Zero Option

19

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

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

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

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

The younger-looking one spoke first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not likely, Mr. Carson,” Jones said.

“Why’s that, Captain?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Good Lord! Has something happened?”

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

“And do they usually bring a press officer?”

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

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

“Quasi-undercover?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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