Sweepers

“Mr. von Rensel,” Carpenter asked, “you remember those things I was going to order you not to do, when we last discussed this matter?.”

“Yes, sir, but-“

Carpenter cut him off. “Right. Execute.” The other thing I told you that I did want you to do remains in effect.”

Train was momentarily baffled. “The other thing.” Then he renyembered.

Keep Karen safe. “Oh, right,” he said.

“Good. I don’t think ‘we need to discuss this matter any further. Karen, you’ve been through a truly harrowing experience. I suggest you take a couple of days’ leave. In fact, I insist on it. You, too, Mr. von Rensel. How about we see you both back here, say Monday? You’ve both been through a lot.”

“What about Admiral Sherman?” Karen protested.

“What do we do if he gets in touch with us?”

“Refer any calls from Admiral Sherman to my office.

Captain Pennington will be instructing the IR yeomen to do the same.”

Then Mccarty was standing up, indicating the meeting was over. The admiral looked at both of them as they stood before his desk. “I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that there are currents in this case moving above your respective pay grades,’ as the saying goes. Above my pay grade, for that matter. You both did well. You two were very lucky yesterday. Now I think it’s time to observe the golden rule about following orders when you don’t understand the reasons behind those orders: You must assume your boss knows something you don’t, okay?

Captain Mccarty will let you know if there are any new developments.

Thank you both. That’s all.”

After the door closed behind Karen and Train, Admiral Carpenter instructed his yeoman to hold all calls. He then went to his computer desk and entered the JAG archive system.

A minute later, the Rung Sat incident investigation report was on the screen. He read through the by-now-familiar findings of fact, opinions, and then the all-important endorsements. The archive files were, by law, read-only files.

He cursed his JAG forebear who’d put that restrictive protocol into the system. Access could be controlled, but content could not be modified.

Well, that would never do, he thought with a sigh. He dispatched the file back to the mainframe over in the Navy Yard across the river, and the screen settled into an undulating helix screen-saver routine.

But then he had an idea. It was a program protocol preventing anyone from altering data. Maybe, with the right kind of help, he could change the protocol, or perhaps inhibit it long enough to make one small change. He thought of the-dour Kensington. Okay, two small changes-if he’s nice to me. And he thought he knew right where he might get some help of that kind.

He picked up his secure phone and autodialed-the DNI’s office. The EA patched him in to the admiral. “‘Yes, Thomas?”

“Subject is the flag officer in difficulty.”

“No, Thomas, I rather think the subject is larger than that. “

Carpenter, surprised, said nothing for a moment. “Okay.

I’ll grant you that. I want to make a deal with those people.”

“Oh, they love deals. What’s yours?”

“They want us out of their sweeper problem, presumably so they’ll have a clear field of fire. I’m ready to accommodate them. But, in return, I want two things. The first is a complication with which I need some technical help.”

“What kind of help, exactly?”

“I need the services of a hacker, a really good hacker.”

It was Mallory’s turn to be silent. “Do I want to know the details of this, um, complication, Thomas?”

“You do not.”

“Didn’t think so. And the second thing?”

“I want their guarantee that nothing bad will happen to my two people, because if something bad does happen, I’ll be forced to tell the whole world. But you can also tell them that, as a measure of my good intentions, I’ve sent the two of them home for a long weekend, with orders to stay there. “

“All right. Back to this complication. It bears on your flag officer’s problem?”

“He’s got new problems. No, this is much more important.

“Very well. I’ll transmit the message.” There was. a pause on the line.

“If I may ask, Thomas, are you sure you know what you’re doing here?”

It was a question made just possible by that minute difference in seniority. Carpenter was not permitted to take offense.

“I sure hope so, Kyle,” he said. “But a lot of it depends on how quickly they solve their problem. And after what this guy did last night, sooner would be a whole lot better than later. You can tell them that if you want to. Don’t forget my conditions.” He hung up the phone and dabbed the sheen of perspiration off his forehead. This could not come out-not now, not ever. It would mean the end of his career, not to mention the field day the press would have with it. Why in the hell hadn’t’those people moved against this Galantz? What were they waiting for? The simplest and therefore the most likely answer that suggested itself didn’t help his disposition: They didn’t know where he was.

Karen and Train walked side by side back to IR, saying nothing. Captain Pennington was not in evidence when they reached the office. Two of the IR lawyers were outlining a case on the whiteboard, and the yeoman was threatening the copy machine with bodily harm as he -tried to unjam the paper tray. Karen automatically went to her cubicle to check voice mail.

The yeoman, seeing Train, gave up on the machine with one last, vengeful kick and then brought Train a computer diskette.

“This came in from NIS this morning,” he said.

Train thanked him and dropped the diskette on his desk.

It had to be the hard copy of the database screen on Jack Sherman. He sat down and checked his own voice mail.

There was one message, from Captain Mccarty: “The admiral thinks it might be a good idea if Karen stays somewhere else than at her home in Great Falls for a while. See what you can do about that.” Train replayed the message and checked the time stamp. The message had been recorded as they had been walking down the hall from the JAG front office, which meant Mccarty had not wanted to say that in front of Karen. As he was clearing it, Karen was walking over with a yellow phone-message memo in her hand. She had a strange look on her face.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I just listened to a message,” she replied. “From Galantz.” Her eyes were a little white around the edges. Train quickly got up, looked around, and then steered Karen into the small IR conference room and closed the door.

“How do you know? What did he say?” he asked.

“It was on voice mail. It was-it was the same voice as on the phone Monday night.”

“Damn. Did you save it?”

“Yes. But that voice, it’s hardly human.”

“So much for voiceprints. What did he say?”

She consulted the message slip. “He spoke my name. He said that I -was lucky last night but that I would have to be lucky every time, and that he had to be lucky only one time.”

The Irish Republican Army, rule, Train thought. Man had a way with words. He took a deep breath and then exhaled.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve got to go ransom Gutter, preferably before the afternoon rush hour. Why don’t you come with me? I can take you home right after that. It’s on the way.”

But Karen was shaking her head, her face turned away to conceal her fear. “I don’t want to go-home I just now,” she said. “Not after yesterday. Not after this.” She waved the yellow slip.

Train seized on what she had just said to follow through on Mccarty’s suggestion. “Okay, look. I’ve got a sixbedroom house down in Aquia. It’s a pretty secure situation.

There’s even a housekeeper. You’re welcome to hole up there for as long as you want. Or until we sort this business out. Unless you have-“

“That would be fine,” she said quickly, surprising him again. She turned away from him, her hands fluttering.

“Train, I’m scared,” she said. “It embarrasses me, but there it is.

After everything that happened yesterday, and now with Admiral Sherman missing … There were two of’them yesterday, at least down by the river. That means that Galantz-if that’s who this is-has help. I know they’re watching me. They can get in and out of houses like smoke.

They-” He realized that she was starting to unravel, her eyes shooting from side to side and her voice rising. Finally, he just reached for her, turning her around and pulling her gently into his arms as she stifled a cry. He stood there holding her, patting her on the back while she let it out, babbling through a stream of tears, her words becoming incoherent, her breasts heaving against his chest and her shoulders trembling. He comforted her and held her for a few minutes until she became still. Then, with an embarrassed expression on her face, she backed away, pushing her hair out of her tear streaked face. Her skin was blotched with patches of red, and mascara had run down her cheek on one side. She saw his look and put a hand up to her face.

“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s the matter with me.

Of course I can go home. I don’t have to bother-“

“No way. You’re coming home with me,” he said. “the hell of it is you’re right. This guy has been able to do anything he damn well pleases.

There’s no way you should be alone, especially isolated in Great FAII5.

Besides-“

“What?” she asked, pulling a Kleenex out of her skirt pocket and wiping her cheek.

“Besides, that’s my tasking. Or what’s left of it. The one Carpenter wouldn’t say out loud when he started speaking in tongues back there.”

“Train, what are you talking about?” That suspicious look was back in her eye.

“My tasking, and these are the Great Man’s very words, is to keep Karen Lawrence safe.”

“And what was that other business, the things he was going to order you not to do?”

“Finding Galantz and interfering in anyone else’s efforts to find Galantz.”

She sat down, continuing the damage control on her makeup. “Are we just going to quit? Let Sherman swing in the wind?”

“No. Galantz almost got us both killed last night. I take that personally.”

She nodded but said nothing for a moment. “I guess I feel the same way,” she said. “But after that, that bag, I’m not as confident as you are. We should also remember what Admiral Carpenter said: Sometimes we have to assume our boss knows what he’s doing with this thing.”

Train shook his head. “if he or any of these admirals knew what they were doing with this case, last night wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think they do know what they’re doing. I think they’re flailing, hoping like hell it will all just go away. That the people who created this monster will clean it up sooner rather than later.”

“But if Galantz is out to ruin Sherman, why in the hell would he be trying to kill me?”

“I don’t think he intended to kill you. Just take you off the boards. it wasn’t until I showed up that you went in the river. I thought it was because he thinks you’re close to Sherman, Karen. But the attack on you happened after we talked to Jack Sherman. There has to be a tie-in there, somewhere, somehow. I say let’s go back and squeeze that punk again. He lives near Triangle-that’s not far from My place in Aquia.

Nobody’s given me orders about Sherman’s son.”

“Spoken like a true sea lawyer,” she said.

“Yeah, well. So let’s go get my dog out of hock.”

It was six on the nose when T - rain turned in through the tall brick gates of the von Rensel estate. Karen, following in her Explorer, stared in appreciative silence as they drove up along a curving gravel drive bordered by ancient river oaks overlooking a wide expanse of lawn.

Beyond a low brick wall at the far edge of the lawn, the Potomac River glinted in the sun, almost a mile wide. Ahead, a moderately sized two-story white house surrounded by columned porches appeared from behind massive boxwood hedges.

“Wow,” she said to herself. Train had told her a little bit about the family property on the way out to retrieve Gutter, but this was obviously something very special. She was suddenly glad she had asked Train to take her by the house in Great Falls to get some more clothes and her car.

As they pulled up in front of the house, they were met by a slim Japanese man, who came over to her car and opened her door, bowing politely. Karen got out and bowed back, and Train introduced her to Hiroshi. She was struck by the enormous physical contrast between them, the tree-sized Train and the slim but wiry Hiroshi, who could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy years old. She could see at once that there was a very special bond between them.

Hiroshi extracted her bag and hanging gear, gave Train’s disheveled clothes a lifted eyebrow, and went up the steps.

Train then introduced Karen to Hiroshi’s wife, Kyoko, who was waiting on the front porch. Kyoko took Karen inside and showed her upstairs to one of the guest rooms to freshen up. Train went to his own room on the riverfront side of the house and changed into clean clothes. Then he went looking for Hiroshi. He found him in the back pantry, doctoring Gutter’s leg, and told him about the events of the preceding night. He explained that Commander Lawrence would be staying with them for. a few days. Hiroshi, ever the great conversationalist, nodded once and continued his examination on the dog.

Train left him to it and went back in time to meet Karen as she came downstairs. He gave her a tour of the downstairs of the house. “About half the house dates back to the 1790s,” he told her. “This is one of two reception rooms.

Sort of eclectic in style, after many generations of taste and circumstances. Started out as a smaller copy of Mount Vernon, up the river, and then it was modified several times through the years. It’s not that big, really.”

“How did your family come to have this land?”

“The first von Rensel came to the United States in the retinue of the Baron von Steuben. By the end of the American Revolution, he had risen sufficiently in General Washington’s esteem to be granted a four-hundred-acre parcel of land down river from Mount Vernon. My family alternated between prosperity and near financial ruin over the generations, but a strict observance of the rule of primogeniture ensured that the original land grant survived intact well into the twentieth century, when my grandfather Heinrich finally seized the opportunity-to turn four hundred acres of riverfront property into a secure family fortune. These are the original kitchens.”

“This place has four hundred acres?” she asked.

“Not. anymore. Heinrich struck an adept political deal with the local county government that basically secured the serenity of the family estate. In return for the sale of the remaining acres of riverside lands to the county for a park, the county agreed never to permit development of that land.

By the time I was born, only ten walled acres and the house remained of the original eighteenth-century plantation, along with a structure of family trusts, which pays for all this.”

Later, over a simple’ dinner served by Kyoko on’the screened porch, he told her some more about his own upbringing. She was curious about Hiroshi and his wife. Train told her the story of how the couple had corrie to Aquia.

“Before my mother died in 1959, my parents maintained a pretty full social schedule up in Washington. They kept a town’ house up in Georgetown a weekends. My father had British I think. I was a lot closer to Hi mother died. When both my parents were g(

clear that they were expected to stay on in their retirement years.

“I’ll bet Kyoko wonders when you’re going to get married,” Karen said with a mischievous smile.

“Wonders and occasionally nags, in her own incredibly polite way,” Train said, returning that smile. Then he surprised himself.

“Tell me about Frank,” he said. “I sense a loose end there.

She looked away for a moment, long enough to take a deep breath. “Yes, there is.” She told him the story, faltering when she came to the part about where he had been when his heart killed him, and the possible reasons why.

I’ll in still tom about it,” she said. “I think he loved me.-

He was certainly a loving man. And you’ve seen the house, the nice cars, all of that. And yet ..

He nodded slowly. “Now you wonder if you should pull that scab until you find the truth, or leave it be and get on with your life.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“Advice?”

She looked at him expectantly.

“You had ten years. If he was unfaithful, he cared enough about you to keep it very discreet. You seemed to have been good friends as well as husband and wife. He left you more than well provided for. There are worse men than I that.

She nodded, visibly stifling a few dozen buts.

“And there are better men than that, too, Karen.”

re She was about to reply to that when Kyoko came in to move the plates.

Suddenly, Train was yawning. His yawn immediately triggered hers.

“Tree time in the jungle, I think,” she said.

“Tell Kyoko if you need anything,” Train said, standing.

“Breakfast at eight, okay? Then we can kick around next steps.

“Make it nine,” she replied, yawning again. “I think I’m ps include going to sleep forever. And I assume next Ste going back to see Jack Sherman, right?” she asked.

“Yes, only this time I’m going to get some answers out of him that make sense.”

“How, by beating him up again?”

“I didn’t beat him up. He walked away.”

She gave him an arch look. “Maybe this time let me do the talking,” she said, getting up. “Remember, the objective is to find out what’s going on.” Train was suddenly too tired to argue. They said good night. Kyoko led Karen upstairs, and Train headed for the library. He was exhausted but too wound up for sleep. He decided to get a brandy and review the NIS file before turning in. He was just putting away the decanter of Armagnac when Hiroshi appeared in the doorway.

“Hiroshisan,” Train said as the old man came into the study. They exchanged bows, and Hiroshi sat down on the front three inches of one of the upholstered chairs, his back straight as a board and his hands folded politely in his lap.

“So, I need to tell you what’s going on,” Train said.

“This is a serious matter?” Hiroshi asked.

Train knew that Hiroshi would never have dreamed of coming right out with a direct question unless he was very concerned. “Very serious, Hiroshisan. There have been two murders. A senior naval officer is being made to look like a murderer by a man from his past-. It appears to be a matter of revenge for something that happened in Vietnam many years ago. The lady upstairs, Commander Lawrence, was assigned to find out if the accusations were true. I was assigned to help her. Because she became involved, she became a target, too. She cannot be safe until the man behind all this is captured, or killed.”

“It is a killing matter?”

“It is for one of the government agencies involved. But the matter is complicated by the fact that some government agencies are at war with one another. I think one agency might be trying to gain advantage over the other by exploiting this matter. This man is something like a ninja who is no longer under control.”

“Ali,” Hiroshi said. Ninja, he understood.

“But my military superiors have told me not to pursue this man, and not to interfere in the pursuit efforts of others,” Train continued.

“My’military superiors are apparently willing to sacrifice the senior officer in order to avoid having the Navy involved in yet another scandal.”

“Does this senior officer agree to the sacrifice?”

“No. He feels it is unfair. But in a certain sense, he is not blameless, either. And now there are indications that his son may be involved in this matter. Exactly how, I don’t know. And to cap it off, the senior officer has disappeared, which will probably renew suspicion against him. It is very complicated.”

Hiroshi thought about all this. “What will you I do?” he asked.

“There are some aspects to this case that don’t make sense,” Train replied ‘ “Commander Lawrence feels the senior officer is being unfairly set up, and I’m beginning to agree with her. We plan to talk to the senior officer’s son.”

“Will he talk to you?”

“One way or another, he will. We think he was involved in what happened last night. And if he was, then maybe we can expose at least him to the police, which might then force the Navy to do the right thing by the senior officer.”

Hiroshi thought about that for a moment. Then, as usual, he came back to the real issue. “But what of the ninja who seeks revenge?”

“His own superiors are supposedly hunting him. But if he comes after me, or, more importantly, after Karen Lawrence, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.”

Hiroshi thought some more about it. “And if you remove this man, would this not please your superiors? As well as all the other superiors who want to find this man?”

Train grinned. “You have, as usual, hit the nail on the head. I thought that Is what my boss had in mind. He may yet want that, but he is not permitted to say it.”

“Your boss is a most devious boss,” Hiroshi observed, getting up. “I will release the night dogs now. When will you leave in the morning?”

Around ten or so. I’ll need time to go over my plans with Commander Lawrence. And I badly need some real sleep.”

Hiroshi nodded again. “This woman has no husband?” he asked. “He died about a year ago-She remains sad.”

Hiroshi cleared his throat. “What?” Train asked. “Kyoko says not that sad.”

Train eyed the old man. “Don’t you start, Hiroshi.”

“Kyoko says Train-sama must open his eyes. Hiroshi says Kyoko is interfering old woman. Hiroshi says-“

“Hiroshi says good night.”

There was the barest hint of a smile on the old man’s lips.

“Hiroshi says good night, Train-sama.”

Train smiled to himself as the old man closed, the double doors behind him. Kyoko had been after Train to get a wife for’about ten years now, and old Hiroshi had probably been threatened with severe chastisement if he failed to pass along her message about Karen. Not that sad. He chuckled.

Then he put in the diskette and forced his weary eyes to focus on the screen. He had to enter a standard NIS access code and then his personal security identifier code before the file would open.

The file began with a biographic history. John Lee Sherman. Lee and Sherman, now there was an interesting apposition of last names. Born in San Diego, California, January 1967. Parents William Taggart Sherman, Marcia Kendall, aka Beth Sherman. There followed a laundry list of residences tracking the admiral’s duty stations, and a schools list, which terminated in 1986 With graduation from Washington -and Lee High School. A homeboy. Right here in the Washing I ton area.

The military service section picked up the bio. Enlisted in the Marines at Quantico, Virginia, on 5 December 1987.

Four months of basic at Parris Island, three months of advanced infantry training at Lejeune, and then joins the recon battalion. Well, well, well. The recon battalion was the Man . the Corps version of Special Forces troops. Kid must have done exceptionally well to be picked up right out of the training pipe. When Train had been in the Corps, you couldn’t even apply for recon until you’dserved successfully in the Fleet Marine Force for at least a year. And yet his father had said the kid got into the Corps via what the recruiters euphemistically used to call “a judicial referral.”

That didn’t square with the elite recon assignment. So, young Jack must have had either a unique skill set or a unique personality. Train was ready to bet on the personality. He scrolled down to the discharge info.

Hello. A bad conduct discharge in January 1990. That meant a special courtmartial and something relatively serious.

He scrolled up and checked out the last physical description in the bio: five-seven, black hair and brown eyes, 155 pounds. That was still pretty accurate, even now, except for that scraggly beard. He yawned and hid to blink his eyes to keep them focused. Got to get some sleep.

The physical description dated back to Jack’s graduation from boot camp.

A little guy, by Marine Corps standards.

And yet his pack and-gear would have weighed more than one-third of his own body -weight, so a. very strong little guy. Little was the wrong word; wiry better described it. He paged down to the section on criminal records, which was in two parts, preenlistment and then the subsequent civilian entries. Sure enough, there was his teenage track record, with three arrests, one for breaking and entering, one for drunk and disorderly, one for possession. But no convictions. Three arrests in two years, but no convictions. A snitch maybe? His father said he ran with bad company.

Maybe a gang. He windowed further into the arrest record and looked for adjudication codes. PB-plea bargain on the last arrest, the B and E beef. Off to the county boot camp.

the police boot camp to the Marine boot camp, which explain why he had done well. Already knew how to say, “Sir, yes, sir!” at the top of his lungs, “What’s the right answer, maggot?”

“Sir, anything you say it is, sir!”

A genius-level recruit by Corps standards.

He sat back from the screen. A high school grad, but with marginal grades. Three arrests, lowlife punk type, goes to police boot camp.

That in itself was a little strange, given his age, which had to have been around nineteen. Then he gets into the Corps. Thirty years ago, he could have accepted that on face value. But this had happened in 1987, and things had become a whole hell of a lot more selective by 1987. Even with his old man pulling a few strings, this just didn’t sound like the kind of guy the Corps -wanted.

He screened up the military record. the Page Thirteen showed assignments and promotions. Boot camp. Advanced training. He had joined the recon battalion in the fall of 1988. Promoted one pay grade June 1989. BCD seven months later. The Page Thirteen had an entry listing the special courtmartial but not the charges and specs. JAG records ought to have that. Maybe Karen could get them on He thought about it. If a guy didn’t work out in the rec force, he’d be shipped back to the FMF until his hitch was up. But this had to involve more than just a misfit. A special courtmartial, and a poisonous discharge paper that he would carry around for the rest of his life.

And there was the post-enlistment civilian arrest record.

Possession of marijuana. DUI and speeding on a motorcycle.

A second DUI charge that was later dropped due to contested evidence. An assault charge, dropped because the complainant had failed to appear in court. Regular pond slime, our boy Jack. But all low-level stuff.

Train considered the current address. Most of the Cherry Hill area overlooked the Potomac, separated from the river itself by the main north-south line of the railroad that serviced Washington.

He closed the file and shut down the PC. He rubbed his eyes and then looked at his watch. It was well after eleven.

Suddenly, he was very sleepy. He tried to conceptualize a pattern out of the file on Jack Sherman, but nothing surfaced. The admiral had told them he divorced his wife in 198 1, when Jack would have been just entering high school.

Mother a drunk, kid in the full emotional flame of male adolescence, and Pop bails to save his career. Good recipe for producing a bent kid.

Yeah, like you know anything about. Still, Sherman had achieved the pinnacle of his profession, admiral’s stars, while his wife ended up eating a gun and his only son was probably hustling pot to the riffraff who hung around the main gates of the Quantico base. And even those brand-new stars hadn’t saved Sherman the moment there was a whiff of scandal. That exclusive club he’d been dying to join for so many years was apparently ready to deep-six him.

Or were they? Carpenter had assigned Karen Lawrence and Train von Rensel to run some cover for him, or at least until Karen’s abduction. The tasking had become ambiguous, as if Carpenter was suddenly scared of something more than just bad press for the Navy. Now Sherman was apparently missing, but Carpenter and company didn’t seem very concerned about that. There had to be something they knew-some bits of privileged information flickering around that, famous flag-protection circuit-that Carpenter, for some odd reason, wasn’t going to share with them.

He stared at the glowing embers in the fireplace while Gutter snored quietly in the comer of the study. The hot coals swam in and out of focus. This whole case was being expertly steered into a box canyon of some kind. Surely Mcnair and the Fairfax police had access to the same kinds of information NIS did. So why hadn’t they found Jack?

Who was telling them to back out, and why were they so willing to go along? Local cops hated federal interference.

And there was the FBI, fence-sitting, trying to decide between helping out and letting the agency they loved to hate get another political black eye.

He kept coming back to Carpenter. What did that wily old man really want them to do?

e stretched at his desk, then immediately regretted it. shoulder muscles were sore as hell from the helo hoist, and his right leg had the makings of a really good charley. horse. Then another thought struck him: If they weren’t supposed to go after Galantz, did that perhaps mean Carpenter expected Galaitz to come after them? Take Karen somewhere safe. And do what? Wait. Wait for Galantz to come to them. And when he does … what? Were they bait now?

He shook his head. He was missing something here. But more than anything, he was too tired to think. it was time to climb up in his tree and get some desperately needed sleep.

He got up to close the screen and glass doors on the fire, considered going upstairs, then flopped down on the big leather couch instead. His last thoughts before drifting off were about Karen.

Karen woke up, to find herself actually out of the bed and standing in a comer of the guest room, her heart pounding.

She couldn’t remember the dream, other than having a desperate desire to run. She listened for signs of life downstairs, but the house was silent except for the occasional creaks and cracks of an old house’s bones. Her nightgown was soaked with perspiration from the nightmare. She took it off P and went into the bathroom, where she used a wet washcloth to sponge away the film of fear. She appropriated a terrycloth bathrobe hanging on The back of the bathroom door and went back to sit on the edge of the bed, where she stared through the sheer curtains covering the window. There appeared to be. a heavy fog or mist outside that hid even the big trees surrounding the house.

She wondered where Train was.-Down the HAII9 She had been so sleepy at dinner, but now she was afraid to go back to sleep, even though her eyes were aching. She recalled his words at dinner: that there are worse men; there are better men. She would never QTWIL the bitter coil of anger at the fact that Frank had cheated on her. And yet, as a philosophy for the rest of her life, the “better men” thesis would be a hell of lot more productive.

She eased the bedroom door open and went downstairs, walking on tiptoes past the other bedroom doors along the hall on her way there. There was a single night-light on in the main hall, and light showing through the open study doors. She was halfway into the room when she realized Train was asleep on the couch. He was on his back, his massive hands folded on his chest. She walked over to the’ couch, silent as a ghost in her bare feet, and watched him for a minute. His face looked younger in repose, the lines and furrows in his face less pronounced. She spied the brandy decanter across the room, walked over and poured a small measure into a snifter, took a sip, and made a face.

Strong stuff, whatever it was.

She went back, sat down on the floor next to the couch, and breathed in the aroma of the Armagnac. So what are we doing here? she asked herself.

You know full well what you’re doing here. You’ve had the stew scared out of you and now you want a man, a big strong man, to hold you and love you and make it all go away, if only for a while.

That2s silly. That stereotype went out the window a long time ago.

Oka-a-y-y, so maybe he’d like someone to hold him, love him, and make it all go away. Look at the lines on his face, the bags under his eyes. The poor beast is exhausted. Hell, we’re both exhausted.

She smiled to herself in the darkness. All these rules.

You’re forty-four years old. Just exactly how long do you plan to abide by other people’s rules? Frank is gone. They had had ten years, and if he had been unfaithful, he’d at least been discreet about it. And he’d been a pretty good provider. This Sherman mess was going to come to a head f some kind, probably behind some closed flag office doors, and then what? She would be leaving the Navy and the career and all the rest of it.

She watched him sleeping, then just let her thoughts wander for a while-about her life, choices made and avoided, her ten years with Frank. She thought about this mess with Sherman. Behind the applause of flag selection, what a shambles that poor man had made of his life. Some things of value. It was ironic that Galantz seemed to have a better appreciation for which things really were of value in this life. She looked back at Train, and was surprised to find him awake and watching her.

“Did you swipe my Armagnac?” he asked.

“Not uilty. Fetched my own.”

“Anything else I can do for you, Counselor?”

She looked right at him, touching him with her eyes, and then he’was swinging himself off the couch and up into a sitting position, lifting her to him, kissing her hard, no more control now, just a hungry wanting that lit her up from one end to the other like a tungsten filament. They kissed while working hurriedly on each other’s robes, and, then he stretched out full length on his back and pulled her up onto his body.

She arched her back as he explored with his hands and his lips, and then she did some exploring of her own, stopping, almost alarmed, when she realized how big he was. She swallowed hard.

He pulled her knees forward, lifting her hips, kissing her breasts, letting her labia rub along the full length of him, keeping it flat against his belly until she started to tremble uncontrollably with her own desire.

“You do it, Karen,” he whispered. “Go slow.”

She leaned all the way forward and reached behind her to guide him in, moaning when she felt his heat begin to fill her up while she lifted and then pushed backward, slowly, but seemingly forever, her belly fusing finally with his. He didn’t move, just let her absorb him without discomfort, and then he was unfolding her legs backward, stretching her out full length on top of him. And then he did move, slowly, carefully, until she responded, and then, the first time, it went fast, very fast, her fingers clawing at the leather of the couch, his hands bouncing her hips harder and harder as she climbed the mountain, until she stopped, her breath caught in her throat, her whole physical being suffused with the power of her climax.

She collapsed over him; muscles humming, the edges of a cramp in her legs, her breath shuddering out of her in sobbing gusts until she was able to get it under control. He was still inside, still hard, and she was almost afraid to move. But then he was pulling her knees up again, gently lifting her into a straddling position on his hips, his big hands on her breasts, massaging them, rolling her nipples through his fingers while he moved inside of her, going deeper, the flat, hard muscles of his groin pressing harder and harder against her own, summoning the fire again. As she felt him rising to his own climax, she took over, driving the rhythm while watching him through slitted eyes, her hair damp and hanging down over her forehead, the taste of sweat and his hot kisses in her mouth as she rocked above him, locking him in and going faster, feeling his hands go weak and then his breath catching, his hips lifting up in one werful deep thrust that felt as if it would split her in two PO as he came, filling her belly with an intense warmth.

She leaned forward when he was spent, keeping him inside, and kissed his face, his lips, his chin, his lips again, whispering to him while he stroked her back and her hips with his hands. She stretched out full length on top of his body, -with his arms wrapped tight around her.

After a little while, he suggested they go upstairs to his room.

“What are-your intentions, kind sir?” she asked, reaching for the robe.

“Whatever my lawyer recommends, Counselor. Unless you’re out of ideas.”

“Silly man,” she said. “What a silly man. Only you’re going to have to help me walk.”

FRIDAY. dressed in Karen came down for breakfast just before eight her uniform and carrying a large leather civilian purse. The breakfast table was set in the dining room, but no one seemed to be about, so she went into the kitchen’ where she found Hiroshi and - Kyoko having a cup of tea. As Kyoko started to get up, she asked Hiroshi if he would bring her car around to the side of the house. Hiroshi frowned but then nodded and left to get the c*. at down witk Kyoko and asked if she could have Karen’s some tea. Kyoko took one look at Karen’s face, smiled hugely, and hastened to get it.

“Train is still asleep,” Karen said, blushing. “I think he is very tired.”

The old woman just looked at her over the fun of her cup, and Karen was careful to avoid eye contact. “I’m going over to the Marine Corps base at Quantico. I think it best if Train was not disturbed.”

Kyoko nodded once but still didn’t say anything. Karen sipped her cup of tea for a few minutes, suppressing a grin of pure pleasure. She finally looked over at Kyoko. Then they both smiled, exchanging one of those knowing looks women have been trading since the beginning of time. Karen got up when she heard the car, thanked Kyoko for the tea, and went out the back door to intercept the Explorer. Hiroshi stepped out and gave her a remote device for opening the main gates.

“Train-sama does not go with you?” he asked.

“He needs his sleep, Hiroshi. He stayed awake to watch the night before last in the hospital. I’m just going over to the Marine base. I’ll be back by noon. Let him sleep, all right? He’s been up for almost two nights.”

Hiroshi looked unconvinced. “There is no danger where you go? Do you wish Hiroshi to go with you?”

She looked at him and wondered how much Train had told him. “I don’t -think so,” she replied. “I’ll be sa on the base, Hiroshi. There are lots of big Marines there. He has my car phone number if he’s worried.”

Hiroshi nodded, then hesitated, as if he had one more question. But then he bowed and closed the door for Karen.

She drove off as quietly as she -could, not wanting to wake Train. He’d be pretty agitated when he found out she had gone 4f on her own, but after last night, she was determined to do two things: first, hurry this Sherman thing to a conclusion. She knew Jack would never open up if Train was present. But if she could make him talk and establish that he was acting in concert with Galantz, they should be able to force Mcnair to move, which damned well ought to precipitate something. Secondly, she wanted to demonstrate to Train that she was an equal part of this team.

An hour later, Karen drove back out of the Marine base front gates and turned fight into tiny Triangle, Virginia. Her trip out to the airstrip had been a complete bust: Jack Sherman had not shown up for work. And when she had asked for his home address, the civilian clerk behind the counter had refused to give it out, citing the Privacy Act. Since Karen did not have Train’s database file with her, she now needed to find the boy’s address. She could, of course, admit defeat and go back to Aquia, but she was determined not to do that. She checked her car phone to see if there had been any calls, but there were none. Good. Still asleep, then. With any luck, she could get back before he even woke up. Then she saw the sign for the Triangle post office.

She turned the Explorer off Route One and entered a side street that led to the post office. The assistant postmaster turned out to be a retired Marine, and he perked up at the sight of Karen’s three stripes. She turned on her best smile in an effort to ease his bureaucratic conscience. After a few minutes of Navy-Marine. Corps banter, the postmaster produced the box with the postal box registration cards.

“Here’s your boy,” he announced, pulling an ID yellow

“Shows an address of number four card out of the file box.

Slade Hill Road. Which explains why he has a box. I think I’vd seen this guy. Skinny, rat-faced fella.”

“Sounds like him. We’ve interviewed him once over at the Marine base where he works. But he didn’t show up this morning. How do you know him?”

“Slade Hill is a one-lane mud track, goes up a steep hill off a Cherry Hill Road. There’s a pair of trailers halfway up, and then this guy. Our delivery trucks can’t get in end out except when it’s bone-dry, which is almost never’ That’s assumin’ they’d want to. Buncha biker lowlifes up there.

The old Slade house up on top, all falling in. Plus the snake problem.”

He looked obliquely-at Karen. “You sure you wanta go up there?”

“I need to talk to this guy,” Karen said. “And what’s this about a snake problem?”

“Like I said, Slade Hill Road goes mosta the way up a snaggle-assed hill that’s s’posed to be crawling with snakes.

You know, it’s one a those places. Lotsa rattlesnakes just happen to be there, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Right,” she replied, trying not to show her apprehension. Snakes were not-high on her list of favorite things.

This guy,” the postmaster said. “He never hasta know where you got the address, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Always happy to help out Navy law. But like I said, that’s a medium-rough crowd out there along the river Still kinda wild back in there. You be careful, Commander.’

“Appreciate the heads-up,” she said, and thanked him again. She went back out to the car. “Snakes,” she said as soon as she had the engine running. She exhaled, got out her Prince William County detail map, and found Cherry Hill Road.

It took fifteen minutes to get there and locate Cherry Hill Road. She thought about the jurisdictional problem she might be creating, then dismissed it. If she could get Jack to talk, Mcnair could deaf with any jurisdiction problems.

The road narrowed as it curved around toward the river, and at one point she had to pull the Explorer to the right and almost stop to make room for a pickup truck coming toward her. The good news was that Jack wasn’t likely to call the cops just because some Navy people were harassing him with questions. But she was sure she was on the right track.

With Sherman missing, his son had become the vital lead.

The only other wrinkle was Carpenter. He had ordered them off the case, effectively. What was that term Train usedfreelancing?

She concentrated on her driving as the narrow road climbed into the low hills bordering the river. The twisting road became even narrower, and she had to slow, both to avoid surprises and to size up the territory.

There were no developments down here, only single-home plots. Along the upper p art of the road, the houses were presentable, if modest: a mixture of regular construction and prefabs, with neat, well-tended lawns, established trees, and, usually, one or two elderly vehicles. As the road canted downhill, closing in on the river, the dwellings became mostly trailers. The edges of the road became more ragged, and she had to steer around some major tank traps disguised as potholes.

“Anywhere along in here,” she murmured to herself, holding the map in her lap. Slade Hill Road wasn’t on the map, but it did show some lines leading off Cherry Hill along in here. She decided to ask for directions when she saw a very fat man rolling a green plastic trash barrel down to the road from his house.’The man was about sixty; he was decked out in an armless T-shirt and red shorts whose tops were well shielded by his paunch. He had sparse brushcut gray hair and what looked like a few days’ growth of b-and littering his jowls. There was a large tattoo of the Marine Corps globe and eagle on his biceps. He peered suspiciously at the Explorer as Karen stopped, rolled down the passenger-side window, and leaned across to talk to him.

“I’m looking for Slade Hill Road. Am I close?”

“Round the next bend, first dirt road on the left. Watch yerself, lady.

Buncha assholes up there. Bikers and shit.”

Karen thanked him and rolled the window back up as she pulled out.

Lovely, she thought. If he thinks they’re assholes, they must be some . serious assholes. She came around the next curve in the road and saw what had to be Slade Hill Road on the left, a badly rutted dirt track leading up a fairly steep hill. The entrance was flanked by two piles of white garbage bags lying in the rain ditch, both of which had been ripped open by scavenging dogs. She put the Explorer in four-wheel drive and turned left into the muddy dirt road. The vehicle slipped sideways for a moment but then gained traction and began to climb. For the first hundred yards, there was nothing but heavy trash-littered underbrush and sad-looking trees on either side, with deep runoff ditches limiting the road to a one-way passage. ‘ There must have been a spring or seep up at the top of the road, because it was wet. Then she passed a rusting, burned-out trailer on the left, surrounded by six or so junked cars and heaps of moldering trash and blackened debris from the fire.

Two scabrous dogs came yapping out of the wreck and ran after her car, then quickly gave it up. The road zigged to the right, and Karen had-to maneuver the vehicle carefully over a deep erosion rut that ran diagonally across the road.

The road bent back to the left, still climbing, and then widened in the vicinity of two more trailers that looked as if they had been dropped from the air several years ago and then landed haphazardly in a muddy clearing. The trailersbutted up against each ociter at -an angie, and the junction was draped in”Sheets of heavy clear plastic like some kind of air lock. There were signs of life, in that the trash and garbage looked fresh. A new crew of scavenging dogs, feeding happily on a white garbage bag, ignored the Explorer as it ground past. There were four large motorcycles parked under a makeshift lean-to constructed out of dirty plastic panels supported by two old refrigerators. A faint wisp of smoke was coming out of what looked like a woodstove stack cut through the roof of one of the trailers. Karen kept going, watching her rearview mirror to see if humans or otherwise had come out to check on her intrusion into this sylvan paradise.

Maybe the purported snake problem up here is of the twolegged variety, Karen thought. She was suddenly glad it was morning, guessing that all the reptiles were still-in hiding.

She kept climbing in first gear, the road now showing less sign of use.

The lower tree branches were beginning to scrap’e against the top and sides of the Explorer, and the tire ruts were not so pronounced. Then the track just ended, or effectively did, because there was an enormous dead tree lying across the road. It had obviously been down for many years, but even half-rotten, the massive trunk meant that she would have to turn around.

She stopped but kept the engine running. This has to be the top of Slade Hill, or almost so,, she thought. She looked through the windshield to see if the road continued, but it didn’t look like it. She tried to remember what the postmaster had said about a house up there, but she finally decided to maneuver the Explorer around so that it faced downhill. Then she shut it down and got out, wishing she had worn the trousered working uniform I instead of the skirted variety. Her toes were curling in her dress shoes until she remembered that she kept a pair of Bean boots in the back. She changed shoes and then extracted her oversized bag, slinging it over her shoulder and then locking the car.

There was hardly a sound up here among the stunted trees and heavy underbrush, as if the native fauna had long since fled in disgust. There appeared to be the beginnings of a path on the river side of the clearing. She walked a few yards down the path before spotting the top of a trailer about feet off the road, back in a jungle of vines and weeds. e smell of a dysfunctional septic system competed with the odor of rotting vegetation and old tires at the edge of the dirt road.

Single-wide paradise. She could imagine some covert marijuana patches out in those_ woods, and maybe a meth boiler room down below at the double trailer. Above to the left, there was a ridgeline outlined by old trees, where patches of gray limestone appeared as silvery smudges against all the burgeoning greenery of spring. There might have been the ruins of a house back in those trees, but she could not tell. And no birds, she noticed. Not a peep from what should have been a hillside full of birds. Did snakes at birds?

This has to be the place, she decided reluctantly, although there was no mailbox or anything else with a number 4 on it. She started in toward the trailer along the dirt path, which was littered with an amazing variety of trash, beer cans, plastic shopping bags and ancient oily articles of clothing.

Stepping through the low underbrush, she wished she had a big stick to sweep the grass ahead of her. She felt a bramble bush put a good-sized tear in her right stocking. After about thirty feet, the path opened up into a clearing, where a badly damaged trailer lay half on, half off its cinder-block fqundations. The top of the trailer on one end looked as if it had been hit by a falling tree, although the tree was not in evidence. Electricity and telephone wires snaked down from a pole on the dirt -road to the comer of the trailer, so presumably somebody did live here. Off to one side, there was a motorcycle hootch built just like the ones at the trailer’s below. Battered packing crates constituted its sides and a plastic tarp stretched across some two-by-fours for a roof.

There was room under it for a couple of bikes, -but only one motorcycle was present for duty. It looked quite large, and it was partially covered by a moldy-looking shower curtain.

There was a mound of bags and clothes stacked to one side of the bike.

She wondered if that was the motorcycle she had seen at the church, but all motorcycles looked the same to her. She looked around for dogs. She heard a sound, and sure enough, two brown rats skittered out from beneath a pile of rotting mattresses and dived into a hole under some pallets. If there was a big snake problem up here, it wasn’t big enough, she thought. Time to go being on the door. She walked up to the front of the-trailer, kicked aside a white plastic bag of trash, and knocked on the front door. There was no response. She tried it again. The sound reverberated inside the trailer, as if it was empty.

She turned around and surveyed the littered yard. He hadn’t shown up for work, and he wasn’t answering the door. If this was his door, that is.

But the motorcycle rather made her think it was his place. The silence was a bit unnerving , though, and she began to imagine that someone was watching her. She went back to the door and banged louder, but there was still no response. She stepped back from the door to check the windows, but they were covered up inside.

She caught another whiff of sewer gas coming from under the trailer, an4 she stepped back out into the yard again.

A thought occurred to her. Suppose Jack was more than just a bit player in this business? There had been two people putting her into the cart and dragging her down to the river.

Suppose one of them had been Jack? As she stood there in the silence of the clearing, she began to think that being up here by herself might not be such a great idea. Then something moved in the pile of rags next to the motorcycle.

She walked over toward the motorcycle shelter,’being careful of where she put her feet. Then, to her surprise, the pile of rags itself moved, and a pale-faced Jack Sherman sat up groggily among the rags, a confused, disoriented look on his face. So drunk last night he’d never made it to the trailer.

He was wearing a filthy black leather jacket over an equally filthy T-shirt. His black jeans had been embroidered recently with the finished product of the brewer’s art. Karen could see the red of his bloodshot eyes from twenty feet away.

She relaxed: Jack was in no shape to give anybody any trouble. Just as long as Galantz wasn’t lurking nearby.

Jack swiveled his head around until he could focus on Karen. The bright light of morning was making him squint, and she wondered if he secretly needed glasses. He managed a liquid belch, and she decided not to get any closer lest the sight of another human provoke some even more distasteful bodily functions.

“Is that you, Jack Sherman?” she asked.

“Stop yellin’, man,” the derelict said, his voice thick.

“I’m hurtin’ here, man.” His eyes were closed now, and he held one hand up to his right ear, which Karen noticed was crusted with a thin line of blood. He made no move to rise from his nest of rags.

Karen moved a few feet closer, looking around to make sure Jack was alone. An admiral’s son, no less, she thought.

She wondered if this was a sight not unfamiliar to the admiral.

“Aren’t you a pretty specimen,” she said. “That man said there was a snake problem up here. This looks like a rat -problem.

“Snakes,” the kid mumbled, his eyes still closed, his head weaving with the effort to stay upright. Then he giggled as if he was still drunk. “it speaks,” she said. “Hard to believe this is an admiral’s son, but there’s no denying the facial resemblance, is there?”

The boy reacted to that, opening his eyes. “What’re you talking about, bitch? I ain’t no admiral’s son. Never was, never will be. -Fuck all admirals. And fuck you, whoever the hell you are.” . Karen moved a step closer. “You’re telling me that your father isn’t Rear Admiral W. T.

Jack rolled slowly all the way over in his bed of rags, squinting hard now, staring at her, pushing himself up on one arm to look at her, and then she saw a wave of recognition cross his face. “Hey, it’s you,” he said. “From the base. Where’s your bodyguard?”

“Not all that far away,” Karen lied. “But we thought we’d try asking our questions nicely, so he’s waiting in the car.

“Well, fuck that noise. I ain’t answering any ioddamned questions. Even if you do have a great ass.”

Karen cocked her head to one side. “You talk to all the girls that way, Jack?” she asked. “Or are you just attracted to asses in general?”

It went right over his head, and he waved a hand at her as if to make her just go away. He belched again, and for a moment, she thought he was going to be sick. But then he was looking at her again.

“Like I said, fuck you, lady. I don’t hafta talk to you.

Besides, you oughta be thankin’ me, man. He was gonna plug your ass before we dropped you in the river. Whadda ya think a that, bitch? Hey, you like your little ride in the river, huh?”

Karen felt a wave of anger swell up inside her chest. But Jack was getting up now, staggering to his feet, holding on to one of the two-by-fours.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a great ass, lady, Commander, ma’am, sir, whatever the hell you’re called. I took a little look, see, right after my old man popped his flashbulb in your face. You don’t remember? I do.

Great ass, like I said, sexy panties and all. Love that shit.” He was trying to move toward her, but he was still too drunk to stay upright without the help of the two-by-four. Then he stopped, looked into her shocked face, and made the mistake of laughing.

Karen lost it when she heard that laugh. She reached into her bag and pulled out Frank’s .45, and, almost as if she had been shooting one for years, she snapped back the hammer in one smooth motion and let one -go in Jack’s general direction. The two-by-four just below his hand shattered, blowing wood splinters all over the place. Jack yelled and went windmilling backward, toward the bike.

Karen stepped forward and fired again, the huge automatic kicking up in her hand and shocking her right -wrist.

This round pulverized the bike’s headlight, sending shards of glass into Jack’s face and causing him to fall sideways over the bike. The bike tipped and then fell over in a crashing heap, with Jack now pinned under the front wheel.

Karen walked toward him, the gun pointing right at him.

“What did you say, you son of a bitch? You put me in that bag, did you?

So that was you, Jack?” She fired again, aiming just over his head and hitting the back tire instead, and this time Jack was screaming for her to stop. She walked up close, her own hands trembling now, and lowered the muzzle to point right at his face. Jack started to babble and cry.

It Vas the sudden acrid smell of urine penetrating all the gunsmoke that brought her to her senses.

She backed away a step and slowly lowered the big gun.

Jack was curled into a protective ball underneath the front wheel of the bike, his right arm across his face. He was blubbering incoherently, his noises blending with the hiss of escaping air from the tire. Karen just stood there for a minute, taking deep breaths, struggling to wipe away the red mist of rage from her vision. She physically had to fight the urge to bring the gun up again and blow his damned head right off, and Jack sensed it.

“Get up,” she ordered. Her voice was flat and hard, and there was a strong metallic taste in her mouth.

“I can’t. I can’t,” he sobbed, still not looking at her.

“Do it, Jack, or I’ll put one in the gas tank. Get up.

Now! ” it took a moment for her threat to penetrate, and then he scrambled out from under the upset motorcycle, tearing his jeans and scraping his shins on a hub nut. He scuttled back away from her, farther into the hooch, a trembling hand still up in front of his face. There were shards of bright white glass on his T-shirt, and a large dark stain at his crotch.

“I said, Get up, Jack. I want you out here where I can see you, not just smell you. Get up!” She raised the .45 again.

He swallowed a couple of times and then crawled to his feet, suddenly very sober, his eyes locked on the black maw of the .45.

“Now,” she said, “we’re going to have a little talk. Or rather, I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to give me some answers. Call me bitch again and you’ll have to learn sign language, understand, Jack?”

He wobbled a little but nodded. She swung the gun around in the direction of the trailer. “In there.”

Jack walked carefully around her, eyeing the gun, his face pasty. He wiped his lips a couple of times on the way to the door. She could indeed smell him as he went past. He opened the front door and pushed it wide against some trash behind it. She followed him into the trailer, then told him to open some windows. The trailer stank of marijuana, with an overlay of sewage. The living room area was pretty much bare, with only -a sleeping bag rumpled up on a thin. and filthy mattress at one end, and two overturned boxes that apparently served as chairs. There were beer cans, wine bottles, old magazines, motorcycle parts, plastic jugs of oil, and assorted clothes scattered along the wall. A single overhead light hung by a broken fixture from the ceiling, and a telephone sat on the floor. She could smell the kitchen but could not see it, and she didn’t want to. A single hallway led back to the part of the trailer that had been smashed by the tree, but the hallway was blocked by a pile of clothes that looked as if they had been rescued from a Dumpster.

Jack stumbled unsteadily over toward the mattress. Karen followed him into the room, watching him carefully. Jack flopped down on the sleeping bag, then reached under it.

Karen brought the gun up instantly.

“Don’t,” she warned.

“Drink,” he said quickly. “Gotta have a drink. Goddamn, lady, you made me piss my pants. Gimme a break here.

Karen debated with herself. Maybe let him take a hit, steady his nerves.

If he was a full-blown lush, she might get more out of him if he steadied up. She nodded once. “Use one hand,” she ordered.

With his left hand in the air, he carefully felt around under the rag bag and there, with exaggerated slowness, extracted a long-necked brown bottle with no label. He undid the screw cap, still watching the gun, and took a long swig. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then swallowed, coughing as whatever elixir of the gods went down. Then he put the bottle down and pulled the sleeping bag over his lap. He had to put both hands down on the bag to keep himself upright. He looked at her expectantly.

Karen walked over to the stronger-looking of the two boxes and sat down, putting the automatic in her lap but keeping her right hand on it. She was aware that the hammer was still back, but she decided not to lower it. He might regain his courage after that slug of rotgut and make a move.

One part of her rather wished he would.

“You move and I’ll empty this thing into your face, understand?”

He nodded and then took another hit from the bottle.

“You were there,” she said. “You helped somebody kidnap me and then dump me in that river. Who was it?”

Jack looked away, a glint of fear showing in his eyes.

“My old man,” he croaked.

She couldn’t believe her ears. “You’re telling me that Admiral Sherman was involved in that?”

He still wouldn’t look at her, just kept staring down at the floor. “W.

T. Sherman’s nothing to me,” Jack said.

“I’m talking about my real old man.”

What the hell was this? “You mean Galantz?”

“Never heard that name. He’s always been Mr. Smith.

That’s all, Mr. Smith. Ever since recon training.”

“Where is he now, this Mr. Smith?”

Jack glanced out the back window and shivered.

“Around. I dunno. He comes and gets me when he needs me. He just shows up, man. Always at night. He’s like a goddamned ghost.”

“So Admiral Sherman’s nothing to you?”

“Not’since he did what he did. Back there in D.C.,” Jack said, a hint of the old sneer coming back into his voice. The rotgut, she thought. Watch him.

“You mean when he divorced your mother.”

Jack didn’t say anything, just stared down at the floor.

Even so, Karen could sense the enormous resentment festering in this kid.

“Why do you call Galantz-Mr. Smith-your old man?”

Jack wiped his lips again and glanced sideways at the bottle. “Because he took care of me, back there in recon school, when I was getting my ass kicked by them other guys, the bigger guys. They were gonna wash me out, but Mr. Smith, he stood up, man. He knew about … about what happened to my mother. Said he was gonna be the old man I never had.

Said he’d get me through it. And he did, too.

Them other guys, they were afraid of Mr. Smith. He’s a bad bastard. Not like some a those guys, go around acting tough.

He is tough, man.”

“Yeah, real tough guy. Kidnapping women. Blinding them first, then stuffing them in a bag. Then if something goes wrong, quick, Jack, throw her in the river. A real man, that. A real tough guy.”

Jack’s face went blank as he squirmed around on the sleeping bag. “We was just gonna keep you. Not hurt you.

That’s what he said.”

“Why?”

“I dunno. I don’t ask him questions. He calls, I come. I owe him, that’s all. I owe him big. He told me to get a boat, meet him by the Key Bridge. I did what he told me. I owe him, man.”

“Why? What do you owe him for?”

“That’s personal.”

“Look at me,” she said. He didn’t move. She raised the gup, trying to remember how many rounds were in it. Not that many. “Look at me, Jack.”

Slowly, he raised his head, his face a study in pain and anger in about equal proportions. “I know what happened to your mother,” she said.

“That she shot , herself. “

His eyes blazed. “Because of him, the way he was. I want him dead. You listening to me? I want him dead! All those years, he was always gone.

Off on those ships, no time to come home, no time for us. Always the big fuckin’ deal.

Have to work late. On the fast track here, people. Movin’ right up here.

You got no damn idea, man. My mother, fryin’ her brain with the booze because she was always alone. Going’ to bed drunk, getting’ up drunk, drunk when people came around, drunk when 1-hell, lady, what would you know about any of that shit? You’re one of ‘em, aren’t you? You’re a goddamn officer, just like him.”

Karen took a deep breath. “So you blame him for what happened to your mother?”

“Fuckin’-A, I do. She was-she didn’t deserve that shit, man. Neither of us did. Don’t you think we deserved a little bit of his fucking time all those years? So yeah, when Mr. Smith comes knocking, tells me he’s gonna do a number on that prick over some shit went down in Nam, now that he’s a big-deal admiral, and do I wanta help out a little, I said fuckin’-A.

In a fuckin’ heartbeat.”

“Were you involved in what happened to Elizabeth Walsh?”

“Never heard of her. Oh, yeah, she was the new punch, right? My mother’s replacement? Smith told me about her.

How she had this little fall down the stairs.”Flying lesson,’ he called it. He gave her a damn flying lesson. Told me to go by the funeral, told me where and when. Told me to make sure I rode the bike by so he would see me. Yeah, I was involved.”

“And the funeral for Admiral Schmidt? He told you to go to that one, too?”

“Yeah. Said it was important that he saw me there, too.

Said it was part of the plan. Said old geezers like that, they live too long. Said he was just helping nature along.”

“But you did not help to kill them?”

Jack took a deep breath, as if suddenly realizing how much he had told her. His eyes started blinking. “Look at me, man,” he sobbed. “Just fuckin’ look at me. Look where I fucking live. How I live. I’m a fucking drunk, just like my mother. For the same reason my mother was a drunk.

And he don’t give two shits and never has. So, yeah, I helped Smith with that deal at your place. But that’s ‘ all. Whatever he did to those other two, he did what he did. None of my fuckin’ business. Rest of the time, I’m usually right here, man, boiled out of my fuckin’ gourd, okay, man?” He stopped and took another hit. “And I’ll tell you something else,” he said as he tried to get up. “He comes around again, tonight, tomorrow, whatever, asking? I’m gonna sober right up and say yes, man.

Whatever the fuck it is, what’ ever the fuck he needs, he’s got it from me, man.”

“But don’t you understand? You’re involved in murder.”

Jack, halfway to his hands and knees now, just shook his head. His face was red flushed, his eyes on fire. “Don’t give a fuck. Because he’s gonna do what I always wanted to do, bring that pretty bastard down, man. Far as I’m concerned, that pretty bastard murdered my mother and fucked me up for life. Mr. Smith, man? He’s the fuckin’ Lone Ranger and I’m fuckin’ Tonto, man. Now why don’t you just leave me the hell alone, okay?”

He flopped down onto the sleeping bag, his face hidden from her, his shoulders shaking. Karen stared at him for a long moment and then backed out of the trailer. She eased the hammer down on the .45 and put it back in her purse as she walked back through the weeds to the Explorer. She unlocked the car, got in, and started it up, glancing down at the phone when it beeped. Three calls in the system for her.

Uh-oh, that had to be Train. Sleeping Beauty had awakened and had probably gone hermantile when Hiroshi told him where she had gone. She decided to wait until she got back to fill him in.

She steered the Explorer carefully down the dirt hillside, keeping the bag close and open in case some of the locals at the other trailer decided to come out to play. The .45 lay right at the top, exuding a comforting whiff of cordite into the area of the 4front seat.

Train was just getting into his car when he heard the sound of Karen’s Explorer coming up the drive. He took a deep breath and got back out, trying not to slam the door. Control, he said. This is the time for lots and lots of control. He saw Hiroshi standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his face a wooden mask. Train had awakened at eleven and realized he had slept long past eight. Upon going downstairs anding out that Karen had left three hours earlier, he had tually yelled at Hiroshi for not waking him up. Then he banged around the house for a while, worried more than he would have thought possible, trying to decide whether or not to go after her or to wait for word. He had placed three calls to her car phone, to no avail. Anything could be happening out there. Then he had called the maintenance department at Quantico airfield and found out that Jack Sherman had not reported for work-which meant that Karen had probably gone out on her own to Cherry Hill, which was no place for a woman alone, even if she wasn’t the target of some mad bastard. That had settled it, and he was on his way when she returned to the house. He tried to neutralize his face when she got out of the car.

“I got him to talk,” she said in a rush. “I know you’re mad at me for going off alone, but I got him to talk. Now let’s go inside where we can talk privately.” She smiled up at him’, took his arm, and steered him toward the house.

Damn the woman, he thought, his anger melting when she grabbed his arm, but he went along, ignoring Kyoko’s efforts to erase the smile that was on her face as they went into the house. Look at Kyoko. Damned women were all in it together.

Train got up and began to pace around in the study after Karen finished telling him about her encounter with Jack Sherman. She was sitting on the couch with that oversized handbag at her feet.

“So he admits he was in on what happened to you out in Great Falls?” he asked.

“Yes. He denies having anything to do with what happened to Elizabeth or Galen Schmidt. But only because Galantz didn’t ask him to. He did appear at the funerals on Galantz’s instructions.”

Train nodded. “We’re going to have to find out what the historical connection is between Galantz and Sherman’s son.

You said they first met at recon school?”

“That’s what he said.”

“That, we can check out. I’m sure Galantz was there as an instructor or something. I wonder if Jack Sherman’s BCD had anything to do with Galantz.”

“There’s something I haven’t talked about yet,” Karen said in a tone of voice that made Train turn around. She told him about her outburst with the .45.

Train grinned in spite of himself. “Wahoo,” he said. “I think I’d like to have seen that, Counselor.”

But Karen wasn’t laughing. “I think I wanted to kill him.

Hell, I know I wanted to kill him. Train, I’ve never had an impulse like that before.”

He went over to her and sat down on the couch, he said, reaching for her hand. “If not for some fortuitous accidents the other night, you’d be dead now, and that little piece of crap up_ there on Cherry Hill wouldn’t be giving it a second thought. You’re upset to find yourself getting down to his level, but remember, he’s the one who provoked it.

Now, where’s the -forty-five?”

She reached into the bag and produced the Colt, holding it by the slide.

At that moment, Hiroshi knocked on the study door and opened it to report that lunch was ready.

When he saw the huge automatic in her hand, he stopped in mid-sentence.

“It’s okay, Hiroshi,” Train said hurriedly. “Tell Kyoko we’ll be right in.”

Hiroshi withdrew carefully while Train slipped out the magazine and worked the slide to eject the chambered round. “We need to clean and reload this thing,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t be carrying it,” she said. “I don’t have a license or anything.”

Train laughed at that, kissed her on the cheek, and went over to the shotgun cabinet in the corner of the study and began fishing around in a drawer. “Given what’s been going down, I’d feel better if you did have it with you. A concealed-weapons-violation beats a body bag every time.”

He did a quick cleaning job on the pistol and then found a box of .45 auto to reload the clip. But when he turned around, Karen had her face in her hands. He finished up ith the weapon and went back to her and held her for a w minutes, telling her it was okay, that nobody got hurt, and next time to take him with her when she went out into the weeds.

Over lunch, they kicked around her idea about telling Mcnair about Jack Sherman and what he had said. Train was for telling the police what they knew. “Mcnair’s been pretty straight with us,” he said. “We owe it to him to return the favor. At the very least, the cops will want to sweat young Jackie boy, because they’ll think he can lead them to Galantz.”

Karen wasn’t so sure now. “I don’t think Jack Sherman can lead himself to the bathroom most of the time. The cops aren’t even going to get close to Galantz through him.”

“But he admitted being part of a kidnap and attempted murder-namely, yours.”

“I know. But right now, that’s hearsay. If you could have seen him, Train, you’d know that he is nothing but a pawn.

Galantz has some kind of hold on him, but otherwise he’s a dysfunctional mess. Besides, there’s another problem with telling the cops about Jack.”

“Which is?”

“If they pick him up, either they or we have to tell Admiral Carpenter that Sherman’s son is in fact mixed up in the homicides. Right now, they have Sherman sidelined on a selection board just because there’s a whiff of scandal.

But if this gets out, they’ll force him to resign and take his homicidal relatives with him.”

Train was silent for a moment. “Yeah, but you’re forgetting that Sherman himself is missing. His goose may already be cooked. Let’s do this: Let’s talk to Mcnair, tell him about the son, and lay out the political ramifications for him. That way, we’re straight with him, but maybe we-can mitigate any collateral damage done to Shehnan senior. I think we can convince Mcnair that his real target is still Galantz and not some whacked-out kid.”

“And what do we tell Admiral Carpenter?”

Train shrugged. “That’s a tougher question. The good news is that we’re supposed to be sitting here on the sidelines. I don’t see that we need to talk to Carpenter at All right now. We’re better off talking to Mcnair first-before something happens to that kid.”

“Happens? Like what?”

“I don’t know. But if galantz finds out that you and Jack Sherman have had a quiet little chat, Jackie boy might become surplus gear.”

Karen was folding her napkin, staring pensively across the dining room.

“What I’d really like to do is find Admiral Sherman,” she said.

Kyoko came in to clear the table and Train suggested they go for a walk around the grounds before calling Mcnair. As they were stepping out through the front door, the telephone began ringing. Train paused to see who it was. Hiroshi came through the main hallway. “Detective Mcnair,” he announced with a stiff face. Train realized he would have to deal with the problem of injured feelings before the day was over. Karen followed him back to the study.

“Mcnair,” Train said. “We were talking about calling you.’ “Trouble?”

Mcnair asked.

“Not exactly. But we’ve located a new player in the Sherman puzzle-Admiral Sherman’s son. We need to talk.”

“What’s the connection?”

“He’s been helping Galantz.”

There was a moment of silence on the line. “You told your Navy people about this?”

“Not yet. I figured this is first and foremost police business. “

“Good thinking,” Mcnair said.

Karen was trying to tell him something. “Hang on a’ sec.

What?” he asked.

“Tell him we need to find Admiral Sherman,” she said.

Train relayed her message.

“Believe it or not, that’s why I was calling,” Mcnair said. “How do you two feel about making a little drive2”

“Like where?”

“Like to a Saint Martha’s Hospice Center, about five miles outside of a little town called Hamey, Maryland, right up on the Pennsylvania border.”

“A hospice center?” he asked.-Karen was staring at him.

“What the hell, Mcnair?”

“I’ve got an all-day court deal today,” Mcnair said.

“The hospice center is right on the main drag. I think it’s Route 134, just north of Hamey. Meet me there, say, five P.m. Give me the number for your ear phone in case I get delayed. Commander Lawrence is with you, right?”

“Yup.’ “Good. Keep it that way. I’ll see you there at five.” Train agreed and hung up. He told Karen what Mcnair had said.

“A hospice center?” she said.

“That’s what the man said. On the Pennsylvania border.

Look, it’s almost one. This will take-what, three, three and a half hours? Why don’t we get on the road now, get north of D.C. before all the traffic starts? But first, I need to mend some fences with Hiroshi and tell him where we’re going.”

They found the St. Martha’s Hospice Center with no difficulty, arriving just after 4:30. The sky had turned overcast and colder during the afternoon, and the air smelled like rain when they parked in front of what appeared to be the main building. St. Martha’s had the look of a private sanatorium. There was a brick wall surrounding nearly five acres of wooded grounds, and all the buildings were covered in old ivy. The main building, which was distinguished from the rest by the fact that it had three stories, had a granite Gothic arch entranceway capped by a plain marble cross set back into the arch. There were several cars in the parking lot but no obvious police cars.

The glass doors of the front entrance opened into a carpeted reception area, with a front desk that looked very much like a hotel checkin counter. There were couches and chairs in the reception area, and fresh flowers on the tables.

There were two nuns in modem black-and-white habits behind the desk.

The younger of the two was working on a computer. The other one, a pleasant-faced woman of indeterminate age, stood up to greet them. Train signed them in while Karen went in search of a ladies’ room.

Mcnair arrived about twenty minutes later, shedding a light raincoat as he came through the door. He saw and waved to the two of them, then went up to the desk to talk to one of the Sisters, who got on the phone as Mcnair signed in. He walked back over to where Train and Karen were sitting and nodded politely at Karen.

“Commander, you’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”

She smiled at him but said nothing, not wanting to dwell on the last time. He asked Train if they’d found the place without trouble.

“No prob,” Train replied. “Although we’re still in the dark about why we’re here.”

Mcnair sat down in a chair facing them both. “You recall that Admiral Sherman supposedly went missing sometime Wednesday.”

Train nodded. “What’s that got to do with this place?”

“In a few minutes, a Sister Bernadette will come down here to meet us.

She’s the head of patient affairs. She’s going to show us a videotape, and then we can talk some more about the good admiral. But first, run through this business with his son. I take it you two tracked him down?”

Train gave Karen a sideways look that said, Let me take this one. Thenhe debriefed Mcnair on ac’s w erea)outs, his putative connection to Galantz, and what he had revealed about his own role in Galantz’s operation. Mcnair listened carefully, taking some notes before turning to Karen.

“And you actually interviewed him the second time, Commander? What was your estimate of this individual’s general physical and mental state?”

She thought for a moment. “Physically, he was badly hungover from using alcohol or dope of some kind. Probably both. He’s malnourished, very thin, but still strong enough to operate a big motorcycle.”

“And mentally?”

“Filled with hate. Rage. Pretty messed-up kid. Actually, he’s twenty-what? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? Not exactly a kid, but that’s the word that comes to mind: a belligerent teenage kid, resenting everybody and everything, living like the poorest white trash that ever was.”

“And he admitted to helping Galantz with your abduction in Great Falls?

How about the two homicides?”

“According to him, his contribution to the Walsh and Schmidt affairs was to appear at the respective funerals so his father would see him. And he doesn’t recognize the name Galantz, by the way.”

“Right, Mr. Smith. But for him, this all has to do with getting back at his old man for what happened to his mother, correct?”

“And to him. The night the syringe showed up, the admiral told me something of his history. He admits he’s more than a little responsible for what happened to his family.,, “I see. Of course this is all hearsay. Might work for a grand jury, but not so good at trial, as you know. You suppose he would tell us the same story if we pick him up?

There was no coercion or anything like that, was there?” Karen looked at Train, who arched his eyebrows at her.

Reluctantly, she told Mcnair about losing her temper with the .45.

“Uh-huh,” Mcnair said. There was the ghost of a smile around his lips when she was finished. Karen put the best face on it she could. “I don’t know what to say. I realized that here was one of the guys who cocooned me in a damned body bag for several hours and then nearly drowned me in the river. Especially when he revealed all this with a maximum sneer.”

“And you just happened to have a forty-five in your purse?”

“I did that morning, yes.”

Mcnair glanced at her regulation purse. “Got it in there now, do we?”

Karen couldn’t tell if he was being facetious. Given her inexperience in the use of the big ” hundredth time how lucky she had kill Jack. She decided to play it safe.

“No, I I she said. “Look, I shouldn’t have done that. So, yes, I left the gun for this trip.”

Mcnair nodded again, lookin over at the desk for signs of Sister Bernadette’s arrival. Train washelpfully studying the floor.

“Okay,” Mcnair said, turning back around. “Technically, what happened up there is a Prince William County problem. It doesn’t sound like the kid is the type who’ll be crying to the cops. The important thing is what he’s revealed. Assuming Mr. Smith is Galantz, this is pretty strong corroboration.”

“And maybe a good way to locate Galantz,” Train offered.

“If he’ll tell you the same story, wouldn’t that take care of Sherman’s political problem?” Karen said.

“It might,” Mcnair said. “But it doesn’t take care of his Galantz problem, not until we can take Galantz himself off the boards.” , I”So,”

Train said, “what are we doing in this place?”

Mcnair nodded and closed his notebook. “We checked with the Navy when we couldn’t contact Sherman. Carpenter’s office said he was on a selection board of some kind and that they’d get him to call us. Then they called back, said he was not present for duty. I asked if he was A.W.O.L., They said flag officers don’t go A.W.O.L.. Anyhow, the) huffed and they puffed and finally admitted they didn’t know where he was. I had a patrol unit go by his house -No car. I put out a locating bulletin for Sherman’s car. the tristate area. Maryland state trooper located the car at motel here in Hamey yesterday afternoon. I talked to tire motel manager. Turns out Sherman is a regular.” -“A regular?” Karen said. She was confused, until sb remembered the prior weekend, when Sherman had gone out of town.

Yup, ” Mcnair said. “See, this motel has a cut-rate. deal for people who are visiting long-term patients at the hospice here. The sisters here set it up years ago.’,’ At that moment, a large matronly-looking nun came out of the elevators, spotted Mcnair, and came over to where they were sitting. She looked to Karen like an approaching battleship in her black-and-gray uniform, with a large silver crucifix bouncing over a generous bosom. Mcnair roade the introductions.

“Very pleased to meet you both,” Sister Bernadette said.

“Detective Mcnair, I have the videotape you requested, and a busy night ahead.”

“Right, Sister, and we really appreciate this. As I explained to you, just seeing this tape will be a great help in our investigation. Then we’ll get right out of your hair.”

“That’s fine, Detective. Everyone does understand that this particular tape is not available for release or for any court proceedings, yes?”

“Absolutely, Sister,” Mcnair said.

“Very well. Let’s go to the security office.”

She led them to the elevators, where they ascended in silence to the third floor. Karen searched Train’s face for some explanation of what they were doing, but he could only shrug.

“All the administrative functions are handled up here,” Sister Bernadette explained as they came out on the third floor. “That way, the patients and the residents are on the lower two floors. Better for fire-evacuation purposes, you know.

As they walked down a carpeted hallway with what looked like offices on either side, Karen asked what the hospice’s mission was.

“We’re a Catholic charity hospice, Commander. We provide a medically staffed residential-care facility for a special kind of patient-those we term ‘the mentally absent.’ Clinically, these are people who are not ill-with cancer, for example-but who are no longer with us mentally and who require full-time care. These are also people who can’t afford or can’t get access to a commercial nursing home or hospital. Families pay what they can, of course.”

They arrived at the end office, and Sister Bernadette punched in a code on a keypad. “We have one hundred and eighty beds here, a full nursing staff, doctors here during the day and on call at night. The facility is full and there’s a waiting list.”

She led them into the security office, which combined a clerical area with a security surveillance center. The office part appeared to be closed, but there was an older man in civilian clothes sitting at a console in front of several dozen black-and-white monitors embedded in one wall.

“That’s our monitoring system,” Sister Bernadette explained. “This is Mr. Franklin, who has the four-to midnight shift.” The man nodded politely at them and then returned to watching the screens while Sister Bernadette explained the system.

“We can maintain surveillance of the facility and all of the rooms. A computer generates a random sampling that gives a one-minute look into each viewing area. Or the watchman can select sites for continuous surveillance. The system is integrated with the call system, of course, and the nurses’ station on each floor has a single monitor that can be used to respond to any calls, either from a patient’s room or from the security office right here, with two-way communications.”

“That’s a pretty sophisticated system,” Train said.

“A gift from a corporate donor.” Sister Bernadette replied. “Much of our facility equipment has been donated.”

“I can imagine. But suppose someone wants privacy, say for a visit?”

Train asked.

“Mr. von Rensel, by the time they come here, most of our patients have achieved the ultimate privacy. That’s what we mean by the term mentally absent. They may be alive and well as persons somewhere in their own minds, but we outsiders can no longer see them or’communicate with them.

The monitors are watching their bodies, for their own safety, care, and comfort. In fact, that’s how we come to have the Detective Mcnair wishes you to see. This way, ase.”

She led them to the back comer of the monitoring area and turned on a regular television set. A picture came up, one of the local stations, but the sound had been muted. She inserted a tape cassette into a VCR and switched to the video playback channel. The tape leader created a fuzzy black and-white pattern on the screen.

“What are we going to see here?” Karen asked.

Sister Bernadette hit the Pause button. “When our patients have visitors, we monitor. It’s for our protection and the patient’s.

Visitors are fully informed, and they can even see the tapes if they wish to. But a visitor cannot gain access to the room until the charge nurse has confirmed the monitor is positioned.”

“What we’re going to see here,” Mcnair interjected, “is a that of Admiral Sherman making a visit-to his wife.”

“His wife?” Karen said. “But I thought-I mean, he said-“

“She’s been here for ten years,” Mcnair said.

“Admiral Sherman didn’t tell us the whole story about what happened to his wife. She did shoot herself. She just didn’t succeed in committing suicide. She’s in what the docs call’a sustained vegetative state.’ Body is alive. Brain is not.”

“We don’t know that last bit, of course,” Sister Bemadette observed.

“Her mind might be alive. She might even come back.”

“Has. that ever happened?” Karen asked. She was still trying to absorb the fact that the admiral’s wife was still alive. Ten years. My God.

“Yes it has, but very seldom. It is dramatic, though, when it does happen.”

“I’ll bet,” Train said. “And this is a tape of a visit?”

“Yes. He’s been coming here for nearly ten years. When, he is assigned in Washington, he comes almost every weekend. This particular tape is almost a year.old, but it is representative of what happens. I must reiterate that what you are going to see is intensely personal.

Detective Mcnair has explained that this is a murder case. You two must assure me that you will never reveal to Admiral Sherman that you have seen this. On your honor, yes?”

Karen and Train nodded agreement.

“Say it please,” she demanded.

They said it aloud. Train wondered if they were being taped. “Very well, then.” She pressed the button.

There were a few more seconds of leader noise, and then a black-and-white image materialized on the screen, showing a hospital room. There was a single hospital bed in the room, a chair, a dresser, and a door that presumably led to a bathroom.

There was a sound and the door to the room opened. A nurse led in Admiral Sherman, who was dressed in civilian slacks and a sweater. He thanked the nurse, who looked up at the monitor briefly and then withdrew from the room.

Sherman approached the bed, where a woman lay motionless under the covers. Looking at the screen, Karen couldn’t tell how old she was. She had a middle-aged face that had once been pretty, but her hair was now snow white. Her eyes were open but clearly vacant. Sherman sat down on the edge of the bed and lovingly reached out with his right hand to brush a few strands of her hair away from her forehead.

“Ten years,” Train murmured.

“There are some who have been here longer,” Sister Bernadette said.

“Some come as children. They can break your heart. “

Sherman sat there in silence for a few minutes, smoothing his wife’s hair and staring into space. Then he leaned forward onto the bed, near his wife’s head, and gently rolled her to face him, cupping her head with both hands. Karen was startled to realize he was saying something.

She had to strain to hear it.

“I’m sorry, Beth,” he was saying so y. in so very sorry.” He said it over and over, holding her tightly. Karen watched for a few seconds, then turned away, tears in her eyes. Sister Bernadette switched off the set.

“That’s what he does,” she said as the tape rewound.

“The same thing each time. He stays for about forty minutes and then leaves. Usually comes Saturday afternoons, and again Sunday mornings.”

“Every weekend?” Train asked. Karen noted that he seemed to have a catch in his voice. Mcnair, who apparently had known what was coming, waited patiently.

“Often enough. Of course, some years he’s been away at sea. Sometimes he comes unexpectedly. He told me once that this place has become his refuge, too, when his official life becomes too - complicated. But we have a visitor log at the front desk and we keep records for seven years. Given the nature of our patients, there are often legal actions that requite our records.”

“I see,” Train said. “This must cost a fortune, Sister.

Even an admiral doesn’t make that kind of money. And he’s only recently an admiral.”

“We know,” she replied. “As I said, people pay what they can. And in his case, he just sent in a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That happens. People inherit something, or someone dies and leaves insurance.”

Karen and Train looked at each other. Elizabeth Walsh’s life-insurance proceeds had found a home.

“Sister, we thank you for your time and for letting us see this,” Mcnair said. “And we will keep what we’ve seen and heard here private.” ‘“Very well, Detective,” she rtplied, ejecting the videocassette.

“Is Admiral Sherman here now, Sister? Karen asked.

“I don’t know. You can ask at the front desk, Commander. I’ll take you back downstairs now, if you don’t mind.”

They checked at the front desk and found out that Admiral Sherman had indeed been there but had already left.

They signed out, went out to the front entrance, and stood on the steps.

The pyomise of rain had been fulfilled as a light drizzle blew in from the northwest. The parking lot was illuminated by -several tall light standards, whose tops were now veiled in a misty orange glow.

“Well,” Kare said.

“Yeah, well,” Mcnair replied. “Not that he’s been a very good suspect up to now. But I can’t feature a gvy for murder who makes this little pilgrimage for ten years, no matter what it looked like originally.”

Karen had a sudden thought. “Do you suppose Elizabeth Walsh knew about this? And that’s why she’left him the insurance-policy money? She had no other relatives.”

Train nodded thoughtfully. “Possibly. But I think the more important question now is whether or not we want to go talk to Sherman,” Train said. “Tell him what his son admitted to. That he’s been part of Galantz’s -little program.”

“Not here,” Karen said immediately. “I don’t think he should know that we know about this. Besides, we promised.”

Mcnair nodded. “Once I found out where he’d gone, what he was doing here, I left a message on his voice mail at home to contact me,” Mcnair said. “But that was before I knew that the oni was involved.”

“We need to find out how Galantz set this up,” Karen said. “I’m beginning to think he planned to use. the son in some fashion for a long time. Probably from when he ran across the kid in Marine recon school.

God knows, Jack has as good a motive to destroy his father as Galantz does. Or at least he thinks he does.”

“Why don’t we do this?” Train said to Mcnair. “Let us sit down with Admiral Sherman and walk through the son’s status. We’ll tell him that you got antsy when you couldn’t contact him, tracked him up here, and discovered that his wife was still alive. You told us. We don’t need to get into what he does up here. He visits, that’s all. But we can tell him what his son said, since we’re the ones who heard it.

Maybe we’ll tell him you’re not in that loop yet, and see what he comes up with.”

“And what good does that do? I want to move on Galan Z.”

“I’m not sure, but I’m thinking if we can maybe, just maybe, put father and son back together, we can maybe use Jack to trap Galantz.”

Mcnair studied the ground for a moment. “That’s a real reach, G-man. But maybe that’s the best we can do. And you’ll keep me cut in on what you get out of that?”

“We have so far, haven’t we?” Karen said.

“Yes, you have, Commander. Which is the intelligent thing to do, when there’s homicide on the table. But I’m also worried about the Navy getting ahead of us. I told Mr. von Rensel here that my bosses have been getting some heat about this case from some federal sources-as in the Sherman problem involves a federal situation best left to federal solutions. It wouldn’t stun me if the Navy told both of you, for instance, to return to the fort and leave Galantz to the real Indian fighters.”

Train looked sideways at Karen. Mcnair caught it.

“Uh-huh. Already happened, am I right?” he said.

“Sort of,” Train -said. “Although I’m not entirely sure what the game is. I take my orders from the Navy JAG, Admiral Carpenter, as does Commander Lawrence here.”

“And those orders currently are what, specifically?” Mcnair demanded.

“Not to pursue Galantz. Not to interfere with the efforts of other people who might be pursuing Galantz. To keep Commander Lawrence safe from any more attempts on her life.”

“And Admiral Sherman was sent on some kind of temporary duty? Is that like suspension with pay?”

“Not normally, but in this case, I’d say he was put somewhat in limbo,”

Train said. “It’s almost as if the admirals are waiting for something to happen. But I don’t know what the hell it is.”

Mcnair nodded but remained silent. He drew his Coat closer around his throat as the drizzle deepened into rain.

“I think,” he said, “I need to go talk to my lieutenant again.

This is getting too political for us snuffles. And if the feds are well and truly in it, it’s gonna get pretty screwed up.”

He looked up at Train with a wry smile. “No offense intended, G-man.”

Train laughed. “None taken. No arguing with reality.”

“So’we’re agreed?” Karen persisted. “We’ll get in touch with Admiral Sherman, Navy-to-Navy, as it were, and see where it takes - us?”

“I guess So,” Mcnair said. “But just in case, let me confirm your car phone numbers.”

Train and Mcnair exchanged numbers and then Mcnair closed his notebook.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m headed back to D.C. And, Commander, when you have your meeting with Sherman and Junior, leave that forty-five at home, all right?” Mcnair grinned again as he headed for his car. Train wisely said absolutely nothing.

An hour later, Karen put the road map back up in the sunshade over her seat and switched out the map light. “Route 216 from here down to the interstate,” she said.

“Got it,” Train replied. -“It’s nice having a navigator. I usually wing it and then get to see lots of unusual sights.” ‘“Not that you would stop and ask for directions?”

“Naw. Against all the guy rules.”

“Right. Is Mcnair still behind us?”

Train looked in his mirror and said yes. They were headed down a two-lane state road in the darkness of the Maryland countryside.

Mcnairhad followed them out of the hospice parking lot in his departmental car. Train was maintaining a fairly constant sixty in deference to the slick roads.

“So,” she said, “how do we go about getting in touch with Admiral Sherman?”

“Call him,” he said. “We know he’s up here at the hospice tonight. I’m going to assume he’s checking his voice mail.

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then I guess we’ll contact with him at the motel. I had hoped not to reveal that we know the details of this situation.

It like a Peeping Tom, looking at that tape.”

Karen had been struggling with that problem since they had left the hospice: how to regain contact with the admiral without letting him know what they now knew.

It started to rain a little harder, and Train slowed down to fifty-five.

The two-lane black asphalt road glistened in their headlights between indistinct boundary lines. They appeared to be passing through some low foothills, with intermittent farmsteads fleetingly’ visible under barnyard security lights among the trees. The farmhouses were all, built practically on the edge of the road, and the barns were enormous. Train looked back in the mirror.

“Not much happening out here in the sticks on a Friday night,” he said.

“We and Mcnair are the only people out here.”

As if to make a liar out of him, a. pickup truck came past in the other lane, trailing a cloud of spray. Train had to hit the windshield cleaners after the truck passed. Karen turned in her seat as the truck went past, which momentarily illuminated the car behind them. She looked and then turned around quickly.

“I don’t think that’s Mcnair,” she said. “Unless his car sprouted one of those cop-car spotlights since he left.”

Train looked into the side mirror and then the center mirror. “I can’t see anything but headlights. You sure?”

“I think so. I’m going to look again the next time a car comes past. How far back do you think that car is?”

“Maybe ten lengths. He’s been pretty constant. That’s why I assumed it was Mcnair.”

She wanted to turn around again, then realized that if she did, the driver back there might see her face. “Didn’t Mcnair give you the number for his car phone?”

“Sure did,” he said, fishing in his shirt pocket for the piece of paper.

Karen read the number and dialed it up on Train’s car phone. The signal was weak and scratchy, but she could hear four rings, then the recording saying the customer was not available. She hung it -up.

“Not available,” she reported, resisting the urge to turn around again for another look.

“That doesn’t prove it’s not him,” Train said unconvincingl,./ ..7.

“So now what do we do? Mcnair’s car was white; that one back there looks like a darker color. And there’s that spotlight. I I

“Did you see antennas? Like a state cop car?”

Karen thought for a moment. “Yes, I. think I did. On the roof. Maybe it’s a state cop, or a county patrol car. Are you speeding?”

He shook his head as they entered a stretch where the woods came tight down to the road on either side in a blurry embrace of rain-soaked forest. The road curved to the right and began to climb a long hill.

Train slowed down to an even fifty. Karen watched the car behind them in her side mirror. The distance did not change. Whoever was back there was paying attention.

“Next paved side road on the right,” Train said. I’ll m going to make an exciting turn. If this guy follows us, we’ll either get pulled over or we have a problem.” He doublepunched the door locks and the compartment opened under his left elbow. He took out the Glock and passed it over to Karen. “Hang on to this for me. If it’s a cop car, I’ll put it back before he gets to the window.”

Karen took the heavy pistol and put it in her lap.

“That’s a Glock,” he said. “It’s double-acting. Point it and pull the trigger. It’ll fire once and then it’s s&miauto.

Don’t hold the trigger down.”

Train accelerated a little, keeping both hands on the wheel as he piloted the big vehicle through the winding turns of the hilly road.

There was no sign of any side roads, and she suspected they would have to get back down to flatter land before there would be any. She could still see the headlights behind them, staying right with them. The rain had stopped, but the ‘roads were still wet. I Then a loom of headlights in the opposite lane was visible over the next hill, and this time Karen had time to get ready. The car flashed by them, and Karen got a good took at the car behind them. It definitely looked like a cop car, with at least two aerials visible, a large chrome-plated spotlight on the driver’s side, a single driver in the front, and maybe another figure in the backseat.

She whipped her head around and described all this to Train, who was still having to concentrate on the road.

“See any blue lights? Bubble-gum machine on the roof Anything blue on his dashboard? In the grille?”

“No. No lights.”

“So maybe not a cop car. Maybe Somebody who wants look like a cop car.”

They were coming down out of the to patch of hills now, with the terrain leveling off.

“Should we call nine-one-one9” she asked.

“And tell them what? There’s a car behind us? Hang on-there’s a county road sign.’ “

Karen tightened her seat belt and gripped the Glock as Train slowed down imperceptibly. They drove down toward a bridge crossing a tree-lined creek, beyond which she could see a T intersection with what looked like a gravel road bisecting the two-lane one. Train tightened his own seat belt, flexed his hands, and then swung the Suburban in a noisy, gravel-spitting right turn. Karen could feel the vehicle lifting off its left wheels slightly before Train hit the gas and sent them hurtling down the county road, accelerating through the dense woods on either side. She looked back in time to see a flare of red brake lights and then a pair of high beams swinging over the trees and pointing toward them.

“Here he comes,” she said as Train punched it.

“Look for cop lights,” he ordered.

She almost hoped for flashing blue or red emergency lights, but there was only that steady stare of high beams coming up after them in the darkness. She turned back around as Train careened through an unbanked curve, once again throwing up gravel all over the place. The road was almost as wide as the state road.

“I was hoping for a paved road. Oh well,” he shouted over the road noise. Karen punched out 911 and transmitted a call for help. Nothing happened, and then she had to hang on as Train took them through another curve. She had a fleeting glance of an embankment whipping much too close past the windows, and then they passed some kind of tower.

She checked the phone and saw that there was next to no signal. She swore. Then the light behind them became much brighter.

“He’s using the spot,” Train yelled, squinting as a blaze of bright white light flooded into the Suburban. The car behind them was a lot closer. Train batted down the center mirror and then swore as he nearly lost control going around the next bend. The road was almost too wide, and, being unmarked, it was nearly impossible for Train to hold the center. There were also more potholes now, and the Suburban was banging noisily through some of them. Karen wondered if the road went on much farther. But it had to go somewhere, didn’t it?

“He’s trying to pass! Get down!” Train yelled as the enng over on white light moved up on them, from ‘ the leftrear side of the car. Karen ducked as Train swung in front of the pursuing car, trying to block it, and then careened back across the road as he overcompensated. -The Suburban was too big and heavy for this sort of high-speed maneuvering on gravel. Their pursuer was holding tight on their left rear, that big spotlight throwing back blinding glare from every reflective surface, including the front windshield.

Karen realized Train must be having trouble seeing anything at all.

He swung back to the left sharply, too sharply, and the Suburban began to fishtail. He instinctively hit the brakes for a second, which allowed their pursuer to surge up abreast on the left. She remembered the Glock and raised her hands to bring it to bear behind Train’s head as the other car’s nose drew abreast of their rear doors, the spotlight blasting white light at them Re some kind of ray gun. in the light reflecting off their own left side, she saw that the right-front window of the other car was sliding all the way down, and she screamed at Train to lean forward so she could get a shot as the other car crept forward.

But Train was still fighting to regain control. At that instant, the other car pulled up abreast of them, blanking out the spotlight, and she caught a glimpse of a solitary figure in the other car, one hand on the wheel, the other holding something in his hand. Not a gun. Something smaller. Shiny. For a split second, she had the ridiculous thought that it was a flashlight.

Flashlight.

Light. Light! She remembered that purple-red flash that had stunned her into insensibility in the barn.

“Close your eyes! Close your eyes!” she screamed at Train, clapping her left hand over her own eyes and squeezing them shut as tightly as she could. Even so, she felt the brain-stunning power of the retinal flash as it imprinted the cracks between her fingers on the underside of her eyelids.

Then the other car shot past and the Suburban was slowing down as Train, groaning, slumped into a semi-stupor behind the wheel, his eyes staring sightlessly. Karen dropped the gun and grabbed for the wheel, but her seat belt kept her from reaching the brakes. She punched at the belt latch just as the big vehicle swerved toward the edge of the road. She fought the wheel hard, her left foot punching desperately to find the brake pedal between Train’s feet. The flare of red brake lights flooding the windshield alerted her to the other car. She finally found the brake pedal and tried to stand on it. Train leaned against her, and she looked right, in time to see that the other car was close, right in front of them. Just beneath the Ford emblem on the trunk was what looked like a very large gun barrel, pointing right at her. Oh my God!

She groped for the Glock as her foot slipped off the brake pedal. But now the lights and her view ahead disappeared as something spattered all over the front windshield, something opaque, something that instantly blotted out all the light from their own headlights and the other car.

It sounded as if they had entered a sustained rainsquall of heavy, wet plaster as she found the brake pedal again and wrestled the Suburban away from the embankment closing in on the right-front window. The interior became cavelike as she stared uncomprehendingly at the now-blackened windshield, her right shoulder pressed up against the dashboard as the car decelerated. The drumming noise continued as whatever it was covered the front windows on both sides and then moved down the left side and back windows, the spray clattering down the side and over the back of the -car like the pressure nozzles of a car wash.

Then abruptly the Suburban tilted as it ran off into the ditch on the right side, banging its frame over the edge of the gravel road and screeching the right side against the embankment before finally stopping with a loud bang.

She was momentarily stunned as the right side of her head hit hard on the center mirror. The engine raced, the rear tire,, machine-gunning gravel out from under the chassis, until she realized she was stepping on the accelerator. She jerked her foot off the pedal, but it was too late. The big car swayed once and then settled all the way over onto its right side almost in slow motion, in a mighty crunch. Karen screame( but was able to jam the shift lever over into the park position as she slid across the front seat and banged up against the right-front door, pursued by a small landslide of all the little things that accumulate in a car. Train sagged down towarc her, thankfully still in his seat belt, although the top bel bolt was creaking ominously as she struggled to get herself upright. The engine stalled out. It had become almost pitch. black inside, with only the instrument lights providing illumination.

For a moment, she just sat there, trying to get her bearings. Train was out of it, hanging like a sack of potatoes it his seat belt. The side of her head stung, and she was disoriented. The smell of gasoline began to penetrate the Sub, urban’s interior. Then she heard something outside.

She froze.

Silence. Then another noise, behind the car, but muffled Whatever was on the windows was making it hard to hear Another noise. She felt around in the clutter piled up against the right-front door for the Glock but couldn’t find it. Train groaned softly. He started trying to unlatch his seat belt.

“Don’t undo your belt,” she whispered. “We’re over on side. Someone’s out there.”

The smell of gasoline was getting stronger-Then she thought she heard a car start up. Train groaned, rubbing his eyes. “I can’t see a thing,” he whispered. “Bastard got me.’ I

“My eyes are okay, I think,” she said.

She was pretty sure her eyes were working. She scrunched herself up against the dashboard and helped Train to release himself from the belt and slide his legs down to stand on the right-front door. He was rubbing his eyes furiously.

There were no more sounds from outside, other than dripping and gurgling noises from the engine compartment.

Conscious of the gasoline, she switched the ignition off, leaving the interior of the car pitch-black. She reached up and turned on one of the map lights over her shoulder. She looked around at the windows, but they were covered in what looked like thick dark paint. “There’s something all over the windows. It came from the other car, when I was trying to get us stopped. There was some kind of gun sticking out of his trunk.”

Train rubbed his eyes again. “Everything’s purple. I never saw the damned thing coming.”

“You had your hands full,” she whispered. “I recognized it at the last instant and covered my eyes.”

They both. shut up and listened. They could hear the sounds of the engine block beginning to cool, and other noises from outside. “You think he’s still out there?” she said.

“No. I don’t think so,” he whispered. “But we’re going to have to get out of the car to find out. Where’s the Glock?”

She finally found the gun lodged under the right armrest.

“Can you see well enough to use it?”

“Not yet,” he said. “That phone have a signal?”

She recycled the phone and waited for it to go through the warm-up sequence. “Two dashes. Not much of one, if any .

“‘Antenna may be busted,” he said, “Try nine-one-one anyway. Tell them we’re overturned a few miles west of State Road 216, on a county road. I think I saw a fire tower.

I don’t know the county road number.”

While Karen transmitted the message in the blind, Train popped the door locks and then pushed up on the left-front door. It was stuck shut.

Then he reached over and tried the leftrear door, with the sameresults.

The door latches were working, but the doors were frozen. Train then tried all the windows, but none of them would move, either. He held the window switch for the driver’s door down until the circuit breaker under the dash popped. He swore again. There was a new dripping sound, somewhere in the back.

Karen peered at the stuff on the windows.’ “I think they’re stuck. This stuff’s like glue.” She turned around, looking past Train’s legs, but it was all over the back window, too.

The right-side windows were clear, but they were compressed into the embankment. The gas fumes were getting stronger. ” ‘ We’ve got to get out of here,” she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice. Train tried all the window switches again. Another circuit breaker popped.

“Ignition’s off, right? It may not ignite,” he said, twisting to look the darkened back of the vehicle. The back of the car looked like a coroner’s vehicle, with the windows painted black. “Unless it gets to the catalytic converter. And after that run, that thing’s going to be red-hot,”

“We’re over in a ditch, Train. That gas is going to pool.

We’ve got to get out of here!” ‘ “That stuff looks like plastic of some kind,” he said. “If we could get a window open, we could cut our way out.”

He popped the latch on the door compartment and held up the knife.

“But these god damned electric windows are dead,” she said

“We can’t get at it.” Then she remembered the Glock.

“What if we use this to shoot a window out?” she asked.

“Break the glass and then cut that stuff.”

Train thought for a moment and then nodded. “Right.

Don’t bother with the windshield. It’s safety glass. Do the window on the driver’s side. Shoot a pattern-three across the top, three across the bottom, and then one in the middle.

Then I can kick it out, I hope. Put something in your ears.”

Karen stuffed some Kleenex in her ears as Train did likewise. Then he suggested they get in the backseat to avoid flying glass. They ended up standing on the fight-reardoor panel. The smell of gasoline was much stronger in the back.

“Is this safe?” she asked. “To fire the gun with all these fumes?”

“No choice. I still can’t see anything. Do it, Karen.”

She tried not to think about whd or what might be waiting for them if and when they got out of the car. She aimed the Glock at the left top edge of the window while Train covered his ears. She had to pull hard on the trigger before the gun fired once, and the noise was deafening in the tightly enclosed car. A starred hole appeared roughly where she had aimed. She pulled again, and in her excitement she fired five more rounds before stopping. She was astonished to see that Train was grinning at her through the pall of gunsmoke, but then he was moving, swinging his body over into the front seat, his chest half on and half off the front seat’s backrest, his massive legs kicking up at the window, dislodging a hail of glass shards. But then his foot was punching into what looked like a rubber sheet outside the.window.

Karen coughed, choking. The car was now full of smoke as well as gasoline fumes. Train was coming back over the seat, his shoes crunching on shards of glass as he fumbled for the knife., He banged away at one comer of the - glass with the butt of the knife and then cut a line through the plastic skin covering the window aperture. Karen crouched low in the backseat to get away from the smoke and the gasoline fumes, fighting the urge to scramble past him and out that hole.

Suddenly, the air above her head cleared and she looked up. Train was slashing at the rubbery coating now, making the hole bigger. Then he leaned back down into the backseat.

“Give me the Glock,” he said. She passed it up to him, and he stuck his head and fight hand out of the hole. Immediately, he ducked back down.

“Forgot. Can’t see.

Everything’s still purple. You look.”

She squeezed up against him in the space between the front and back seats, poked her head out of the hole in the rubbery substance, -and looked around. There was only the pale stripe of the gravel road cutting through the dark woods. The other car was gone. But the stink of gasoline was even stronger outside. She ducked back down into the car.

“Looks clear,” she said. “But there’s definitely gas pooling somewhere.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll boost you through the window.

You cut the stuff off the door, ‘cause there’s no way I can fit through that window.”

She nodded, handed him the Glock, and squeezed her head and shoulders through the hole. He hunched down on the right-side door, wrapped his arms around her legs at the knees, and straightened up. She felt like a Polaris missile coming out of that hole, and she promptly lost her balance as she scrambled to find a handhold, finally grabbing the edge of the luggage rack on top of the car. She tore her skirt sliding over the bottom edge of the car but landed on the gravel more or less upright. Train popped his head and one arm out of the hole right after her and gave her the knife.

In order to free the front door, she had to climb back up on the side of the car to cut away the rubbery dull white film covering the whole left side of the ear. The film was thin but very strong, and it would not peel off the side of the car, so she had to cut through to the seam of the left-front door before being able to yank it open. The rubber clung to the door like a shroud.

Train climbed out, and together they scrambled wordlessly around the front of the car. But just as they started up the hill, they heard the sound of the car phone ringing.

They looked at each other. The phone rang again.

“Who the hell-” Train said.

“Mcnair. I’ll bet it’s Mcnair. We called him, remember?”

“But-“

“There must be a signal now,” she said. The phone rang again. Karen handed him the knife and ran back around to the side of, the car. But there was no way to reach the phone inside without climbing back up on the side of the car.

Train was about to help her when something at the back of the Suburban caught his peripheral vision. A whiff of smoke? A tiny white object, back by the bumper. Purplewhite. Fverything tinged with purple. He squeezed his eyes shut and then opened them, desperately trying to see as he moved carefully toward the back, of the car. Karen was stretching, trying to lean into the car.

“Karen, wait a minute,” he called as the phone rang again. And then he froze when he recognized what was on the rear bumper. A lighted cigarette was dangling from a string tied to the bumper, about eighteen inches over the shimmering puddle in the ditch. The ash had burned almost back to the string.

“Karen! Karen! Get, out! Get away, now!” he shouted, and then began to backpedal sideways across the hill, trying to get to her.

Karen had been halfway into the hole in the driver’s window when she heard him yelling. She turned, saw the look on his face, dropped back off the car, and bolted up the bank, where Train grabbed her. Together, they scrambled up the hill. An instant later, the car exploded behind them in a bright red-and-yellow fireball. They both hit the ground as the hot compression wave seared the night air over their heads, and then bits of hot metal and flaming plastic were’ clattering around them on the wet hillside. Down on the road, the remains of the Suburban burned furiously, hot enough to keep them backing UP the hill, hands held by the sides of their faces to ward off the intense heat. The road and the surrounding trees were thrown into stark visual relief in the yellow-orange glare. They stopped, about fifty yards up the hill and sat down in the underbrush.

Karen examined her torn skirt, ragged stockings, and uniform jacket. “Remind me never to go parking with you in the woods again,” she muttered.

Train grinned weakly in the firelight. “Well,” he said, “I try to give all the girls a hot time. The good news is that fire ought to bring somebody..”

“The good guys this time, I hope,” she said, trying to cover her thighs with the tom skirt. “I’ve got to go buy some fatigues if you and I are going to keep seeing each other like this.”

He grinned again and put -his arm around her. But then he grew serious.

“We were lucky. Very damned lucky.

Again.” He described the cigarette hanging off the bumper.

“It’s the oldest time-delay fuse in the business, and it leaves no trace. Once the cigarette burns back to the string, it drops.

In our case, into that ditchful of gasoline.”

“Then he meant to kill us this time.”

“No doubt in my military mind,”

Train said, shifting his bulk in the grass. She noticed for the first time that there was a cut on his forehead. Down below, the burning hulk was settling now as the frame deformed and bits of the interior fell out onto the road. The hood popped open as they watched, revealing several glowing engine components. The night breeze was raining soot all over the hillside where they crouched under a small tree. Finally, the fire began to diminish.

“How did he know where to find us?” Karen said.

Train rubbed his eyes and thought about that. It had to be the phone lines at his house. Mcnair had described where the hospice was, and he’d also intimated that Sherman would be there, that they would all be there. “He got it from Mcnair’s phone call. My phones must be tapped.”

Karen nodded in the flickering light, knowing the feeling.

Then she realized what had been tickling the edge of her memory. “That stuff-on the windows. I know what that is. It’s that plastic compound they were using to cover that helicopter-at the Quantico air base.”

Train looked at her and swore softly. A jet of intense n-orang I e flame hissed out of the engine compartment en the fire found the air conditioner’s Freonflask. Karen shivered in the wet darkness.

“So young Jack Sherman did his old man another little favor,” she said.

“He said he’ would. I wish I’d shot him when I had the chance.”

Train squeezed her hand. “Mcnair will have to move now. After this.”

Twenty minutes later, they heard a siren approaching, and then a second one. Train got up, helped Karen get to her feet, and put his arm around her. They began to walk sideways down the hill, keeping their distance from the burning hulk. The distant flickering of blue and red lights over the trees was a welcome contrast to the glowing metal carcass on the road.

Three hours later, they were in Mcnair’s car, headed back Washington.

Karen was lying crosswise in the backseat, to her legs up on the seat, her sleeping form wrapped in one of the Fenster County EMT blankets.

Train sat up front with are Mcnair, who had been listening c fully to Train’s debrief of the incident on the county road for the second time.

Train finished with the arrival of the first EMTS. Their clothes still smelled of char.

“Pissed me off,” he said. “Burning up my Suburban.”

“Goddamned lucky you both aren’t toast,” Mcnair replied, accelerating to pass a semi. “This wasn’t a warning.

You know’t ‘ hat, don’t you? This was for real.”

“Message received,”

Train said. He looked back over his shoulder at Karen, but she was still sleeping. “I think it’s time we went over to the offensive. I’m beginning to feel like the settlers barricaded in their cabin. I want to get out in the woods and start killing some Injuns.”

Mcnair shot him a skeptical look.

“Yeah, I know,” Train said. “But we need to break the pattern here. We need to act instead of always reacting.

What I can’t figure is why he upped the ante.”

“Maybe the commander’s little courtesy call on the Sherman kid had something to do with it.”

Train nodded silently. He had been thinking the same thing. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s look at that. Galantz wants us out of the way now because we’ve attracted daylight to Sherman’s son. If this is still all about Sherman as the target of revenge, why’s the kid important? Guy like Galantz surely doesn’t need help.”

Mcnair did not reply. Train let him think about it.

“Okay, I give up,” Mcnair said. “I can see the ‘what’ part of it but not the ‘why’ part.”

“My theory,” Train said, “is that Galantz has been planning to fold the kid into his little scheme for a long time.

From what the kid told Karen, they met back when Jack was still in the Corps, at recon school, where Galantz was probably an instructor. That’d be a good stash for a sweeper.

Then something happened, maybe even something his new I old man’ engineered, and then Jack was out with a BCD.

The only friend he’s got in the world now is the guy that got him through recon training.”

“But what’s the game?” Mcnair said. “Like you said, it’s not like Galantz would need the help of a shitbird like that to off the admiral.”

“It’s not about killing Admiral Sherman,” Train said.

“This is about destroying him. Ruining his reputation. Provoking a Navy rubbed raw by a string of scandals to force him out, right when he’s made it to the top. Using the guy’s‘ son would be icing on the cake in that program.”

“But how?”

“Picture the headline: ADMIRAL’S SON A MURDERER. Galantz has been thinking ahead of us. He knows you guys will never catch him, so you’ll settle for what you can catch Sherman’s son. Hell, it’s already working.

Sherman did nothing but attract a homicide cop., and they’ve stashed him sideways over in the Bureau. Then he gets spooke . d and bolts for the hospice. Goes A.W.O.L.. An admiral, for crying out loud. And after this caper tonight, you guys are going have to move. And you’ll move against Jack Sherman, because you know you can pick him up anytime you want.

Arresting Jack Sherman’ gives the Fairfax County cops a: suspect in custody,’ and any potential political heat dies away.”

Mcnair shot him a look. “We’re desperate guys,” he grunted. “But not that desperate. And we’re just supposed to forget about Galantz?”

Train glanced back at Karen, but she was still asleep.

“Isn’t that what certain federal agencies have already asked you to do?

You’ve got two probable homicides, and two attempted homicides. You grab up a viable suspect, your face is saved, and you can leave Galantz to the spooks and hope he doesn’t get Sherman, about whom the Navy no longer cares.”

Mcnair nodded again in the darkness. “it reads,” he said finally.

“Except for maybe when I take it to a commonwealth’s attorney. Which leads me to believe that this is a really good time for you two to hole up somewhere.”

“Yes and no Train said. “After tonight, I’d rather be the finder than the findee. I think this guy just wants us dead.” He looked back over his shoulder. Karen’s face was illuminated momentarily in the light of some passing headlights. “I don’t want her exposed to any more of this, and I also want a crack at the real bad guy here. Especially if you guys are gonna back off.”

Mcnair didn’t answer. He patted the pocket of his suit coat and then sighed. “Goddamn,. I’d like a cigarette. Quit two years ago, and not a day goes by that I don’t crave one., Look, I’ll make a deal with you.

Give me a day or so. You two get your heads down and stay low. Take her back to your house. I’ll get Stafford County to put some protection on for you, whatever. But basically, you agree to stay put.

In return, I’ll see what I can do about putting some heat on Galantz.”

Train thought about it. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because he’s killed two people on my turf, and tried for two more. That pisses me off-personally. I want his ass.

Deal?”

Train thought about it. As they approached Washington, the traffic out on the interstate was heavier, even at this late hour. The stream of red and white lights still had a purplish corona to them. “Okay,” he, said finally. “Deal. Two days. “

“Okay,” Mcnair said. “And leave Sherman to me. I’ll break the news to him about his kid’s involvement.”