Zero Option

34

“Where the hell did this come from?” General Carrothers asked, waving a piece of paper in the air. Major Mason’s face was grim.

“From Army Criminal Investigation Command, General. I just called them to verify it. They got it from the FBI intelligence division.”

Carrothers examined the spot report again. The first paragraph contained the usual warnings and caveats about protecting sensitive intelligence methods and sources. It was the second paragraph that had his attention, the one reporting that word was circulating among the clandestine international arms network that an individual by the name of Stafford had put feelers out into the market regarding the possible sale of stolen chemical ordnance, for which he was reportedly asking a million dollars. No further identifying data on subject Stafford. The FBI was investigating, and requesting any available corroborating information about missing chemical ordnance from the Army.

Son of a bitch! he thought.

“I assume the implied question there is whether or not we’ve had any weapons stolen,” Mason said.

Carrothers nodded slowly. “Not so, implied, is it, Major? And the technically correct answer is no, we have no reports of stolen chemical weapons. Tell them that at once. Then hopefully they won’t come asking if we’ve lost any CW ordnance. Jesus H. Christ, Mason, if this is true…”

“Yes, sir. Understood, sir. That name, Stafford—”

“No shit. How many Staffords have we encountered recently? And there’s the matter of his evasions on that lie-detector examination. Damn it.

Maybe I fucked up. We should have held him.”

A front-office clerk stuck his head into the general’s office. “A Colonel Fuller is here, General? Shall I have I him wait?”

“No, send him in.”

Colonel Fuller came into the office and shut the door behind him.

“Morning, General, Major Mason,” he said. Then he saw their faces.

“We’re reconstituting the Security Working Group? Has something happened?”

“After a fashion, Colonel,” Carrothers said.

Fuller looked from Carrothers to Mason and back. “Does General Waddell know about this?” Carrothers said nothing, and Fuller nodded slowly.

“All right,” he said.

“Let me guess: You don’t think that thing went into that demil machine, do you?”

“Colonel Fuller, I have a question for you,” Carrothers said. “Why did General Waddell pull you into this thing?”

“Well, Myer Waddell and I go way back,” Fuller began, but Carrothers raised his hand.

“No, I mean why you, a BW expert?

Colonel Fuller sat down in a chair and pulled at his shirt collar. He glanced over at Major Mason, but Carrothers indicated that Mason was staying.

Fuller nodded. “Right. The problem is I have specific orders from General Waddell not to discuss this with anyone, including you, sir.”

Carrothers turned on the frost. “Care for a little temporary duty out on Kwajalein Island, Colonel? I can have you on a plane this afternoon.”

Fuller smiled, then put up his hands in mock surrender. “The Wet Eye weapon is a hybrid, General. It contains a biologic component. An unstable biologic component, if my information is correct.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Carrothers muttered.

“Unstable how, Colonel?” Mason asked, making notes.

“Unstable in that the biologic component may mutate in the absence of the environmental controls provided by its coffin.”

“In other words,” Carrothers said, “we don’t know what the hell might be going on in that cylinder?”

“That’s correct.” Fuller paused, as if he was about to amplify that, but then went on. “Let me give you some history, General.”

Fuller described hqw the United States had come into possession of the weapon, and what the biological weapons program had decided about Wet Eye all those” years ago.

“So this wasn’t even one of ours?”

“No, sir. And this is all archive information on the offensive BW program. That’s all gone now. All we do out at Dietrick now in BW is on the defense side. We develop vaccines to inoculate our troops against the BW programs of the Saddam Husseins of the world, you know, all those upstanding countries who won’t sign the treaties banning this stuff.”

Carrothers got up and started pacing behind his desk. “Major,” he said, “tell Colonel Fuller about that FBI intel report.”

Fuller listened carefully and then shook his head. “Not likely, General,” he said. “The group’s information was that Stafford got there after the containers had come in from Tooele and been destroyed. We checked with DCIS when he popped up at the first response-team insertion.”

“What did they tell you about him?”, “That he blew the whistle on an SES-Two, which, of course, did not endear him to senior officials in DCIS. They hinted pretty strongly that the guy had been shit canned. But they did say he was a first-class investigator. Just has no political sense.”

“In other words, not the kind of guy who’s likely to steal and then try to sell stolen chemical weapons to, say, the Iranians.”

“No, sir. He’s an ex-cop and now a GS-Fifteen federal agent. That’s too much of a reach.”

Carrothers pointed to the intelligence report. “Then what the hell’s this all about? Where’s it coming from? And if this guy Stafford knows something, why in the hell hasn’t he come in to talk about it?”

Mason cleared his throat. “He did, General. In a manner of speaking, that is.” This comment earned him a quick glare from Carrothers. Mason squirmed uncomfortably.

“If we refuse to admit we’ve lost a weapon, where else could the guy go?” Fuller asked.

“To his boss, goddamn it!” Carrothers said. “Major, get that guy I talked to the other night — I think his name was Sparks — on the horn.-He’s down in Smyrna.”

Mason got up and left the office. Fuller was shaking his head. “And tell him what, General? We’ve lost a chemical weapon and we really need to talk to Stafford?”

“Of course not. I’ll tell him we’ve received this report and we wanted to know if It’s credible.”

“By definition, it’s not credible. We aren’t missing a weapon. As long as we can’t admit this, it seems to me we shouldn’t go talking to anybody.”

Carrothers started to reply but then sat back down at his desk. Fuller was right. What he really wanted to do was talk to Stafford, this time without the atmospherics of the tombs at Anniston. But he was not so sure he wanted to tell this slippery colonel what he was really thinking. Fuller was still Waddell’s man, and Carrothers knew he was on thin ice with what he was doing visa-vis Wad dell’s orders.

“What you say is true, Colonel. But I think we have a responsibility to make damn sure this weapon isn’t still out there somewhere, especially if there’s an unknown biological capability hatching out in that cylinder. I think Mr. Stafford knows more than he’s letting on.”

“Based on what, General?”

Carrothers started to tell him, but then he thought better of it.

Waddell did not know about his little excursion to I Anniston. Fuller is Waddell’s man, he reminded himself again.

“I just do,” he said. “A hunch, I guess.”

Mason came back into the office. “DCIS regional office, Symrna. Mr. Ray Sparks, regional supervisor. I have the number here.”

“Get him on secure.”

As Mason left the room, Fuller asked Carrothers if he’d like to see a video on Wet Eye he just happened to have.

Carson’s secretary came in with a yellow message slip. “Another losing bidder, wants to complain,” she said, handing him the slip. He nodded and went back to the paper he was working on tfhtil she left the office.

He glanced at the 800 number. Tangent. Good.

He waited fifteen minutes and then told her was going to lunch. Ten minutes later he was standing in a phone booth out on State Road 42. He had to close the door because of all the truck noise. The booth immediately began to cook in the bright Georgia sun. He’d been doing a lot of thinking about how to make the transfer.

“Carson,” he said when the phone was picked up.

“Right. We’ve dropped a little nugget into the FBI’s intelligence system. Stafford should now be in deep kimshii.”

“How in the hell did you manage that?”

“The FBI pays confidential informants to report interesting rumors in the international arms markets. A lot of it’s total bullshit, but sometimes they get lucky. We’re one of the informants.”

“Jesus, that’s playing with fire, isn’t it?”

“Not really. You want to hide from the FBI, do business with them right out in the open. They tend to make everything they do really hard.”

“Won’t DCIS find out about it?”

“Very probably, but we didn’t identify Stafford as a government guy.

Just used his name. But because we said chemical weapon, the Army will probably get a call from the Bureau, and they’ll know exactly which Stafford. That way we get one government agency leaning on another one.

They’ll get all wrapped around the axle over jurisdiction, and we, in the meantime, will get a window to do this thing. You ready?”

“Yeah, but all this other shit’s been distracting the hell out of me.

But I’ve decided one thing: I want the money in cash. Greenback dollars.

Hundreds.”

“You do know you’re talking ten thousand hundred dollar bills, right?

That’s a stack of hundreds about ten feet high.”

“That’s a footlockerful. And that’s how I want it. I don’t know anything about diamonds or any of the rest of that stuff. And I really think we ought to do it here, at the DRMO. Now that the Army’s looking, I don’t want to move that thing.”

Tangent was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “I suppose we can do it there. My client is nervous about our going onto a federal facility for this kind of transaction, that’s all. Some gate guard searches the vehicle, finds the money, it’d be tough to explain.”

“There aren’t any gate guards here at Fort Gillem. It’s an open post.”

“Okay. How’s about the ‘when’ question?”

Carson was ready. “This is Monday. How soon can you have your people here in Atlanta? With the cash?”

“Hell, logistically, we’re ready now. To get down it there, get set up, eight, twelve hours.”

“Okay, here’s how I want to do it. I’ll assume your people can be ready by midnight tonight. That’s twelve hours from now. Sometime in the next twenty-four hours after that, I’ll call them at a number that you designate and tell them to come to Fort Gillem. They get here, there will be instructions on what to do and where to go next.”

“Don’t make this too complicated, Carson.”

“I’m trying to make it safe. For me. A million in cash is a tempting amount of money.”

“How do we know you won’t stiff usl”

“What else am I going to do with this thing except sell it, huh?” Carson asked. “It’s not like I want to own it.” Especially, he thought, after I found out it might be cooking.

“Okay, that works for us. I’ll call one more time to confirm all this.

In about two hours.”

“I’ll be waiting.”