Zero Option

33

Dave Stafford drove into Graniteville a little after eleven on Monday morning, suppressing the umpteenth yawn. He had not slept well at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Morning, Sheriff,” Stafford said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We talking poison gas of some kind?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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