"I never lie." The man handed the gun back to the larger man. "We will find the One. Use today as a lesson."
"What do you want from this One?" the girl on the end demanded.
The man had handed the revolver back to its owner. He seemed puzzled for a second by the question, whether by the fact she had asked it or by the question itself, it wasn't quite clear. "What do we want? Vengeance." He waved a hand at the guards. "Take them away."
The larger man stood once the girls were pulled out of the room. "We must leave. There is much to be done," he said in French.
The first man nodded, his mind elsewhere. "We must prepare them all now if the One is to be ready."
"Tell the doctor," the larger man said. "He's just been sitting around here anyway. Make him earn some of his money."
Chapter Six
Thorpe stared at the list of names whose service records he was supposed to peruse to make sure they were up to date, then he looked at the clock. It was only 1030 and he felt like he'd been locked in this room forever. The office had no windows, a gray-painted square, about twelve feet by twelve, with just the two issue desks in it. Takamura's area had a little bit of the personal touch in the form of a small pewter figure of the Starship Enterprise set on top of his monitor. The side of his computer was covered with various stickers with sayings from the same show. Takamura wasn't much for talking, the only sound the steady clack-clack of his keys, letting Thorpe know the other man was still alive.
Thorpe started to type the next name when a sudden thought stopped him. He went back to the main menu and entered the enlisted personnel database. He typed: Dublowski, Daniel.
In a few seconds, Sergeant Major Dublowski's personnel records came up on the screen. Thorpe scrolled through until he found Dublowski's evaluation report from the tour of duty in Stuttgart. There was no mention in it, nor should there be, of his daughter. It was a glowing report that a commander would write for a soldier he'd want to serve with again.
Thorpe tapped a pen against the side of the computer monitor as he thought. The one thing that Dublowski had not mentioned was why he had been shipped back to the States so quickly. A normal tour of duty overseas was three years, yet Dublowski had been in Stuttgart less than a year. Thorpe knew that could be explained by his expertise being needed in Delta Force, which always had priority selection throughout the army, but it was still strange. Of course, everyone affiliated with the Omega Missile fiasco had had strange things happen to their lives.
Thorpe ran through the pages that had been scanned in, searching for a copy of the orders that had reassigned Dublowski. He found the order assigning the sergeant major to Germany, but no copy of the stateside reassignment. That was strange, although there was a possibility the file hadn't been updated yet.
"Hey, Takamura," Thorpe called out.
A head poked around the side of the large monitor. "Yes, sir?"
"Is there a way to check on family members?"
"Family members?" A frown creased Takamura's forehead. "Are you in the dependent personnel database?"
"No, I'm still in the active duty database."
"Sir, we're not supposed to go into areas for which we aren't authorized."
"Can you access family members?" Thorpe repeated.
Takamura reluctantly nodded. "If they have an ID card, they're in the computer. You have to access whoever the person is who has the primary ID card, then you can get to all dependents, or family members as they're now called, off the main page menu. In the lower right-hand corner there should be a small box labeled FM — family members."
Thorpe saw the box where Takamura had directed him. He clicked on it. There were two names listed. Marge, Dublowski's wife, and Terri, his daughter. Thorpe clicked on Terri's name.
He was surprised when a very pretty face appeared in the upper left part of the screen. Black hair framed piercingly green eyes. Terri had grown up in the past four years. The rest of the screen was filled with her basic data that was on the card: date of birth, blood type, expiration date, which was listed as her eighteenth birthday. That birthday was only a month away, Thorpe noted.
Thorpe noticed an asterisk in the lower right corner followed by a string of numbers. "Hey, what's this?"
Takamura walked around and looked. "CID case number."
"Can we access it?"
"Yes, sir, but we'll get a come-back tag."
"A what?" Thorpe asked.
"Someone will know we accessed it and they'll probably want to know why. You can't dig into CID records without authorization." He looked at Thorpe. "We don't have authorization, do we, sir?"
"No, we don't."
"What's happened," Takamura explained, "is that a new level of security has been added to the Department of Defense central database — indeed, every federal database — to prevent unauthorized access. The first, and old, level of security is a password. But since you and I have a password, along with tens of thousands of other people, there was seen a need for more security against unauthorized searches or against hackers breaking into the system illegally. So 'tag' programs were developed and installed. What they are…" Takamura paused, trying to decide how to explain it to the computer-illiterate Thorpe.
"The best way to visualize a tag is that it is sort of a mirror. It picks up someone doing an inquiry or search and bounces it back to find out who that someone is by noting their password and log-on location. Then the security personnel can track down whoever's making an unauthorized search. All the top-secret databases have them. I would assume CID has one due to the sensitive nature of their files."
Thorpe leaned back in his chair while Takamura returned to his computer. Thorpe thought for a while, then picked up the phone. He got an outside line and quickly dialed. It was picked up on the second ring.
"Anti-terrorism liaison, Colonel Parker."
"This is Mike Thorpe, SOCOM weenie here at Fort Bragg," Thorpe said.
"Mike," Parker said. "How's Bragg?"
"New buildings, same old shit."
"Where do they have you?"
"SOCOM G-l."
"You should have called me. I might have been able to get you some real work," Parker said.
"I should have called someone," Thorpe agreed.
"What's up?"
"I need your thoughts on something."
"Shoot."
Thorpe quickly sketched the story of Dublowski's daughter, then waited to see what Parker would say.
"No contact at all with the family, either by the daughter or somebody who might have taken her?" Parker asked.
"No."
"That's not good," Parker said.
"Dublowski didn't say it, but I know he thinks she's dead," Thorpe said. "I knew Terri and I agree with him that she wouldn't run away."
"If she's the victim of foul play," Parker said, "then it was either a random act or part of a pattern. A random act of violence usually involves someone she knows."
"Dublowski would have suspected something if someone she knew was involved."
"What about him?"
"What?"
"Police always look to the immediate family in cases of murder."
"Not no, but hell no," Thorpe said. "Dublowski would never have harmed his daughter."
"The mother?"
"Parker…" there was a warning edge to Thorpe's voice.
"Mike, sometimes you don't know people as well as you would like to think you do."
"Let's leave the family out of it for the moment," Thorpe said. "All right?"
"Okay," Parker agreed. "If it wasn't someone she knew, then it most likely wasn't random. If she'd been in an accident her body would have been found. That really only leaves one thing."