintenance, he’ll be the guy in the tractor, pulling air craft to and from the maintenance hangars. Something like that. “

“Okay, ‘lemme check current wants and warrants.

Hmmm. He’s lucky to have a government job, given this DUI record.”

“Oh yeah? A boozer?”

“Two offenses, one prior license suspension, now lifted.

But carrying nine points even now on his license. And on a motorcycle, too. Brave dummy, drinking and driving a bike.”

“Okay, thanks,” Train said. “Shoot me a summary this afternoon if you can. The locators were the urgent part.”

Train hung up as Karen came back downstairs, now in her uniform. “Who was that?” she asked, brushing her stilldamp hair as she came into the kitchen. He almost lost his train of thought. She looked divine, her complexion glowing, her damp hair suggestive of what she might look like after some more convivial physical activity. His speculation on the nature of which specific strenuous physical activity caused him to hesitate just long enough for her to raise an eyebrow in one of those “Hello, did you hear my question?” looks. He had to work at it to find his normal voice.

Damn woman noticed that, too.

“That was NIS database. Jack Sherman works down at the Marine Corps airstrip at Quantico. What do you say we go pay him a visit?”

“Yes, I think that’s next. I wonder, should we take the admiral along?”

Train shook his head. “I think not. There’s no love lost there. Besides, isn’t the admiral supposed to be meeting with the police auditors today?

Hell, maybe that’s why he’s on leave. No, I think we-move first, see what we’ve got here.

I’ve got pretty good locating data.”

“That was fast,” she said, looking around for her uniform hat and purse.

“They had him on file?”

“You don’t know the half of it,” he replied. “And you might not want to.

Let me get Gutter situated. Then we can I I go.

Because Train knew the base, they went in his Suburban.

On the ride down to Quantico, Karen briefed Train on what Admiral Sherman had told her about his son. Then she wanted to know more about sweepers. Train was quiet for almost a minute.

“Sweepers don’t officially exist, any more than the people they are used to control officially exist. I heard about them when I was on loan with the FBI, and even those guys talk about them as if they were myths. But supposedly there are only about a dozen of them, all embedded in deep cover at strategic locations around the world. Washington, Tokyo, London, Berlin-hell, probably even in Moscow. Wherever there might be a need for ‘wet work,’ as they call it, there’s probably a sweeper hidden in a hole somewhere. During the Cold War, the other side had them, too.”

“All men?”

“Don’t know. Probably not. These are individuals with no identities other than the ones they assume-people with a wide range of prepositioned assets at their disposal. I’m talking cars, safe houses, surveillance equipment, cash. Because if those people turn a sweeper on, they’re usually in a hurry or in a mess.”

“And they go after operatives who’ve gotten out of control somehow?” p “Not just any operatives: -They go after the operatives who kill people.

This isn’t everyday work. These are specialists who hunt down other specialists.”

“And do what?”

“I heard an FBI guy once say that the term of art was extinguish. They extinguish the runaway asset. Make the problem go away. Probably in such a manner as to attract zero attention.”

“Why not bring the runaway asset, as you call him, back for disciplinary measures?”

“How do you discipline an assassin, Karen? Take him to court? Look, I don’t believe the U.S. government keeps a big stable of assassins. But I do believe it keeps some, depending on the international climate and the nature of our country’s enemies at any given time. There are even fewer sweepers.”

“And you think Galantz is a sweeper?”

“My FBI friend does. And he says that the agency in question is going quietly ape-shit over the fact that this guy is killing civilians.”

“Well, if that’s true, why on earth don’t they tell the Navy and get Sherman off the hook?”

Train thought about that as he turned the big vehicle off the interstate and headed down toward the base. “That’s what’s puzzling me,” he said.

“Johnson said the Navy had been warned off-throug4 the DNI. But I don’t know whom he’s talked to. If it was Carpenter, the admiral sure as hell didn’t tell me-other than some mumbo jumbo about what he was going to order me to do.”

“And this is a guy with one hand and one eye? Isn’t that how Sherman described him?”

“A guy with one hand and one eye who crawled out of the Rung Sat secret zone with a regiment of VC on his U-all, endured a year in a Saigon jail, and lived to tell about it.

And if he’s been working for those people for twenty years, he’s an experienced sweeper. I think I’d prefer dealing with any number of KGB colonels.” -

It was Karen’s turn to be silent as they approached the main gate of the base and showed their identification. Train drove through the base, remembering his Officer Candidate School days at Quantico back in 1970.

The airstrip was primarily a helicopter operating area, situated at the base to provide helicopter training services to the various Marine basic-training operations. There was a single main strip paralleling the river, five main hangars, a maintenance admin area dominated by Quonset huts, a fuel farm, and a standard flight line and tower complex. Train drove down the flight-line perimeter road, staying clear of two Marine CH46E helicopters that were turning up on the pad in front of the operations building. He pulled up in front of the largest Quonset hut, which had a sign indicating that the maintenance division was housed inside. Even there, several hundred feet down the flight line from operations, the noise of the two helicopters was nearly overpowering.

Inside, they faced a counter that ran the width of the Quonset hut. They produced their identification, and Karen asked a bored-looking civilian woman to see the officer in charge.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

Karen just looked at her.

“Do we need one?” Train asked, his tone of voice clearly expressing his incredulity.

“I’ll see if Mr. Myer is available,” the woman said. Train rolled his eyes at Karen as the woman headed reluctantly toward the back of the open room, where a large red-faced warrant officer sat. Karen just shook her head. The warrant officer saw the clerk and then Karen and Train, and he stood up. The clerk indicated that they should come back. The warrant remained standing in deference to Karen’s three stripes.

“We need to interview a John L. Sherman,” Karen said.

He supposedly works as a rigger on the flight line here?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the warrant said. “I know him.”

“What can you tell us about him?”

The warrant looked over Karen’s shoulder at the clerical area and lowered his voice. “He’s kind of a shitbird, Commander. Makes like a biker hood most of the time. He’s on the wrapper team.”

“Rapper team?” Train asked. The warrant looked over at him, sizing him up, big man to big man.

“Yeah. They fly the forty-six echoes in here that’re going to dopot-level maintenance up in Pennsylvania. We do the baseline check, strip the rotor blades, and then shrink-wrap the birds for the train ride up north.”

“Where can we find him?”

Myer turned back to Karen. “Best thing to do is to go down to the wrap hangar. Last one on the line. You wanna maybe just peek through the side door, make sure they’re done, before you go in there, okay? It’s messier’n shit in there when they’re wrapping.”

“This guy Sherman, he a real biker? A hard guy?” Train asked.

Myer snorted. “Naw. Real bikers would put a guy like that in panties and turn him out in a heartbeat. I can’t believe that guy was ever in the Corps, you know what I mean?”

They -went back outside and got in Train’s car to drive down the flight line to the maintenance hangars beyond the Quonset hut. The last hangar in the line was smaller than the others. There were two helicopters already encased in the white shrink-wrap coating parked out in front.

Without their rotor blades and tail rotors, they looked like giant grasshoppers that had been dipped into a can of gray-white paint. The insect look was accentuated by the bulging blisters covering the front windshield of the aircraft.

As they parked and got out, they could hear a loud hissing noise from inside the hangar. The front door of the hangar had been lowered to within one foot of the sill, and there were signs up warning of flammable fumes and telling people to keep out of a hazardous-spray area. They went to the side door, as the warrant had suggested. When they cracked the door, the hissing noise was much louder. A reek of paint solvent wafted over them. A crew of three men, fully suited up, were standing on a pipe stage platform and operating what looked like a small cannon that was spraying a white foam over the front end of a large helicopter. Most of the body was already encased and they were focusing the spray on the final front quarter of the aircraft. One man operated the nozzle while the other two tended supply lines. Two stainless-steel bottles the size of barbecue propane containers fed the spray. A large six-foot-diameter exhaust fan built into the back of the hangar was roaring away to extract the strong fumes. They watched for a few minutes through the cracked door as the team finished covering the front of the aircraft. The foam seemed to dissolve upon contact with the aircraft’s skin, solidifying into a thick white second skin.

The team shut down the spray unit but left the big fan going.

“Help you people?” a voice asked from behind them, startling both of them.

“We need to see Jack Sherman,” Train said, producing his credentials.

“NIS to see Jack, huh? What a surprise.” The man was heavyset and in his forties. There were bits of foam stuck to the. outer edges of his beard where the mask had left marks on his skin. His spray suit was covered in the stuff and it stank of chemical solvent. “He’s the skinny guy, running the spray gun. I’ll tell him you’re here. Be about tenn-minutes.

You-maybe want to wait out front, okay? Fumes are gonna be strong in here, they shut that big fan down.”

“That’s some amazing stuff,” Train said, indicating the cocoon material.

“Tougher’n nails, I’m here to tell you,” the man said.

“Takes me a week to get this shit outta my hair.”

“How do they get it off at the rework facility?”

“Really big knives. You all better move now.”

It was fifteen minutes before Jack Sherman walked out of the hangar bay.

Train sized him up as Jack slouched his way across the concrete apron in front of the haar. Fiveng six, maybe five-seen in boots, scrawny, wearing ancient v’t black jeans, a wide black belt hat was mostly there for decoration, and a stained white T-shirt. A pack of cigarettes was twisted into the upper-right sleeve of the T-shirt, above pronounced biceps. He carried a black leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder. Train could see some facial resemblance to the admiral in the young man’s face, but a lot of the character was missing. Pale, white face, over which a scraggly black beard wandered uncertainly; long, bony nose; thin black eyebrows; and a weak, not quite chinless mouth set in what looked like a perpetual sneer. He had muddy dark brown eyes, with the purple-stained pouches of the confirmed boozer. The eyes were now appraising Karen Lawrence’s body with a casual, “I’d like to take your clothes off with my switchblade” stare. Train revised the height to maybe five-eight as Jack got closer, and he resisted the urge to smack this kid for the way he was staring at Karen’s body.

“So who wants to see me?” Jack said to Karen, his voice surprisingly thin, the voice of a teenage boy on the verge of breaking. Definite boozer, Train concluded. Jack flicked a quick glance in Train’s direction, as if he had read Train’s thoughts. Train flipped out his credentials.

“My -name’s von Rensel, from the NIS. This is Commander Lawrence, Navy JAG.”

“Squid stuff. Big deal. So why should I give a shit?” Sherman said, fingering the package of cigarettes out from under the twist in the sleeve of his T-shirt. Camels, no filter, Train noted.

Tough guy indeed.

“This concerns your father,” she said.

The change in Jack’s face was dramatic-an immediate hardening. With the cigarette poised to go in his mouth, he stopped and looked at Karen as if she had just invoked the devil. “Then it don’t concern me, lady,” he snapped.

“We think it does,” Train said. “We want to know why you made an appearance at Elizabeth Walsh’s funeral, and again at the Naval Academy cemetery during Admiral Schmidt’s funeral.”

Jack made a slow business of sticking the cigarette in his mouth and getting it lit. Then he exhaled a solid stream of smoke in Train’s direction, an insolent look on his face. “Who says?”

“I saw you at Saint Matthew’s Church,” Karen said.

“Last Wednesday evening. On a motorcycle. Your father saw you, too.”

“And I saw you at Annapolis. Up on that hill. You left on a motorcycle.”

Jack shrugged. “Beats me. I get around. It’s a free country, last time I checked. How about you, lady? You free?”

Train moved in closer, staring down at the kid’s sneering face but turning slightly sideways so that his left forearm was in position to block any sudden moves. “Let me put it this way, Sherman,” he said.

“We’re helping the Fairfax County Homicide Section investigate two homicides. So far, they don’t know about your little cameos at the funerals.

You can either talk to us or talk to them. But’let me tell you something. You don’t know hassle until you’ve seen homicide hassle. Now, why were you there at those ‘funerals?”

Jack didn’t budge an inch under the physical force of Train’s massive presence. But his eyes betrayed him as they darted from Train’s looming face to Karen and back. Then his expression changed again. “Maybe,” he said with a crafty smile. “Maybe I was celebrating. Yeah. That’s it. I remember now. I was celebrating.”

“Celebrating?” Karen asked. “Celebrating what?”

Jack looked at her, then stepped back away from Train.

Then he looked again, a studied, staring, lascivious appraisal, from her shoes to her hair, point by point, as if he was sizing up a piece of meat, or a whore. Train got that itch in his palms again.

“Celebrating that bastard’s loss,” Jack continued. “You know, he lost some things of value. Yeah, that’s it, man.”

““Some things of value,’ “

Karen repeated, focusing on the familiar phrase. She looked over at Train.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “And I suppose you’re the new main squeeze, huh, lady? Commander, I mean. Excuse me. Commander, ma’am. Or is it ‘sir’?

Naw, it’s ‘ma’am.’ ” He stared intently at her breasts. “Those are definitely hooters.

Ma’am.”

Karen. never saw Train move, but suddenly Jack was stumbling forward, toward the Suburban, his right hand enveloped in Train’s left hand, his middle finger bending backward and his feet arching up against the pain, cigarette and jacket failing to the ground as he, was spun up against the Suburban. Train clamped down hard and put his face an inch away from Jack’s grimacing features.

“You … watch … your … mouth … dickhead,” he growled. “That is your name, right? Dickhead? Yes? You agree? Nod your dick head, dickhead!” Jack was almost kneeling now as Train bore down on the finger, bringing tears to the kid’s eyes. Train could see Karen off to one side, staring at him. “Good boy, dickhead. Now listen to me. Listen real good. We know you’re in this. Tell your buddy Galantz we know you’re in this’ That the whole god damned government knows what this is all about. And you dickhead, are a stupid little patsy if you’re helping him: understand? Think about this, dickhead: What’s he going to do to you when he’s done screwing around with your father, huh? You think he’s gonna give you a medal, huh?” Train bent down, getting eyeball-to-eyeball. “Now you talk to me, asshole. What’s your piece of this?”

Jack cried out as Train gave the finger an extra little nudge. His eyes were streaming and his face was red and straining. He was almost on the ground, trying to escape the crushing pain. His pack of cigarettes had spilled out on the concrete like a handful of nails. But he was still defiant.

“Fuck you, man,” he spat in a low, hoarse voice as his elbow touched the concrete. “Fuck you! I just do what my old man tells me to do, okay? So fuck you!”

Train, surprised, let him go then and stood up. He looked over at Karen, whose expression was a mask of shock. He wasn’t sure if it was over the way he had manhandled this punk or if she had heard what Jack had just said.

“Get out of here, asshole,” he said to the figure crouching at his feet.

“And remember, you can run, but you can’t hide. “

Jack grabbed his jacket and-scuttled backward, holding his right hand under his left armpit and clumsily wiping the tears off his face with the back of his left hand. But as soon as he was back out in full public view, he straightened up and sauntered back toward the hangar, head up, never looking back, as if nothing at all had happened. Train walked over to Karen. From the disapproving look on her face, he had a pretty good idea of what she was mad about.

“Sorry about that,” he began.

“No you’re not,” she snapped.

Okay, so now we know, he thought. “No, I’m not,” he agreed. “I just didn’t like the way he was-“

“You don’t listen so well, do you?” she said, those green eyes blazing.

“Let me say it again. When I need your protection, I’ll ask for it. We came here to find out something, and now that kid will never talk to us.

Now what are we-“

Train put up his hand to interrupt her. “Did you hear what he said?”

She checked her anger. “Yes, I did.” Some things of value.’ That phrase-“

“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. That last partwhere he said he was just doing what his old man told him to?” She stared at him. “What?

He said that? Working for his father!” She sighed and looked away across the airfield.

Train decided to say nothing for a moment. It wasn’t as if he had any answers, either. But finally, he felt compelled to break the silence.

“We need to go back to Great Falls,” he said. “It’s time to think. We need to get Gutter programmed f I or your perimeter. I didn’t like that crack he made about you being his father’s new girlfriend. I know, I know,” he said as her eyes started to flash again. “But remember what he just said. It’s time to think, Karen. That kid is definitely part of this. And as far as that little creep is concerned, you’re the admiral’s new girlfriend. Suppose Galantz thinks the same thing?”

At 9:30 that night, Karen was sitting in the study, doing some household paperwork, when the phone rang. Train had gone home about an hour ago.

Gutter’s ears perked up when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Karen, this is Tag Sherman.”

Karen sat up. They had agreed not to tell the admiral about their encounter with Jack until they had had time to talk to Mcnair. “Yes, sir. Hello,” she said. “Did you meet with the police today? Is everything okay with that?”

“Peachy. They brought a consultant in, some ex-IRS guy.”

“Ugh. Was it human?”

“Marginally. But I have my taxes done by a pro, and they’re really not that Complex. or they weren’t. Galen’s estate is going to complicate life a bit. This guy was having trouble not licking his lips. Anyhow, there apparently was nothing there that the cops cared about.”

“What did Mcnair say when it was all over?”Thank you for your cooperation; we’ll be in touch’?”

“That’s exactly what he said. But I was hoping you had some feedback.

And I apologize for the late-hour call.”

“We haven’t talked to or heard from the police,” she said, wanting to minimize what they had learned at Quantico. “We’ve been working on building a picture of where your son, Jack, is and what he’s doing.”

“And?”

“He works down at Quantico, at -the Marine base. He’s apparently a rigger in the helicopter-maintenance section.

We’re waiting for some more information from the NIS database.” She was getting uncomfortable with the lies.

There was a pause on the line. “I’ll be interested in … well, how he is, what he’s like, when you finally interview him. I’d thought of maybe going along.” When she did not reply, he said, “Well, I guess that wouldn’t be very smart.”

“No, sir, it probably wouldn’t,” she replied, grateful that she had not had to say it. “We’ll give you a debrief when we have something.” Then a question occurred to her. “Admiral, you’re on leave right now?”

“Sort of,” he laughed, but without much humor. “I’m actually up at the Bureau, heading up a selective early retirement board for senior chief petty officers. That’s not for publication until the board reports out, by the way.

Which is why my office is saying I’m on leave.”

Karen wanted to ask how long this little temporary additional-duty assignment had been scheduled, but she held back. The Navy went to great lengths to keep selectionboard membership confidential, so the sudden assignment was plausible. But it was also a very convenient way of “Convenient, huh? I suspect Kensington instigated th lower my visibility in Opnav while this current mess sorted out.

“So this had not been in the works for some appreciable time?”

“Would you believe as of eighteen hundred last night The board’s been scheduled for a while, of course. The president’s slot was supposed to be filled by another officer, who was suddenly unavailable. So, yes, now officially incommunicado for the next three days. Any velopments on Galantz?”

Karen hesitated. She wanted to tell him about what I had found out from his FBI contact. And about the visit had received. But Jack’s last words on the tarmac thrown them both for a loop.

“Not yet, Admiral,” she said. “But Mr. von Rensel been talking to some people.”

“I hope he’s getting somewhere.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, at a loss as to where to go f there. He seemed to sense that the conversation was on

“Okay, Karen. And, again, thanks for everything yo doing. I thought when I made admiral, I’d be the gu, control. These past days, I’ve begun to feel like a wood in the rapids.”

“That’s just what this guy’s trying to accomplish, miral,” she said.

“But I think having Train von Re working it is going to help-a lot.”

Sherman agreed, thanked her again, and hung up. Slig embarrassed, she put the phone down and patted Guti head. She thought about Jack Sherman, his overtly inso demeanor and the brazen way he had looked at her. father had probably seen a lot of that sneer before the vorce. She dreaded the thought of finally sitting down i Sherman senior and telling him that his son was still a sli ball, or worse.

they’re really not that complex. Or they weren’t. Galen’s estate is going to complicate life a bit. This guy was having trouble not licking his lips. Anyhow, there apparently was nothing there that the cops cared about.”

“What did Mcnair say when it was all over?”Thank you for your cooperation; we’ll be in touch’?”

“That’s exactly what he said. But I was hoping you had some feedback.

And I apologize for the late-hour call.”

“We haven’t talked to or heard from the police,” she said, wanting to minimize what they had learned at Quantico. “We’ve been working on building a picture of where your son, Jack, is and what he’s doing.” 6”And?”

“He works down at Quantico, at the Marine base. He’s apparently a rigger in the helicopter-maintenance section.

We’re waiting for some more information from the NIS database.” She was getting uncomfortable with the lies.

There was a pause on the line. “I’ll be interested in … well, how he is, what he’s like, when you finally interview him. I’d thought of maybe going along.” When she did not reply, he said, “Well, I guess that wouldn’t be very smart.”

“No, sir, it probably wouldn’t,” she replied, grateful that she had not had to say it. “We’ll give you a debrief when we have something.” Then a question occurred to her. “Admiral, you’re on leave right now?”

“Sort of,” he laughed, but without much humor. “I’m actually up at the Bureau, heading up a selective earlyretirement board for senior chief petty officers. That’s not for publication until the board reports out, by the way.

Which is why my office is saying I’m on leave.”

Karen wanted to ask how long this little temporary additional-duty assignment had been scheduled, but she held back. The Navy went to great lengths to keep selectionboard membership confidential, so the sudden assignment was plausible. But it was also a very convenient way of putting the admiral on ice while the Galantz thing played out. He must have read her thoughts.

“Convenient, huh? I suspect Kensington instigated this to lower my visibility in Opnav while this current mess gets sorted out.

“So this had not been in the works for some appreciable time?”

“Would you believe as of eighteen hundred last night?

The board’s been scheduled for a while, of course., But the president’s slot was supposed to be filled by another flag officer, who was suddenly unavailable. So, yes, now I’m officially incommunicado for the next three days. Any developments on Galantz?”

Karen hesitated. She wanted to tell him about what Train had found out from his FBI contact. And about the visit she had received. But Jack’s last words on the tarmac had thrown them both for a loop.

“Not yet, Admiral,” she said. “But Mr. von Renset has been talking to some people.”

“I hope he’s getting somewhere.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, at a loss as to where to go from there. He seemed to sense that the conversation was over.

“Okay, Karen. And, again, thanks for everything you’re doing. I thought when I made admiral, I’d be the guy in control. These past days, I’ve begun to feel like a wood chip in the rapids.”

“that’s just what this guy’s trying to accomplish, Admiral,” she said.

“But I think having Train von Rensel working it is going to help-a lot.”

Sherman agreed, thanked her again, and hung up. Slightly embarrassed, she put the phone down and patted Gutter’s head. She thought about Jack Sherman, his overtly insolent demeanor and the brazen way he had looked at her. His father had probably seen a lot of that sneer before the divorce. She dreaded the thought of finally sitting down with Sherman senior and telling him that his son was still a slimeball, or worse.

She gave up on the paperwork and got up to turn off the lights. She had told Train she would be in the office to morrow, where they were going to have to make some important decisions. She realized as she locked up downstairs that she was only beginning to appreciate the box Galantz had fashioned for the admiral.

WEDNESDAY Eady the next morning, Karen called into the office and left a message that she would be late but that she was coming in. She had actually overslept, courtesy of the secure feeling of having that big Dobe in the house. She checked her voice mail. There was one message, from Sally, who had not been able to feed the horses this morning because she had to take her father to the doctor’s office. She asked if Karen could please feed them.

Karen groaned. Murphy’s Law, she thought. She deleted the message and looked at her watch. It was almost 8:30.

The horses would be standing indignantly by their gates, an hour overdue for feeding. Okay, get the horses fed and turned out, then come back in, change into uniform, grab a cup of coffee, and jump into traffic to get down to the Pentagon. Wait, better call Train and tell him she’d be late. She punched in the office number, but it came up busy. Now what?

What had happened to the office voice mail? Then she remembered Harry.

She’d have to get Harry into the house before letting the Dobe out, or they might fight.

She groaned out loud. Arranging both dogs was too hard.

She told Gutter to stay, patting him on the head, then slipped out the front door. Harry whimpered at her from under a porch chair, but he did not join her. She could hear Gutter complaining as she walked down off the front porch and headed for the barn. She was amazed at how quiet it was as she headed into the hedge passage. If she stood still, she could almost hear the sweep of the Potomac River through the woods beyond the big pasture. Even the hedge passage which on Monday night hadposed such a terror for her: looked entirely benign in the April sunshine, its crocus borders smiling at each other across the bricks. Duchess whinnied from the barn enclosure. “Oh, all right,” she said out loud, and walked down toward the barn and her starving charges.

Train went to the athletic club early, then arrived in the office at about 8:15. He opened up his LAN mail to retrieve the full text of the database report on Jack Sherman. He grabbed a cup of coffee while the report was downloading into his computer, and he asked the yeoman if he had any messages. The yeoman told him the voice mail was down but that there had been no calls for him. “Oh, and Commander Lawrence will be coming in this morning, but late,” the yeoman said.

Train went back to his cubicle, wondering how late was late. They had two immediate problems to work. whether or not to tell the cops about Jack, and finding out why the warning from the DNI had been shortstopped, and by whom.

The first item would provoke an argument. He was leaning toward full disclosure, having had too many bad experiences in multiparty investigations wherein information was held back for political or bureaucratic reasons. Karen, in her zeal to protect Admiral Sherman, would not agree, but it was going to be tough getting around the matter of what Jack Sherman had said about working for his father. That didn’t make any sense at all, unless they had missed the whole point of what was going on. The warning that Galantz might be a sweeper, they would have to take up with the JAG himself.

Karen opened up the feed room, found three feed bowls, and measured out three rations. It had been so long that she had to consult the feed board to see what they were getting these days.

“It has been a while, girls,” she said to her three interested observers, who were clustered in the comers of their paddocks near the barn, watching her through the feed room’s door and occasionally pinning their ears and making threatening faces at one another. She finished the rations, then carried the flum bowls out to the feeding buckets, which were hung on the fences. She watched with satisfaction as everybody piled into their buckets, feet stamping and with in occasional white eye peeled over the rim of their buckets to stare at one another, just in case.

Karen watched for a minute, then went down the aisle to the door of the hay room. Most of the hay was stored in square bales on the second floor of the barn. One room on the ground floor had been designed as the hay service room, with a trapdoor between the upper floor and the ground floor so that hay could be dropped down into the service room periodically. She unlatched the door and stepped into the semidarkness.

There were ten bales stacked on the concrete floor. The trapdoor in the ceiling was closed, as it should be. She cut the strings on one bede and carried out six pats of hay to a waiting garden cart. She rolled the cart back down the aisle to the area of the feed buckets, then gave each horse two solid pats of hay on the ground near their buckets.

She rolled the cart back down the aisle, past all the empty stalls.

Sally kept a trim and clean barn, she thought. All the tools were hung up neatly, and the cabinets with vet supplies and tack-cleaning stores were a closed. She was lucky to have her, and only too happy to do the feeding chores from time to dw if that’s what it took to keep Sally. She opened the hay service room to put the cart inside, and suddenly there was a black-gloved fist in her face, a snapping sound, and a very bright Purple flash that seemed to make her eyes ring and her’brain stall, and then, without so much as a squeak, she was falling backward into a fathomless black canyon.

By nine o’clock, Train decided to call Karen’s house, but there was no answer. Maybe she was stuck in traffic. He asked the yeoman for the number for her car phone, but the yeoman did not have it. He sat at his desk and scanned the database report again, his mind uneasy. He called her again at 9:15, and then he realized that calling was a waste of time. Something told him to go out there. But that would be dumb if she was on the way in. They’d simply pass each other out on the road.

He got up and paced around the office, making the yeoman nervous. He asked two of the other officers in IR if they had the number for Karen’s car phone, but they looked at him as if he was slightly nuts, although they were polite about it. He went back to his cubicle and thought about going to see Carpenter. No, he decided, not without Karen.

Then he remembered the athletic club. Would she have gone there before coming into the office? Knowing he was waiting? Maybe she would if she was still mad at him. Women!

He got the POAC phone number and asked for them to page her. They obliged, but there was -no reply. But that didn’t mean anything if she was in the pool or out for a run. He looked at his watch. Going on ten.

Damn it!

Karen surfaced in total darkness, surrounded by a strong smell of rubber. Slowly, she realized that it wasn’t really darkness, but that her eyes were blindfolded. It felt as if there was cloth or bandage material pressed against her eyelids, and a strap or tape of some kind wrapped around her head to hold the bandages in place. There was even something in her ears, something that felt like a cotton or Styrofoam plug. She tried to move but couldn’t. She was on her back, her feet and hands bound, probably by tape, from the feel of it. There was even a patch of tape over her mouth, with a small hole cut in the area around her lips. She could breathe through her nose, and partially through her mouth.

She tried to gather her wits. What the hell had happened?

That bright purple light, and something else. The fist, the black fist.

No, a black leather glove. She had a clear image of the glove, a man’s glove with something in it. He had not hit her.. She felt no pain, no sensation of having been drugged. Just that purple-red flash, as if someone had popped an incredibly intense flashcube in her face, and then she had blacked out. She tried to move again, but there was nowhere to go. In fact, she could not move much at all.

With the first flare of claustrophobia, she realized she was in a bag of some kind-a rubber body-length bag. Oh my God, a body bag. She was trussed up in a body bag. She had never even seen a body bag, except on television, yet instinctively she knew what it was.

She tried to move again, tried to roll over on her side.

But there was something on top of the bag-something heavy, rigid, but not hard-edged. And not just on top. There were heavy objects all around the bag, on top, along the sides, and even underneath. She could feel, rather than hear, a scratchy sensation on the rubber fabric of the bag when she moved. She realized that she was breathing heavily now, and she could feel a mist of condensation hovering around the skin of her face.

But there was another smell, something different from the rubber. ‘ Slow down, slow down, she thought. Control. Get control.

Where had this started? In the hay service room. Hay. Bales of hay.

That’s what was on top of her-bales of hay, fifty pounds each. Heavy, although not crushing. She was buried in the haystack. But probably not down in the service room; there had been only ten bales down there. In the hayloft up above, then. Whoever had done this had carried her upstairs into the hayloft, where there were four hundred bales of hay.

And-what? Stashed her?

She fought a rising panic as she grappled with her situation. She tried again to move, to wriggle out of the bindings, but then she realized that each twist and turn was settling the hay bales tighter on top of her. Heavier now, much heavier. The smell of rubber was very strong.

Air.

How was she going to get air to breathe, stuffed in this damned bag? By going slowly, breathing a lot slower than she was now. He hadn’t meant to suffocate her, or else there would not be airholes in the tape over her mouth and nose.

So the bag must have an airhole in it. Or the zipper had been left open around her face. Pay attention. Feel. Yes. The scratchy ends of hay straws against her face. An aroma of last year’s grass just underneath the rubber smell. The feel of a zipper up against her chin.

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling her lids pull against the gauze.

Focus. Concentrate. Breathe, but control it.

Slower. Force your body to relax, stop fighting, settle into a reduced state. Squeeze the picture of where you are out of your mind. Focus on surviving until the next thing comes along. He had stashed her here. Had to mean he was coming back.

Train would come-when she didn’t show up at the Pentagon. Absolutely. He would come running. Could be coming right now, depending on how long she’d been out. Her eyes hurt, even though they were bound shut. She could still see that purple-red flash. She concentrated on her breathing.

Train would find the dog, and then he would come looking.

Hell, the dog could probably track her down here to the barn. Maybe even find her here in the hayloft. The trick was to listen for signs of a search. Maybe he would call the cops right from the Pentagon. Somebody would find her. Had to find her. Before whoever did this came back. So keep your wits about you; be ready to make noise when you hear someone in the barn.

Except there was cotton in her ears, and tape over the cotton. You’renot going to hear anything!

Despite all her efforts at selfcontrol, she lunged against the bag and then swallowed hard, fighting again to -get her heaving chest and wildly racing heartbeat under control as the weight on her breasts shifted, increased again, ever so slightly. Stop it. Stop it! One thing at a time. Stabilize. Control. Breathe-once, and then hold it. Again, and hold it.

Concentrate on feeling the presence of someone in the barn.

Train was coming. Breathe, and hold it.

By 10:30, Train said to hell with it. He made a diskette copy of the database report to take home and then cleared his screen. He told the yeoman that he was going out to Commander Lawrence’s house to see why she hadn’t shown up for work. The yeoman, curious, asked if he should alert the EA. Train said no, not until he called back in. It could be just a simple niisconnection. He left the number of his car phone with the yeoman in case Karen showed up, with instructions to call him at once. , It was almost 11:30 when he pulled into the driveway and stopped in front of the house. The first thing he saw was Harry coming down the front walk, head down, as if the old dog were apologizing for something.

The second thing he saw and heard was Gutter jumping up on the inside of the front door. Uh-oh, he thought. He headed for the house and let himself in. Gutter was all over him, frantically trying to tell him something. Train called Karen’s name, then did a fast recon of the house. Her uniform was laid out on the bed, but the house was empty. He stepped outside onto the front porch and called her name again-twice. No responses Gutter wanted to go; he was dancing around in a circle and whimpering at him.

“Okay, dog, go find her!” he ordered, and the dog took off down the path between those big hedges, toward the barn.

He stopped to think. When you find a fire, first call the fire department; then do something. He went back inside the living room and picked up the phone to dial 911. He identified himself as a federal agent, gave his name and badge number, Karen’s address, and requested the assistance of a Fairfax County patrol car to secure the scene of a possible abduction. Then he went outside and headed down toward the barn.

The dog was running up and down the aisleway when he got there, and he called her name again, but there was no reply. Gutter couldn’t seem to fix any one spot. She must have come down here to see the horses or something, he thought. But then what? Had she been kidnapped? The dog sniffing hard at a doorway. Train looked at the door wished he had a gun. The Glock was in his car. “That’s’t carrying,” Johnson had said.

Got that right. He thought about going back for it, but then he reached for the door handle. It was unlocked. He snatched it open. A hay room.

Nothing in it but eight or nine bales of hay. Gutter went in and circled the room, then came right back out, obviously defeated. He ran up and down the aisleway again, then back outside. Train looked around the hay room again, but that’s all it was: a hay room. He closed the door and followed the dog back outside. Sure as hell, she’s been kidnapped, he thought.

Gutter ran around sofffe more, even going partway out into one of the fields. The horses were visible at the other end of the field. Three of them, so she wasn’t out for a ride.

Damn. He called in the dog and went back to the house, stopping to get his notebook out of the car. He got Mcnair’s phone number and called it from the car phone. Mcnair was not available. He left a message with the Homicide Section’s secretary that Commander Lawrence might have been abducted and that a police unit was inbound. He hung up and heard the phone in the house ringing. He ran to beat the voice mail and just made it. It was the 911 operator, verifying his original call and asking him to remain on the scene until the first patrol units responded. He told them he would, then hung up.

He took the dog out on the front porch and paused to think. Cars. Check to see that the cars are here. Swearing at himself for not checking this first, he walked over to the garage, but both doors were down and he did not have a remote opener. He got down on his hands and knees and looked through the crack at the bottom of the doors. Both cars were in place.

Satisfied that he had done all he could for the moment, he went to sit in the Suburban, after putting Gutter into the back compartment.

The first police car arrived five minutes later, and two large cops got out. Train got out of his car, showed his NIS identification, and gave them a brief outline of the events of two nights ago, telling them that he had last seen Commander Lawrence the previous evening and that he had left his dog to protect her, having given her instructions not to go anywhere without the dog. She should have gone to work at the Pentagon this morning but had not shown up. Now she was missing, and both of her cars were in the garage.

He also told them that there was a homicide investigation in progress and that, Commander Lawrence’s disappearance might be related to that.

One cop asked for the name of the homicide investigator, then got on the radio.

A second patrol car showed up with a patrol supervisor, and Train went down to tell him the same story. The first cop came back and asked him if he had been in die house since returning from the Pentagon, and if so, where he had been and what he had touched. Train told him, and the cop took it all down in his notebook while the other officers stood around admiring Gutter through the windows of the Suburban. Gutter admired them back.

“If you’re pretty sure she’s not in the house, we’re going to wait for the CSU to come out,” the first cop told Train.

“I’ve put in a call to get Detective Mcnair out here’. Appreciate your waiting around until he shows up.”

“No problem,” Train replied, getting back into his car.

The cops spread out and started a careful walking tour of the immediate grounds. Train got on his car phone and called the office.

“Commander Laorence show up?” he asked the yeoman.

The answer was no. He asked if there were any messages.

Another no. He then called the JAG front office and asked for Captain Mccarty. The EA was in a meeting. He left a message for the EA to call Mr. von Rensel’s car phone voice mail for a memo, told the yeoman it was important, and left her a three-digit entry code. He hung up and then put a memo message into a mailbox of his mobile system about Karen being missing; then he assigned it the entry code he had left with Mccarty. He sat back to wait for Mcnair, but he got tired of that after about a minute and got out to join the cops.

The CSU showed up forty minutes later, and Mcnair drove in behind them in a department car. He checked in with the patrol cops, sent the CSU into the house, and then walked over to Train.

“So what’s this about a night visitor?” he asked, his tone implying that he should have been told about thus.

Train gave him a debrief, watching Mcnair’s face cloud as he did so. “We were going to call you guys this morning,” Train said lmnely. Now he didn’t dare tell Mcnair about their little meeting with Jack’ Sherman.

Mcnair was giving him the fish eye as he, made some notes. “And you left that big Doberman in the house last night before you took off9”

Train didn’t care for the term took off, but he understood that Mcnair was controlling his temper. “Yes,” he replied.

“I brought the dog out first thing yesterday morning, because she was going to stay home.’The dog was m the house when I got here, and there were no signs of a struggle or problem in the house. I’m guessing she went out of the house on her own steam and left the dog behind. I can’t explain why she didn’t take the dog with her.”

Mcnair nodded, then looked over at the barn, whose roof was visible over the hedge passage. “You check down fitwre?”

“Yes. I took Gutter, or, radwr, he took nw. No joy.

Again, no signs of trouble down dwe, either. Once I called nine-one-one, I considered the whole place a scene, so I got back in my car.”

Mcnair nodded again and scratched some more in his notebook. Train was restless just standing there, but he knew the cops would be woriang their standard procedures, and procedures always took Um. Then one of the cnm-scene techs came to the front door and called to Mcnair. Train followed along. They went mm the house, and the tech took them to the kitchen, where the telephone had been dismantled.

“This thing’s got a bug and a transceiver in it,” he announced.

“Meaning?” Mcnair said.

“Meaning someone could eavesdrop remotely, in and out, and also call in, probably make her phone ring, even talk to her, all without coming through the central office. Pretty slick toys.”

“Those are spook toys,” Train muttered under his breath.

Mcnair looked at him. “And which spooks might those be?”

Train shrugged, and Mcnair looked faintly disappointed.

“Now don’t go getting all federal on me, von Rensel,” he . “I know we’re all hicks in the sticks out here, but said.

we’re coming right along . in the technology department.

Most of us have running water and everything.”

“Sorry,” Train said. “I didn’t mean to patronize. I guess You and I need to talk. There’s a new dimension to this case, something I learned yesterday.”

“Yesterday. How timely,” Mcnair said. He told the tech to check out the rest of the phones and also to access the voice-mail system’s operator to see if Commander Lawrence had any messages that might explain her disappearance. A second tech reported no signs of violence or misplaced bodily fluids in the house after a first look. As Mcnair walked Train out to the front porch, another car -pulled into the driveway and Lieutenant Bettino, Mcnair’s boss, got out.

He joined them on the front porch, where they sat down in chairs. Mcnair gave his lieutenant a quick synopsis of where they stood. Bettino took it in, giving Train an occasional glance. “Mr. von Rensel here was just telling me that there’s a-what’d you call it?”A new dimension to this case.’ It

“A new dimension., That G-man talk?” Bettino said.

Train squirmed a little bit. The cops had every right to be upset.

Except that until Karen went missing, none of what he had learned Yesterday really involved the cops–especially the news, that Galantz might be a sweeper. He wasn’t even sure the local cops Ought to know that there were such things as sweepers. So he told them that the word in certain quarters was that Galantz was indeed real, and that he nfight have clandestine intelligence service connections; that there might be a larger problem than the two homicides; that the chances of laying hands on Galantz might be slim to none; and that, in a related development, Admiral Sherman might be training for Olympic-level plank walking.

“Might, might, might,” Mcnair chanted. “Tonto’s beginning to wonder if the Lone Ranger here might be blowing just a wee bit of smoke.” But surprisingly, Bettino waved Mcnair off. “Okay,” he said. “What you’re telling us computes, because we got a love note this morning, passed down through a political channel who shall remain nameless. But the message was that we might want to proceed very carefully and very slowly—emphasis on the slowly-with the investigation of the Walsh and Schmidt deaths.”

It was Train’s turn to be surprised. Bettino smiled knowingly. “So,”

Train asked, “are you still looking at Sherman for those?”

Bettino shook his head. “We Put Admiral Sherman with some of our audit people, who gave him what the IRS calls a ‘fiscal reality check.’ Basically, he’s clean. Absent any new connections being made with the murders, he’s off the list.”

Train thought about what young Jack Sherman had said yesterday. But they just said Sherman was off the list. So’ should he tell them? Karen had made a big deal about not filling in the cops until they, the Navy side, could make sense out of Jack’s cryptic remark. But now Karen was missing. He didn’t know what to do, so he just nodded.

“Those gizmos on her phone in there make me worry and wonder,” Mcnair said. “And they also make me want to pay attention to political advice coming from on high.”

“That’s not your job,” the lieutenant said, surprising Train again.

“That’s my job. Look, von Rensel, as far as the Homicide Section is concerned, we are still investigating two unexplained deaths. We don’t have any suspects-yet.”

Mcnair opened his mouth as if to say something, but he thought better of it when he saw that Bettino was not finished. “We appreciate your filling us in on the military aspects of this case. The two dead people so far have been close to this Admiral Sherman. I’m very concerned that Miss, uh, Commander Lawrence is now missing. Any ideas?”

At that moment, the crime-scene tech from the kitchen stuck his head out the front door and saved Train from having to answer.

“Mcnair? There was voice mail. Someone named Sally called and asked Miss. Lawrence to feed the horses. That was early this morning. Then -a couple of messages from a guy called-what was it, Train? Yeah. Those were between nine and ten this morning.”

The lieutenant stood up. “Thanks, Jerry. Okay, let’s go play Farmer Brown.” He looked over across the yard. “I’m a city boy. That’s a barn, right?”

Captain Mccarty knocked once and went into Admiral Carpenter’s office.

His face was grim, causing the admiral to put down a briefing folder and say, “Now what?”

“Von Rensel left me a message via his mobile voice mail.

Karen Lawrence has gone missing.”

“Missing? What the hell’s that mean?”

“That’s all I have. He said he went out there this morning after she failed to show up for work. Said he left one of his Dobermans with her, and that the dog was in the house and she wasn’t. Her cars are there; cops are there.”

“Goddamn it,” Carpenter said softly, turning in his chair to get up. He walked over to one of the windows and stared at nothing.

“I made a call,,, Mccarty said- “To Sherman’s office.

To see if he might know something.”

“And he wasn’t there, was he?, I Mccarty, surprised, looked up. “They said he was on leave. Have they made a decision? Is that what’s happened?”

Carpenter turned around. “Sort of. He’s chairing a selection board.

Short notice. The deputy in OP-32 has been made ‘acting.’ “I see,”

Mccarty said, the obvious question lingering in the air between them.

“Okay, it was my idea,” Carpenter said. “Reduces his profile while our guys and the cops work the problem. Von Rensel’s on it, presumably with the cops and not in spite of them. That’s as good a resource as we can have in the game right now. Put a call into Bupers. Talk to Sherman and see if he knows where Karen is. I’m going to call the DNI.”

Mccarty did not understand. “The DNI?”

“Yeah. I need him to drop a message down a certain hole.

Say that there had better not be any spook fingerprints on what’s happened to Karen Lawrence. Because if there are, I’ll go to the Washington Post and give them the interview of the year.”

Mccarty closed his notebook. “Does von Rensel know that this Galantz individual may have connections to those people?”

“Not from me. But I would guess he has his own sources on the matter.

Make sure he checks in when he has something. Get in touch with Sherman.

See what he knows, if anything. I think I may have been wrong about what’s going on here… “

Mccarty hesitated, as if waiting for the admiral to explain that last comment. When nothing was forthcoming, he simply said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and left the room. When he had gone, Carpenter sat down at his desk and thought about this new development. He hadn’t been quite honest with Mccarty just then. On the other hand, he’d been hoping von Rensel might find or at least localize this Galantz individual, which would go a long way to solving his other problem.

He decided not to call the DNI. He picked up the phone to call Kensington instead. He dreaded doing it. The DNI’s description of what a sweeper did was sticking in his throat like a bone.

Karen awoke with a start. She hadn’t realized that she’d gone to sleep.

Her throat was very dry, and her right knee hurt where there was excess weight on the bag. The bag.

She felt a flare of terror and immediately stifled it. She tried to swallow, but it hurt. She tried her voice, managing only a croak. She wondered what time it was and how long she had been buried. Bad word, that. Tied up. That was better.

The image of being buried alive was more than she could cope with. He’ll be back, she assured herself. This was done for a reason. He’ll be back.

She wondered where Train was.

She concentrated on controlling her breathing, and on listening. But all she could hear was the thudding of her own heart.

The lieutenant, Mcnair, three of the ‘patrol officers, and Train searched the entire Lawrence property, including the barn, the yard, and the surrounding paddocks before deciding that she wasn’t there. One of the patrol cops rode horses, and he showed them that someone had done the morning feeding and then cleaned up. The horses were all sticking to the far ends of the fields because of all the strange humans. It was nearly 5:30 when they gave it up and gathered on the path leading up toward the house. “Somebody just snatched her up,” opined one of the patrol cops. “Up by the house. Probably when she came back from the barn.

Threw her in a car and went down the road and gone. Too bad she left that Dobo6 in the house.”

“That’s a great-looking dog,” Mcnair said to Train.

“Lennne ask you something. You running a proforma investigation for the NIS, or are you sort of freelancing?”

Train looked at him for a moment, wondering where this had come from.

“Freelancing, after a fashion,” he said.

“I’m under tasking, but not from NIS. From Admiral Carpenter, that admiral you met the-“

Mcnair nodded. “Yeah, the JAG. Okay. I do a little freelancing myself, like when I need another Cadillac or something. So I know about the elasticity of rules. Now, about that spook shit, and all those ‘mights’-“

“I’m going to go back to Fort Fumble and pull on that string,” Train said.

Mcnair gave him a blank took. “Fort Fumble?”

“The Pentagon.”

Mcnair flashed a grin, but then his face sobered. “We’ll do the standard deal,” he said. “A neighborhood canvass.

See if anyone heard or saw anything. Not likely, this area, all these estates, but who knows? And we’ll put a tap on her phone, record who calls in.” He looked over to where Lieutenant Bettino was standing, speaking on a cellular phone. “And, of course, if all else fails, we might have to bring in Fart, Barf, and Itch, eventually.”

“Um,” Train said.

“Um what?”

“There’s a remote’possibility that the FBI may already be working the edges of this case.”

Mcnair thought about that for a moment, then looked up at Train. “Don’t tell me. We’re in the middle of some kind of turf fight between the housekeepers and the gatekeepers?”

Train shrugged. This guy didn’t miss much. “My main concern right now. is that somebody has Karen Lawrence,” he answered.

“This lady mean something to you personally?” Mcnair asked.. I Train re Train gave him a circumspect look. “Yeah, plied, trying to be very careful. “Not something she’s aware of, but yeah, I want to find her.

Alive, and soon. And I’m willing to break some rules and/or bones if that’s what it takes.”

Mcnair looked over towed his lieutenant again. The lieutenant was protesting something, waving his free hand in the air. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind,” Mcnair said softly.

“But you keep me in mind, you hear things. I’m just a lowly homicide dick, okay? Personally,-l don’t give a rat’s ass if there’s some kinda heavy-side layer developing on this case.

I want to know the who and the how of what happened to Walsh and Schmidt, even if we locals do end up getting shut down here.”

He was looking straight at Train, his body language sending a pretty clear signal. Train said he understood. As Mcnair walked away, Train checked that Gutter was still in the back of the car. He waved to Mcnair, who was now talking to Lieutenant Bettino, got in, and backed up to turn the big vehicle around. He drove past the patrol cop who was watching the front gate, then headed for the village of Great Falls, where he parked in the shopping center parking lot. Once parked, he got on the car phone and called the office. One message-from Mccarty: “Check in when you have something to report. The admiral is very upset.”

Train thought about that. I’ll just bet he is. The admiral had charged him with keeping Karen safe. Now she was missing. He put a call into Captain Mccarty. The yeoman said that the EA was in a meeting with the admiral but that he’d left a message for Mr. von Rensel in case he called.

“He said to read it to you, sir. Verbatim.”

“Shoot.”

““Orders from JAG. Back out of the Sherman matter.

Focus on the Lawrence problem exclusively until you receive further orders.’ “Say it again, please.”

The yeoman read it back to him. “That’s all of it, sir.

Uh, the EA wanted to know that you understood.”

“Okay, reply as follows-. Orders understood. Will com. I ply”

Movement. Karen felt movement in the haystack. Her heart quickened. Had the police found her? Or was this her abductor coming back? She fought down the urge to thrash or struggle. Go limp, she commanded her body. Go limp and maybe Definite movement. The weight on her chest eased, and then the nearest bales were being removed. One at a time, not the urgent scrabbling of rescuer’s hands.

Damn. Wrong finders.

A bale was lifted off the edge of her face. Now the one on her hips.

Then the one across her thighs. Breathe. Control. In. Hold it. Out, slowly.

And then all the weights were off. She could feel the solid blocks of hay all around her, as if she were lying in a shallow grave in the middle of the haystack. The image spiked her fear, but she gritted her teeth and clamped down on it.

Control. She could feel but not hear. It was maddening.

Total helplessness.

Then there were hands, strong hands, under her shoulders and at her feet, lifting her out of the grave-no, the cavity in the haystack. Get that word grave out of Your mind. If they were going to kill you, they could have done it long ago. They. Had to be two of them. But they’re not going to just kill you. They could have done that by simply leaving you there, trussed, taped, utterly helpless in a rubber bag, and closing the zipper.

Control. Breathe. In. Out.

She felt herself being lifted and then carried, and she tried to visualize where they were in the hayloft. There had been at least four hundred bales of hay up there the last time she had dropped hay into the service room. About twenty square feet of bare floor around the trapdoor, the rest covered in piled bales. Were they going to drop her?

The trapdoor was the only way out of the hayloft, not counting the conveyor used to load the hay up into the loft-Then suddenly she was vertical, the strong hands letting go of her shoulders and holding what had to be straps on the bag, her feet no longer supported, but jammed down into the bottom of the bag by her own weight. She tensed, waiting to be dropped, but no, she was being lowered, bumping her back along the rungs of the ladder that came up through the trapdoor. She felt her feet hit the concrete of the ground floor, and then she was falling, sideways, into a heap on the floor. She grunted in pain as her left hip hit the cold concrete, but at the last instant, she remembered to go limp, protecting her head and shoulder.

She lay on the floor, her thoughts whirling. They were taking her somewhere, but where? And how? Was there a car pulled into the aisleway of the barn? What time was it?

Was it dark? Then, partially lifted by those shoulder straps, she was being dragged across the floor, her calves bouncing hard against the doodamb of the hay service room. Out of the service room and into the aisleway. Then she was dropped again, and this time she did bang her head.

Silence. Damn them for putting cotton in her ears and then taping it.

She was in nearly total sensory deprivation.

Eyes, ears, and mouth taped off, hands and feet immobilized. All the movement had produced a sudden, desperate need to urinate. How long had she been in the bag? What time was it now? What were they going to do with her?

Panic rising again. Control. Breathe. No point in struggling.

Hold your strength in reserve. Maybe they’ll free you, and then, then you can-what? One level of her mind was spinning out images of her coming out of the bag and surprising them, lashing out, hitting someone and then running away.

But below that level, her cooler subconscious mind knew that was all a pipe dream. She would come out of the bag with her joints stiff and rubbery and her muscles weak and spastic. Then they picked her up again, and she was being carried, carried like … well, a body. She went limp, waiting to be dropped again.

Train decided to drive back to Karen’s house after his call to the Pentagon. Twenty minutes later, he changed his mind and pulled into the rear parking lot of the French restaurant that Karen liked at the end of Springvale. There was a wall of Dumpster’s at the far end of the lot.

He parked near them to hide from any passing cops. He assumed the cops would be gone by now, but it was better to be safe. It was full dark as he shut down, and he waited to get his night vision adjusted.

He pulled a canvas satchel out from behind the driver’s seat and opened it. He shucked his coat and tie, then pulled on a large olive drab Marine Corps woolly pully sweater.

He exchanged his office dress shoes for a pair of well-worn -topped hiking boots. The suit pahts would just have to’t their chances.

Now for the good stuff. He double-clicked on the switch of the electric door lock and a panel toward the bottom Of the left-front door edged open. He removed a bolstered black Glock pistol and a four-inch sheath knife from the compartment in the door. He attached the sheath knife to the top of his right ankle. He eased the pistol out of its thin canvas holster and checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber. Then he stuffed the bolstered automatic into his waistband, at the small of his back, snapping a small canvas flap through a belt loop and covering the rig with the sweater. Not as good as a shoulder holster, but certainly along for the ride.

He pulled a small Maglite from the glove compartment and then stopped to think. Gloves, and something to cover his chrome dome. He fished around in the bag and then rooted in the side pockets of the front doors before finding a pair of black leather gloves and a black knit Navy watch head. cap. He pulled the cap over his He got out of the car, released Gutter from the back compartment, told him to heel, then broke into a casual jog through the big oaks surrounding the back of the parking lot and reached the verge of Beach Mill Road. There was no sidewalk, but most of the traffic was coming from behind him, homeward-bound, so he only occasionally had to leap out of the way of a car coming toward him. He actually passed another jogger going the other way. The guy was dressed out in a Day-Glo orange vest and was looking nervously at the big Doberman trotting along beside the even bigger man in the dark sweater and watch cap. Train wondered what warp factor the jogger could achieve if he turned around and started to follow him. He pressed on. It wasn’t far from here.

She was lowered, not dropped. But not into a car. What was it? They were turning her on her side and then bending her in the middle, forcing her into something, bending her trussed legs back toward her hips in an accordion fold. She couldn’t figure out what they were putting her in until suddenly she was jerked up into a slant, head up and her knees wedged down against the sides of something. The cart, the big Garden Way cart that sat in the aisle. They had dumped her into the cart and now she was rolling. She could feel the bumping through the bottom of the cart, almost hear the rumble of the wheels. Then a big bump. They had to be outside now, rolling over the rougher ground. But where?

Where were they taking her? It felt as if they were hurrying.

When Train passed Karen’s driveway, the gates were closed and appeared to be chained. There was a strip of yellow crime-scene tape fluttering behind the gates. He jogged on past for about two hundred yards, and then, pausing for a break in the intermittent stream of cars, trotted across the road and climbed over the pasture fence. The Dobe hesitated at the fence for an instant, but when Train had the top strand of barbed wire held down, he snapped his fingers and Gutter cleared the fence in a single smooth bound. Train moved away from the road for about twenty yards and then hunkered down in the dewy grass to get his eyes further adjusted. The dog sat down next to him and waited.

The’night air was clear, but there was no moon yet. The trees bordering the paddocks looked like solid walls in the darkness. He tried to remember the layout of Karen’s place.

She had described it as a rectangle, divided roughly into four quarters.

Three of the quarters were pastures, and the fourth, nearest to Beach Mill Road, contained the house and its immediate grounds. He remembered that there was a state park that bordered the west banks of the river all the way down to the Great Falls cataracts. He could see the house clearly across the pasture because the cops had left the external lights on over the garage.

Train stood up then and started across the field toward the barn. The last phone message on her voice mail before his calls had been about feeding the horses. So if she had been snatched anywhere, it had been down at that barn, which, of course, was a great place to do it-out of sight of the road, so a car could be positioned in or near the barn.

Grab her, truss her, into the car, and then drive out easy as you please.

Damn, I wish you’d taken Gutter, he thought. They might have shot the dog, whoever this was, but there would have been one hell of a ruckus, and she might have made a run for it. Karen was certainly fit enough to sprint her way out of a problem if she had some warning. He closed in on the barn, once again stopping to hunker down in the grass, this time alongside the gate leading into the barn enclosure. The headlights out on the road were not so distracting in here, and he realized he could actually see better in the darkness.

The barn was entirely dark. The aisleway was a black rectangular mouth in the side of the building. Not going to just amble on in there, he thought. He sent Gutter instead.

The dog went into the aisleway like a torpedo, loping all the way through, and then came straight back to Train.

Okay, no humans waiting in ambush. He went in, with the dog at his heel, and quickly made a flashlight survey of the’ barn. The door to the tack room was closed and locked, as was the feed roomi The stalls were all empty, and the only other door led to that small hay room. As he was looking in there, Gutter made a noise. Train turned around to find Gutter circling the area around the door to the small hay room, sniffing hard at the concrete. He snapped on the Maglite. There were bits of hay on the floor. That was new.

“Whatcha got, dog? Find it, Gutter,” he called, encouraging whatever the dog was up to. Gutter gave a small yip and then trotted out of the barn, nose down, ears up and forward. Train hustled along behind him. The dog had a scent, but of what? Karen? He mentally kicked himself for not bringing the dog back down to the barn after his initial look. He should have done it right, given him a piece of Karen’s clothing and then turned him loose, crime scene or no crime scene. Dobes weren’t famous as scent hounds, but a dog’s nose beat the hell out of a bunch of cops tramping around in the weeds. The thought that Karen may have been hidden there all day gave him a cold feeling as the dog led him straight out from the barn into the third pastures Gutter hesitated at the twelve-foot-wide farm gate, circling anxiously until Train found the chain and opened it up. Gutter shot through, prompting him to rein in the. dog with a sharp command to walk. Train’s night vision was very well adapted by now, but it was still pitch-dark, and he was going away from houses and civilization, down toward the dark band of deep woods bordering the river. Not an area he wanted to run toward, especially if the dog was following someone.

Karen knew by the feel of the ground rolling beneath the cart where she was-or rather, where she was being taken.

The path was leading downhill, first across the relatively smooth turf of the back paddock, now along the much harder, rockier path that led into the woods along the river. She had walked and ridden along this path a thousand times, and she could almost plot her position as the cart bumped and banged over familiar ruts and rain runoff channels. It was about a third of a mile from the edge of her back paddock to the banks of the Pbtomeic. She knew the cart would be making some noise, but she could hear nothing, only feel.

She was wedged even tighter into the cart now that it was tilting downhill. Now that they were taking her somewhere, anywhere, the dreaded constrictions of claustrophobia had retreated, for the moment anyway.

Why the river? Were they just going to dump the bag into the current?

From the banks of the river adjoining her place, it was about a mile downstream to the first of the cataracts for which her neighborhood was named, and less than that to the reservoir diversion dam. The river would be in full spate, especially now with the spring snowmelts from the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. She imagined that she could feel it already, although she knew that wasn’t possible, and she certainly could not hear it. There was a rotor below the reservoir dam, where drowning victims’ bodies were often trapped for months.

That’s a feature a sweeper would like, she thought, and then squeezed that thought out of her mind.

She winced as the cart hit a bad pothole, banging her head through the rubber bag. Then she realized they had stopped suddenly, as if to listen for something. She jumped as hands grabbed both ends of her body and hauled her out of the cart.

Train followed the dog into the dark woods, stumbling along a rocky, hard-packed path through the forest. The footing was treacherous, with lots of small round rocks and six-inchdeep rain gullies. The woods were pervaded by the muddy smell of the big river somewhere down the hillside in the darkness. He gave a soft command to call the dog back to him, then proceeded more carefully. It was even darker here in the woods, although he could differentiate between the cleared area of the path, about six feet wide, and the dense tangle of new vegetation on either side. At one point, he stopped to listen, but he heard only the sounds of small animals or birds disturbing the undergrowth.

He got down on one knee, causing the dog to close in on him to see what he’d found. Shielding the Maglite with his closed fist, he twisted a red lens into place and then switched it on. He traversed the path with a dime-sized pinpoint of light, looking for fresh tracks or any other sign of recent human passage. At first, he saw nothing, but then in a soft patch of mud, he discovered the tread marks of what looked like a bicycle tire. A bicycle? The track was fresh, with little granules of red clay still balanced delicately along the edges of the depression caused by the tire. A bicycle-that would be a rough-ass ride down this path. Then he realized he was looking at the left side of the path. He traversed the light carefully across the path, finding a second tire mark three feet away. Not a bicycle. A cart or wagon of some kind.

And recently, very recently. He switched off the light and closed his eyes to readjust his night vision.

The dog growled then, low but distinctively. Train opened his eyes to see the dog leaning forward, looking down the path. A cart, heavily loaded, too, to make such a deep impression in this hard-packed dirt.

He hadn’t looked for any tracks when he followed the dog out, trusting in Gutter’s nose to follow whatever had caught his attention in the barn.

His mind conjured up an impression of a guy or a couple of guys grabbing Karen, tying her up, and then taking her through the woods to-what? Why go down to the river?

To a boat, dummy. Get her in a boat and take her either way, up or down the river, or even over to Maryland. The cops had assumed a vehicle.

They’d be watching the roads.

Nobody would be watching the river.

He got up, put away the flashlight, and hauled out the Glock. Now what?

They could be just ahead, or already down on the banks of the river.

Should he run down there, in the darkness? Yell at them? Dumb move. Send the dog.

Let the dog get ahead of you; then get down there.

“Gutter!” he called softly, and the dog looked expectantly at him, sensing his master’s building adrenaline. Train gestured down the hill.

“Schnell! Schnell!”

The dog was gone instantly, lunging down the path and instantly out of sight. Train waited about ten seconds, then followed, not sure how far he had to go to reach the river, although he sensed that it was only a few hundred feet now as the slope began to level off. He was slipping and sliding down parts of the path, careening against tree trunks and being whipped in the face by low-hanging branches. He only faintly heard a commotion ahead of him, then the clear roar of Gutter on the attack and a man’s voice yelling, “Look out I “

Ten seconds later, he burst out of the underbrush into a small clearing on the bank of the river. Framed by a black mass of lowlying trees, the shadowy silhouettes of two human figures were outlined fifty yards upstream against a silvery expanse of rushing water, grappling with something between them. As he stopped short, he realized that the something had to be Gutter. The dog simultaneously yelped in pain, and then there was a metallic clank from the riverbank, a sound Train recognized as that of a boat sliding over some rocks. He raised the Glock way above his head and fired two rounds into the air, making his own ears ring.

He ducked behind a tree trunk to take stock, not knowing if Karen was up there or not, then realizing. he had to get closer. At that instant, an outboard motor lit off, and then there was a loud splash.

He started running through the underbrush along the water’s edge, just in time to see a small boat careening upstream, with either one or two dark figures crouching low.

He aimed the Glock out over the water, but he held back as the sound of the engine dwindled. What if they were just a couple of fishermen who had been terrorized by a large dog and’s , ome nut shooting at them? And where the hell was Karen? In the boat? He swore out loud in frustration.

Then Gutter barked from the edge of the riverbank and limped over to Train on three legs. Train put the Glock back and reached for the dog, but Gutter grabbed the wrist of his sweater instead and pulled back, a gentle but firm grab Come here. Come this way. Now. Train stumbled forward into the low rocks and fallen tree trunks along the riverbank, but Gutter kept pulling, down to the edge, backing into the water. Train pulled back. n he looked out onto the river and What is it, dog?” Then he caught a glimpse of something in the river toward shore in the current, sweeping gracefully downstream toward the cataracts.

Karen heard the two shots. She still did not know where she was or what they were doing with the bag, but the two Pops in quick succession did penetrate through the bag and the cotton in her ears. The zipper had come open enough to expose her face down past her chin. She could smell the cold, wet air of the river. They had been moving the bag from the cart, seeming to take some care doing it, dragging I its lower end across some rocks, when something large and alive caromed off the side of the bag.

After that, everything had happened very fast. There was some kind of intense struggle practically on top of her, and she tried to roll over in the bag to protect herself. Something heavy and squirming fell on the top half of the bag, making her ears ring. She would have sworn she heard a growl or a bark. Was it some kind of animal? A dog? Gutter?

Whatever it was, her captors had their hands full in a fight right on top of the bag. Then she thought she heard the animal yelp in pain, and everything was still for about two seconds.

Then she was being dragged again, this time with no pretense of care.

The bag was twisted around roughly, and then there was an odd feeling that she was falling. She tensed her body for a landing, but the sensation was wrong, all wrong. She was failing, and then there was a shock of cold water on her face. She was bounding upward again, and then she knew, with a cold fist of fear squeezing her heart, that she was in the river-still in the body bag, in the river. She felt the sudden cold along her back, and this time she struggled in earnest, giving way to her panic, thrashing and pulling against the tape, breath hissing through the holes in the tape, eyes streaming behind the gauze taped across her eyes.

The bag just rolled indifferently in the water, submerging her face again for an instant, and then the current had her.

The dog pulled once more on Train’s wrist, then let go and whirled out into the water. But the leg injury quickly brought him floundering back into the shallows. Train got the picture: The dog wanted that thing that was floating down the river. But what the hell was it? He hurried downstream along the bank, pushing his way through beached snags, muddy underbrush, embedded beer cans, and wet rocks. The main current was visible fifty feet offshore, creating swirls over submerged rocks and raising a gray bow wave along a stranded tree trunk. He realized he was losing ground in his attempts to keep up with whatever that was, but the dog persisted, splashing through the shallows, halfswimrmng, half-leaping, trying desperately to keep up with that thing out there.

The river was a couple of hundred yards wide, with a long, low island running down the center. The Maryland shore was visible only as a darker line beyond the island.

Train finally gave up trying to get through the tangle along the shore and jumped down into the water, which shocked him with its icy grip. The bottom felt like gravel, but there were unexpected potholes, and he lurched along like a drunk, head and eyes down to see what he was stepping into, trying to keep upright while catching up with whatever was out there. The dog: Where was Gutter?

He looked up and saw Gutter out in the river now, paddling furiously toward the thing, his head bounding in and out of the water as he flailed his way out into the channel.

Train stopped, then pushed forward as he realized how fast that main channel current was. He was already twenty feet behind the action out there, but try as he might, he couldn’t go any faster, and he knew that he would never last in that cold if he tried to swim out there. To retrieve what? He still didn’t know, but he trusted the dog’s instincts.

He wished he could see the damn thing, but it was indistinct, loglike, but glistening in the silvery starlight reflecting off the channel currents. The rushing noise of the river drowned out his own breathing as he swatted away overhanging branches, trying to keep up while not stepping into the potholes in the gravel shelf that ran along the bank.

As he pushed through the tendrils of a leaning willow tree, he thought he heard a distant engine sound, but he ignored it, keeping his eyes on the dog.

Gutter was catching up with the thing, but the cold water was also catching up with the dog. He kept going, paddling hard, but the shiny black head was coming up out of the water less frequently. Then Train’s right foot stepped off into nothing at all and he was underwater, swimming hard to escape what felt like a small whirlpool, the black water shocking him again with its icy grip. He surfaced some twenty feet away from the bank and felt a moment of panic as he sensed the strength of the current, but then he saw Gutter’s head bound out of the water about fifty feet ahead of him, eyes white, no longer in pursuit of the thing, but swimming for survival. He thought he saw the thing hang up on the white branches of a snag.

He yelled to the dog to hang On, more to let Gutter hear the sound of his voice, and then he began to swim in earnest.

He was not going to lose Gutter. The effort of swimming was staving off the cold, although he knew that was an illusion, that the energy equation would very soon be working to kill him in this icy water. Then he heard the engine noise again, and suddenly the river’s surface was awash with light, light streaming down from above. He stopped swimming and looked up to see a helicopter flaring out above the water downstream, perhaps a hundred Yards from him. Then the helo disappeared in a cloud of its own downwash, a billow of spray that was rapidly advancing up toward him and already enveloping the struggling dog. The pilot evidently saw what was happening and lifted out of ground effect as Train swam harder, his energy galvanized by the appearance of the helo.

After sixty seconds of hard going, he drew abreast of the dog, and he finally could see what they had been pursuing.

It was a bag of some sort, rolling slowly against the snag in the current. Rubber, from the looks of it, its sides puffing out as if it had air trapped in it. He closed in on it as the helo came back, the powerful blue-white spotlight hurting his eyes as it dazzled through the cloud of spray. He collided with the submerged trunk of the snag and reached out and grabbed the bag, then reached for Gutter, who was on his last reserves of energy. To his astonishment, something inside the bag moved, and then it moved again. Then he recognized what the thing was: a god damned body bag.

n? Great God, was Karen in there?

He momentarily lost his grip on’ the dog’s collar, then launched back out into the current to retrieve the struggling animal. He had to fight like hell to pull them both back upstream to the snag. He caught a glimpse of a face at the top of the bag, but the features were missing.

Was she dead?

He ended up holding on to the dog’s collar with one hand and to one of the straps on the bag, whose buoyancy acted like a long, slippery life preserver, with the other while his body straddled the trunk of the snag.

The helo swept closer, the noise and the dazzling light almost overwhelming his ability to think. The cold had him now that he had stopped swimming, and he sensed that the dog was choking in his grasp.

He tried to change his grip on the dog and lost his hold on the bag again, going under with the sudden weight of the dog, and then both of them rotted to the surface again, just in time to collide with a submerged rock that knocked the breath right out of Train.

When he surfaced again, he was alone on one side of the -I i rock, blinded by the spotlight and gasping for breath. The helicopter, hovering just upstream of him, was invisible in the spray, but the downdraft felt like an arctic blast, turning his facial muscles to cold rubber. He peeled off the face of the rock and slipped down river, backward now, spinning as he hit another whirlpool. Then he saw the bag, with the dog at one end, clamping on with his teeth, going with him about twenty feet away. Something slapped the water near his head, and he looked up. A helmeted figure was leaning out of the helicopter, with one foot out on the skid, the other inside, a wire cable in his hand. He was trying to steer a life ring closer to Train.

Train had to decide whether to take the ring or to drag it over to the bag. He wanted to direct the helo over to the bag, but the guy would never understand. So take the ring, get up there, explain what he thought was in the bag, and then go back for the dog and the bag. He grabbed the ring as it swung by his head, thrust his fight shoulder into it and then his neck. But it was too small. He could not get it around his chest, and he was suddenly exhausted by the effort of even trying.

He pulled his right arm out of the ring and looked helplessly up at the blazing light and the silhouette of the man on the skid. This pilot is good, he thought idly, really good. He was keeping the helo right on top as they drifted down the current. Except that it looked like they were approaching something, some dark mass downstream, and he thought he could feel the current tugging at his hips and legs, getting more turbulent.

The life ring popped out of the water and zipped up to ward the bottom of the helo, where the figure on the skid did something. Then it was coming back down, slapping the water practically on top of Train’s head.

This time, it wasn’t a ring, but a Navy-style sling collar. Recalling his Marine training, and with his last reserves of strength, Train went underwater and came back up through the collar sling, both hands and head through the sling, then gripped the attachment point where the sling was mated to the cable. He was hoisted immediately upward, his feet smacking something hard in the water, another rock. As he approached the underside of the helo, he Saw the U.S. PARK POLICE painted on the belly of the aircraft. Then he was dangling next to the hatchway on the helo. He looked down and saw the bag and the dog clearly for the first time since going in the water.

Good boy, Gutter. The dog had a death grip, literally, on the end of the bag, which looked like a headless porpoise in the water. But it was still buoyant.

Then he was being hauled roughly into the cabin of the helo, the rescue wireman yelling something at him from behind the face shield of his helmet.

Train tried to answer, but his face was frozen and his lips didn’t work.

He grabbed the front of the guy’s flight suit as he felt the helo begin to lift.

“Someone in the bag!” he yelled, trying desperately to make himself heard over the noise of the helicopters engines and rotors.

“What?” the rescue man shouted back at him.

“Someone in the bag! Someone in the bag! Get the god damned bag!”

The crewman gave him a thumbs-up to signal that he understood, then pulled his lip Mike closer to his mouth to tell the pilots. Train sank down on the deck of the cabin and tried to get control of his breathing.

The helo stopped rising fifty feet above the river, the big spotlight fixed on the bag and the dog, the aircraft spinning around to stay just downstream of the bag. Too far to drop, he thought. Yeah, like you could really do anything. Have to. Have to get back down there, get a hook on that bag. Let them lift the bag.

stay in the water with the dog; then they could come for him. My God, Karen was in that body bag, he just knew it. The crewman was shaking his shoulder and bending. down.

“No way to get the bag! No exposure suit! You sure someone’s in that thing? Alive?”

“Yeah,” Train shouted back. “Put me back in. It’s a body bag. it’s got straps. Send down a hook. Get the bag, then come back for me and the dog.”

“No way, man. You can’t go back down there!” the guy yelled.

“You’re done.”

Train looked back out of the hatch. The helo was back over the bag, maybe thirty feet above it, the spotlight drifting back and forth across the bag. Gutter was still clamped on, but his eyes were closed. The water looked black. But at least there were no rapids. The guy saw him looking, figured it out, and started to reach for him. But Train was already moving, swinging out of the cabin a nd onto the skids, the downwash whipping his sodden clothes.

“Hook!” he yelled. “Gimme a hook”And then he slid off onto the skid, holding on to the cold, wet aluminum for a second before dropping into the freezing water. -He cringed as he hit, instinctively trying to pull his legs up under him, waiting for the shock of hitting a rock, but thankfully, it was deep water, but god damned cold. It felt like fire this time, painful, every inch of his skin immersed in the icy-hot grasp of the current.

Go. Swim. Move. The helo was coming lower, but there was no hook. He used a hard breaststroke to get over to the bag, then grabbed a strap.

The . lower end of the bag submerged, bobbing beneath the black surface.

He worked his way around to the end where the dog was hanging on and yelled some encouragement to him. He patted the lumpy shape in the bag, thanking God that body bags were waterproof. He thought he felt the lump move again, but there was a steel hook dropping close to the water alongside the bag. Train grabbed it, felt the wallop of a static shock discharging through his elbow into the water, and then the hook was yanked out of his hand as the helo lifted for some reason. Train swore, but then the hook was back as the crewman once again swung out on the skids, now only fifteen feet above the river, and worked the rescue hoist. Train dragged the hook back along the bag and tried to snap the hook onto a strap, but his hands weren’t working. He stared at the dog’s face, its eyes shut, its teeth gleaming white against the glistening black rubber. His own brain numbed by the cold, he tried to figure out what to do next. Then the hook was yanked again and he refocused, and with a huge effort, he pushed the moused hook over the heavy strap. He raised his right hand and gestured to lift. He was tempted to hold on to the bag as the wire tightened, but he didn’t know how strong the cable was or whether he even could hold on. But the dog could. Train grinned lopsidedly as he saw that Gutter, eyes slitted open now, wasn’t going to let go of that god damned bag for anything.

And then he was alone in the river as the helo pilot maneuvered to keep the aircraft stable against the sudden weight on one side. The spotlight moved sideways, and Train relaxed, not so cold now, letting the current just carry him, no longer having to struggle quite so hard. He looked out across the water and realized he was way out in the middle of the river, the black banks on either side’ several hundred feet away. The helo was stationary over the river as they worked the lift, and his view became clearer as he sailed downstream. He watched the bag, now dangling lengthwise, with the unlikely shape of the big dog holding on with its teeth near the hook, lift up to the cabin hatch and then disappear into the cabin. The helo moved even farther away and up as the crewman and the pilot worked to redistribute the load inside, which was when Train felt something, a deep, rumbling vibration behind hi.-n. He made a lazy turn in the water, frustratingly slowly, his coldnumbed senses resisting his efforts to bring them back to life, and looked downstream.

So,-nething wrong with the. river. A near horizon, a line of darkness visible against a curtain of silver spray that seemed to span the main channel, a line that was maybe four hundred yards away, and W preaching.

He tried to think. Why was there a line in the water? He couldn’t understand it. And then he did.

Then the helo was coming back, its roaring rotor noise and blazing spotlight coming in fast, the cable already back down in the water, with the horse collar skipping wildly across the water like a game fish on the hook. The pilot flared the aircraft out right overhead, perfectly positioned, the collar actually batting Train in the head a couple of times before he sluggishly reached for it. But he didn’t put it on.

What was that damned line? He’d just figured it out and now he’d forgotten. He turned around in the water again, looking downstream for the black line. A moment ago, he’d had it, knew what the line was all about. But he couldn’t think, all this god damned noise, that bright fight; he couldn’t see it, but he could feel something in the water, a different feel, a drumming against his hips and legs that seemed to be in perfect sync with the drumming of his helicopter, his own personal helicopter. Not cold anymore, really. This water’s not so bad; it’s just so-what? So wet, that’s what it was, wet, yeah. He laughed, but no sound came out, not with all that damned noise above him. He still held on to the collar. Collar. The drumming feeling was now beginning to overcome the helo noise, and the water was moving faster. He could feel it, a swiftness and a strengthening grip, an embrace as it hurried, hurried-where? Toward the falls.

Yeah, that was it.

The falls. That black line. The collar jerked in his hands.

Put the damn collar on. Why? Hands don’t work. This water’s not so bad, not so cold. The rumbling was shaking him now, the air different, the spray cloud from the helo above him going somewhere else now, the spotlight more intense.

Put the collar on. You’re close. Really goddamned close.

Put the collar on. Might be interesting, see what happens.

Then amazingly, he felt his boots dragging on the bottom.

What the hell? Supposed to be deep out here in the middle.

His upper body was being clutched upright by the rushing current, and then he actually heard the throaty roar of falling water. Shocked finally into action, he thrust his head and arms through the collar just as he felt his feet banging up against the lip of the falls. He nearly popped out of the collar with the shock of lift. His shoulder sockets screamed with pain as the winch locked and the helo rose off the river.

Fold your arms, he remembered, now on the verge of passing out. Fold your arms under the collar. Then he felt his shoulder bang up against the edge of the skid and a strong, grappling arm was reaching under his sweater for his belt, and then he was sprawling across the cabin floor, sliding along the length of a slippery, wet bag and jointly into the arms of Karen Lawrence and a very excited Doberman. See, he tried to tell them as he passed out, that wasn’t so bad.

It was after eleven when the docs were finished with him and Mcnair was allowed into the hospital room. The Park Police helo had flown them both to the Bethesda Naval Medical Center up on Wisconsin Avenue after finding out they were Navy. Train had tried to talk to Karen before she was whisked off to another room in the ER, but he really hadn’t been operating all that well himself. Mcnair’s face was a surprisingly welcome sight.

“Well, G-man,” Mcnair said, pulling up a chair. “They say you’re going to live. Feet like talking?”

“Why do I think I’m gonna have to listen first?” Train replied carefully. The skin on his face felt rubbery. His voice was a hoarse croak. He could feel some vestiges of intense cold still lurking in the marrow of his long bones.

“What, you expect me to chew your ass?”

Yup.

“Consider it chewed. Actually, putting aside the fact that you invaded a crime scene and otherwise messed around with an ongoing police investigation, you did pretty good.

We should have left somebody there.”

Train shrugged, then regretted it immediately. His shoulders were very sore.

“The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Train said, ling to make his lips work. “Where did that blessed come from?”

“Park Police. They own the river, and they have the helicopters and the crews who know how to do water rescue.

You two were lucky enough to have a Park Police helicopter already up and operating a possible drowning down at Little Falls dam.”

“Man, lucky is the word. I need to thank that guy. Is Karen okay? I forgot everything I learned about cold water out there tonight.”

“Well, not everything. Yeah, she’s gonna be okay. Not harmed physically.

Scared shitless, mentally. That was a bad ride she took.”

In a body bag. This guy is a serious whacko.”

Mcnair eased his notebook out of his pocket. “Speaking of whackos,” he said. “How many were there? Commander Lawrence says she thinks two, but she never saw them.”

“Two,” Train said. “I think. It was dark out there, but I’m pretty sure I saw two figures in that boat. They went upriver, by the way.”

“Actually, they went across the river.”

“Huh?”

“To the Maryland side, where they apparently hauled their little bitty boat up to the C&O canal and then shagged ass down the canal, locks and all, back toward Washington.

A Washington co’p car responded to an intrusion alarm at the Washington Canoe Club and got there in time to see a boat shooting out into the middle of the river under Key Bridge.”

“They follow ‘em?”

“Hell no. The D.C. harbor police boat was broke-dick at the pier. Busted like everything in the District is these days.

So whoever they were got clean-ass away. Commander Lawrence told us something interesting, though, about the initial grab.”

“Where did it happen?”

, Down at the barn, like you figured. But she said that she was going into one of the rooms in the barn, and this black glove appeared in front of her face and then a very intense, very bright purple-red flash.

Next thing she knew, she was trussed up in that bag. She thinks they took her upstairs to the haystack and carved out a burial chamber in the hay.

Anyway, about that light: Any ideas, G-man?”

Train sat back against the pillows for a moment and closed his eyes. “So she was there all the time.”

“Apparently. Now about that bright purple-red flash?”

Train hesitated. “That sounds like a retinal disrupter.”

Mcnair’s eyes had a speculative look in them. “Come again, Spock?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard of them. It’s an optical weapon-like an electronic flash-bang grenade, minus the bang. It emits a blast of light centered on the color frequency of a particular group of rods and cones in the human eye. Puts the brain in stimulus-overload condition. Total disorientation for about a minute.

Plenty of time to disable a guy. Or wrap somebody and stuff him in a car, or a bag.”

Mcnair was making notes. “And which government organization carries these nasties?”

“Silly question, Detective.”

“I knew that,” Mcnair said. “Okay. Docs say they’ll probably let you out after morning rounds. Your dog’s down at the Maryland Staties’ K-9 unit kennels. That’s a barracks out on the Bladensburg Road, and one of my people retrieved your Suburban. It’s out front.”

“Thanks. Where’s Karen?’ “Down the hall, actually. They admitted her.

Gave her a sedative, and they’ve got a shrink laid on for the A.m. Like I said, they didn’t hurt her, physically. She must be one selfcontrolled lady. I’d a gone snakeshit, mummied up like that.”

Train shook his head. “Assuming this was Galantz, I’ve conjured up a theory about why he snatched her.”

Mcnair closed his notebook and raised his eyebrows.

“This guy is after Sherman,” Train said. “She’s been with Sherman, and he probably thinks they’re an item.

Maybe he thinks she’s Elizabeth Walsh’s replacement. Grab , then lure Sherman to some dark and lonely place. Have some fun with both of them.”

Mcnair grinned at him. “And?”

“And what? What’s funny?”

Mcnair tapped his notebook once with his fingertips and stood up, stretching. “And,” he said. “Optical weapons.

Telephone bugs with built-in transceivers. Like you said, those are federal toys.” He paused. “We found the place up in the haystack where they hid her. Probably hid themselves there, too, all day-the whole time we were there looking. Your theory doesn’t read, G-man. This is a steelyeyed motherfucker. He could have had Sherman’s ass anytime he wanted to. You wouldn’t be holding back on me by any chance?”

“Moi?”

“Yeah, you, G-man. Like, for starters, who was the second guy?”

Train let out a breath and frowned. He kept underestimating Mcnair. But he was also very reluctant to tell him anything about Jack.Sherman.

Besides, after what Galantz had done to Karen, Train personally wanted a shot at him.

“I’m not holding back, Mcnair,” he replied. “But my bosses might be.

Didn’t you tell me you scrubbed Admiral Sherman’s personal scene?”

“Yeah. Clean, just like he said. Except that he’s now considerably richer than he was. Although it’s interesting that two hundred fifty large came and went already.”

“The money’s gone?”

“Yeah. Says he gave it to some Catholic charity.”

Train nodded, thinking about that locked investigation report. “I’m going to pull the same string, but inside Navy channels. I’ll share anything I find. Promise.” He put a sincere expression on his face, hoping the lie was plausible.

But Mcnair was shaking his head from side to side in mock wonder. “Sure you will,” he said. “Tomorrow’s Thursday. How’s about we meet, say Friday? Pull it all together.

“We can try,” Train said. “My mind has all these earnest plans, but my aging body is probably going to disappoint both of us.”

Mcnair laughed. Then he got up, went to the door, and looked both ways up and down the corridor. He came back over to the bed and pulled Train’s Glock and knife out from under his jacket. “Here,” he said. “The ER turned these over to us.” He gave Train a steady look, one bespeaking years of experience as a cop. He held the gun in his right hand, pointed down toward the floor. Train felt a spike of fear as he looked into Mcnair’s eyes. For just an instant, the friendly detective had been replaced with someone else.

“Keep the Glock handy, G-man,” Mcnair was saying.

“Me, personally? I think you’re in over your head.” He reversed the gun, handed it and the knife to Train, then turned and left the room.

Train lay back on the bed after Mcnair had gone, the Glock lying cold between his thighs under the covers. Nurse brings a bedpan, he mused, it’s gonna be a contest to see who pees first. This thing tonight had been close. If that Park Police helo hadn’t been airborne, he would have gone sailing over that dam fight behind Karen and spent the next few months rolling around in the rotor at the foot of the diversion dam, along with the six other people who had drowned there in the past year.

He wondered how well Karen was bearing up. Let’s go find out, he thought.

He opened his eyes and looked around the semiprivate room. The other bed was not in use; the dividing curtain was pulled back against the wall.

He wasn’t hooked up to anything. He found his clothes, still damp, hanging in the bathroom, but he opted for a dry Johnny from the closet.

He tucked the Glock and the knife between two towels on the closet shelf and went to find some coffee and then, hopefully, Karen.

Karen lay on her back and listened carefully. A moment ago, there had been a scratching sound on the door to her darkened room, as if something or someone wanted in. A scratching sound, she was sure of it.

Her body was tense, almost rigid, but she was very warm, sweaty. She wanted to push her damp hair out of her face, but her arms were leaden.

She worried about that sound. She could see a rim of subdued light framing the door to her room, especially at the bottom. She focused on the bottom, watching that line of light. There, a shadow. Then it was gone. She closed her eyes and then opened them again. Everywhere she looked, there was a curious red-purple halo. She had seen that before, but she couldn’t remember where. She wanted to close her eyes again, but she was scared she would miss something, whatever had scratched on the door. She stared at the line of light until her eyes hurt, then remembered to breathe.

She should be safe. No more bags. Her skin crawled at just the thought of the word bag. Her last memories of the bag were of ice-cold water -leaking in from the partially opened zipper when they had thrown her in the river. That utterly helpless feeling of being carried away, down the surging Potomac, toward the cataracts. Wondering if the ominous cold around her lower extremities was water, and if the bag would fill before she got to the falls. In her panic, she had actually managed to rip the tape around her legs, but her hands, her hands had remained stuck. She had rolled and rolled in the water, her face alternately submerged and then free, all for nothing.

There, scratching.

She forced herself to look back down at the line of light along the bottom of the door. And she stopped breathing.

There were two black shadows obstructing the line of light.

Someone was out there, waiting. Waiting to see if she was awake. Then there was a purple corona of light from the corridor growing all around the door, and someone was pushing it open-a man, dressed in dark clothing, maybe in black. She couldn’t quite see his face-all that light from the doorway put him in silhouette-but he was familiar.

And he was holding something, something long and shiny, over his left arm, like a big cape. Something familiar. Fabric of some kind. Shiny.

She knew what it was but couldn’t form the word. Couldn’t move as the man came closer, saying something, indistinct at first, but then louder.

Whispering it. Raising a black-gloved fist and whispering.

She yelled and woke up, to find that she was sitting on the edge of her bed, bare feet swung out over the cold floor, her body trembling, her hands clutching the sheets along the edge of the bed in a death grip that was hurting her fingers.

The room looked as if it would start spinning if she moved another inch.

A dream, she told herself. Just a dream. She looked around carefully. A hospital room. Must be the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. She sank back against the pillows. She felt drugged and dirty. Her face hurt where the tape had been taken off, there was a bump on the side of her head, and there were some sore spots along her left side.

Alive, and lucky not to be on the bottom of the Potomac.

Unable to hear anything, she had had no idea of what was happening when the helicopter lifted the bag out of the water, and for one heart-stopping moment she had thought she was in midair, going over the falls. And the incredible relief when she felt the vibrating floor of the aircraft under her, and helping hands peeling her out of that bag.

She had tom the tape off her eyes and mouth as soon as her hands were free. The helo crewman had given her a quick once-over, not trying to speak in a the noise roaring through the open hatch, and then he was gone, back out on the skid, holding the rescue cable in one hand and concentrating on something below, something in the glare of large searchlights. She had been stunned when Gutter had come crawling out of nowhere to lick her face, his whole posture one of abject apology. She remembered the noise, the spray billowing up from under the helicopter, looking like white smoke from some awful fire below, the dipping and weaving of the aircraft as the pilot positioned the bouncing machine in one turbulent hover after another, a fleeting glance of rapids and distant black trees over the crewman’s shoulder. Now she knew what real terror was like. It was cold, cold in your core, cold your insides turn to liquid and your mouth taste’d metal, like right now.

She took a deep breath and got up and ran to the bathroom as a wave of nausea boiled up in her stomach. She barely made it in time. It was several minutes before she was able to get up off her knees, turn on the bathroom lights, and wash her face with hot water. Then she realized there was a shower. She didn’t hesitate, shucking her hospital gown and standing in the hot water for a long, long time.

When she finally felt clean and her stomach seemed to be relatively calm, she turned the shower off and dried herself.

There was a bathrobe on the back of the door, and she put it on and went back to the bed.

There was a knock on her door, low, almost tentative, but definitely someone there. She found herself holding her breath and then saying, “Yes?’ ‘ She was vastly relieved to see Train’s large gleaming head poke around the door. He had a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand, and he was wearing a ridiculously small Johnny and white socks. He looked over his shoulder and then edged through the door, which shut behind him.

“Hey, Counselor. You look, um… “

“That good, huh, Train?” she replied, trying to follow his lead, keep it light. But it didn’t work. She felt her face get rubbery and her eyes filling. And then he was sitting on the edge of her bed and she was in his arms, wailing like a baby while he patted her back and told her that it was all right, that they were safe. When she was finally still, he grabbed a handful of Kleenexes from a box on the bedside table and wiped her eyes and face. Then he kissed her forehead and looked into her eyes.

His eyes were luminous. Up close, she saw that he had pronounced crow’s-feet in the comers of his eyes. He held her hands in his, and they felt like two warm, calloused paws.

“Wanted to do that for a good long time,” he said. “Under better circumstances, of course.”

“These are pretty good circumstances, considering,” she replied. Then she reached for his face and gave him a long, lingering kiss on the lips. She felt him stir in response, but then she sensed that he was imposing control on himself She felt slightly embarrassed as they stopped, feeling as if she should look away, but for some reason, she couldn’t.

The affection in his eyes was right out there, fully visible.

She tried to summon up that demure look-away expression, the one she’d used to deflect the interest in men’s eyes since Frank had died, but she couldn’t find it, and suddenly she didn’t want to. Train must have sensed what was going on in her mind, because he put a finger up to her lips.

“Slowly,” he whispered. “Let’s not screw this up.”

She smiled at him and reached for his hands again. “No, let’s not,” she said. “I’ve been in limbo for a while, Train.

Observing all the proper conventions. But after tonight … well, I don’t want to put off life or living anymore.”

He nodded his understanding. There was a rattle of some kind of trolley outside in the hallway, and he stood up to pull a chair right next to her bed. “Considering the circumstances, neither one of us should ever go to Vegas. We used up every ounce of luck tonight, and then some. So, tell me what happened.”

They exchanged stories. As she began hers, he extended the coffee cup and she sipped some and then handed it back.

He drank some while he listened, an unconscious small intimacy, which she registered even while she was talking.

When she had finished, he just sat there, his face grim. She realized he felt responsible.

“I know. I should have taken the dog,” she said.

He nodded absently. “And I should have trusted my instincts and gone out there when I first thought about it. Oh well.”

“We’ve got to talk to Sherman,” she said urgently.

“About what his son said. There were two of them.”

Train got up and went to the window. At the moment, he was sick of the Sherman business. What he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her for the rest of the night. He rotated the venetian blinds.

Karen’s room had the same view of the same parking lot, which was still empty. There was a hint of fog hovering over the of grass beyond the parking lot. Three hospital corpsmen in their orderly uniforms were smoking cigarettes out under the ER portico.

“I think we have to talk to Carpenter first,” he replied.

“Mccarty’s orders were pretty specific. Back off the Sherman matter. I don’t know if that’s because you had gone missing or if those were orders from Carpenter given before you went missing. Either way, Sherman is being isolated.”

“Sherman is getting the shaft,” she said, sitting up straighter in the bed. She was silent for a moment. “On the other hand, it got awfully up close and personal today.” She was starting to feel cold again. “Train.”

He turned around.

“Will you sit with me for a while? I don’t want to think about this case right now. I want to make it all go away until I can see sunlight again.

I-“

He shushed her, going back over to the chair next to her bed. He sat down and smoothed her hair. “Let’s kill all these lights. You sleep.

I’ll be right here.”

She hit the switches for the lights, which left only the subdued rose-colored light from the parking lot suffusing the room. Karen shut her eyes and pulled up the covers, leaving her hands clenched up under her chin. He put his hand on her forehead again and smoothed her hair back away from her brow. She reached for his hand and clasped it between her own until her breathing slowed.

He watched her sleep. He was surprised to find himself fantasizing: If he was married to a woman like this, would he ever wake up at night and just watch her sleep? He thought he might. Then he smiled in the darkness. Married?

The lady had been widowed for only a year. She was just feeling grateful, that’s all.

He got up and pulled down a blanket and a pillow from the closet shelf and laid them out on the chair. Then he went over to the window again and looked out. It was now almost 2:00 A.M., and the parking lot was practically deserted. He stepped back over to check on Karen. She was still sleeping, her hands clutching the. covers up under her chin, her breathing deep and regular now. Maybe the sedative had finally taken effect. He sat down in the chair next to her bed and pulled up the blanket. Was this place safe? he wondered.

Should he wake her and get them out of there? He decided against it. He looked over at her sleeping face again. You predicted something was going to happen, and it did. Galantz had made a move against them. And Carpenter was losing his nerve, it seemed. Train slept.

THURSDAY By 11:30 Thursday morning, Train and Karen were sitting, in Admiral Carpenter’s outer office, awaiting an audience.

Train had called Mccarty at seven o’clock to give him a quick debrief of the previous day’s events. Mccarty had seen a short article in the morning paper about a rescue out on the river, but there had been no names. He was stunned into silence when Train gave him the details.

Train also told him they needed to talk to the JAG. They would spend the morning getting released from the hospital, get Karen home for a change of clothes, and then come in to the Pentagon, he said. Train lived too far south of the city to bother going home, so he was sitting there in his suit, the jacket of which was reasonably presentable. The rest of his outfit had been attracting careful glances all morning.

Karen was properly dressed, if a little pale around the edges. He had to work at it not to take her hand fight there in the front office. She had seemed steady enough until the yeoman handed her a cup of coffee, and Train caught the little ripples in it when she held the cup with both hands.

He watched her out of the comer of his eye. She’s solidified on the surface, he thought, but underneath she’s still scared.

Hell, so am 1. Karen stared across the office area as officers and clerks came and went. “This has gotten way out of hand,” she said softly.

“That’s what we’re here to tell the JAG,” Train replied.

The door to Carpenter’s office opened, and Captain Pennington came out.

Captain Mccarty was standing behind him in the doorway. Pennington looked briefly at both Karen and Train, his face neutral. He nodded curtly but did not say hello, then left the office.

“TA-oh,” muttered Karen as they got up. “That’s not a good sign.” But Mccarty was beckoning them into the admiral’s office. He wrinkled his nose at Train’s clothes ds they went in, Admiral Carpenter was standing by one of the windows, his back to them. Mccarty shut the door and cleared his throat. They all stood in the middle of the room for a moment before Carpenter turned around.

“Karen,” he said. “I am so glad you’re back among us.

You gave us all quite a scare.”

“Nothing like the scare they gave me, Admiral,” she replied. Train felt a flush of pride at her quick comeback. If they were going to be yelled at, she was showing no timidity.

But Carpenter did not appear to be angry. “Please, sit down,” he said.

“You, too, Train. I’ve just been on the horn with Detective Mcnair, who told us some of what happened yesterday. We didn’t learn any of this until this morning. Mcnair said he didn’t see the need to wake people up. guess he was never in the Navy.”

“It was a seriously long day, Admiral,” Train said. “And now I think we need to revisit the guidance.”

“You do, do you?” Carpenter said with a faint smile as he sat down.

“Can’t imagine why. According to Mcnair, you did some amazing things out on that river.”

“Admiral, whoever this is, he’s not messing around. One, probably two homicides, a kidnapping, and attempted homicide. I think this thing has expanded well past Admiral Sherman’s involvement.”

“Just so,” Carpenter murmured, staring at Train over steepled fingers.

Both Train and Karen looked at each other.

“Admiral,” Karen said, “what is Admiral Sherman’s status?”

“Admiral Sherman has been given temporary administrative as the president of a selection board.”

“So he’s not on some kind of admin leave or even suspension?” Train asked.

“No. Whoever gave you that idea?”

Karen looked down at the floor. Train pressed ahead.

“Can I suggest a meeting?” Train said. “I think he needs to know what’s happened to Karen, and perhaps some other things as well.”

Carpenter looked over at Mccarty, who nodded imperceptibly. “There is a small problem with that,” Carpenter said. “No one actually seems to know where Admiral. Sherman is at the moment.”

Karen and Train stared at him.

“Indeed. When Karen went missing, someone from the police attempted to contact Admiral Sherman to see what, if anything, he knew, or even if she might be with him.”

Train saw Karen color slightly at this comment. The admiral continued.

“The OP-32 front office told them he was on leave, which is what they’ve been instructed to say, of course. But then this morning, the secretary of the selection board called into OP-32 and asked where he was, since the board could not convene without him. Thirty-two Acting called us, but we’re in the dark,. too.”

Train leaned forward. “Admiral, Detective Mcnair told me yesterday that the Fairfax County Police Department was being pressured by someone to move slowly with this investigation. Do you know why, and who might be doing the pressuring?”

“I have no idea,” Carpenter replied, looking from one to the other with a sincerely neutral expression, as if daring either one of them to challenge what he had just said. Train thought of a hundred things to say, including reminding the admiral of their earlier words on this subject, but it was pretty obvious that something had changed and the admiral wasn’t going to talk about it. After a few seconds of silence, Carpenter got up and walked around to his desk.

“I think it is indeed time to review your tasking. Both of your taskings, for that matter. Karen, I think Admiral Sherman, wherever he might be at the moment, has problems that are beyond the scope of your initial tasking. I want you to resume your normal duties in Investigations Review.”

Karen’s expression registered protest, and she looked over at Train as if for support. But Train was studying Carpenter.