Nightwatch

Chapter 8

It had taken only a single call to aTF headquarters in Washington for Thomas to learn that Ted Callahan’s surprise request for his services indeed had priority over his current investigation. The reassignment had come right from the top, with Director McShane personally getting on the line to inform Thomas that the Special Agent in charge of the St. Louis field office would be taking over the search for the abortion clinic bomber. That left Thomas free to offer Army CID whatever assistance they might need. The Director never did explain the nature of this mysterious case, and Thomas left for his new duty directly from the Labadie raid site.

Fort Leonard Wood was conveniently situated off the four lane highway he currently traveled. A trip of less than one hundred miles would bring him to the post’s front gate, and Thomas spent a good portion of the drive mentally adjusting to the sudden change of venue.

He hated to leave a case unsolved, especially after discovering a promising lead, like the fire-scarred detonator box that he pulled from the trash bin. Would further searching prove that the bikers were making IEDs in addition to their fireworks? And if they weren’t, surely someone else in the region had purchased the same lot of detonators, and this was where the piece of cardboard box originated.

It was frustrating to leave these questions unanswered, though Thomas realized that this unexpected reassignment wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing. He had been pulled off unsolved cases before, and in almost every instance he returned with a new way of looking at things. Missed clues were rediscovered, and a new perspective often produced amazing insights.

Besides offering a much-needed mental break, to work with Ted Callahan again would be exciting. They hadn’t collaborated together since late last summer, when Ted helped him track down yet another bomber in the hills of West Virginia. Callahan’s tracing of the C-4 sample was an instrumental part of breaking that case, and Thomas owed him big-time.

An NPR news update redirected his thoughts, and Thomas was surprised by the lead story. It referred to reliable sources confirming the previous rumor that the President had just landed in the Crimea to begin a secret negotiating session with the Presidents of Russia and Ukraine. As the newscaster went on to describe the purpose of this unannounced summit, Thomas remembered well the first time the so-called Global Zero Alert Treaty hit the headlines.

It occurred late last summer, at about the same time he last worked with Ted Callahan. A brainchild of the Russian President, the idea of removing the world’s stockpile of nuclear warheads from their delivery systems was initially presented to the United Nations, on the day before the QE2 set sail for the infamous G-7 summit at sea.

The entire incident had a nightmarish quality to it, and seemed to have taken place in another lifetime. This was fine with Thomas, who brought home scars of both a physical and an emotional nature. Some doors were better left closed, and that was the way he felt about his experiences aboard the QE2.

Except for a private ceremony in the Rose Garden, when the President presented the Kellogg brothers with citations expressing his personal thanks, Thomas had managed to keep out of the public’s media-crazed eye. He was content to let the incident at sea fade to oblivion, with the only positive byproduct being a closer relationship with Brittany.

Thoughts of Brittany kept him from losing his temper when a semi pulled in front of him without warning. The impatient trucker was trying to pass a slower-moving competitor, and there was no way he’d be able to complete this move before reaching the steep incline of the next hill. Thusly trapped, Thomas fought back the temptation to sound his horn, and he bided his time thinking instead about Brittany’s mysterious whereabouts. It suddenly dawned on him that the reason she couldn’t join the Kellogg family in Branson was because she was most likely in the Crimea with the President, on a mission that could very well mean the end of the Cold War’s hairtrigger nuclear response posture.