Unsolved. March 25, 1998; Fort Meade, Maryland, First U. S. Army headquarters — inventory shortfalclass="underline" forty-eight 81mm M29 mortars, 144 M375 white phosphorus rounds, 168 M301 illuminating rounds, sixty M374 high explosive rounds. Unsolved. March 25, 1998; Fort Knox, Kentucky, 194th Armored Brigade — inventory shortfalclass="underline" one Light Armored Vehicle.
Unsolved.
“Good Lord,” Thomas managed as he looked up into Callahan’s probing glance. “Do you mean to say that this entire printout is filled with similar data?”
Callahan solemnly nodded that it was, adding, “I began the search as of January 1 of this year, and only queried installations in the four-state region that you asked about. The readout includes all military hardware reported missing, either by unknown inventory shortfall, or suspected theft.”
“Surely most of the shortages can be explained away as mere accounting errors,” offered Thomas while flipping through the rest of the stack.
“We believe that a large percentage of the losses are indeed paperwork screwups, Thomas. But that still leaves too many unsolved cases that aren’t. That means it’s either accidental loss or intentional theft as the cause, and the latter is starting to scare the piss out of me.”
Thomas knew full well that Callahan definitely wasn’t the type of man who could be easily frightened, and he sat forward and carefully probed.
“Times are tough all around, Ted. You remember what it was like to exist on enlisted man’s pay. With today’s thriving black market, a GI who gives in to temptation can make a quick bundle, and chances are we’ll never catch him. Take that shipment of Colt Commandos that one of our interdiction teams chanced upon last month in San Francisco. It turned out the guy responsible for stealing them was a twenty-year old Leatherneck from Pendleton, who swears he did it just to buy his wife a car and put a decent down payment on a house.”
“I wish that we could attribute the rest of the unaccounted losses to dumb kids like that one,” replied Cal la han his gravelly voice hushed.
“But I’m starting to recognize a definite pattern in both the type of installations reporting these thefts, and more significantly, the type of items that have been lost.”
Thomas sensed where his old friend was headed. He cut him off with a single pertinent word. “Militia?”
Callahan reached for the printout that Thomas had been holding and nodded affirmatively. “Somebody out there is on one hell of a shopping spree, Thomas. Their list runs the gamut of what every well-stocked army needs to fight both a conventional and a nuclear war. When a dozen mortars go mysteriously missing from one base, the exact caliber shell that they fire goes missing from the next. It’s been happening time after time, with every weapon system in the inventory, and my gut tells me that this material isn’t meant for export.”
“How about C-4?” asked Thomas directly.
Callahan had been anticipating this question. He isolated the last two pages of the printout. He nastily scanned their contents before handing them to Thomas.
“I know that it’s not much, but this is all we’ve got on recorded shortages involving military-grade explosives. Take a look at that June robbery of the National Guard Armory in Wheeling, West Virginia.”
Thomas found this particular listing on the bottom portion of the top page. A clear case of forceful breaking and entering, the Wheeling robbery involved thirty-nine 1.25pound blocks of M112-grade C-4 explosives. This had been the full extent of materials taken, and Thomas found his curiosity piqued.
“What exactly is M112-grade C-4?” he asked.
“That grade refers to the age of the production lot. Unlike recent blocks that are pure white and packed in olive-drab containers, the older lots are dull gray and wrapped in clear Mylar film.”
“Any way to find out if the explosives that I’m dealing with came from the Army National Guard Armory at Wheeling?” Thomas asked.
Callahan grinned. “If you can spare me a quarter-ounce sample, I believe that with a bit of lab analysis, the U. S. Army can figure that one out for you, Special Agent Kellogg But I’m going to warn you up front that it’s going to cost you in Oriole tickets.”
“I believe we can handle that,” Thomas replied. “May I use your phone?”
A call to BATF headquarters found Les Stanley still at work in the lab.
After asking the EOD technician to coordinate the transfer of the C-4 sample to Callahan’s people, Thomas checked his own extension for messages. He was pleasantly surprised to find that one was from Brittany. She’d left it barely ten minutes ago, and, given the return number, had called from the Pentagon.
Hungry, he returned her call with an invitation to dinner. The offer delighted her. Because Thomas hadn’t seen the operations center she was working out of, they decided that he would pick her up down by the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center, or NMCC, in ten minutes.
When Thomas hung up, Callahan commented on his wide grin. “Hey, Kellogg, it looks like you just won the lottery. I hate to be an eavesdropper, but who’s the new flame?”
“Brittany Cooper. She’s a commander on the CNO’s staff, who’s presently…”
“… working as assistant naval attache to the White House,” Callahan finished.
“You know too much, Ted.”
“That’s why I’m a colonel.”
Thomas smiled, and left his friend with a salute, a thank-you, and a promise to get back to him the next day for the results of the lab analysis. He slipped the computer printouts into his brief bag and set off for that portion of the Pentagon holding the NMCC.
Also known as the War Room, the NMCC acted as the U. S. military’s central command post. It was manned twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and served as a clearinghouse for military activity worldwide.
During times of crisis, the secretary of defense and the individual force commanders would rely on the NMCC for the latest situational updates. Actual field orders would be broadcast from the NMCC by means of a wide variety of secure communications systems, and it was here that the nuclear unlock codes would be first released.
The NMCC was semi hardened to withstand an indirect nuclear strike and was located several hundred feet beneath the Pentagon’s ground floor.
To reach this heavily secured area of the building, Thomas had to descend a series of ramps and stairwells. Since he had stood many an extended watch in the command post while on active duty, he easily navigated the maze of twisting hallways that too often proved a nightmare for the uninitiated.
He soon found himself standing in front of the NMCC’s reception desk. A smartly attired MP intently studied his credentials. To gain further access, the MP first had to call Brittany to get her approval. Once this had been achieved, Thomas had to sign an official log and surrender his BATF identification card. Only then was he given a clip-on visitor’s tag and allowed to continue farther down the tiled hallway.
As Thomas approached yet another security checkpoint, he returned the curt greeting of a stone-faced MP who was seated behind a tall counter with the emblem of the Joint Chiefs of Staff displayed on its side. He signed another log here and while the guard called the NMCC’s watch commander for final clearance, he looked up to examine the digital-display screen mounted on the wall behind the counter.
The screen was comprised of four separate panels, with only one panel lit in red. It read, classified level one materials present. Thomas knew that this referred to the nature of the data currently displayed on the NMCC’s overhead monitors. Because his current security clearance didn’t allow him to see such classified information, he would have to wait until the relevant material was deleted before they’d allow him inside.