Zero Option

23

Stafford had taken a motel room at the Holiday Inn out on 1-20 after having a late breakfast at one of the ubiquitous Waffle Houses. After his meeting with Sparks, he had gone t up to his room in the hotel long enough to pack his stuff, get five hours of sleep, and then hit the interstate west out of Atlanta. It had taken him an hour and a half to get to Oxford, which was the turnoff for Anniston to the north I of the interstate. The motel room would provide a base of {operations with a land-line telephone and a local directory, and he would probably be staying overnight, depending on what shook out from his inquiries at the Army base. As long as he kept his government-issue cell phone off the air, Sparks could not know where he was, which should give him forty-eight hours of breathing room. Until Monday, that is, at which time Ray Sparks would expect him in the DCIS office in Smyrna. He smiled ruefully. What Sparks had actually said was that he expected Stafford in his office this morning, but Stafford had decided to misunderstand.

Forty-eight hours. On a weekend. Not much time.

He made a call to the local newspaper and talked to a harried-sounding female reporter who was about to go out to cover a local charity golf tournament. He identified himself as a freelance writer, gave a false name, and said he was looking for local interest stories in small-town Alabama. He said he’d heard a rumor that there was something big going on at the Army base, something to do with chemical weapons. She laughed and told him that there were always rumors about the CW depot, but the only news came when they made a shipment out west somewhere and the local environmental protestors did their bit along the railroad right-of-way. Because a lot of people in this town were dependent on the base, though, the protests never amounted to much. Otherwise, there was nothing shaking that she knew about, and she said she really had to get a move on. He thanked her and hung up.

He tried the same probe at the local radio stations in Oxford and Anniston, but everyone was out doing something called “remotes” at shopping centers or car dealerships. Nobody had heard about anything out of the ordinary going down at the Army base.

He sat back on the bed. This was going to be much harder than it had seemed last night. Somehow he had to find out whether or not the Army had lost a chemical weapon. If they had, what would they do? They’d initiate an internal investigation, both at this base and probably at the shipment destination point. He thought about the Army Criminal Investigation Command, what used to be called the CID. They were the investigatory branch of the Army military-police organization. If there were a big-deal investigation going on behind closed doors, the local CIC people would have heard about it, even if they weren’t involved. As a DCIS investigator, he could go into any CIC office in the country, ask for help in his current DRMO investigation, and, from there, make a casual inquiry about what was shaking at Anniston.

Unless, of course, Ray Sparks had already begun some damage-control efforts by alerting the duty office at DCIS Washington that Dave Stafford had, once again, wandered off the reservation. And if he’d done that, DCIS Washington might in turn be alerting their counterparts in the military services to be on the lookout for a Stafford, David, unit of issue one each, even as we speak. Shit.

It all depended on how fast Ray moved, and whether or not he would wait until Monday. Civil servants, even the police variety, almost never worked weekends, but there were duty officers at every level of the chain of command whose job it was to cover weekend contingencies. Hell with it, he thought. I’m going to go over to that base and talk to the Army CIC people. If I run into a white eyed stone wall, that in itself will tell me something.

The map provided by the motel showed Fort Mcclellan on the north side of the town of Anniston. He wondered where the hell they kept all the evil shit. He was very surprised when he turned in at the first gate he came to and found it unguarded. Fort Mcclellan was an open post? He drove down the road until he found a headquarters office, where he obtained a map of the post.

He finally found the provost marshal’s office, which was located in a headquarters area three blocks from the sprawling Chemical Warfare School. He parked the government car and went in, where he found the Army version of a police station desk area. There was a waiting room in the front, facing a railing with a gate in the middle that spanned the room. A young black man, who appeared to be a civilian, was sitting in the waiting room. To the left was a door marked cic. Bingo.

He walked up to the railing and waited for the female sergeant to get off the phone. He presented his credentials and asked if the CIC rep was in.

“No, sir,” she said, “It’s Saturday. I have a beeper number I can try.

Except—”

“Except?”

“Well, this weekend is the annual campground cleanup. Everybody’s going to be working up in north post. It’s a volunteer thing every spring. I don’t think he’s gonna be close to a phone. He’s already had one call this morning, and he hasn’t answered. Can I maybe help you with something?”

Stafford had to think fast. He had planned to ease into this question.

“I’m running an investigation in Atlanta, at a DRMO,” he said. “That’s one of those surplus sales offices. Yesterday a team from here went in and ran a CW exercise, and I wanted to talk to the CIC agent here to see if that exercise was possibly connected to my investigation.”

“A CW exercise? From Fort Mcclellan?” “Well, they said they were from Anniston. I assumed Fort Mcclellan.”

“They say they were from the Chemical Warfare School?”

“No. It was some kind of emergency response team.

They were all suited up, except for the officers who were in charge. Two big-ass trucks. About twenty people.”

The clerk thought for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s nothing like that here at Fort Mcclellan.”

“Is there anything going on here on the base that might initiate an exercise like that all the way up in Atlanta? Some big exercise? War games?”

She shook her head again. “No, sir, not that I know of. Not here. But maybe the team came from the depot.”

“The depot?”

“Yes, sir. The Anniston Army Weapons Depot. That’s not here. It’s a special weapons storage area, about ten miles west of here. They might have a CW response team like that. Fort Mcclellan doesn’t.” “I see,” he said. Now what? he thought. Wrong Army base? “Well, I guess I need to go over there, then. So there’s nothing going on here that might have emergency response teams running around Atlanta?”

“No, sir, it’s just a normal Saturday, far as I know. Fort Mcclellan doesn’t store weapons, sir. We’re mostly about schools here.”

“Okay. Let me leave a name and number for your CIC duty officer, in case he calls in for his messages. I’m staying down at the Holiday Inn, on the interstate in Oxford. Room number 405.” He repeated his name, then let her see the credentials again. She wrote it all down and promised to try the beeper a couple of times. He got directions from her to the Anniston Depot, thanked her, and left.

Her directions took him back into the center of Anniston, where he stopped by a Burger King for a caffeine fix. He then drove west out of town on Highway 202, which was a two-lane road that took him through open farmland and wooded hills, interspersed with clusters of trashy looking trailers crouching by the road. He kept looking for signs to the depot, but there was nothing marked. After ten miles, he stopped and asked for directions at a gas station minimart, and the lady pointed him to the next intersection. Sure enough, there was an inconspicuous sign up on a hillside announcing the presence of the Anniston Army Weapons Depot.

He turned right and headed down an extra-wide road. There was nothing on either side but pine woods. He had sort of expected razor wire, guard towers, and electric fences, but then, a CW storage area was probably not a favorite place for local deer hunters. After about a mile, the road crossed over what looked like a mainline railway, and then made a sweeping right turn down into an area resembling the assembly area in front of a ferry landing. There were several semis parked diagonally in waiting lanes, and ahead was a large reinforced steel gate that was closed. Beyond the gate, several large industrial buildings were visible. The buildings were constructed entirely of windowless concrete.

There was an expansive railroad siding area, with rail spurs running under closed steel doors into the concrete buildings. No humans were visible on the other side of the gate area.

He drove down the hill. An armed civilian guard came out of the gatehouse. Dave stopped and showed his credentials, hoping that his ID and the government car would get him in.

“This is a closed post,” the guard declared, holding on to Stafford’s credentials while studying them. “Unless you have a point of contact who’s there now and whom” we can call on the phone, we can’t let you in.” “No,” Dave said. “I don’t. I was hoping there was a CIC office here at the Depot.”

“Nope,” the guard said, still looking at the credentials.

“CIC’s over at Fort Mcclellan.” “Okay,” Dave said. “Is there a CERT of some sort based here? A team that might go out to do its thing in two big Army semis?”

The guard’s expression revealed absolutely nothing. “Don’t know anything about any teams, sir,” he replied, handing back Stafford’s credentials.

“This here is a special weapons storage area. Can’t let you in. You can back up and turn around right over there.”

Stafford thanked him and turned the car around. As he drove off, he could see the guard through the open door of the gatehouse; he was writing something down at his desk. Probably has to record the name of anyone coming, going, or refused entrance, Stafford thought. He wondered if that procedure might come back to haunt him.

He drove back to Anniston with the afternoon Alabama sun blazing in his mirror. Now what? he wondered.