Zero Option

43

Stafford was awakened by the shrijl ring of the motel telephone. He sat up in the bed, momentarily disoriented, squinting at his watch.

“Yeah?” he mumbled. What had he been dreaming about? Something about a waterfall. And Gwen Warren.

You’re pathetic, he thought to himself as he rubbed his eyes.

“This is John Lee Warren, Mr. Stafford You seen the news yet this mornin’?”

“No, Sheriff. I just woke up.”

“You ought to have a look The NEC channel from Atlanta is on 41. Then I think you’n me ought to meet for some breakfast. Say eight-fifteen?”

Dave looked at his watch again. Seven-fifteen. “Yeah, fine, Sheriff. Let me get my heart started here, okay?”

“Watch the news. That’ll do it.”

Stafford hung up and sat up straighter, looking for the TV remotk He found it after some searching and flipped on Channel 41. Helicopter shots of the Fort Gillem DRMO came up on the screen. He unmuted and then listened with fascination as the newscaster described a disastrous fire at Fort Gillem, just southeast of Atlanta, Georgia, with die complete destruction of the Atlanta DRMO. “Complete destruction” about describes it, he thought, looking down at the rectangular outlines of blackened ashes. And men the scene shifted to a makeshift press conference set up at what looked like the main gate of Fort Gillem, which he noticed was now crawling with MPs. A tall hawk-faced brigadier general decked out in Desert Storm-style cammies stood in front of a makeshift podium. The man, identified on the screen as Brig. Gen. Lee Carrothers from Army headquarters in Washington, was reassuring the whole world that there had been no personnel casualties and that the damage had been restricted to some warehouses full of obsoleted and surplus military gear, a lot of which had been already slated for destruction.

Yeah, right, Stafford thought. And I wonder if you’ve told the reporters you’re Army Chemical Corps there, General.

The general stated that initial theories included a malfunction in the demil complex, where the possible explosion of combustible waste products might have started the fire. He said it would be several weeks before the cause could be pinpointed with any accuracy, given the extent of the destruction. And then came the kicker: The FBI had been called in to locate the manager of the DRMO, one Wendell Carson, who was missing.

Carson was wanted for questioning in connection with reports of safety violations at the DRMO, and about problems that had surfaced recently in a Defense Criminal Investigative Service inquiry about the auctioning of defense materials.

Stafford sat up straighter when he heard that little announcement, but there was no further explanation given. A snappy-looking colonel followed the general to entertain questions, but no one pursued the matter of the DRMO manager.

He switched the TV off and went in to shower and fj: shave. Standing in the shower, he speculated about the fire and its origins. It had happened sometime the previous night, and yet there was already an Army brigadier down there. The same brigadier he’d spoken to in Washington as late as yesterday afternoon. The same brigadier, he was pretty sure, who’d shanghaied one David Stafford to An nistpn, Alabama, and subjected him to a lie-detector test about what might or might not be lurking at that DRMO. He began to wonder if maybe the Army itself had burned the damned place down. That would sure be one way of — eliminating the DRMO as a hiding place. And now they were searching for Carson, based in part on a DCIS investigation? How very interesting. And then it hit him: This was the one contingency that threatened Gwen and Jessamine: Carson, on the run.