Sweepers

SATURDAY.

Mcnair dropped them off at Karen’s house in Great Falls.

Karen needed some clothes, and with the Suburban destroyed, they needed a car. Karen’s Mercedes was in the garage. Mcnair stayed in his car to make call while Karen extracted a spare key from its hiding place.

Once they were in the house; Mcnair left. He had given Train a beeper number in case something came up over the next two days.

Twenty minutes later, they were out of there and headed for Aquia.

Karen, refreshed after her long nap in Mcnair’s car, was elected to drive, while Train kept watch behind them, the Glock stuffed between the front bucket seats. He was not going to be surprised by this bastard again. The sodiumvapor lights along the highway still had a reddish purple tinge to them.

“I’d be happier if Mcnair had come with us,” she said as she pulled the car onto the Beltway.

“He’s just as tired as we are,” Train said. “Actually, with all this traffic out here, I think we’re reasonably safe.”

We hope, he thought.

“Nobody’s safe on the Beltway,” she said. “But at least there’s a phone signal.”

At which point, the car phone started to ring, startling both of them.

After a moment’s hesitation, she reached down and hit the button so they could both listen.

“Hello?” she said.

Congratulations.

Karen actually closed her eyes for a moment before she remembered she was driving. Train leaned over to speak into the remote microphone.

“Gonna try again, Galantz?” You were lucky. Again. As I think I told you, you have to be lucky every time. I have to be lucky only one time.

“You some kind of ghost, Galantz? Only come out at night?”

Not a ghost, von Rensel. A grotesque, to be sure. I have one eye, a scar that bisects my face, a stainless-steel hand, and a Teflon larynx. I am memorable.

“So what now, Galantz? Calling to tell us you have the admiral tied up somewhere?”

There was an audible wheeze, a precursor breath each time before the voice replied.

You don’t understand, von Rensel. If I’d wanted Sherman dead, he’d have been extinguished a long time ago. That’s what I do. What I’ve done for years.

“So what do you want?” Karen asked, speaking for the first time.

His destruction. At the hands of his own kind, Commander. I’m provoking his precious Navy to turn on him at the peak of his professional success. I’m going to take away everything of value to him and leave him to contemplate that for the rest of his life. And there’s nothing you two can do about it.

“The Navy knows what’s going on here, Galantz,” Train said. “They’re not going to fall for this.” But as he said it, he wondered.

The admirals will do precisely what I want, von Rensel In a manner of speaking, they’re part of this. That’s why you’re going to Aquia now.

And that’s why I’m making this little courtesy call-to reinforce your orders. Stay out of this. Stay out of this or I’ll extinguish you both, understand?

How in the hell did he know that? Train wondered. He tried to think of something to say, but he sensed that Karen was getting truly frightened.

Hell, -so was he. There was absolutely zero emotion in that machine voice.

You listening, von Rensel? I’ve been setting this up for years. Years of watching Sherman. Years of cultivating his wretched son. But time t’ s growing short. My employers are ‘ a little upset with me just now, and I don’t need any distractions in the end game. Go to your pretty little estate. Stay there. This will be over soon. Now, look behind you.

Train snapped his head around. Their Mercedes was all alone out in six lanes of the Beltway. There was a wall of headlights farther back, but all of the traffic was holding back because of the police car that was a hundred feet behind them.

“Oh no,” Karen whispered.

Train reached for the Glock, but then he saw the police car begin to fall back, signaling an exit, merging into the phalanx of headlights ahalf mile behind them.

Go to Aquia. Live a lot longer. Then there was only the hiss of static.

“Now what?” Karen said.

“We call the cops, that’s what,” he replied. “What’s this number?”

She gave it to him while he reached for the phone, recycled it, and dialed the beeper number Mcnair had given him. The beeper tape came up, and Train punched in the car phone’s number and hung up. The phone rang one minute later.

“Von Rensel,” Train said.

“You called us,” -a male voice replied.

Train hesitated. Us? Who the hell was us? “I have -a message for Mcnair,” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“Tell him Galantz caught up with us on the Beltway, gave us a friendly phone call. We’re headed for Aquia.”

“Your ETA?”

“An hour from now. Maybe less.”

“Your route?”

Train hesitated again. Who was this guy? But then, if they wanted protection, the cops would have to know their route.

He told the voice they would take the Beltway to 1-95, and then straight down to Aquia. “Us” broke the connection without replying. Train hung up the phone.

“Who’d you get?”

“An ops center, from the sound of it. They knew Mcnair, though.”

“That voice scared the hell out of me.”

“Me, too. Rock and roll, Karen.” She kicked it up to seventy.

An hour later, they arrived at Train’s estate. Train had called ahead and raised Kyoko to tell her they were coming in.

Hiroshi was waiting for them at the front steps when Karen pulled the Mercedes to a stop. The two Dobermans, who had accompanied the car up to the house from the front gates, sat attentively on either side of the car until Hiroshi gave them an order that sent them back out into the morning twilight. Karen slumped behind the wheel and turned to look wordlessly at Train, her eyes betraying her exhaustion.

“For the moment, I think we’re safe,” he said, not entirely believing it even as he said it.

“Only for the moment? I thought Mcnair said we weren’t targets anymore.”

“Yeah, but what does he know?” When they got out, Hiroshi signaled that he had something to tell Train. Karen took her bag and went into the house to use the bathroom.

Hiroshi waited until she had gone into the house. “There is la visitor,” he announced.

“Visitor?” Train asked. “At this hour?”- And then he knew. “Admiral Sherman.”

Hiroshi nodded. “Arrived three hours ago. He is asleep in the study.”

Train was wondering where the hell the good admiral had been all night.

He ‘was still bothered by what he thought of as the feasibility problem.

Then he dismissed his suspicions: As Galantz had said, Sherman was in end game and didn’t know it. He took Hiroshi aside.

“Go in and wake him up. Take him some coffee. When Commander Lawrence comes back out, we’ll take a little walk around the grounds, give him a few minutes to get himself together. Then we’ll come in.”

Hiroshi gave a short bow, then hesitated.

“Yes, Hiroshisan?”

“He has a gun, I think. In his coat pocket.”

Train nodded. Why not, everybody else was packing tonight. “It’s been a long night, Hiroshi,” he said. “We were ambushed up in Maryland.” He told Hiroshi about what had happened.

“Ninia,” the old man murmured thoughtfully. Train caught the note of approval. But then he realized that it was respect being given to a worthy and capable opponent and not admiration for what Galantz was doing.

“Yes, ninia,” he replied. “But a ninja without honor. He kills women and old men. His real objective is the destruction of this senior officer, this Admiral Sherman, the man inside.”

“This is the senior officer?

The ninja will kill him?”

“I don’t think so. I think he means to disgrace him and then let him live with that disgrace-for’d long time.”

Hiroshi gave another nod. Disgrace was much worse than being killed.

“Commanoer Lawrence and I interfered. I think the first. attack on her was meant to neutralize me. The second time was meant to remove both of us. Now I think if we were just to stay here, nothing more would happen to us. Or to anyone else here,” he added pointedly.

Hiroshi gave a dismissive snort. “Let him come here. Life is sometimes boring.”

Train laughed out loud. “Not with this guy, Hiroshisan.

But my other problem is that my superiors are playing at some kind of game.”

Hiroshi was silent for a moment while he absorbed this news. Then he gave Train a sideways look. “You will remain here?”

“I’m not sure. When I was in the Marines, we were taught not to sit still and wait for the enemy. Waiting in one place just simplifies his problem. There’s another factor: The senior officer’s son is involved in this matter. He has been helping the man who is behind the killings.”

Hiroshi shook his head. ““The son helps the man who would destroy his father? What kind of son is this?”

Karen was coming back out of the house. There was a hint of sunrise across the river. “There’s history, Hiroshisan. The father treated the son very badly long ago. The father is not entirely innocent here. Send Gutter out, please.

Hiroshi bowed . and went back into the house as Karen walked up, carrying two mugs of hot coffee. A moment later, Gutter came trotting out from behind the house. Together, they walked across the front lawn and down a gravel path toward the river oaks. Train was amused to, see that Gutter was staying closer to Karen than to him. Dogs figure stuff out, he thought. There was a thin band of red light defining the silhouette of the Maryland hills across the Potomac. They could hear the honking of some Canadian geese upstream in the park; the sound made the Galantz problem seem remote.

“Have you figured out what we’re going to tell this poor man?” she asked, taking his hand.

“I’m getting the inklings of a plan,” he replied, kicking a dead branch off the path. “Although Mcnair might not like having his hand forced. I think we need to tell Sherman about his son’s involvement. Then maybe suggest we put the two of them face-to-face, see what happens.”

“What about your deal with Mcnair?”

“So far, we’ve kept it. Sherman came to us, not the other way around.

But here’s the problem: Mcnair knows the kid’s involved. He may have told the Navy. If he has, what use does Galantz have for the kid now?

Jack’s served his -purpose-another nail in Sherman’s political coffin.”

“Which makes Jack expendable?”

“Yeah, I think so. I think he plans to kill the kid and heap final insult to injury. Things of value, remember? Galantz knows that, despite the estrangement between father and son, it would just about crush Sherman if his son became the final victim.”

Karen shivered in the predawn air. “And we’re the ones who told Mcnair.

I’m beginning to feel a little like a puppet, aren’t you?”

“And the son thinks Galantz is more of a father to him than his real father. He’ll never see it coming.”

“Wow. Like he said, years of planning.”

Train nodded. “I’m starting to regret our deal. This stinks. We ought to do something.”

Karen paused to watch the morning twilight play on the broad silvery expanse of the river. An alert catbird discovered them and began to scold from one of the oaks. “We have company,” Karen said, glancing back over her shoulder.

Train looked. Admiral Sherman was coming across the lawn. Karen quietly disengaged her hand from Train’s. Even from a distance in the dawn twilight, they could see that his face was haggard and his eyes unnaturally bright, almost as if he might have a, fever. He was wearing his navy blue uniform trousers, shirt, and black tie, but he had a beige civilian car coat on over his uniform. Karen felt Train tensing up as the admiral came across the wet grass. She felt a pang of disappointment that Train was still suspicious of this man.

“Good morning to both of you,” Sherman said, the fatigue audible in his voice. There were dark pouches under his normally youthful eyes.

“Hiroshi said you were out here. Mr. von Rensel, I hope you’ll forgive this intrusion.”

“Good morning, Admiral,” Karen replied, jumping in before Train could say anything. “I hope your night wasn’t as interesting as ours.”

Sherman stared down at the grass for a moment and then out over the river. “I’ve been driving,” he said. “All night.

Never done that before. Just got in the car and drove. All the way east to the north side of Baltimore, then back down to D.C. Trying to sort some things out.”

“How did you end up here?” Train asked.

“Mcnair,” Sherman said. He looked from one to the other. “We need to talk. I want to know what my son has to do with all this.”

“Did Mcnair tell you about our being attacked last night?”

“Only that you had been. That you would fill me in—on that and on Jack.

He said that you and I needed to talk.”

“Where were you last night, Admiral?” Karen asked as gently as she could, trying not to sound accusatory.

Sherman frowned, but then he answered. “Where? I was up in Maryland, near the Pennsylvania line. A little town called Hamey.”

“So were we, Admiral, courtesy of Detective Mcnair,” she said, giving him a moment to comprehend that they knew, that Mcnair also knew. “We do need to talk. Train, let’s all go back up to the house.”

Over coffee, fresh fruit, and hot rolls, Karen told the admiral about what had happened since Wednesday. She finessed what they knew about the hospice situation, limiting it to the fact that his wife was still alive. With one eye on Train, she told the admiral about Jack’s admissions. Train dutifully kept silent. Sherman’s face was grim when she was finished.

“Great God,” he snapped. tossing down his napkin. “I had no idea. This guy is on a god damned rampage.” He looked from one to the other. “How muqh of this does the JAG know?”

Karen looked at Train for a brief second. He picked right up.

“He knows about what happened out on the river,” Train said. “To my knowledge, he doesn’t know about the attack on the road last night, or your situation at the hospice. I’m not sure he knows of your son’s involvement.”

The admiral let out a long breath. “If he doesn’t, he will,” he said.

“Mcnair will probably be filling him in shortly. Perhaps it ought to come from me. Technically, I’m probably A.W.O.L. right now, anyway.”

“Why did you bail out, Admiral?” Karen asked.

His face tightened, but then he relaxed. “I felt everything closing in.

Usually, I go up there out of a sense of responsibility. She’s there because of me.” He stopped to take a deep breath. “But the second reason I go there is to seek. refuge. It’s the one place in this entire world I can go and never be judged.”

“Karen nodded slowly. Train continued to study the table cloth.

“Now tell me what Jack’s role is in all this. Did he help Galantz kill those two people?”

“From a legal standpoint, I think the police would say he was an accessory after the fact,” Train said. “But he did admit to being part of Karen’s abduction.”

“He was there? At Elizabeth’s? At Galen’s?”

Karen gave Train a reproving look. “He says he wasn’t.

He claims his only role was to show up at the funerals, so that you would see him. But we think he’s definitely working with Galantz. The attack on us out on the highway involved a machine Jack uses at work.”

“Damn,” Sherman said, rubbing his face. “And Mcnair knows this?”

“Yes, sir, he does,” Train said. “But we’re not sure what exactly he’s doing with it. Galantz is the guy Mcnair really wants.”

“My God,” Sherman muttered. “My own son.”

Train leaned forward. “We think that’s part of the plan, Admiral.

Galantz has been contemplating revenge for years.

He encounters your son at the recon training school, realizes who he is, befriends him, then sets something up that gets Jack thrown out of the Corps. Once Jack get’s out on his ass on civvy street with a bad discharge and a drinking problem, here comes his old buddy from recon school to make life interesting again.”

“And fold him into his master plan to destroy me.”

“We think so. Use Elizabeth’s homicide to frame you, or at least to get you in trouble with the Navy. We think Galen Schmidt became a target of opportunity.”

“Because I went to see him when I got the note,,” Sherman said, his face gray.

Train sidestepped that remark. “And if that didn’t do it,” he continued, “Galantz puts Jack in our faces. We focus on Jack, the cops are right behind us, and now you and your son are involved in homicides.”

“Jack was a hater,” Sherman said softly. “I never figured him as a dupe.”

Karen reluctantly began to shake her head. “No, sir. I think he’s in this willingly. I’m sorry, Admiral, but that’s what I -took away from talking to him’ “The admiral stared down at the ground. Karen’s heart went out to him when she saw the desolation in his eyes.

Galantz has won, she thought.

“Jack’s not exactly-how shall I say this-socially functional?” she said.

She described the living conditions at the trailer, and Jack’s physical state when she first found him.

Sherman shook his head and pushed back roughly from the table, causing Gutter to sit up. Sherman got up and stared out through the windows for a minute while Kyoko came in and silently cleared away the dishes.

“I told Mcnair I need to go resolve this,” he said finally.

“I’ll call the JAG. I had thought of maybe going to see Jack, alone, to try to sort this out. But … He didn’t finish this thought. Karen looked at Train. She could now see at least two problems with what Sherman was suggesting. If the police found the two of them together, the implications might be very disturbing for the police. But worse, she wasn’t sure the admiral would stand up under the emotional assault of his son’s boasting about helping Galantz, as he surely would. And then of course, there was Galantz. She was relieved when Train stood up.

“The phone’s in the study, Admiral,” he said. “Then if you’d like to shower and shave before you go in, Kyoko will show you to a guest room.”

The admiral rubbed the sides of his face with both hands, his characteristic gesture, and then nodded absently. He followed Train to the study, where Train showed him the phone. Then Train came out, closing the door behind him.

Karen met him in the hallway.

“He’s at the end of his rope, I think,” Train said. “Taking him to see Jack doesn’t seem like such a good idea just now.”

“1. agree. If the police showed up, they’d be very suspicious if they found the admiral there, especially if Jack seized the opportunity to deny Galantz’s existence and point the finger at his father.”

“Damn. He would, too.”

“That three-star is going to force Sherman out,” she said.

“And he knows it.”

“I hate to say this,” Train said, “but maybe you should go in with him.

He’s-going to need a friendly face.”

She smiled up at him. “About time you were nice to this poor mart-. And why, exactly, do you hate to say that?” she asked.

Train actually flushed a bit under her direct look. “I don’t want to let you out of my sight. Things of value, you know?”

She, smiled again and squeezed his hand. But then she thought about Sherman’s situation. “If they agree to see him this morning, on a Saturday, they’re not going to want any commanders in the room,” she said. “Especially commander lawyers. This will be a flags-only meeting.

No mere mortals allowed. At least not until they get all the blood off the walls.”

“Yeah, but I’m worried about what he might do afterward. Like try to go to find Jack, and maybe walk into Galantz in the process.”

Karen was not fooled. “And while we’re gone, kind sir?

You will be staying right here like you promised? Like a good Train, right?”

Train was looking over her head and squirming perceptibly. She grabbed his elbow and steered him away from the closed-study door. “You promise me, Train von Rensel. No Lone Ranger stuff. You be here when I bring this poor man back out here. You promise, right now, or I don’t go with him.”

“I wasn’t thinking of-“

“Oh yes you were,” she said. “Now you promise me-“

The study door opened and the admiral came out, running his left hand through his hair. They turned to see what he would say.

“It’s show time,” he announced. “At noon, I’m to meet with Admiral Kensington in his office. I think they’ve made some decisions.”

“Admiral, Karen thinks she should go with you,” Train said before Karen could speak. “Moral support, if nothing else.”

Sherman gave Karen a weary smile. “This isn’t going to be a pretty sight, Karen,” he said. “They’d probably invite you to wait out in the hallway. And if you did come in, I have to warn you that commanders who get in the middle of a flag-level gunfight do so at their professional peril.”

“I’ll take my professional chances,” she replied, shooting Train a look.

“Besides, I have firsthand knowledge of the facts, and the law.”

“Well, I’d appreciate the hell out of it. Not that they’re likely to let facts or law get in the way of a little purge. Mr. von Rensel, may I take you up on that offer of a guest room?”

I I This is Admiral Kensington’ “He’s coming in. At noon.

“Have you solved our problem?”

“Yes, I have. Those people sent someone over this morning. He was able to lift the protocol long enough for me to edit the file and then replace it. Then he put the protocol back in place. I’ve lifted the access restrictions as of Monday morning and returned it to the archives. Until then, there’s a security trap on it.”

“You’re telling me more than I want to know. Very well.

You told him to come to my_ office?”

“At noon.”

“Good. I’ll send everyone home before then. Is this going easy way or hard way?”

“That’s not knowable, Admiral. But that detective has been in touch. It seems Sherman’s son is involved in the homicides somehow.”

“His own son? Well, that does it. This isn’t going to be any problem at 0, Thomas.”

“I hope not. I’ll see you just before noon, thew.”

At eleven o’clock, Hiroshi brought Karen’s Mercedes and then the admiral’s sedan around to the front of the house.

Train thought the admiral looked impressive as always in his blues, the single broad gold stripe glowing in the morning light. Kyoko had done his shirt, and a shower had done the rest. Except for circles under his eyes, he looked almost ready for a fight. When Karen came out on the porch, he felt his heart do a little flop. She, too, had prospered from an hour’s rest, and a treacherous voice in his head pointed out what a good-looking couple they made, both handsome people in uniform. And you suggested they go into the Pentagon together to face the lions. Good move, bud. Really great thinking. But then she winked at him and he felt a whole ‘ lot better.

Karen went to get in her car. The admiral came over to Train. “Mr. von Rensel,” he said, offering his hand.

“Thanks foreverything. You have a lovely home out here.

I assume that after this morning, the Navy’s official role in this investigation will be finito.”

“Admiral, that may be true,” Train said, taking the admiral’s hand and shaking it. “But I’m not ready just to let this thing go, even if the Navy is. This guy has tried to kill me once and Karen twice. If the cops don’t get him, and soon, I’m going to take a shot.

Their eyes met. Train got the impression that the admiral knew precisely what he was talking about. “If this goes the way I think it will, call me,” Sherman said. “I’d like to go along when you take that shot.”

Train went over to the Mercedes and Karen lowered the window.

“Did I ever tell you I’m a sucker for sailors in short skirts?” he said.

“This is not a short skirt,” she retorted, although sitting in the front seat of a car in a straight skirt was making a liar out of her.

Train grew serious. “Look, I’m not thrilled with your venturing out alone. We promised Mcnair-and this guy’s already tried for you twice.”

“You promised Mcnair,” she said. “And besides, this was your idea, was it not?” Then she put her hand on

“You’re right about this. Somebody has to be there with him. And one of us should be here in case Mcnair tries to contact us.”

“I hope to hell someone besides us is working this problem. Any sign of trouble out there on the road, you get onto nine-one-one. And remember, your car phone is not secure.”

“Everybody knows that. And I promise to yell if something starts. And you promised to stay here, right?”

The admiral’s car started forward around the circular drive, heading for the gate. Train stepped back from the car.

“You better roll. You’ve got Saturday shopping traffic to get through up at Springfield.”

“Train, you promised!”

“I know. I won’t do anything stupid.”

She gave him a warning look and then started the car and followed the admiral out.

Train watched them go and then walked thoughtfully back into the house.

He yawned. He had slept a little bit last night, but not restfully. Need to call Mcnair again. Tell him that Sherman and Karen are headed to the Pentagon. Then I’m going to go put my hands on that kid.

He went into his study to make some calls. The first was to his insurance company, and the second was to the Chevy dealer in Fredericksburg to order up a replacement Suburban. Then he called Mcnair’s number again. It being Saturday, his call to the Homicide Section was diverted to the police department’s general operator, who promised to relay the

“Call me” message. He hung up. Saturday. Then he thought of something: that number Mcnair had given him.

He had to go find his suit coat to retrieve the card, but there it was, a beeper number. He called the system, prepared to leave the house number. Instead, he got the phone company’s hideous “you just screwed up” tone in his ear, followed by a taped message saying, “The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the-“

He hung up. What the hell? He had assumed that the beeper system connected with a police operations unit. No longer in service? They must change it all the time for security purposes.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. So, where the hell was Mcnair? He put his head down on the desk for a few minutes. Not to go to sleep, of course; just to rest his eyes for a minute.

Karen was surprised to see how many cars were in’t he South Parking lot.

Lots of eager beavers here today, she thought.

Polishing that all-important career. What was it someone had once said?

The word career was also a verb? She parked beside the admiral’s Ford and got out. He was putting on his uniform cap and buttoning up his service dress-blue jacket. It was a lovely spring day, with clear, bright sunshine everywhere and a leafy breeze blowing in from the green slopes of Arlington Cemetery across Washington Boulevard.

“Too nice a day to go in there, isn’t it?” he said, glancing over at the drab concrete pile that was the Pentagon building.

I it’d be a -good day for a run,” she replied, locking her car.

“If I went for A run, I think I’d keep on going,” he said.

“Karen, I’ve been thinking. I’d like to keep the hospice situation out of this, if I can.”

“They’ll want to know why you went off like that, Admiral. And where.”

“Why, maybe. Where is something they have no need to know. They may just seize on the fact that I checked off the net for a couple of days.

Couple that with this Galantz business and I think they’ll ask me for my retirement papers.” He gave her an intense look. “If that’s how it comes out, that’s okay, as long as I can protect Beth.”

“I thought you were going to fight something like this, Admiral. You’ve given up an awful lot for those stars.”

“Haven’t I just,” he said bleakly. “But if the big boys want me out, practically speaking, there’s nothing I can do.”

“You could refire.”

“Yes, and then what? Orders to a tour in charge of the Antarctic research station? No thanks. I’m either a player in the surface Navy or I’m not. Let’s go, Commander.”

“You’re going to have to sign me in, I’m afraid,” she said. “My ID card burned up in the fire.”

Sherman did the paperwork at the South Parking guard station and then they walked quickly up to the Opnav area.

When they arrived on the fourth floor, the admiral stopped and looked up and down the deserted corridors.

“Not quite noon on a Saturday, and yet everybody’s gone,” he said. “I think somebody’s cleared the decks early in the OP-03 area. Don’t want any snuffies walking in on a, kangaroo court.” He gave her a wry look.

“Sure you still want to come along on this ride, Commander?”

She nodded firmly, although as they walked into Kensington’s office, she wondered if she should have checked in with Admiral Carpenter before doing this. But Admiral Carpenter was standing in Admiral Kensington’s front office, talking to Kensington’s deputy, Admiral Vannoyt, when they arrived. The normal front-office staff was also present, including the EA and the flag lieutenant. Carpenter stopped in mid-sentence and greeted them.

“Admiral. Commander,” he said, nodding at each of then. Vannoyt just looked disapprovingly at her but said nothing. Karen felt the social temperature in the room dropping. The office staff was suddenly concentrating very hard on their paperwork.

“Admiral Kensington’s on the phone with the Vice Chief right now,”

Carpenter said to her in an abrupt, almost unfriendly tone of voice.

“We’ll go in shortly. Are you here for some special reason, Commander Lawrence?”

Karen had to swallow before she found her voice. “I’m here because I know some aspects of this case with which Admiral Sherman may or may not be familiar. Have you heard from Detective Mcnair, sir?”

Carpenter stared at her as if she had said something grossly impertinent. “I don’t think your presence is going to be necessary at this meeting, Commander,” he said in clipped tones. “Admiral Vannoyt, what do you think?”

“I quite agree, Admiral. Feel free to wait here, Commander. Or better yet, outside in the passageway.”

Karen felt her face flushing. “In the passageway, Admiral?” No senior officer had ever talked to her this way.

“That’s what I said, Commander,” Vannoyt replied acidly. “Or in the parking lot. Or at home, if you’d like. This meeting was called at the flag level. There will be no need for staff legal officers.”

The venomous intonation Vannoyt put on the term legal o fficers evoked a raised eyebrow even on Carpenter’s face.

Sherman’s mouth was set in a tight line, but he remained silent. Karen, her heart racing and her face turning red, wasn’t sure what to do next, but she was saved momentarily by the intercom buzzer on the EA’s desk.

The EA, a polished-looking young captain, stood up and nodded once at Vannoyt. As Vannoyt and Carpenter began to move toward the inner office door, Karen grabbed Sherman’s arm.

“You need a lawyer for this,” she whispered urgently.

“You really, really do.”

Carpenter overheard that, and, sensing what might be coming, he stopped dead in his tracks. “Karen,” he began, but she turned her back on him.

Sherman looked into her angry eyes, understood, and then nodded once.

“You have to ask,” she said. “You have to request counsel, formally-from the JAG.”

“Karen, what the hell are you doing?” Carpenter said, visibly angry.

Vannoyt looked confused, and he was still trying to get the group moving again. Kensington was waiting. , Karen turned back around to face Carpenter. “As Admiral Vannoyt just pointed out while he was inviting me to cool my heels in the passageway, I’m a Navy lawyer. What I’m doing is my job, Admiral.”

Sherman stepped past her. “Admiral Carpenter, I hereby request Commander Lawrence be appointed as my counsel in these proceedings. I believe that’s my right if these proceedings are going to be adversarial.”

Carpenter was staring at Karen, and she realized that for the first time since she had been working for him, he didn’t know what to do’. He looked from her to Sherman and then back at her. He started to say something but then snapped his jaw shut.

“Gentlemen, the admiral is waiting,” Vannoyt said.

“Well, Admiral?” Sherman said.

Train sat up with a start at his desk and instantly regretted it. He had a sharp crick in his neck and his left arm was ep. He looked at his watch. It was 11:30.

asle Damn it. He looked across the room. The study doors had been closed.

Gutter was on watch in the corner of the room. That sneaky Hiroshi.

Coffee. He needed coffee. He got up and stretched, then sat back down again. He lifted the phone. The dial tone stuttered in his ear. One message on the voice mail-from a Detective Davison, Fairfax Homicide Section. “Detective Mcnair’is on leave. If someone else can help you, call back. “

Train put the phone down slowly. On leave? Now what the hell? He tried to ‘ rationalize that bit of news, and then it made sense. If there was political heat coming down on the Fairfax cops to back off this case, then having the lead detective slip off on leave might just solve everyone’s problem. Mcnair was probably working off-line, much like he and Karen were. And if Mcnair turned up in the wrong lace at the wrong time, he could always be severely chassed. Absolutely severely, County Commissioner, sir. It’ll never happen again, sir. A smoothy like Lieutenant Bettino would be quite capable of that.

He got up and went out to the kitchen, where Kyoko was poring laboriously over the household accounts through a pair of oversized reading glasses. Train realized with a pang that she was getting old.

“Any coffee left?” he asked.

She got up immediately and went to fetch the making for fresh coffee.

He carried the coffee back to the study and waited for the caffeine to do its work, still speculating about Mcnair. Then he had another thought: Suppose Mcnair was freelancing and had gone directly after Jack Sherman. He called the maintenance division at Quantico. No answer.

Saturday, stupid, he reminded himself as he hung up. So then Jack ought to be at that trailer up on snake hill or whatever it was called. I’d still like to drag that little prick back here and let the good admiral have his confrontation after all. Although, from what he had seen of that little viper, he didn’t give much for the admiral’s chances of achieving any sort of reconciliation. But over and above that, he felt a strengthening need to do something and not just sit here waiting for the bogeyman, or for Mcnair.

You promised Karen not to leave the house, an inner voice chided.

He thought about that for a minute. Actually, I never did.

Promise, that is. She just thought I did. He got up and beckoned the dog. “C’mon, Gutter. Let’s go rat hunting,” he said. He wondered how they were doing at the Pentagon.

“Very well,” Carpenter said, glaring at her. “Commander Lawrence is so appointed.” He appeared to be ready to say something else, then turned on his heel instead and followed Vannoyt into the inner office. Sherman gave Karen’s arm a little squeeze and they followed the two flag officers in.

Kensington was, as usual, in full uniform, but he was not at his desk.

He was standing with his back to them by one of the large windows overlooking the Pentagon helipad.

Vannoyt walked to the center of the room, cleared his throat, and announced that Admiral Sherman was here as requested.

“Directed,” Kensington said, continuing to face the windows. “Not requested. I don’t desire. I don’t solicit. I don’t request. I direct.”

“Yes, sir,” Vannoyt said, sounding to Karen like’a chastened ensign.

Kensington turned around and fixed Sherman with an eagle eye, and only then did he see Karen.

“Why is she here?” he demanded.

“I’m Admiral Sherman’s counsel, sir,” Karen said.

Kensington looked at Admiral Carpenter as if to ask why he had not been told that Sherman was coming with his lawyer. The JAG’s face was tense.

“I just found out about this, Admiral,” he said. “Admiral Sherman is within his rights to request counsel under these circumstances.”

“I don’t want her in here,” Kensington snapped-“

“Um,” Carpenter began, but Kensington shut him off yvith a gesture and turned to Sherman.

“Admiral Sherman, I want to talk to you privately. Off the record, if that’s what it takes. I want you to listen to what I have to say, and then you can decide if you want your lawyer here to hear it, in which case I’ll say it again, for the record, and in her presence.”

Sherman looked to Karen. Her first instincts were to refuse to leave. On the other hand, that would just provoke an impasse. These senior officers could get Sherman by himself anytime they wanted to, just by issuing some well-timed direct orders taking her out of the building.

She had to swallow to find her voice.

“I advise you to commit to nothing beyond what the admiral has just proposed,” she said to Sherman. “And if you don’t want to go along with this, you have the right to request formal proceedings.”

“If you do, those proceedings might be called a courtmartial,” Carpenter said. “I advise you to listen to what Admiral Kensington has to say. I remind you that he just off the phone with the Vice Chief of Naval Operations.”

“Very well,” Sherman said. His voice was firm, but he had that mousetrapped look on his face again.

“Then I’ll wait outside,” Karen said, looking at Vannoyt.

“In the outer office, if you think there’s room.”

Vannoyt glared at her and Karen left, closing the door forcefully behind her. The EA looked up at her with the beginnings of a smirk on his face, saw her expression, and retreated back to his paperwork. Karen went to the far end of the outer office, over by the front door, sat down, and tried to compose herself Her professional talent and good looks had carried her a long way into the inner and senior circles of the Navy JAG world, but she had just learned that there was-at least one private club of which she was definitely not a member.

And her move to become Sherman’s counsel-where the hell had that come from? It changed everything. She was no longer working for Carpenter as far as the Sherman case was concerned. It also split her efforts from Train’s: Train was working for the JAG. You better call him. Tell him what’s happened.

She got up and asked to use a phone, and one of the yeomen turned his telephone around on his desk. She dialed Train’s number in Aquia.

Hiroshi answered.

“He’s not here,” Hiroshi said. “He took your car.”

Karen swore softly under her breath. “Going where, Hiroshi?”

“Cherry Hill. He took Gutter.”

Karen thanked him, hung up, and went back to her seat.

I knew it. He is going after that kid. At least he has the dog with him.

She hoped that the kid was all he ran into up there in the weeds. She concentrated on summoning up what she knew about the military law of individual rights. That’s almost an oxymoron, she thought.

Train drove slowly up the dirt track, finally coming upon two more trailers sprawled across a muddy clearing. He saw three large motorcycles parked under a makeshift lean-to.

Two men were changing the rear tire on a fourth motorcycle by the side of the dirt road, and the larger one of them straightened up as the Explorer came into view.

Train slowed as the big ihan moved into the lane to block the way. He looked to be in his early forties, and he was dressed in greasy jeans, combat boots, and a filthy sleeveless undershirt. Emphasis on big, Train thought as he stopped.

Gorilla-sized, maybe slightly less intelligence. He had a full flowing black beard that reached his chest and an oily ponytail of equal length hanging down his neck like a drowned rat. His glaring eyes bulged dangerously The other man looked positively anorexic, with thin, pale arms showing below an olive drab T-shirt that flapped over ancient Army fatigue trousers and scabrous sandals. There was something wrong with his face, as if it had been knocked sideways a long time ago and badly reset. Train thought he saw a thin line of drool visible on his chin. He remained crouching by the bike, watching the bearded one’ the way a smaller dog watches a larger one around the food bowl. - Train stopped the Explorer and ordered Gutter, who was lying in the rightrear seat, to stay down. Then he got out, leaving his door open. “The hell you want?” demanded the big man after spitting a brown glop of chewing tobacco into the dirt right in front of Train. His pawlike hands were twitching as if they were longing for the feel of an ax handle.

“I’m going up this hill,” Train said equably. He concentrated on Beard while keeping an eye on Drool.

Beard hunched his considerable shoulders and leaned forward. “The hell you are., Bud. This here’s private. Turn that piece a Yuppie shit around and git your ass outta here.”

“Or?’ I

“Or?’ ” The man exclaimed in mock surprise, straightening up.

“Or!” He grinned down at Drool then, as if his morning had just been made. “Or I’ll throw your ass and that Ford down the goddamn hill. How’s that sound to you, asshole?” As he spoke, he reached down to pick up a tire and then began to smack it gently into his left palm.

Train spoke one -word, and Gutter came out of the car to stand next to Train, who quietly gave him the growl command.

When Gutter rumbled, Drool dried right up and began to scuttle backward, away from the motorcycle, on -his hands and heels. Beard frowned.

“Which one of you is rare?” Train asked.

Beard was still frowning. ““Fuck’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“Dog here likes his meat rare,” Train explained, eyeing Drool. “So which one of you is rare?”

That did it for Drool, who bolted for the trailer, not stopping until he was safely through the flimsy metal door. Both Train and Beard heard him lock it. ‘fsounds like he locked it,” Train announced. “Guess that means you’re rare.” He raised his hand as if to give Gutter a command, and Gutter obliged by notching up the volume and showing another yard or so of teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Train saw a shade flutter across the single front window in the trailer.

“Hey, man, hey, wait a goddamn minute here,” the big man complained, backing up now, the tire iron dropping conspicuously out of his hand.

“You wanna go up the goddamn hill, play in the snakes, that’s cool. You go right the hell ahead. We didn’t mean nothin’, awright?”

Train silenced the dog and flashed his ID. “I’m a federal agent,” he said. “You go back in your trailer with your girlfriend there, and you stay in there until you hear me leave. I’ll be leaving the dog on watch when I get up there.

You or anybody else goesup there will be disemboweled.

You understand disemboweled, do you?” The big man continued to back up, his eyes still locked on the dog.

“Yeah, right. Got it. No problem.” Then he turned and walked quickly to the door and beat on it for Drool to open up. The whole trailer shook.

He was still banging on the trailer when Train got back into the Explorer and resumed his climb up the hill, with Gutter outside, trotting conspicuously alongside the car.

After fifteen minutes of cooling her heels in the front office, Karen was startled when the buzzer went off on the EA’s desk. He picked up a black handset, listened attentively, and then said, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. ” He hung up the phone and looked over at Karen.

“The DCNO would like you to come in,” he announced.

Karen took a deep breath, got up, and walked back over to the closed door leading into Kensington’s office, ignoring the curious stares from the office staff. She knocked once and then opened the door.

Kensington was now sitting at his desk, his uniform coat still buttoned up. His face was tight with anger. Sherman was standing in front of the desk, and the other two admirals were sitting in adjacent chairs to one side. The, tension in the room was palpable, reinforced by Sherman’s expression of defiance. Karen walked over to stand beside Sherman, trying to keep the nervousness out of her own face.

“All right,” Kensington snapped. “She’s here., Now I want an answer.”

Sherman turned to her. “They want to know where I was on Thursday and Friday. I don’t think they need to know that. “

“Why does it matter?”

Karen asked the room at large, stalling for time.

“Because the admiral was technically an unauthorized absentee from his place of duty-to wit, the selection board,” Carpenter interjected. “We assume he had a good and sufficient reason for being so absent, but that assumption rests on his willingness to tell us what that reason was.

Beyond so-called compelling personal circumstances, that is.”

Karen did not like the fact that she was coming into this conversation cold, but she made her decision. “You do not have to reveal the reason, especially under these circumstances, I I she said, making it clear that she thought “these circumstances” had something of the flavor of a kangaroo court to them.

“Now look here, young lady,” Kensington began, but she ignored him. “I need to confer with Admiral Sherman,” she announced. “Privately. Excuse us, please. We’ll be right back. Admiral?” She took Sherman by the elbow and steered him toward the door.

“Goddamn it, JAG, she works for you. Do something,” Kensington protested, but Admiral Carpenter had a peculiar look on his face and was starting to shake his head. Karen pelled Sherman through the door of the inner office and pro then out into the A-ring corridor, pulling the outer door shut as she went through.

“What’s the deal?” she asked.

He sigped. “Mcnair’s told them everything. They want me to put my papers in. Ask for early retirement. If I don’t, they’re going to proceed against me for disappearing without notice. It would probably start with some kind of psych evaluation at Bethesda. Kensington started in with some kind of bullshit about how concerned they were about this Galantz situation. How they had lost confidence in my ability to focus on my duties with this extreme personal threat hanging over my head. How it would make the Navy look bad if I were to be hauled into a courtroom, an admiral in uniform, for being involved in two murders.”

“But Carpenter knows that’s a lie,” she argued. “He knows full well you’re not a suspect and that you were never involved.”

Sherman nodded as two commanders walked by, trying hard not to stare.

“I pointed that out. But strangely enough, Admiral Carpenter has had very little to say in there,” he said. He paused for a moment. “And I’m not about to beg him to speak up. If this is a setup, then he’s part of it’ ” Karen recalled what Galanti had said about the admirals being part of this. “But why?” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re a flag officer.

Why aren’t they protecting you?

Why are they so ready just to let you go over the side?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t done anything, other than bolt the other day.

And that wasn’t from fear of Galantz, but from overwhelming disappointment. You make flag, it’s not supposed to be this way., Karen.

Hell, at, this point, I’m ready to do what they want.”

“You shouldn’t do that. You should fight them.”

“But how? I don’t know where I stand. Kensington said he just got off the phone with the Vice Chief. If there’s a four-star against me, there’s no point in fighting it.”

Karen tried to make him look at her, but he resisted.

“You don’t know that,” she said. “He may just have said that. He may have been talking to the Vice about’t something entirely unrelated.

You said it yourself. You worked for all those years to wear these stars. At great personal cost, may I remind you.”

He looked at her then, and she saw in his eyes that he had crossed an important psychological bridge and was now prepared to bum it. He took her hands. “Karen, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The career has been everything. For all those years, it was my career, my advancement. I was always so very important, so very busy. And now my wife’s in an institution, and my son is in league with my worst enemy. All for-what?

Preserving my almighty stars?” He dropped her hands, and the emotion seemed to leak out of him. “To hell with these people.”

“Is there anybody else you can talk to?” she asked. “Any other flag officers?”

He laughed. “My contemporaries are all guys against whom I competed for the first star. Now we’re competitors for the second star. If that three-star in there has put the word out, nobody in this building is going to return my calls.”

The door to the outer office opened, and a yeoman stuck his head out.

“Sir? The admiral was-“

“Yeoman?” Sherman barked.

“Yes, sir?”

“Bring me a pair of scissors.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” Looking baffled, the yeoman retreated back into the office.

“Where’s von Rensel?” Sherman asked. “He’s … he’s gone looking for Jack, I think. He was supposed to wait at his house until we got back or he heard from Mcnair.”

Sherman nodded. The yeoman returned with a pair of scissors. Karen could see the EA standing at his desk, trying to see what was going on out in the corridor. Sherman pulled out his wallet and extracted his ID card.

He took the scissors and cut the ID card into four pieces. He handed the pieces and the scissors over to the yeoman. “Give these to your boss.

Tell him I’ve gone to look for my son.”

“But,-sir, the admiral-“

“Tell him what I said, young man. Tell him Captain Sherman left with his lawyer.”

Train stopped short of the clearing containing the decrepit trailer and checked his watch: just past 1:00 P.m. He looked around. He was standing behind a large scraggly bush, which put him mostly in the shadows. There were no sounds coming from the trailer, and the woods both above and below the trailer were silent and strangely devoid of birds and insects.

He wondered briefly about all the talk of snakes.

Gutter stood by his left side, ears up, eyes alert. Train eased the Glock out of its waistband holster, checked the chamber, and then sent the dog forward to scout the place out. Gutter trotted into the clearing surrounding the trailer, stopped, and then put his nose down and began to cover the ground between the trailer and the plastic-covered hootch to the right, where Karen had said she first found Jack.

Train considered crouching down but then dismissed the idea. He was simply too big to hide behind anything much smaller than a house anyway.

The place felt abandoned. He had thought he had seen the dark silhouette of a fallen-in house up there among the trees near the top, and there were signs that there had once been a road or a driveway, now entirely overgrown, beyond the dead tree. Gutter disappeared behind the trailer and then reappeared a minute later on the far side.

Train considered his options. The dog would find anyone hiding outside the trailer, although not necessarily someone inside the trailer. Karen said the guy rode a motorbike, and there was no motorbike in sight. As the day warmed up, the aroma from all the trash around the trailer was becoming stronger, accompanied by the whine of flies. He could not imagine someone living like this, and yet he knew that there were lots of other trailers just like this in these parts. The dog came loping back to him, and Train, satisfied that no one was lying in wait ahead, decided to go check out the trailer itself He looked over at the huge dead tree lying across the road, then took Gutter back to it, instructing him to stay down underneath the trunk. Train was pretty sure he could handle Jack if he was in I that trailer, and while he would have preferred to keep Gutter with him, he wanted the Dobe between him and those two thugs down below.

He could always call him in if there was trouble. GUTTLVR flopped obediently onto his belly, giving Train a mildly resentful look.

Train patted him, reinforced the command, and then walked down the path lea . ding to the trailer, proceeding carefully, with the Glock in his right hand but held down by his side. He went straight up to the door, -knocked, and then stepped back, holding the gun behind his back. He kept looking around the clearing to make sure no one was moving, hoping that Gutter still had a view of the clearing. He knocked again and called out Jack’s name. Nothing moved inside the trailer. He knocked a third time, more forcefully, making the side of the trailer rattle. Then he tried the door handle and found the door unlocked.

He looked around again and then pushed the door in, hard enough that it banged all the way back to the wall. He called Jack’s name again and then listened carefully, but there were no sounds coming from the trailer. The gun pointed up now, he went into the trailer. He felt the floor sag beneath his feet as he took shallow breaths against the stink of rotting food and’filthy clothes. The interior looked a lot like the exterior, and the trailer had a definite sewage problem somewhere.

It felt empty. He checked out the other two rooms and bathroom, staying out of the tiny kitchen for fear of the mess he would find there. He looked around. The place was little more than an aluminum cave; all it needed was a pile of bones in one comer. But there was no one here.

He went back to the clearing and checked on Gutter, who was still on command, then focused on what looked like a ruined house a hundred yards or so up the hill from. the downed oak tree. It took ten minutes to push through all the undergrowth, and he was careful about where he put his feet.

It was only early afternoon, but already there were shadows forming under the trees. The house was a total wreck. Two enormous stone chimneys at either end were the only things vertical about it. It appeared to have . been a two-story woodframe house with porches running around three sides, but the second floor and the roof had long ago subsided into the Pound floor. The porches sagged and dropped like old spiderwebs. The steps were long gone, although the stone supports were still there. The ground-floor window frames were deformed and empty of glass and sash, and he thought he could see parts of the ground-floor ceiling sagging down into the front rooms. The front door was missing, leaving an asymmetric black hole facing the dying trees out front.

He walked around three sides of the house, but there were no signs of life or the detritus of vagrants. Huge old vines roped up the remains of the porches, and some had even gone inside. He was about to go back down the hill when a squirrel burst out practically from beneath his feet, giving him a good scare. The squirrel hightailed it up one of the old trees and Train watched it go damned near all the way to the top, which is when he saw the antenna. At first, it didn’t register. He moved closer to the tree, peering through the branches, and there it was, a radio antenna of some kind.

And a wire, cleverly concealed in the ragged bark of the tree, descended the tree and disappeared in the underbrush.

He rooted around the base of the tree, found it, saw which way it was pointed, and followed the route with his eyes until he found it again, disappearing under one of the porches. Well, well. Ruined, but not necessarily abandoned.

Still holding the Glock, he made his way around to the front steps.

Balancing himself, he climbed up the stone step supports and then tiptoed across the bare floor joists of what had been the front porch and approached the open doorway.

The old wood creaked ominously under his weight, but just inside the door, he hit pay dirt again: There was a piece of plywood resting over the open floor joists about six feet inside that doorway. He eased his way through the doorway and saw that both front rooms on either side were filled with the wreckage of the second floor. Heaps of plaster and broken boards pointing every which way were all piled onto the ground floor. But straight ahead, in what looked like a main hallway, there was more plywood, ending in a closed door that seemed to be surprisingly intact.

He listened carefully, but there were no sounds. No smell* of human habitation, no candy wrappers or beer cans. But that wire had to go somewhere. That wire was new. And this plywood was new. He stepped out onto the first sheet and it held, although broken plaster scrunched underneath as he took the next step. The hallway got darker as he moved across the plywood, and he kept looking over his shoulder at the frame of the front door, where the glare of the afternoon light outside etched every detail of the front porch. He was about six feet from the closed door when he looked up and saw something shiny above the door-something round and glinting, as if made of glass. A camera? Oh Lord, was that a video camera?

The flash went off in his face, a sickeningly familiar purplish blast of light that overwhelmed his brain circuits even as he recognized it. As he reeled back, his brain paralyzed, he thought he heard an ominously familiar inhalation sound.

“Let him go,” Carpenter said after the yeoman brought in the pieces of the ID card. “He’s just mad right now. He’ll come around.”

Kensington dismissed the yeoman and waited for him to the door. “Are you completely sure those archives are an?”

Carpenter wasn’t sure of anything. He had been truly unsettled when Karen Lawrence turned on him like that. And God only knew what that von Rensel guy was doing. “Yes, sir, but I’m going to keep a security trap. in place until we have Sherman’s papers.”

“You said it was clean.”

“It is, but I don’t trust computers, or the weird bastards who can get into their brains and manipulate them. Like that guy those people sent over.”

Kensington nodded thoughtfully. “Do you realize how bad that whole business would look in today’s climate?”

“I don’t want to even think about it. Leaving a guy behind was one thing. Not trying to get him back was something else again. In today’s climate, the Navy’d be tom apart over this little story.”

They were interrupted by the EA. “Admiral Carpenter, your office has patched down a call from a Mr. Mcnair?

Says it’s urgent.

As they walked quickly away from Kensington’s office, Karen’s mind was spinning. Why was Carpenter doing this?

As a woman, she could understand Sherman’s decision to throw in the towel. But not why Kensington and Carpenter were doing this. Unless, of course, Sherman wasn’t the scandal they were really afraid of. She stopped short in the corridor, thinking about that locked file.

“Admiral, there has to be something more behind all this than just fear of a public-relations problem. And I think I know where we might find it.”

Sherman gave her a weary look. “Do we have time for theories, Karen?”

“I think We ought to make time for this one,” she said.

“I’d like to divert to my office before we leave the building, and hopefully before Admiral Carpenter gets back to his office. I need to get to my. computer.”

“Will the office be open? And what are we looking for?” He asked as she turned dawn the sixth corridor, heading toward the Investigations Review offices. Their voices echoed in the empty hallway.

Stem portraits of CNOS past frowned down on them.

“This whole thing began in Vietnam,” she said. “A week ago, I asked for the archive file of the original JAG investigation, when Galantz was lost. But when I tried to pull it up, there was a security block.

Admiral Carpenter, told Train that he had read it, and that it corroborated your version of what happened out there in Vietnam. But I’m wondering if there isn’t something else in that file.”

“Did von Rensel see it?”

“No, sir,” she said, turning into the D-ring corridor and quickening her pace. “He obtained the NIS file on Jack. But he thinks Carpenter is behind the security block.”

They arrived at the IR office door, whose translucent glass window was dark. She punched in the code and opened the door. Sherman followed her in and closed the door behind them as she turned on some lights. “Why would NIS have a file on Jack?” he asked.

She hurried over to her cubicle, debited with herself about turning off the lights, and decided against it. She went over to the yeoman’s desk and booted up the network server, and then she went to her desk to bring up her own system.

“I’m not sure they had a file on him, per se. They apparently have access to multiple databases, and they can do what the telemarketers and the credit checkers can do, only with some federal muscle.”

“What a concept,” he muttered.

“Okay, system’s up ” She sat down at her desk and put through a request from’the IR system to the JAG local-area network. Sherman paced around the empty office while Karen’s fingers flew over the keyboard.

“Any luck?” Sherman asked from across the room.

“Almost,” she replied, opening the’access screen and keying in her original request number. The screen asked for her personal identifier.

She keyed that in. A red banner exploded across the screen. It told her that her access was invalid and that the restricting authority was being notified.

“Uh-oh,” Sherman said from across the room.

“Uh-oh is right,” she said. “Access denied. And I’ll bet Carpenter’s office is getting an alert right now telling them I’m trying to get into this file.”

“Maybe we should shut down and get out of here, then,” he said. “Before the rent-a-cops show up. Or worse, some of the CNO’s Marines from Opnav security.”

“I can’t imagine anything like that,” she said. “It’s not as if I was doing something illegal. This is a system I use all the time.”

“See if you can log into your division’s LAN E-mail system,” he suggested. “See if this denial is file -specific, or user-specific.”

She frowned but then exited the archive system and opened E-mail.

Another red banner. “It’s me, she whispered.

“I was afraid of that,” he said. “Let’s go. Now.”

“I have to shut the system down. If I don’t, the server will-“

“Screw the server,” he said, reaching down to hit the computer’s power key. “We need to get out of this building and down to Aquia as quickly as possible.”

Karen got up hurriedly and turned off the office lights.

They opened the door and looked out into the empty corridor.

“No sounds of approaching jackboots,” Sherman said.

“Follow me.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, hurrying to keep up in her skirt and heels.

“Don’t think we ought just to waltz out the South Parking entrance,” he said over his shoulder. If that was a network trap, there’ll be a security alert. I’m not sure what’s going on here, but somebqdy’s locked you ‘out of the system, and recently. We’ll take these stairs right here.’ He ducked sideways into a small stairway in the middle of the corridor. Karen followed, her heels clattering on the concrete steps.

“Where does this go? I’ve never used this one. “

“Spend enough years in this building, you learn some shortcuts. This’ll get us down to the first floor, and then we’ll go around the B-ring to corridor four. Stay out of the A-ring in case security vehicles are on their way. Damn, I wish it weren’t Saturday. The building’s empty as a tomb.

We’re going to be conspicuous.”

“Where will that take us?” she asked.

“And I may have to take these shoes off.”

He turned around to look and then apologized. “Sorry. I forgot about heels. I guess there’s no need to run.” But even as he said that, as they were about to cross the sixth corridor through the B-ring, they heard the urgent beeping sound of an approaching electric security vehicle coming down the A-ring to their left. They stopped and ducked back into the B-ring, flattening themselves against an office door.

There were two large glass doors across the sixth corridor, where they could see the reflection of the security vehicle, a large electric golf cart with a rotating amber beacon, go humming by. There were four armed men riding in the vehicle.

Sherman swore. “Reaction force. Probably on their way to the main entrances. That may or may not be for us, but if it is, we’re going to have to hurry.”

Karen popped her shoes off and began to trot in her stockinged feet. As long as they were on the polished corridor floors, it wasn’t too bad.

They moved quickly along the angled segments of B-ring, across the fifth corridor and then into the fourth corridor. She had to put-her shoes back on to get across the garage and utility street between D-ring and E-ring, and she left, them on as they went back up a small stairway to reach ground level. Sherman paused just inside a doorway.

“Okay,” ‘he said. “What we’re trying for here is the heliport door. It’s an exit that’s open only on workdays. Usually, there’s a guard, but probably only an alarm system ‘right now. It opens directly into the heliport area, and from there it’s only a hundred yards or so to South Parking. It’s all I can think of.”

She nodded. “I can’t believe there are police after us. I didn’t do anything I don’t do routinely.”

“That’s when you were persona grata,” he replied, keeping an eye out into the corridor through the glass door.

“Now you’re keeping bad company. Sure you want to keep going with this, Counselor?”

“I’m sure,” she said with a small smile. “I think.”

Right. Remember that the forces of truth, justice, and the American way are all behind you. Way behind you.

Let’s do it.”

He took one more look through the door for amber strobe lights, then pushed the door open. They stepped out into the fourth corridor, which was darker than usual. In the perpetual effort to save money, the Pentagon building’s management turned out half the overhead lights in the corridors on weekends. Trying to act normally, they walked together the final eighty feet to the small doorway at the end of the corridor.

The guard table by the door was unoccupied, but they could see a red sign chained across the door.

“Definitely alarmed,” she said, keeping her voice down as they approached the door. “Won’t that bring the reaction force?”

“Probably. We can only hope they come from the inside and that no one thinks to simply step out of the South Parking entrance to see what’s happening back on the heliport.

Wish I had a helo out there.”

“You’re an admiral. Can’t you just call one?”

“Remember the guy in Henry the Fifth who claims that he can call forth spirits from the vasty deep? And the other guy says, yeah, but do they come when you call them?

That’s me. I used to think I could, though,” he said.

The chain across the door was there to hold the sign, not to secure the door. The door itself had a fire-escape bar on the inside, which meant they could get out, although not back in once that door closed. Two black boxes with shielded wiring were positioned on either side of the top left crack between the door and the doorjam. There was also an amber strobe light mounted ten feet high in the ceiling and it, too, was wired to the black box.

“Definitely alarmed,” he said. “Okay. Once outside, we turn left and walk quickly but normally toward South Parking. If someone stops us, we did see a man in civilian clothes headed for the River Entrance.”

“He went thataway, Sheriff?”

“Right. Unless they’re specifically looking for us, my admiral’s uniform may do the trick. Ready?”

“I guess,” she said, adjusting her shoes. She was wishing she could see through that door.

He stepped forward, unhooked the chained sign, and then pushed the bar.

Karen expected an audible alarm, but the only thing that happened was that the amber light began to flash over their heads. They went out through the door, pushed it shut, walked quickly down the steps to the heliport area, and turned left for South Parking. Traffic out on Washington Boulevard whizzed past just beyond the heliport. The bright sunlight was almost blinding.

They headed down a sidewalk right alongside the building and made it almost to the edge of the heliport before two armed guards came around the comer of the building.

“Good, they’re Marines,” Sherman murmured.

Karen couldn’t quite figure out why that was good, but then she began to understand when the Marines trotted up to them, assumed rigid positions of attention, and saluted in unison. Sherman returned the salute casually and asked what the problem was.

“Intruder alarm, heliport door, sir,” the smaller one said.

“I saw a guy come out of there as we were walking past,” Sherman replied, pointing down toward the other end of the building. “Civilian?

With a briefcase? Seemed to be in a hurry?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, sir!” they shouted in unison as they took off down the side of the building, unslinging submachine weapons.

“Let’s go, Counselor,” Sherman said, looking over his oulder. “That’ll be good for about another ninety seconds we’re lucky.

They walked rapidly to the comer of the building and then stepped across the empty perimeter street toward their cars. Karen could see other guards standing around the South Parking entrance doors, one of whom was using a radio. They made it to their cars, and Karen slipped into the Mercedes while the admiral opened the door to his car. She reached down to finger a pebble out of her right shoe, and when she straightened back up, the cars were surrounded by armed guards. A huge man in a uniform she didn’t recognize was gesturing for her to get out of the car. He was emphasizing his, command with the barrel of his gun. She rolled the window down, keeping her hands in sight.

“Get out of the car, please, Commander,” the guard said.

Two other guards were between her car and Sherman’s, and she could see Sherman getting out of his car. She did the same, and they walked her around to the back of Sherman’s car. Three Army majors who had been about to leave for the day were watching in amazement from the next row of cars. Karen was grateful not to see the two Marines they had encountered along the side of the building.

A Marine captain walked up to the group of guards and saluted Sherman.

“Opnav security, Sir. Sir did you just come through the heliport door?”

“Yes, I did. We did.”

“That’s an alarmed door, Admiral,” the captain said in a tone of voice that clearly indicated he was pointing out the obvious. “May I see your identification, please, Sir?”

“Sure,” Sherman said, reaching for his wallet. And then he paused for a second and looked over at Karen. She felt a cold wave of dismay. He had cut up his ID card up there at the DCNO’s office. He fished out his wallet, looked inside, and then shrugged his shoulders. “Well, Captain, I seemed to have misplaced it.”

“I can identify this officer,” Karen said.

“May I see your ID card, then, Commander?” Which is when she realized she didn’t have an ID card, either.

“Uh“‘was all she could manage to say.

“Yes, ma’am,” the Marine said in a gotcha tone of voice.

“Why don’t we all go back to Opnav Security and straighten this thing out? Admiral Sherman, this way, please, Sir. I I They know who we are, Karen realized with a sinking feeling. Train, we need you.

Train was blind, again. He had been looking directly into that lens, his eyes wide open when the retinal flash exploded down his optic nerves. He was only vaguely aware of a sharp sting in his left arm. He tried to think of what to do next, but his brain was just idling’quietly in place. He realized that he was still standing, leaning against the wall in that hallway, but that was about the sumof it. There were still two intense purple suns pinwheeling in his eyes. Seen those puppies before.

And then a wave of something else took over, a warm, almost-comforting tide of sleep washing over his brain, diminishing those purple suns, filtering all that bright light, causing his knees to buckle, and then he was going down like a stunned ox, his right hip and elbow hitting the plywood, but no big deal, tuck and roll with the best of ‘em, so nice to rest, so very nice just to sleep a little while. He thought he heard a voice say something about getting his arms.

Karen was starting to get angry. They had been cooped up in this small room for nearly three hours since their apprehension in the parking lot.

The Marines had escorted them up to Opnav Security on the-fourth floor, given them a perfunctory airport-style search for weapons with a magnetic wand, and then deposited them in this office without another word. The room was about fifteen feet square, with a small table and four chairs in the middle. The door to the main operations area of the security office had a translucent glass panel, and they could see people moving around out there but could not hear what they were saying.

The walk through the Pentagon had been embarrassing, as it must have been obvious to anyone passing them in the main hallways that they were under police escort of some kind, even with only four guards. The Marine captain had accompanied them as far as the security office, but then he had disappeared. A policewoman escorted Karen to the bathroom the one time she had asked, but there had been no other contact. At one point, Karen started to ask Sherman how long this would go on, but he had put his fingers to his lips and pointed to the ceiling. She automatically looked up. There was nothing up there but a fluorescent light fixture.

And then she understood. The room was probably bugged. She had nodded and then made herself as comfortable as she could while they waited.

But three hours? She was ready to go bang. on that door and demand something, although she wasn’t sure what. The only actual crime they had committed was to breach the security door by the heliport. Okay, so sue us, or give us a building traffic ticket, or whatever. Carpenter and company had to be behind this somehow, but for the life of her, she could not understand why. And she was worried about Train. She didn’t want to think about that prospect. She looked at her watch for the hundredth time. Sherman gave her a wry smile when he saw her do that. He motioned for her to pull her chair around so that she was sitting next to him. Then he began to print invisible letters on the table with his finger.

“There’s a point to this,” he scrawled.

“What point?”

“Something else is happening. We are being held out of the way.”

She nodded, and then thought about Train going to Cherry Hill. She reminded the admiral of this fact.

“Going to find Jack?” He traced the question, his eyes alarmed.

“Yes.”

“To arrest him?”

“No. To bring him back. Train feels Jack is in danger.”

Sherman got up then and began to pace around the table.

She watched him while he considered the possibilities. Then she saw an idea come over his face. He pointed up at the ceiling and mimed that there was somebody listening hard somewhere, Then he started talking to the ceiling.

“Damn it, I’m getting tired of this,” he announced.

“Don’t these people realize that von Rensel is out there right now? That he’s probably going to shoot Jack as soon as he finds him?” His voice startled her as much as what he had just said. But he was motioning for her to play along.

Quick, what to say? she thought.. “You’re right, Admiral. He’s out of control,” she said.

He was nodding vigorously. “If they’d let us out of here, maybe we could stop that. But they’re probably too dumb to do that. I hope it’s not too late.”

“Von Rensel’s more than just out of control,” Sherman said, looking up again at the ceiling and the presumed microphone. “He’s going to’go public when he’s finished with Jack. Some people in this building are going to be pretty embarrassed if he does. He’s much too close to those Fairfax cops. You know NIS. They’ll just screw it up.”

They went on like this for a few minutes, then subsided into silence.

Twenty minutes later, the door was being unlocked and the Marine captain was back.

“Apologize for the long delay, Admiral, Commander.

We’ve had some trouble verifying your identity. Saturday. and all that.

But you are free to go now, sir. Commander, next time don’t let the admiral here go busting through security doors. Use the regular entrances, okay, ma’am? And you need to get that ID card problem squared away.”

Karen just stared at him, but he maintained an entirely sincere expression in the face of her obvious disbelief. She was half-expecting Sherman to go through a “how dare you” routine, but he was touching her elbow. “Let’s go,” he said urgently.

The admiral was in a hurry. Suddenly so was she. They needed to get down to Aquia. But more than that, they needed to get to a car phone. A single Marine was detailed to escort them back out of the building, since it was illegal for them to be in the Pentagon without ID cards.

Out in the parking lot, Karen called Hiroshi from the Mercedes while Sherman stood by her door.

“Hiroshi, this is Commander Lawrence. Is Train back?”

“Not back yet. No calls.”

“And he’s in my Explorer?”

“Yes, your car.”

She thanked him, hung up, and looked at her watch. A little after four.

There were only about thirty cars left in South Parking. The sun was starting to set behind the Arlington Annex buildings overlooking the national cemetery.

The dark band of an approaching weather front lurked in the west.

“Nothing?” Sherman was asking.

“Not a word. No calls. He should have been back by now.

“He take your car?”

I”Yes.’ I

“Call your car phone. See if he’s there.”

Why didn’t I think of that? she fumed, and punched in the number for the Explorer.

One ring, two rings, a pickup, and then the voice: Hello, Commander.

She almost dropped the phone when she heard his voice again. She mouthed the name Galantz at Sherman, her throat too dry to speak. Sherman reached for the phone.

“What do you want, Galantz?” he shouted into the phone.

Your dripping bloody spine on my kitchen table, the voice said. If you had one.

“Where’s Jack?-” Sherman said, his voice not quite so forceful. Karen felt an icy fist grip her insides. If Galantz was in her car, then where the hell was Train?

Jack’s with me. Want to see young Jack, do you, Aqmiral?

“Let him go, Galantz.”

Let him go? He’s here of his own free will. Although that might change, of course.

“Let him go, Galantz. You’ve done enough damage.”

Nowhere near enough damage. But I will. You want Jack?

You come to where von Rensel went. Tonight. Come alone.

No helper bees. Let’s say about nine. That suit your busy calendar? We can finish this tonight. Just you and me. But remember, come alone. Or we just keep playing.

Sherman swallowed as the phone hissed at him. He handed the phone back through her window.

“He’s offering to trade Jack for me, from the sounds of it. Wants me to come to wherever von Rensel was going this afternoon. Says we can finish this tonight.”

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “We’ve got to tell Mcnair. We need-“

“No. I have to go alone.”

“That’s crazy, Admiral. I’m sorry, but you’re no match for this guy.”

“Don’t you see, Karen, this is never going to end until I face him? And Jack.” Sherman looked away for a moment, and she suddenly had the impression that he-no longer cared what happened to himself. “Did he say anything more about Train?” she asked.

“No. So we’d better get down to Aquia.”

It was nearly 5:30 when they arrived in their separate cars.

An obviously worried Hiroshi met them in front of the house.

“No calls?” Karen asked as soon as she got out.

“One call. From a Mr. Mcnair.”

“Mcnair!” exclaimed . Sherman, joining them next to Karen’s car. Hiroshi turned to face him.

“It was for you, Sherman-sama. He said don’t go.

“That’s it?” Karen asked, frowning. Then she looked at Sherman. “But how in the world-“

“The phones,” Sherman said, kicking gravel at a tire.

They must have all the goddamn phones covered. Here and the cars, too.

Was that the entire message’, Hiroshi?”

“No. He said he was sorry about Jack. But Galantz was more important.” herman’s face paled in the evening light, as if Hiroshi slapped his face. “Sorry about Jack? Sorry about Jack!

What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Karen took him by the arm and steered him away from the cars. Hiroshi waited patiently behind them. “Mcnair is the police,” she said. “He knows that Jack has been helping Galantz commit murder. He’s obviously willing to sacrifice Jack to get the mastermind here, Galantz. But what he doesn’t know is that Train may be up there.”

Sherman shook his head. “He should know if he can listen to all these damned phones. How did you find out Train went wherever he went?”

“I called Hiroshi from OP-03’s office. Oh, right. If they’ve got devices on the phones here, he would know.”

She stopped for a moment. “And you’re sure Galantz didn’t mention anything more about Train?”

“Nope. Nothing other. than to say that I should come to where von Rensel went. Where is that, Karen?” Karen felt her heart sink

“A place called Slade Hill,” she replied. “It’s near the river. Did he imply he had Train, as … Well?”

“No. Just that one oblique reference.”

It was Karen’s turn to think hard. But then an odd thought struck her: Could Mcnair have been behind their three-hour detention in the Pentagon? Mcnair working through those two admirals? If he knew that Train had gone to Cherry Hill before they were detained, might he have arranged their detention? But how would he have found that out? Easy, the phone call she made from OP-03’s office, when Hiroshi had told her where Train had gone. And then, when he overheard Galantz tell Sherman to come to Cherry Hill, he had left this new message. Which meant the police were finally moving against Galantz.

“What?” Shermafi was asking.

Karen shook her head. “An off-the-wall theory,” she replied. “But I think the cops are about to make their move’ ‘ ‘ Sherman sighed in exasperation. “At this moment, Karen, theories don’t interest me. I want my son out of there. I have to talk to him. I have to know if he really was part of this, or if he was just a dupe. Look, the rest of my world is in pieces. I’ve got to know this. Do you understand? I can’t just sit here.”

“I do understand,” she said. “But if Mcnair has a police operation under way, and we go up there, we could screw that up. Run into a SWAT team up there.”

“Mcnair wants Galantz. I think he’s made it personal.

Jack’s just excess baggage to him. Well, Jack is blood personal for me.

I’ve got to get face-to-face with him, just once. “

Karen was wavering. If Jackwere to be killed, either by Galantz or by a SWAT team, Galantz would have succeeded in destroying everything of value to Sherman: his lover, his mentor, his career, and now his only son.

“Karen? Train’s probably up there, too.” He took her arm. “I can’t do this by myself,” he said. “You’ve been there. You know the ground. And you’ve got something of value up there, too, Karen. Either Galantz has him, too, or he’s been hurt. The cops will treat him as another cop.

They’ll try to recover him. But Mcnair is focused on Galantz, and sometimes cops get hurt.”

That did it “Hiroshi,”.she called. The old man walked over, his eyes alert. “We need some weapons.”

Train rose toward consciousness, aware now that he had been chemically silenced but not able to remember why, or where. He opened his eyes slowly, seeing nothing but a purplish halo in the darkness. He tried to rub his eyes, only to discover that his arms were constricted. Then he realized that his hands were taped back-to-back, and his wrists felt like they had been taped together and then fastened by more tape to his belt buckle. His ankles were also taped together.

His whole body was constricted, enveloped in something that had him wrapped loosely from head to toe. Only his face was exposed. He smelled rubber, and immediately he recognized the shape of the thing that held him. And he remembered where he had been when he saw it.

He turned his head, but then his face slid under the the bag left open for him to breathe, the rough edges of a zipper scratching his cheek. He didn’t do that again. The darkness was complete. He had a vague sense of being underground.

Okay. Karen managed to get through this. So can you.

Breathe. Regain sensory control.

But then a wave of torpor insinuated itself as a last vestige of the chemical washed across his forebrain, sinuous molecules urging sleep, a resumption of the comforting nothin ness that took away the fear of being cocooned like this.

No. Fight that. You know who did this. He has plans. He doesn’t want you. But he’ll use you to bring Sherman in.

You have to be ready when he comes back. Breathe. Exhale the poisons.

Reinvigorate the bloodstream with fresh oxygen.

After a few minutes, the deep breathing began to work, and he felt the insidious chemical recede. Then he tried the tape bonds on his arms and feet. Tight, unyielding. But he knew about tape. The secret to tape was steady pressure.

Tape was plastic fabric. Hard to break with brute force without first tearing it, but ultimately, it was stretchable. This was an exercise in isometrics. Put on steady pressure, then relax. It was difficult with his hands being back-to-back, but the sword exercises had built unusual strength in his forearms. Push out, like trying to do the breaststroke.

Relax. “Men do it again. Keep doing it. Push out. Relax. Get one hand free, then the other, and then get out of the bag. But first the tape.

Push. Breathe. Relax. Push.

Hiroshi drove them in Sherman’s car. It was fully dark by the time they reached and went past the entrance to Slade Hill Road. Sherman had Karen’s .45; she carried a Browning .380 semiautomatic, which Hiroshi had produced from the gun locker. She sat up front with Hiroshi, with the admiral perched on the edge of the backseat like a kid trying to see everything out the windows. “That’s the entrance to the road that goes up to the trailer,” she announced quietly as they drove past the familiar trash piles in the ditch. They had talked about how best to approach the trailer on the way over. They decided to go past the entrance, turn around, and get out somewhere above the Slade Hill Road entrance, on the premise that it would be easier to walk downhill to the trailer than climb up to it in the darkness. She had told Sherman about the POS tmaster’s snake stories. Hiroshi drove back up the hill until Karen signaled for him to stop abreast of what looked like an abandoned trailer pad. “We should be about a quarter mile above the entrance to Jack’s road,” she said.

“Okay, then it’s show time,” the admiral announced, hefting the big Colt. They each ‘ had a flashlight, whose lenses the admiral had darkened by using a red felt-tipped pen. Hiroshi’s instructions were to drive back down to the entrance to Slade Hill Road and park the car facing out on the road. Karen and the admiral got out, closing the car doors as quietly as they could. Hiroshi drove off, with one further instruction: to call Mcnair thirty minutes after he had parked to tell him that they were on the hill.

Karen waited to get her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The sky was overcast, with a low scud blowing down toward the river. She realized they would be walking across the face of Slade Hill rather than down any slope. She suggested they bear left, partially up the hill, so that they would come down on the trailer and traverse the dirt road rather than have to climb, any part of it.

Sherman nodded in the darkness. He pushed the light on his watch.

“Nineteen-thirty,” he said. “We’d better go.”

They set out into the woods, where immediately they found themselves enveloped in a tangle of vines and thick vegetation. Sherman led the way, and they both soon picked up sticks to use to push the brambles out of their faces. She hoped they were going in a straight line across the hill, but there was really no way to tell in the darkness. The ground was soft and rocky, with patches of ankle-deep mud in places. Karen tripped and fell at one point, and then realized she had lost the .380.

They spent five minutes searching for the gun in the weeds, and this time she put it into a zippered pocket of the windbreaker. The admiral paused periodically to listen, but the woods were silent, with only some night insects and the occasional rustle of small game getting out of their way. The night air was heavy and humid as the front approached, compressing the atmosphere.

After twenty minutes, they could see a single dim light below. and to their right, which Karen assumed was the bikers’ trailer. Something snapped a stick up ahead of them in a grove of trees. They froze and listened for a few minutes, but there was no other sound. Finally, the admiral motioned that they should go on. Karen checked that she still had the gun, and she was about four paces to his left when the snake let go, an alarmingly loud buzz that sounded as if it was coming from just in-front of her. She froze..

Sherman turned around in the darkness. “Where is it?” he whispered.

“Can you tell?”

“To my right. Can’t tell how close.”

The snake buzzed again as Sherman stepped closer to where Karen had assumed her one-legged stance. He probed the bushes where the noise was coming from, then stopped when he realized he didn’t know how close the snake was to Karen.

“I’ll try to distract it,” he said, probing very carefully now with his stick. “If I feel it hit my stick, I’ll sing out, and you jump backward, okay?”

The snake stopped buzzing, and Sherman froze. “Now what?” she said, her throat dry. Neither one of them was properly dressed for rattlesnake country. Sherman swore and then began tapping his stick on the ground.

Nothing happened. Karen felt her first real surge of fear. As long as it was buzzing, she knew about where the damned thing was.

Now, she could only imagine it slithering between her feet, or gathering to strike.

Sherman stopped the tapping. “In theory, they’re as scared of us as we are of them. Supposedly, they’ll escape if allowed to.” In theory, huh?” she said. Her leg was getting tired, and she hated not being able to move. She put all her weight onto her left leg and moved her own stick to the right in the damp grass, probing for the dark patch where the buzzing sound had started. There was no response. Then she described a circle in the grass within two feet of where she was standing, still with no response.

“Hell with it,” she said, putting her foot down gingerly.

“I think it’s gone.”

Sherman beat the bushes between them more aggressively with his stick.

“I think you’re right,” he said, and turned around to proceed. He took one step, and a loud buzzing erupted right in front of him. It was his turn to freeze.

“Damn it,” he said. “Now it’s right in front of me.”

“How close?” Karen asked, trying to see around him without moving.

“Close enough,” he said, his voice tight as the snake buzzed again. “I’m even afraid to move my stick. Circle around! Come in from ahead of me and distract the damned thing!”

Karen went sideways, probing carefully ahead with her stick, moving uphill of where the admiral was frozen in place. She stepped very carefully, not placing a foot until she had swept the ground ahead and to the side. She had heard the old tale about rattlers traveling in pairs. That sounded like a big snake. She had just about made it halfway around him, at a distance of about six feet, when another snake let go, this time in front of her. As Sherman swore out loud, she froze again, focusing her senses, trying to detect the snake’s position. It’s a goddamned minefield, she thought. Then her heart gave a leap when the tip of her stick hit something that did not I feel like a tuft of grass.

The snake buzzed louder, and she realized she had stopped breathing in anticipation of a strike.

She pulled the stick back, but it caught momentarily and pulled something off the ground. She jumped back then, throwing the stick off, certain that the damned snake was on it. She stepped back and to the left, but to her horror, another snake started up to her left, about five or six feet away. She froze again, not sure of what the hell to do.

Sherman was calling to her as the buzzing stopped.

“Karen! Stand still ‘ We’ve disturbed a nest!”

“I am standing still! There’re three of the damned things out here. I don’t know which way to go!”

He had no answer for that, and they both stood there for a minute, immobilized, listening carefully. They could hear nothing but the wind.

“Karen,” he said.

“What?”

“Did you throw your stick?”

“Yes.’ “Why?” She told him. He asked if what her stick had caught on could have been a wire. She thought about it. Something had caught her stick, but had it been heavy enough to be a snake? “It might have been a wire. I thought it was a snake.”

“Okay, hang on a minute.”

She could barely see him in the darkness, but he was probing again with his stick. After thirty seconds, the buzzing started, and he stabbed down hard with the stick and then pulled the tip straight up. There was a loud buzzing noise in front of Karen, and another one off to her left.

It actually sounded as if there might be even another one to Sherman’s right, down the hill about ten yards.

“Got it,” he said. “It is a damned wire. These ‘snakes’ are electronic devices.”

“Are you real, real sure of that?” she asked, embarrassed by the sound of her own voice.

“Come over here. I have it in my hand.”

She took a deep breath and stepped sideways toward him.

When she got up close, she could see the dark wire in his hand, as well as a small black object embedded in the wire that was putting out a really good rattlesnake noise. He jerked hard on the wire, and the others in the reptilian chorus let go for fifteen seconds before going silent.

Pretty damned effective,” he said. “The good news is that we know what it is. The bad news is what might be listening at the other end of this wire.”

“Where does it go?” she said. “Up there?” They looked up the hill.

Galantz was more likely to be at the end of that wire than at Jack’s trailer. She recalled seeing the glimpse of a fallemiown house up above the trailer she had talked to Jack. But if that’s where the wire went, they were way off course.

“That light,” she said. “That might have been Jack’s trailer. We might be closer to the top than we realized.” She told him about having seen what looked like a ruined house at the top of the hill.

“Jack’s trailer,” he asked, “did it took like two people were living there?”

“It didn’t look like a human lived there,” she said, and then regretted it immediately. “I’m sorry.”

He took a deep breath. “Then we need to follow this wire,” he said, looking up the hill into the darkness. “And we’re going to be expected.”

Train was making progress with the tape, a millimeter at a time. The skin of his wrists was getting raw, and he could feel the tape getting warm as he. applied pressure. He was now convinced he was in some kind of basement or underground room-something about the temperature and musty smell of the air. But the tape was giving way, little by little.

He alternated pressing his hands out and then his feet, intent on restoring as much circulation as he could. He was wary about moving around or trying to see in the darkness, in case Galantz had another one of those blinding devices attached to a motion detector. He tried to think. Galantz would contact Karen or the admiral somehow and offer a trade. More than likely, he wanted to get the admiral in the room with his son, make sure the father knew that the son had been part of it, and then perhaps execute the son to finish his lethal head games on Sherman.

Galantz didn’t want Sherman dead. Quite the opposite: Galantz wanted destroyed, and then left alive to contemplate his And what would happen to Karen if she came with the admiral? And what was Galantz going to do with him, for that matter? He stopped pushing as a small wave of nausea swept through him, a fleeting vestige of the sedative. Galantz had been able to move with impunity throughout this whole business. Granted he had had years to prepare, all the fun in the world to plant devices and scout the ground.

Plus Jack’s help with some of the dog work. And tradecraft at the level of a sweeper. No wonder Mchale Johnson had been impressed, and FBI guys didn’t impress easily. He was also pretty sure that the FBI had decided to sit on the sidelines if the agency they loved to hate was showing its ass.

But why hadn’t the Fairfax police been more effective?

Mcnair should have been able to find Jack, so why wasn’t a SWAT team in these woods? The cops should have picked Jack up and squeezed him for information about Galantz: where his base of operations was, what was going down next. They must have known almost from the start that Walsh and Schmidt had been homicides.

You are seriously’in the dark, Bud, he thought. He stared out into the darkness. Well, duh, Sherlock. So push harder.

His left hand was getting looser.

They crept together to the edges of a shadowy clearing that revealed the remains of a house. Sherman had followed the wire up the hill, lifting it periodically to make sure where it was headed, provoking a battle line of rattlesnake noises all the way up. Karen followed thirty yards behind, a new stick in one hand and the .380 in the other. Sherman had insisted on the separation: if someone fired on him, she would have a chance to escape. When he stopped at the edge of the clearing around the house, she sank down on one knee behind a bush. With her eyes fully night-adapted, she could just see him up ahead in the darkness. He stood there, apparently waiting to see what happened next.

She fought down the urge just to cut and run. If Galantz was up here, there was zero chance they were going to surprise him. Once they picked up that wire, someone had to know they were coming, or at least that Sherman was coming. He might not expect Karen, in which case she wanted to go to that trailer, on the chance that Train was down there, maybe disabled. She didn’t want to think about the other possibilities. Damn the stubborn man for going out on his own.

Sherman wag moving again, toward the front of the house.’Then he was climbing carefully up the zigzag step supports. She couldn’t make out much about the house, other than it had fallen in on itself. Sherman appeared to stop in front of what should have been the front door. She put the gun down on the ground near her right foot, turned her left forearm away from the top of the hill, and slipped her sleeve back to see what time it was. The fact that she had her face turned downhill saved her from the searing visual impulse of the retinal disrupter firing above her. Even so, her night adaptation vanished in a millisecond, and she could only gasp and sink down on her hands and knees while her brain reeled from the purple flash a hundred feet away.

Train gave one last pull, and his. left hand, minus all the hair on the back, came stickily out of the tape. He immediately stripped the tape off his right hand, and then, flexing his hands rapidly, worked them up to where he could grab the zipper on the bag with his thumbs and pull it down. He kept his eyes tightly closed in case there was another disrupter set up in this place. But so far, none of his struggles had set anything off. He shed the bag like a snakeskin,. then rolled over on his side to get the circulation going back in his legs and knees. The tape around his ankles proved to be a tougher proposition. Without a knife, he was forced to find the edge of the tape and start unwinding it.

He rolled up onto his hands and knees, experiencing a wave of dizziness as he did so. He reached out to see what he could touch. The room or wherever he was remained in darkness. He tried to stand up and almost fell over. The mical wasn’t entirely gone. He could still feel the puncture wound on his left bicep. He sat down on the floor and began stretching and breathing. He ignored the total darkness. He was in a basement, or at least underground, at night presumably, although he had no idea how long he’d been out. He felt for his watch, but it was gone.

Of course-his watch had a light.

He waited for a few minutes for the dizziness to subside, then started crawling, until he ran into a wall. Stone wall, from the feel of it. He turned right and followed the wall, proceeding carefully when he ran into a big spiderweb. Visions of black widows in long-empty basements flitted across his mind, and he decided to turn around. He kept one hand on the wall as he reversed course, not wanting to lose his bearings any more than he had to in total darkness. He had crawled about three feet back toward where he’d started from, when he’heard that dusty inhalation, and then the metal voice came laughing out of the darkness.

Big man like you, afraid of a little bitty spider, is he?

Train froze in place. Galantz! He’d been in the room with him all along . ? Watching him get out of the bag? There was more metallic laughter.

Son of a bitch must have a nightvision device, Train thought.

That’s right. I’m wearing a night set. I’ve been admiring your physical discipline. Why don’t you just wait there, von Rensel? We have one more visitor, then. we can do what we came to do.

“What’s the game, Galantz?”

Endgame, I think. I’ve invited the object of my affection to come up here. Told him I’d let his boy go in return for some quality time with the father.

“And then you’ll kill the kid in front of his father? Finish what the Navy is doing to him?”

You have no idea, do you? Why the Navy is cutting him loose?

“They’re tired of getting black eyes in all the national.

papers. They’ve probably figured. out that you’re going to kill and tell.”

I certainly am But that’s not why they’re cutting him loose, von Rensel They’re cutting him loose so he can come to me. They’re counting on me to kill him.

Train moved sideways a little, trying to locate the metallic voice. But it seemed to be coming from all around him.

“Why kill him? I thought you wanted him alive. To savor his fate.”

You figured right, von Rensel I want him to live with this for a long, long time. But you need to find out why certain very senior officers in the Navy might actually want him dead. Then you’ll understand why he’s free to come here tonight. Now sit tight. Stop scaring my spiders. My time is unfortunately limited.

He sensed motion across the room from him, a stirring of the musty air, a brief thinning of the darkness diagonally to his right, and then what sounded like a trapdoor being dropped quietly into place. Train sank back down on his haunches, reaching out for thestone wall and then settling his back against it. So what the hell was Galantz talking about? What was this stuff about the admirals? He stared out into the darkness, massaging his wrists and ankles, and waited.

Down on the hillside, Karen could see literally nothing but a purple haze, whether her eyes were opened or closed. She crouched motionless in the grass for a few minutes. She was at the very least night-blind.

But she could hear. The words Help me bring him in, intoned in that mechanical, gasping voice, floated clearly down the hill. Galantz! She froze at the sound of that voice, then senled down onto her stomach in the wet grass behind a mound of vegetation, held her breath, and tried to control the shaking in her knees. The night air was oppressively warm. It was starting to rain, and she thought she heard the distant rumble of thunder. She felt around to find the .380.

Train tensed when he heard sounds above him. Someone moving around-no, two people moving. Another sound: a dragging sound, like a sack of some kind being pulled across the floor above, toward the area of the trapdoor. A rattling noise that sounded like boards being shoved aside, then the noises stopped. A clatter of boards and sticks from above and then, there: Something hit the floor over there and groaned. A man’s voice. Sherman? Was that Sherman?

The trapdoor closed audibly this time, a heavy wooden thump, and there were steps coming down, two sets of feet.

A metallic clank.

Hide your eyes, von Rensel, said the machine voice. Train did as ordered, afraid of another disrupter blast. But instead, there was the noise of a small engine starting, over to his left, and then the room was filled with a pulsing red light, a red strobe light, coming from some device set up on the steps. It actually wasn’t very bright, but compared to the absolute darkness, it was initially almost blinding, and he uncovered his eyes only slowly. But at least he could seesort of. It was as if his eyes were taking pictures with a red flash unit.

The basement was rectangular and, for the most part, empty. Roughly fifty or sixty feet long and about thirty wide. Stone walls, an empty expanse of hard-packed. dirt floor. At his end, he recognized the remains of an enormous coal-burning furnace, its large insulated ducts reaching up through a mass of cobwebs into the house above. The grate door to the furnace had been removed, and what looked like the controls of a portable generator glinted in the furnace’s combustion chamber.

Extension cords ran the length of the basement to the other end,, where there appeared to be a cot with a single mattress, a table, and a folding chair. There was a PC sitting on the table, and three racks of other electronic equipment next to the table. There was a tangle of wiring on the floor.

He shielded his eyes against the strobe light, trying to adapt his eyes.

It was like watching a jilm through an antique projector, flashes of darkness punctuated by flashes of the scene in the basement. On, off.

On, off-about two times per second. Train shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The strobe effect was really disorienting, like watching the dancers in a discotheque, where disembodied faces flashed in and out of view, each time their expressions and attitudes slightly altered. Only everything down here was blood-red, not white. Red made sense, if Galantz had a nightvision device on.

The ceiling was made up of large, heavily cobwebbed wooden joists that sagged ominously into the basement in places. Near the bottom of the steps was one recognizable figure: Jack, in T-shirt and jeans, leaning insolently against the wall, his eyes hooded in the red strobe light, his arms folded across his chest. Not drunk this time, but casually alert, his eyes two black circles in the pulsing red light, his studied pose that of a street thug waiting for a knife fight to begin. On the steps was the silhouette of a man, barely visible because he was standing very close to the strobe source. Bigger than Jack, heftier, thicker. Galantz. Train couldn’t get a focus on the face because of the strobe light, which was placed conveniently just to one side of Galantz’s head. There was just the silhouette, standing there, arms h “ging down, holding what looked like a bulky automatic pistol in his right hand. The left arm, which ended -in a glinting metallic device of some kind, was held casually across the figure’s hips. But no face. Only the shape of the man’s head, distorted somewhat by something he was wearing. The nightvision device, Train thought.

And there was Sherman, crumpled on the floor near the bottom of the steps. Train put up an arm to shield his face from the disturbing pulsing of the strobe. He had thought Sherman was unconscious, but he wasn’t. He was lying on his -right side, his hands up to his face, covering his eyes.

Know that feeling, Train thought. Bet he was out there in the dark, irises wide open, when Galantz popped his little flash toy. Sherman groaned again and tried to sit up. Train could see Jack staring down at his father’s helpless figure, and the expression on his face was not a pretty one. They should be watching Sherman, waiting for him to comet of it.

This bastard was a master of light, Train thought. Galantz had a gun, and Jack might have one, too. And somewhere was the disrupter, ready to disable anyone in the room who didn’t see it coming.

Sherman groaned again, and this time he managed to sit up. He dropped his hands from his face, then slapped them back up there again when the strobe light hit him.

Where’s your girlfriend, Sherman? Galantz asked. Train tried to see Galantz’s throat, but there was only shadow.

The combination of the synthetic voice and the’s y gnu sing red light created a phantasmagorical image. And who was he talking about, Elizabeth Walsh or Karen?

The admiral did not reply. Galantz instructed Jack to go outside, see if Sherman had come alone. Jack moved immediately and wordlessly up the steps, heaved open the trapdoor, and closed it behind him. It was evident from the sounds that the trapdoor was hidden under a pile of wreckage on the ground floor.

“She’s not my girlfriend, you bastard,” Sherman said.

“You murdered my girlfriend.”

Now that you mention it, yes, I did Let me tell you about it while we’re waiting for Jackie boy to come back, okay?

After five minutes, just when she was about to get up and try to move downhill, Karen thought she heard something, something or someone moving carefully through the grass up by the house. Then the noises stopped, somewhere uphill of her position. It was hard to tell, as the patter of the first large raindrops began to mask the woods noises. She clutched the .380 and tried to remember if she had chambered it. Yes, she had.

But this one had a safety. She felt along both sides of the gun until she found the small latch down on the left side of the slide. Because if someone was coming down here to get her, he was going to get shot at a lot. She realized she was breathing too fast, and she put a clamp on it.

She tested her eyes on a hand held up in front of her face, but all she could see was a purple silhouette.

The poor admiral, that thing must have dropped him like a stone. She waited, putting all her mental energy into listening very carefully.

Then she heard the sounds again,. definitely footsteps, someone working slowly, carefully, across the hill above her now, one, two, three steps, soft crunching sounds in the grass, punctuated by intervils of silence.

She remained absolutely still. If whoever this was had been near the flash, even behind the disrupter, his might vision would not be terrific, either. You fervently hope, she thought.

She conjured up an image of a man standing up there in the woods, looking and listening, probably with a gun, or even that disrupter thing in his hand. Somewhere to her left, maybe fifty, sixty feet away, up the hill. There were some big trees up there, but the ground was badly overgrown.

There shouldn’t be a clear field of vision down here-unless he has a nightvision device. She flattened herself even harder against the ground. He would be on the edge of the trees, just inside their cover, looking down the hill. Don’t move.

Don’t even twitch.

He was moving again. She tried her eyes; she thought she could see something now, the outline of her right hand, holding the gun. She very slowly turned her head, individual blades of grass tickling her nose, and looked up the hill.

There, a darker shadow among the black tree shapes. Everything was still outlined in a purple halo, but her vision was coming back, although she had to loo* just to the side of objects to see them.”Me shadow moved again, going left across her field of vision, obscured now by the mound behind which she was hiding. He was staying in the trees, crossing a dozen yards of ground, until suddenly the buzz of a rattler erupted near him. The deadly sound made Karen jump. She closed her eyes and fought for control. She had never heard a rattlesnake before tonight, but there had been no mistaking it. She opened her eyes, then raised her head again to look. The shadow had stopped at the snake sound.

Then, making no more effort to be stealthy, the figure crunched back up the hill and disappeared into the darkness surrounding the ruined house.

Train couldn’t believe what Galantz was doing. He had ordered Sherman to move back, to crawl back over toward Train’ Then, staying in front of the strobe light, he had recounted in a cold, clinical manner how Elizabeth Walsh had died. It’s easy if you know how, Sherman. Not my first one, of course, Turn the head Sideways, then pull straight back.

You can actually hear it. It’s like a rattlesnake: an unmistakable sound Sherman’s hands had dropped as Galantz told his story.

Train could not read hiseyes in the strobe light, but everything in Sherman’s posture spelled total defeat.

And her only crime was to have been your girlfriend Just like the old man: He was really your only friend, wasn’t he, Sherman? Did I get that right? Ifelt a twinge about killing the woman, but the old man-well, he was on borrowed time. I think he actually had a heart attack, when he saw my face. Not the first guy to do tffat, either. The face you gave me, Sherman. You remember, don’t you?

The rhythm of Galantz’s voice was almost hypnotic-die strong inhalation, the stream of words through the voice box, with that wheezy harmonic.

Sherman was shaking his head slowly, as if unwilling to hear any more of this. There was a rattle of boards above, and then the trapdoor opened and Jack came back down the steps.

“The yard area’s clear,” he said. “Can’t tell what’s out there on the hillside. If they’re out there like you think, they haven’t moved -any closer.”

Galantz moved to the other side of the strobe, passing directly in front of it. Train got a glimpse of his face in the reflected light. He definitely had some kind of mask on.

Train wished he could fire a disrupter right about then. The light amplifier of a nightvision mask would really do a number on him.

That woman is out there somewhere, Jack Your father here isn’t brave enough to come alone. Get me the flip phone. Jack went to the desk, sorted through some things, and then brought Galantz a small flat object. Train chose that moment to begin creeping very slowly along the wall, an inch at a time, toward Sherman. He didn’t have a plan, but he couldn’t bear just standing there anymore. He had gone about two inches when he sensed Galantz looking at him, and then there was a bellowing blast from the .45 and something hit the wall next to his head, stinging his face with stone splinters, followed by the sounds of a bullet ricocheting around the stone walls. Everyone in the room except Galantz ducked down instinctively, including Jack.

Train straightened tip and put a hand up to the right side of his face.

It was wet, the blood making a black smear in -the red light.

“Is that like”Don’t move’?” he asked.

“Sit still, you crazy bastard,” Jack hissed, rising from his own crouch, his tone of voice clearly intimating that Train wasn , t the only crazy bastard in the basement. Sherman had ducked his bead almost down to the concrete floor, and he was only now raising it. Galantz was talking into the phone as if nothing had happened.

Karen waited ten minutes before moving, keeping her eyes closed to let them rest, listening hard while fighting back the urge just to get up and run full tilt down the hill. She was almost sick with worry about Train. He had to be up there, too, which gave them two hostages. But was down there on the road, with a car and a phone. Finally, she put her head up and looked: across the hillside. But there was nothing moving out there, just the stationary shapes of trees and bushes couched among the’sounds of the night insects. The rain had petered out for the moment, although the diurhp and rumble of thunder in the distance was getting more frequent. She thought about going up the hill, then quickly discarded that idea. The best thing she could do was get help, and help lay at the end of that car phone down the dirt road.

Staying on her hands and knees, she crawled carefully down the hill, trying to remember where that damned wire was, with all its venomous voices. Another ten minutes and the undergrowth thinned out as she crept closer to the huge downed tree blocking the top of the dirt road, near Jack’s trailer. And then she froze, her skin crawling, when she heard a low, rumbling growl.

Animal there. Big animal. Dog. Huge dog.

She raised the gun. She couldn’t see the dog, but there was no mistaking that noise.

Familiar noise.

“Gutter?” she called. The rumbling stopped immediately, replaced with an eager whining noise.

“Gutter, come,” she called, trying not to say it too loudly. The dog bounded out from behind the downed tree and ran straight to her, a hundred-pound mass of sleek, wriggling canine. She hugged the dog with more than just a little relief. She stood up and walked straight down the hill, around the fallen tree, and discovered her Explorer parked to one side. Train. She looked inside, then hurried down the path toward the trailer.

She was pretty sure that she had heard Galantz tell someone-most likely, Jack-to bring Sherman in. So Jack’s trailer should be empty. She had to find out if Train was in there, although she was pretty sure she knew where Train really was. With the dog at her side, she wasn’t worried anymore about what might be lurking in the bushes.

She went to the trailer and found the front door open.

Gutter bounded inside and made a quick sweep, then started whining excitedly. So Train had been here. She followed the dog back out, but then she called him back, her heart sinking, when he started up the hill. All right. So Galantz had them both. Now, get to a phone.

It took her five minutes to get down the hill, with only one delay when she twisted her ankle in a rut she failed to see. The darkened sedan was parked across the entrance to the dirt road, pointed uphill on the edge of Cherry Hill Road.

But the car was empty when she peered inside. When she looked up, Hiroshi was standing up across Cherry Hill Road,

where he had been hiding in some bushes. He cradled what looked like a sawed-off shotgun in his arms. Gutter ran across the road, wiggling a greeting to his old friend.

“Hiroshi, thank God,” she said. “I need to get on the phone. They’ve taken Admiral Sherman. And I’m sure Train’s up there, at the top of the.hill. There’s an old ruined house up there.”

Hiroshi trotted over, unlocking the car doors with the remote key set.

Karen jumped in on the passenger side and powered up the phone while Hiroshi waited outside with the dog, scanning the dirt road. Now, who to call? Mcnair was the obvious choice, but she hesitated. Mcnair already knew that Galantz was probably up on this hill. He had sent a message for Sherman to stay out of here. So why in the hell weren’t the woods full of cops?

She stared down at the lighted keys on the back of the car phone’s handset, increasingly aware that critical seconds were passing, but also sure she was missing the big picture here.

Hell with it, she concluded. I’m going to call 911, bust this thing wide open. Even better, call 911, then call the nearest television station.

Start a media circus. But then she hesitated again. That last bit was not such a great idea. It might provoke Galantz to do-what? Shoot them both, the kid, too, and vanish? She groaned in frustration, finger poised over the keys.

Then the windshield suddenly filled with headlights, from ahead and from behind, accompanied by the sounds of cars skidding to a stop. She was blinded by all the white light, and she heard Gutter start barking outside, but now the lights were everywhere, all pointing at high beam into the car, and then there were several men outside, shouting some tense orders to Hiroshi to drop the gun, someone else shouting about tranquilizing the dog. A large man was opening the door on the driver’s side and sliding in. Before Karen could say anything, he told her to put her seat belt on, and then he was autolocking the doors and starting up the car. -She looked frantically for Hiroshi, but he was gone, and the other cars outside were already starting to pull out.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked, ignoring the order to put a seat belt on.

“The cavalry, Commander. You’ve done your part; now we’re taking over, okay? Put your goddamn seat belt on.”

He slammed the car in gear and pulled out onto Cherry Hill Road, headed uphill. It looked as if there were two cars in front and another behind.

“But what about the admiral? And-“

“Not your prob anymore, Commander.” The car swerved around the next curve, going up the hill at much too high a speed. Karen grabbed a handrest on the right-front door as the car almost went into the ditch.

She decided she’d better put her belt on.

“Who the hell are you, goddarrm it?!” she yelled, struggling with the seat belt. “Where are you taking me? What have you done with my dog?”

“FBI,” he answered, swerving again, again almost missing the next turn.

There was a roar of gravel from the leftrear wheel. “Goddamned road!” he yelled, looking back in his rearview mirror. The car behind had backed off to avoid all the gravel. “We’re handling the secondary. Another agency is working the primary. That there’s a kill zone, lady, back on that hill. Our orders were to pick up you or anyone else who came back down that hill. The dog’s okay; they’ve just tranked it. This guy Galantz-he’s got von Rensel?”

“I think so, yes.”

“He was a good man. Too bad.” The two cars ahead were slowing down now that they were well away from the dirt road. “Too bad? “Was’? What’s going to happen up there?”

He didn’t answer her, concentrating on the road. She repeated the question. He still didn’t answer, but he looked over at her for an instant, and she was shocked to read sympathy in his face. She faced forward then, realizing now that Sherman, Train, and Jack had all become expendable.

Someone was going to solve the rogue operative problem once and for all, and any bystanders be damned. The cars up ahead were slowing down even more, apparently preparing to turn off into a large driveway that was visible up ahead on the right. The car behind them had already pulled over, its emergency flashers going. The “secondaries” were going to wait here until the “primaries” had finished whatever was planned up on the hill.

A decision crystallized in her forebrain like a bright sunrise. She didn’t give it a second thought, just like when Jack had run his mouth.

She pulled the .380 out of her right pocket, pointed it right in front of the driver’s face, and blasted tworounds through his side window, sending the rounds about one inch in front of the big man’s nose. The window exploded.

With a shout of fear, he slammed on the brakes, bucking up against the wheel as he did so, because he had not put his seat belt on. She fired again, this time behind his head, screaming at him, “Stop the car! Stop the car. Now, get out! Get out of the goddamn car! Now! Do it!”

She fired once again just past his head. The man was white-faced and screaming back at her, a series of

“Hey!

Hey!” and then he was babbling incoherently. She could barely see in all the gunsmoke, but he got the car stopped, and then he was pushing the door. open and rolling out onto the pavement, still yelling as he scrambled away from the car’s rear wheels as it continued to roll forward. Karen unsnapped her belt and grabbed the wheel to pull herself into the driver’s seat. She slammed the door and pulled the big car around in a tire-screeching U-turn, the right-front tire banging off the culvert. She caught a glimse of the terrified agent rolling into the ditch, and then she was blasting back down the hill, nearly losing control as she floored it.

She had to stomp on the brakes-thank God for antilocks-to maintain control through the first curve, ignoring the flare of headlights and taillights from the chase car that had pulled out of her way. Goddamn them! Goddamn them!

Absolutely typical. They’d lost control of one, of their supergoons, and now innocent people had to die so they could cover up their latest mess.

The whole thing had been a setup, right from the beginning. Goats staked out in the jungle, that’s all they had been. Bait for the tiger-Galantz.

She saw the white blur of the trash piles just in time to slam on the brakes. She barely made the hard left turn onto the dirt road. There were more lights behind her now, but she didn’t care. She had no plan, no idea of what she was going to do up there, but she was god damned if she was going to let them just nuke the place to get Galantz. She blasted bags of trash all over the entranceway as she made the turn, and the big car’s V-8 screamed when she lost traction momentarily in one of the ruts, but then she was banging up that hill, accelerator mashed flat down. The car flew past the bikers’ trailer, went off the road into a stand of small trees, and then back onto the road briefly before swerving off on the other side. She fought the car’s wheel viciously, then realized she still had the accelerator mashed all the way down.

Control, she thought. Control-slow the hell down!

The car fishtailed three or four times as she took her foot off the gas, and then it settled into a banging, bumping track up the dirt road, until she finally saw the big dead tree.

Again, she didn’t hesitate. She hauled on the wheel and drove off to the right, around the tree, fishtailing again in the bushes; except this time, the rightrear wheel hit a soft spot and started spinning helplessly. She banged her fist on the wheel and gunned it, but it was over. Her headlights were pointed directly up the hill, unnaturally high. She cursed the hill, the car, the FBI and every other government agency she could think of, and then shut the car down, tears of pure frustration in her eyes.

After a minute, reality settled onto her shoulders like a cold, wet towel. What the hell was she doing? She was a Commander in the Navy, a commissioned federal officer, an officer of the court. She had shot at an FBI agent, driven through a law-enforcement cordon, and now what?

Going to charge up San Juan Hill here guns blazing, like Teddy Roosevelt? And accomplish what, exactly?

She suddenly felt a wave of nausea sweep through her as’ the adrenaline, started to crash. She punched off the headlights and opened the door. A small cloud of gunsmoke puffed out of the car, along with a few shards of glass from the shattered window. She reached over for the .380 and wondered if there were any rounds left. She swung her legs sideways and sat with her head down, half in, half out of the car, holding the smooth steel of the automatic against her belly and taking deep breaths of rain-cool air. She never heard the man who stepped out of the woods until he called her name.

She looked up in shock. It was Mcnair, walking carefully through the rain toward the car, his hands held out at his waist, one eye on her face and the other on that .380.

“Commander Lawrence? Karen? It’s me, Mcnair.”

She stared dully at him. He was dressed in khaki pants, a white shirt under a dark bulletproof vest covered by a khaki windbreaker, and what looked like combat boots. He had some kind of automatic weapon strapped across his back, the barrel just visible over his right shoulder. He wore a khaki baseball cap on his head. He stopped a few feet from the car and showed her his hands, wiggling his fingers to make sure she saw they were empty. But his left hand wasn’t quite empty, there appeared to be a flip phone in it.

“Commander?” he said again in a soft voice … “We okay here? This is just a phone, okay?”

She”Stared at him, her fingers closing unconsciously over the automatic in her lap. He saw her hand move, and he stopped short, his eyes locked on the .380.

“What’s going on up there?” she spat. “And who and what the hell are you, Mcnair?”

He nodded slowly, acknowledging that he had some explaining to do. She was dimly aware that there were cars andsome flashing blue lights down at the base of the hill, although they did not seem to be coming up. She had to wipe her eyes, but she never took them off Mcnair.

“I know, I know,” he.said. “But look, there isn’t much time. He’s holding Sherman and von Rensel. The kid’s in there, too. Galantz is offering a deal.”

“A deal? A deal!” She shook her head to clear the sudden wave of fatigue sweeping over her, compounding the nausea. “What the hell are you talking about, Mcnair?

Aren’t you people about to drop a bomb or something up there?” He took a step closer. “We will if we have to,” he said, his voice a lot less solicitous now. “But he says he’ll come out–on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“You have to go in. He says he needs you as a witness.”

“A witness? To what? And if I don’t? I mean, why the hell should I put my life in that killer’s hands again? Or yours, for that matter? I can’t trust him, and I sure as hell can’t trust you people, can I? You get us all in there, then drop your bomb or whatever it is you’re planning, and all the potential talkers are in the grave, right?”

“We wouldn’t do that,” he said. “We can’t do that.”

“No? You cops have let this guy run loose so far, ever since this crap started. Why should I believe you?” And then it hit her with the force of a hammer. “You’re not a cop, are you, Mcnair?”

“Actually, I am. I told von Rensel that I did some moonlighting.” He looked right at her. She was shocked by the in his face. No more congenial detective.

Somebody very different, with steely eyes and the flat, hard edged face of a killer. Then she really understood.

“Oh my God, you’re one of them, aren’t you? You’re one of those sweepers!”

Mcnair shrugged and looked down at the ground for a moment, the leftover rainwater spilling off the bill of his cap. She couldn’t read his expression in the dim light from the car’s cabin, but she could see he was struggling with something. She sensed now that there were other people out in the woods, out of sight, but not from the car.

“Okay,” he said, looking up at her. “You’re right. You can’t trust Galantz, although I know the guy, and I’d trust him with this. Hell, he knows it’s over. This has to do with Sherman, not you, or von Rensel.

But we won’t move against all of you. There’s a lock.”

“A lock? Stop talking in code. What the hell’s a lock?” “Your people know what’s going-on here. That one of ouguys has gone seriously wrong.

Our people know the real reason why your people pulled the plug on your investigation. But we made a deal that neither of you would get hurt. I

“By you or by him?”

“Well, we can’t speak for him, but since nobody wants any of this to come out, that’s a lock.”

Carpenter, she thought. The blocked file. “And what’s the FBI doing here?”

He sniffed in contempt. “They’ve homed in, mostly to watch us squirm and, someday, to extract something for their silence. We have this tradition.”

“If you knew where he was, why didn’t you move? Before we even got here?” She could hear the shrill note of frustration in her own voice.

“Because von Rensl is in there. And because we had to work some stuff out with the Feebies. Perimeter, comms, who would do what to whom.” He had the grace to be embarrassed. “What can I tell you, we’re all just a bunch of armed bureaucrats.”

She shook her head in disbelief. Two innocent people had been murdered, and all they cared about was protecting their turf? “And on the basis of that, I’m just supposed to go up there?”

“That, and the fact that he says he’ll kill von Rensel if you don’t.

Look, Commander, time is kinda short. There are some people here who really are disposed to use a bomb.”

She felt the icy hand of fear grip her stomach. She had actually forgotten about Train. So she really didn’t have any choice, did she?

She stood up, her legs shaky. Mcnair put his hand out, and she hesitated, but then she handed over the .380. Mcnair actually grinned then, the way a coyote might. “You should have heard the Feebies on the radio,” he said. “That guy’s still shittin’ and gittin’.” d at him, dry-mouthed and wanting But Karen just stare the gun back. He saw her expression and his grin died. She looked up the long, dark hillside. The dark bulk of the ruined house was almost invisible among the trees. “I just walk up there?”

“I’ll call him. Tell him you’re coming in. We’ve got long guns all around it, so if it looks hinky as you get close, they can do something.”

“But once I’m inside?”

He just looked at her. He didn’t have to say it. Then the phone in his hand began to chirp. He flipped it open and answered it, then listened for a second. “She’s coming up the hill right now,” he said. He listened for another moment and then snapped the phone shut. “He said come in the front why.” door and then close your eyes. Said you’d understand “oh yes,” she said, and started up the hill. Close your eyes, or he’d fire that damned disrupter again.. She wanted no more of that. Her eyes still hurt a little, and she hadn’t even been looking at it.

“Commander,” Mcnair called. She turned around, wipup the hill. ing her forehead. He was coming

“Take this.” He handed her something that looked like a television remote, only thicker.

“What is it?” she asked, but then she knew.

“It’s a retinal disrupter. There are two buttons. The big round button charges it. The little sharp button fires it.

Charge it, wait two seconds, and then it’s ready. Like he said, close your eyes.”

She took the thing from his hand and examined it. It was heavy, dense with latent energy. She looked up to thank him, but he was gone.

As she climbed through the tangled weeds toward the house, she tried to think of what might happen in there, and why. obviously, Admiral Carpenter had been running herno, had been running them like a couple of lab rats in a maze. And Sherman, too. Galantz’s owners had been desperate to corral him once the Walsh woman was murdered.

Mcnair, the sweeper, perfectly positioned in the Fairfax POLICE Department, had been activated. But how had. Cupen*. known what was really going on? The only one the cops had ever talked to in detail was Sherman. Unless there was some connection between the thing back in Vietnam and the admirals.

She found herself taking smaller steps as she got closer to the house, which was taking definition now that she was moving into the dripping trees. She could make out the sagging chimneys, but the crumbling mass between them was in deep shadow. She slipped the ‘disrupter into her pants pocket.

The wood planks on the porch were rotted through, for the most part, but she discovered a piece of plywood had been placed near the front door.

The front door itself was missing, and the doorway loomed ahead like the entrance to a mine tunnel. She hesitated. She really did not want to go in there. She looked back over her shoulder, but there was only the spidery trace of the trees showing against the night sky. The sound of the rainwater pouring through the holes over the porch obscured all other noises.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped through the doorway, placing her feet carefully, but it felt as if there was more plywood inside the door. The interior of the house smelled of dry rot, insects, and bird dung, in equal proportions. She was in a central hallway. Ahead, to the left a stairway led up-to the second floor, but the stairs themselves had long ago fallen in. Beyond the stairwell the hallway ended in darkness.

Probably a door there.

She waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the house, then remembered that she was supposed to close her eyes. She squinted, keeping them open just a crack, dreading another purple flash but not willing just to stand there with her eyes shut. The skin on her back was crawling, and she had to fight back her own imagination as to what might be approaching, or coming behind her. Then she heard a noise ahead-something being opened, a soft clatter of boards and debris, then silence. Then the darkness at the end of the hall dissolved into a grayness. Someone was standing there. She held her breath and kept her eyes just barely cracked open.

Karen-n-n.

She stopped breathing. Him, right in front of her. She surprised herself by wishing she had that big .45 right about now. He must have sensed her thoughts.

Open your coat and show me your hands. That horrible wheezing voice. She did as he asked. The shadow seemed to get smaller, and then she realized he was backing up.

Walk straight ahead. Keep your eyes closed I can see just fine, by the way. But if I see your eyes, I’ll use the disrupter. You remember the disrupter, don’t you?

She nodded wordlessly, remembering very well, the urge to grab the thing in he& pocket almost overwhelming. But he had one, too. She took one step, then another.

Keep coming. Straight ahead. You’re going through a doorway. That’s good. Now stop. Feel behind you. Find the door. Shut it.

Karen felt behind her, encountered what felt like a vertical sheet of plywood, and swung it shut behind her back. The voice moved closer.

Now, step sideways. More. Once more. Good. Stop. Now, there’s a lot of debris in here. I’m going to open a trapdoor.

Keep your eyes shut. Step -carefully. Take two steps forward.

There will be steps going down right in front of you. As you start down the steps, you can open your eyes. There’ll be a strobe light. Go down the stairs andfind von Rensel.

She did as she was told, opening her eyes on the second step down, then immediately squinting again as the red strobe light penetrated. She put up a hand and tried to see into what looked like a large basement, but the dazzling strobe made it very difficult. But she did see Train, hunched against a side wall, and Sherman, sitting down in the middle of the floor. She didn’t see Jack with the gun in his hand until she got to the bottom of the steps. He gestured for her to get over against the wall and move down to where Train stood, looking like an angry bear ready to spring out at something. Not looking back, she moved across the cement floor and took Train’s hand. It was all she could do not to hug him, but the tension in his hand reminded her of where she was. She turned around when the trapdoor banged shut, and the silhouette of Galantz came down the steps, disappearing into the penumbra of the pulsing red light.

Sherman was just sitting there, not looking at anything.

She thought she could smell gunsmoke in the basement. A small generator was putt-putting away inside the remains of an old furnace. Galantz was saying something.

Jack. Come over here, next to me.

Jack obeyed quickly, keeping the gun in his hand pointed out into the middle distance between Sherman and Train.

He moved over to the stairway and stood just below where Galantz was perched above him on the steps.

Hey. Sherman. Look over here. It’s time tofinish this.

Sherman looked up slowly, as if he had been asleep. He turned his head to face the strobe light. “I can’t see,” he said. Karen felt Train tensing up even more. Galantz apparently sensed it, too. She saw the .45 pointed at them in the next flash of red light.

Sit still, von Rensel, and your lady friend there won’t get hurt.

Yourjob here is to listen and watch, nothing more.

“I can’t see,” Sherman said again.

Yes you can. Recognize your son, Jack here, don’t you, Admiral? He sure as hell recognizes you. You do know he’s been helping me all along with this, don’t you? That he hates you just about as much as I do?

Sherman put a hand up to his face to shield his eyes against the light, but he said nothing. The two of them, Galantz and Jack, had merged into a single shadow right next to the pulsing strobe light.

You two over there, listen up. Did Yellowbelly here tell you why I’ve hunted him down?

“Yes,” Train said. “He failed to rrfake a pickup when his boat ran into a mining ambush.” That what he’said? “Failed to make a pickup”?

“You didn’t make the rendezvous, and then they ran into the ambush.”

Oh, but I did make the rendezvous, didn’t I, Sherman? I saw you at the controls, when that mine went off. And you saw me, too, didn’t you?

Didn’t you, Sherman?

The admiral, still squinting into the light, said nothing.

Galantz leaned forward and fired the .45 again, this time down onto the concrete floor an inch from Sherman’s hand.

The admiral yelled and spun sideways as the bullet went spanging around the stone walls. Train pushed Karen down to the floor and tried to cover her from the ricochet round.

Amazingly, through all the noise, she thought she heard Jack laughing.

The pulsing light clearly illuminated the gunsmoke in front of the strobe.

Right, Sherman? Answer me, you yellow bastard!

The admiral was picking himself up off the floor, and then he stood up, his legs obviously shaky.

“Yes,” Sherman whispered.

Yes what? Tell them!

“I did see you. You were there.”

Where did you see me?

“Under a mangrove tree.”

But you ran away, didn’t you? Answer me-goddamn your eyes!

A moment of silence. “Yes.”

Train helped Karen get back up. She tried to control her shaking knees.

Her hand brushed over her pocket, and she slipped it inside.

But that’s not what the final investigation said. It said the SEAL never showed The SEAL never made the rendezvous.

Missing and presumed lost. Isn’t that what it said, Sherman.?

“I did tell them.”

Bullshit! Because if you’d told them that, your precious career would have been down the tubes, wouldn’t it? Panicked underfire and left a guy behind. No starsfor that kind of cowardly shit, are there, Sherman?

“I did tell them. They didn’t want to hear it.”

See, Jack, you were right all along. Your daddy here is not only a coward but a liar, too. Hey, Sherman, know what? Jackie here remembers the night I came to see you.

Used to have bad dreams about it. Because he knew, even as a little kid, that his daddy had done something wrong.

But you didn’t give a shit, because you never liked him very much, did you, Daddykins?

Sherman sighed. “I was wrong about that. Jack, I was wrong about a lot of things. About your mother, about-“

“Don’t you even talk about my mother, you bastard,” Jack hissed. “It’s because of you that she’s dead.”

Sherman looked up, raising his hand again to shield his eyes against the strobe. He started to say something, but Jack cut him off. “I was there, you bastard. Did you know that? I was there when she did it. Took that damned gun and blew a hole in her head.”

Sherman seemed to shrink when he heard that. He shook his head. “I didn’t know that, Jack. They didn’t tell-“

Jack cut him off again. “They wouldn’t even let me see her. Goddamned cops took me away, never let me see her.

And you didn’t even come, did you? Away somewhere, being really busy and important with all your Navy shit.” Sherman said nothing just hung his head.

Tell him, Sherman.

The admiral snapped his head around and stared into the light, but then he began to shake his head slowly. Galantz said it again, raising the Colt for emphasis. “Tell me ‘ what?” Jack said.

Karen held her breath as Sherman hesitated. Then he said it. “She’s not dead, Jack.”

There was absolute silence in the room except for the muttering of the generator. Even in the strobe light, Karen could see that Jack was stunned.

Give me that gun. He’s mine, and I don’t. want you doing anything to screw that up. Give it here. That’s a boy. Good.

Now ask him where she is, Jack. Ask him what really happened to your mother.

Sherman nodded slowlyhis gaunt face a study in defeat.

He told Jack where his mother was, and in what condition.

Jack just stared at him, openmouthed. Karen began to feel sick to her stomach. Train put his hands on her shoulders, and she flinched when she saw Galantz looking.

You two getting all this, are you? Because that’s why you’re here. When we’re done here, you’re going to be the only ones who know the whole story, once all those people outside do what they came to do. It’s going to be interesting, living with this knowledge. Life’s all about choices, isn’t it?

Well, I’m going to leave you two with some interesting choices. But we’re not done here yet. Not quite done yet.

Jack, step over there, against the wall, would you?

Jack looked up over the strobe light, a puzzled look on his face, and then straightened up when he saw the Colt pointed into his face. Sherman started to move forward, but he froze when the .45 swung his way.

You know what’scoming next, don’t you, Mr. High-and Mighty Admiral? I killed your woman, and I killed your best friend in the whole world. And I made your only son an accomplice, not that he resisted. Now you’ve surelyfigured out how this thing is going to end right?

“Don’t,” Sherman began.

“Hey, man,” Jack said, his voice uncertain. “What are we doing here? Do him! You said you would. You even said I could watch. You don’t want to do him, then I sure as hell do!”

Galantz laughed. Karen shuddered at the horrible sound coming through the electronic voice box.

Sherman had his hands up. “Don’t do this. Shoot me instead. But let him go.”

Ah. Choices again. What do you think of that, Jack? Him for you?

“You’re gonna shoot me?” Jack asked in a plaintive voice. “I thought-“

“Jack, listen to me,” Sherman said, the words tumbling out of his mouth.

“I know you think I’ve despised you all these years. That I despised your mother, too. That’s not true. I know I didn’t do this right. I was wrong. All those years, I was wrong. My career was all I thought about.

That was wrong.”

Jack just looked at him, his mouth working soundlessly.

Karen saw tears in Sherman’s eyes. Galantz was strangely silent, as if he was enjoying all this.

“That’s why I couldn’t marry Elizabeth Walsh, Jack. I’ve been going to see your mother every weekend in that hospice for many, many years.

Elizabeth never knew. I told her I had to work those weekends. She had no idea. The Navy never knew. Galen Schmidt didn’t even know. I’ve paid a price, too, son. Not like she has,’but I’ve paid.”

“Jack,” Karen spoke up. “Don’t you see it? This bastard never was your friend. He’s used you. He stumbled across you in recon school, and he realized he had the way to get back at your father. That’s been the plan all along, Jack: to use you and then kill you, too, to complete his revenge.”

But Jack wasn’t listening. He was staring at his father, his expression unreadable in the pulsing red light. Sherman was pleading with him.

“I don’t hate you, Jack. I … I love you, son. I forgive you for helping this … this thing to kill those people. I’m asking you to forgive me for the way I treated you and your mother. Please.”

Galantz stood up behind the light. So, Jackie boy. what’s it going to be?

Jack looked from Galantz to his father and then back again.

“You were gonna shoot me?”

That’s right, Jack. But now your father’s made a more interesting offer.

All along, I’ve wanted him to live with the knowledge that Id taken everything of value to him. But maybe I ought to let you decide, Jack You said you were ready to do him Are you, Jackie boy?

Karen, holding Train’s arm with her left hand, gripped it twice, trying to alert him that she was going to do something. Train was staring at Jack, but then he was looking sideways at her, trying not to attract Galantz’s attention. She felt with her thumb over the smooth plastic surface of the disrupter, searching for the big round button. She found it and pushed it once. She felt a tiny vibration, which stopped after two seconds. Then she moved her thumb over to the sharp, smaller button and began to extract the disrupter from her pocket.

C’mon, Jack We have an offer on the table. His life for yours. This is even better. You choose him he dies knowing you did it. Or you could choose yourseii,’Jack. Make him live with it. What do you think Jack?

Life been that good for you?

Karen tried very hard to move her arm without showing movement, but it took supreme concentration, and that damned pulsing light was driving her nuts. Jack kept looking at his father, then at Galantz. His hands moved.

Hey, Jackie, not thinking about making a move here, Jack? Did you forget something? I’ve got your gun, Jack.

Galantz held up both hands, Karen’s Colt in his right and Jack’s bulky automatic in the other hand. The red light glinted off the goggled mask he was wearing.

Karen had the disrupter just about out of her pocket as Galantz pointed the .45 over at Jack. Then she screamed and pulled hard on Train’s arm, spinning him around, away from the disrupter, which she raised and pointed right at Galantz’s face and his light-intensifying nightvision goggles.

NO-0-0-O! the voice box squalled, the guns starting to swing around, and then there was that terrible ripping blast of light. Karen closed her eyes at the last possible instant, and then Train was pulling Karen and himself flat onto the concrete as there came a barrage of gunfire, the blasts from Galantz’s two guns hammering against their brains in the confined space, the whine and howl of bullets smacking stone and . wood and concrete, and even the furnace. Karen tried to melt into the concrete floor with each blast, every shot punctuated by a high keening noise from the steps.

Then came a sudden silence, followed by the sound of the trapdoor opening and banging shut. She realized that the strobe light had stopped and that the room was in total darkness. She couldn’t hear anything after the intense hammering of the gunfire in the enclosed space.

Train rolled off her and they clutched each other on the concrete, coughing in all the smoke. They heard a moan from the direction of where Jack had been standing, and an ominous gurgling noise coming from where Sherman had been. As the strobe light died, Karen realized the generator had been hit, its smooth puttering sound replaced by a distinct knocking sound. She wanted to call out, but she was afraid to. Her ears hurt from all the gunfire.

Train was signaling her with his hands to move with him, away from where they had been when the strobe light had last been on. The smoke was very strong, but she realized it wasn’t gunsmoke. It was -something else.

Then they both found out precisely what: There was a bright orange glare accompanied by a whoomping noise from behind them as the generator burst into flames. But at least now they could see.

Sherman was down on the floor, both his hands to his head, and there was a shiny black pool of blood around his hands and head. Jack was slumped against the wall, his eyes open. He was holding his stomach and breathing through his moutfi’ There was a pool of blood expanding beneath his legs. Karen crawled first to Sherman, then turned to check Jack. Train ran for the steps and tested the trapdoor, but it was either blocked or locked.’He had to jump down off the steps because of the bank of dense oily smoke that was accumulating along the ceiling of the basement. The diesel-oil fire in the furnace was gathering strength.

“Karen, we’ve got to bust out of here somehow,” Train shouted. “See if you can shut the furnace door, stop the smoke, while I look for something to break through the trapdoor!

Karen, bending low to stay out of the choking band of smoke swirling across the ceiling, got as close as she could to the furnace door, but the fuel fire inside was getting very hot. The generator’s carry handle blocked the furnace door, and the fire was making a roaring noise now as it sucked the oxygen out of the basement.

“I can’t get near it,” she called. “The door’s blocked.”

Jack slid over on his side with a low groan. Karen was horrified to see how much blood there was on the floor, under both men. She heard a crash from the other end of the basement. Train came back into view, holding a timber from the wreckage of the collapsed flooring at the other end.

“We’ve got to get them out of here,” she shouted over the noise from the fire.

“We gotta get us out of here,” he shouted back. “Help steady this table.”

She joined him at the table where the computer had been set up. Train swept everything off the table onto the floor in one big crash and then got up on the table. Using a fourby-four, he began battering the floorboards above his head.

She held the table with one hand and his leg with the other as he became a human pile driver, smashing the four-by-four into the rotten flooring up above, choking and coughing in the writhing cloud of smoke that was banking up against the ceiling. Then he was through, and the hole widened as the smoke shot up through the hole into the room above.

The ftimace box and the ducting began to shake as the airflow reversed, feeding fresh oxygen to the burning diesel fuel. When he had the hole big enough, Train turned around and grabbed Karen, and in one great swing he thrust her through the hole in the ceiling, shoving her hips and then her legs up until she was’able to roll out on the floor above.

“Get outside and call for help,” he shouted as he got down off the table. “You can’t lift us out of here!” She nodded and ran outside to the porch.

Down in the basement, Train dragged Sherman and then Jack away from the fire and closer to the hole. His hands became sticky with blood, and he wondered if either of them was going to ‘survive this. Then there was a face in the hole, but it was quickly withdrawn as the stream of smoke immediately blinded the man. A minute later, there was a crash of timbers above the trapdoor, and then it burst open and several men in vests came tumbling down the stairs.

“Head wound!” Train yelled to the first one to reach him, pointing at Sherman. “Gut wound on the other guy.”

“We -got ‘em,” someone yelled. And then there was a general commotion as everyone tried to help. Train saw Karen briefly at the top of the steps before someone topside grabbed her and took her out of there. He helped carry Sherman up the stone steps, through the hallway, and out onto the front porch and into a blaze of headlights, radio chatter, and blue flashers littering the side of Slade Hill. A helicopter was hovering over the trees east of the house, shining a large spotlight at something on the ground. Several men were gathered in the vicinity of the spotlighted area. Karen ran to meet Train as the first signs of the fire appeared in the front window sockets of the old house. He embraced her, but then, to his surprise, she was pulling back, looking behind him.

Mcnair materialized out of the darkness.

“Well?” she said. “Did you get him?”

Mcnair looked over his shoulder at the crowd of police and FBI agents milling around the house. A small fire engine was trying to get up the hill below them, but it appeared to have become stuck. He turned to face them.

“Get who?” he replied.

Train stepped forward. “You know goddamn well who,” he said. “Just what-“

But Mcnair had his hand up, signifying silence. “This would be a really good time,” he said, “for you two to walk down that hill and get in that Explorer and get the hell out of here. A really good time. The commander here will explain it to you. We’re all done up here. But you two might have a loose end or two to work out.” He turned back to Karen and gave her a slip of paper. “The guy at the other end of that number will be expecting your call. He did a little computer work for your boss. The thing you should know about him is that he can undo anything -that he’s done.”

Train started to object again, but Mcnair only pointed down the hill.

Karen touched his arm. “We’ll be knee-deep in cops all night, answering questions she said. “Let’s just get out of here. There are some things I have to tell you.”

Mcnair nodded at her and walked back into the darkness.

MONDAY On Monday morning, Train signed Karen through the Pentagon security checkpoint. They walked in silence through the corridors, along with a steady stream of civilians. Train had to remember not to hold her hand as they walked down the A-ring, heading toward the escalators to the fourth floor.

“You still think this will work?” he asked. Sunday had been a day of rest and recuperation, and planning.

“It had better work,” she said grimly. “If Sherman makes it, I want to be able to tell him why they were so hot to force him out of the Navy.”

Captain Pennington was waiting for Karen when they arrived at the Ill offices. “The admiral wants to see you, Karen, as soon as you get in.”

“But not me?” Train asked innocently. The other officers were keeping their heads down.

Pennington frowned at him. “I think you are going to be reassigned back to the Navy Yard, Mr. von Rensel. I’m not privy to all that went down this past ‘weekend, but there’s been something of a shit storm going on up front since I got in, and your name was featured often and rudely.”

“Oh my.” Train sighed. “And I was beginning to like it here.

Karen was not amused. “I’m not going to see anybody until I’ve had a chance to get into my PC. There’s an archive report I want to see.”

“Um, well,” Pennington began, but Karen walked past him to her cubicle.

Train went to his and turned on his PC.

He could hear Pennington trying to talk to. Karen, but she was answering in monosyllables while she booted up her own machine. When Train was sure Pennington was fully engaged, he got on the phone and called the NIS database administrator.

“What is it now, von Rensel?”

“I need you guys to get into the JAG archive database.”

“JAG? We don’t normally target specific-“

“I know,” Train interrupted, keeping an eye on Pennington, who was starting to get worked up. Karen was supposed to stall him long enough for Train to make this one phone call. “But this one should be easy. I need you guys to pull up a specific investigation file.” He gave the administrator the cite number.

“What the hell, von Rensel. Aren’t you right there in JAG?”

“I am, but I need an external query. And then I need you to attach the report and E-mail it to me at this address, and I need this done ASAP, like anytime in the next ten minutes, if that’s humanly possible.”

“Ten minutes! That’s ridiculous! That’s-“

Train cut him off. “Two people have been murdered,” he said. “An admiral has been shot in the head, and his son has been shot in the stomach, and my car’s been burned up with me in it, and I think, you should really do this thing, and now would be really nice, okay?”

“Holy shit, why didn’t you say so?”

“I just did. Here’s the E-mail address. And this is a real fire, okay?

Get that thing over here right now.”

“Coming at you.” Train hung up. Pennington was stomping off across the office to his cubicle. Karen watched him go, and then looked over her shoulder at Train, who gave her the thumbs-up signal. She turned around and kept going on her PC. Train stood up and rearranged the privacy panel on his cubicle so that no one standing next to Karen’s desk could see him across the room, He heard-Pennington call one of the other commanders into his cubicle for a short conference, after which he came out and started telling the rest of the people in the office that there was going to be an urgent all-hands meeting across the way in the main conference room in five minutes. Nobody would even look at Karen or Train as the commander shepherded everyone else out of the office.

Pennington remained in the entrance to his cubicle, looking meaningfully at Karen, but she ignored him. Train ducked back into his own cubicle and waited for the E-mail banner.

Five minutes later, the office door burst open and Admiral Carpenter stormed in, followed by a worried-looking Mccarty. Train watched through a crack between the privacy panels, but he kept out of sight, resisting the urge to shake his PC monitor to make the E-mail arrive faster.

Carpenter went directly to Karen’s cubicle.

“Commander Lawrence, I am not amused,” he said.

“When I summon a staff officer, they damned well come to see me, not the other way around!”

Karen stood up respectfully and pointed down at her screen, where a large red ACCESS DENIED banner was displayed. “I want to see that investigation report,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not talking to anybody until I’ve seen that investigation report.”

“What god damned report?” Carpenter shouted. “Pennington, out! “

An astonished Captain Pennington backed out of the office, giving Mccarty a “what the hell?” look. He got a nervous shrug in return. He closed the door behind him forcefully. Karen hadn’t budged.

“You know what report, Admiral,” she said. “The JAG investigation on the loss of the SEAL back there in Vietnam.

The one you told Mr. von Rensel you had seen, where . Sherman was adjudged to have done the right thing when he abandoned that man back there on the river.”

Carpenter started to say something but then faltered.

Train tapped his monitor with his fingers. C’mon, C’mon, he thought. She couldn’t hold this guy off forever.

“Sherman told us, Admiral. Before he was shot up there on that hill. He admitted seeing the SEAL. That’s not quite the story he told us before, but he admitted it to Galantz.

He also said that he did tell his bosses back there in Vietnam that he had seen the SEAL on the night of the incident, that they knew he had been left behind.”

“That’s not what the investigation says,” Carpenter declared.

An E-mail notice bloomed across Train’s screen, and he quickly switched screens to the communications program.

One message-from NIS-file attached. He accepted the message and then ordered the attached file copied for retransmission and forwarding. The system asked for the forwarding addresses. Train consulted the OPNAV directory and then sat down to type them out.

“Then let me see it, Admiral.”

“It’s classified. You’re not cleared.”

“It was over twenty years ago, Admiral. And after what 1, ve been through, I am more than cleared. In fact, I feel like telling the whole world about my fun weekend. Then everyone will be cleared.”

Carpenter stared at her, but then his expression changed.

“All right, Commander. Since you insist. Captain Mccarty will remove the lock.”

Karen got up, and Mccarty slid into her chair. After a minute on the keyboard, he got back up. “Call it up,” he said.

Karen sat back down and accessed the archive system.

This time, the file appeared on screen. Carpenter just stood there, looking as if this was just an enormous waste of time, the beginnings of a triumphant expression on his face: the admiral humoring the commander.

Karen began to scan the investigation report as fast as she could scroll through it. The basic letter report, followed by the appendices: the appointing order, the interview list, the findings of fact, the findings of opinion, the substantiatin documents. She was looking for two things: the Swift boat division commander’s statement and the all-important reviewing authority’s first endorsement.

There. The Divcom’s statement. Interview with Sherman.

The mining ambush. Subsequent actions to extract the boat from the kill zone. Damage to the boat. Injuries to personnel. A brief mention of the skipper thinking that he had seen the SEAL by the riverbank at the time of the engagement.

As Galantz had charged, and as Sherman had admitted.

Carpenter was looking at the screen over her shoulder.

“Well,” he said. “I guess it does say that So what?”

“That’s only part of it, Admiral,” she replied. “Now I want to see the final endorsement. Because whoever approved this investigation essentially covered up the fact that Galantz had been left behind.”

Carpenter stood back and took a deep breath, his eyes flitting from side to side for an instant. But then he gestured to Mccarty, as if to say, Beats me. Karen scrolled down through the document to the final section.

The final endorsement appeared on the screen. The reviewing authority, Commander Naval Forces, Vietnam. The major conclusion: concurring in findings of facts and opinions, with the exception that the COMNAVFORV did not concur that the SEAL had been at the rendezvous. That in the heat of an engagement, the skipper could not have seen the face of a man as mines were exploding and. heavy machine-gun fire laid down on the banks of the river. That the SEAL had, in all probability, never made it to the rendezvous. That the division commander was directed to take no further action with regard to the SEAL.

Carpenter again read over her shoulder. “Well,” he said, “I’m not sure that’s what I would have recommended.

Seems kind of coldhearted. But I guess that’s what they recommended, whoever they. were. Are we finished here, Commander?”

“Just about, Admiral,” Karen said. “I just want to see who signed this thing out.”

Carpenter again stood back. “I’m not sure why that Id be of interest, after so long a time. Most likely some’s who are long gone.”

Karen turned to look at him. “Are you sure, Admiral?

Because if the approving officers were still on active duty, and the Navy opens an investigation into why Admiral Sherman is lying in Bethesda with a gunshot wound, these names might be of burning interest within the flag community.”

Carpenter looked exasperated. “I think I’m getting bored with all this, EA. Why don’t you-“

“Ah, here they are. Approving for Commander Naval For&s, Vietnam.

Captain Mccarty, want to take a look?”

“Me?” He looked at Carpenter and then leaned down.

“Son of a bitch!” -he exclaimed.

Carpenter pushed him aside and looked at the screen. His face went white as the names jumped out at him. The two lieutenant commanders at headquarters of Naval Forces, Vietnam-the ones who had approved the investigation report: Lieutenant Commanders Kensington and Carpenter.

Carpenter. for JAG approval, Kensington as the operations officer. The fact that it was signed

“By Pirection” made it even more damning, because that phrase meant that the admiral commanding in Vietnam had nevey seen it.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Carpenter spluttered.

“This shouldn’t-I mean … “Shouldn’t be there, Admiral?” Karen asked softly. “But this is an archive file. Read only. No one can change an archive file, can they, Admiral?”

Train stood up in his cubicle and pushed the privacy panel aside.

Carpenter, visibly shaken, turned around to look at him, as did Mccarty.

“Commander,” Train said formally. “I’ve got what you need. The NIS query went through. I’ve got that Vietnam incident report right here.”

Karen started to’walk over toward Train’s cubicle, but Carpenter stepped in front of her. “What’s the meaning of this, von Rensel? You have no right to access restricted JAG information. That report is classified.