Senior Investigator David Stafford stood out in the hallway with his boss, Colonel Parsons, and listened impassively to the sentence of exile.
“Atlanta, Georgia, Dave. There are worse places in this world.”
Stafford nodded his head. slowly, not looking at Parsons or at any of the people passing them in the busy hallway.
“And you know I’m doing this to save your ass, don’t you? Ray Sparks is the southeastern regional supervisor. You and he go back. He’s willing to stash you there, no questions, no bullshit. You go down there, you work this DRMO auction thing, and you keep a low profile. Get your arm well, get Alice and the divorce off your mind, and then we’ll bring you back once everybody up here calms down.”
Stafford nodded again, not really listening. This hallway meeting was the culmination of the worst eighteen months of his life. He felt like telling the colonel, Thanks, but why don’t I just resign, make it easier on everybody? Except that, at the moment, he had nowhere to go, a mortgage and car loans to pay, a resume with political feces all over it, a useless right arm, a wrecked marriage, and some serious enemies in high places right here in River City. It wasn’t like he had a lot of options … The colonel was watching him, waiting for some kind of reply.
“I appreciate it, boss,” Stafford said, still staring down at the floor.
“I hate it, of course. I hate every bit of it.” Then he looked up at the colonel. “But I really do appreciate it. Where the hell is Georgia, anyway?”
Parsons grinned. “That’s the ticket. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. But remember, no bomb throwing. No making big deals out of a little deals.
This DRMO case has been around for a while, and there’s probably less there than meets the eye. So once you get there, take your time. Your TDY orders are ready down at Travel. Get ‘em and get gone, before the Communists find out about it.”
The colonel clapped him once, forcefully, on his left shoulder, thank God, and then he was alone in the hallway, conscious of the stares and the muted comments. He took a deep breath and headed down to get his travel orders. The sooner the better, the colonel-had said. Well, what the hell, he thought. It might be a nice change to go someplace where his first name wasn’t Goddamn.
On Friday evening, Carson returned to the DRMO parking lot after getting dinner at a local restaurant. He parked his green Army-issue pickup truck in his reserved spot in front of the building, then lowered his window. He could hear over the soft purr of the truck’s engine the demil line running, the sound of rending metal clearly audible behind the admin building. He rolled the window back up and shut the truck down.
Eight-thirty. About thirty minutes more process time on the evening shift. The assembly teams would have left hours ago, after lining up at the feed conveyor belt with stuff to be shredded. Then it would be just the demil operator left to run the line until the conveyor came up empty, after which he would secure the plant. Carson, as manager, controlled the shift assignments. He had made sure Bud Lambry would be on this evening’s shift.
Carson had stopped by a metal shop out on State Road 42 and had a machinist cut a section of pipe about three inches in diameter, shine it up on a lathe, and fit two threaded caps over the ends. The size had been right, but the weight was wrong, so he’d had them fill it with sand. The lathe operator had made a joke of asking Carson if he was making a pipe bomb. Carson played along, told him he was going to blow up the IRS building in Chamblee, just outside of Atlanta. The lathe operator had asked if he wanted some help.
His plan was to take the sand-filled cylinder to his office, switch it with the real one in the red tube, and then carry the thing across to the demil building and explain to Bud that the operation was” blown, that they were going to have to destroy the cylinder. The only problem would come if Bud insisted on opening the red packing tube, at which point he would see that the Army warning labels were missing from the substitute cylinder. Carson didn’t know whether or not Lambry had ever opened the outer tube, but he was going to have to take that chance. He had tried peeling one of the labels off the actual cylinder and it had immediately torn, probably by design, to indicate tampering. The way to do this was to go fast, to go in there looking all hot and bothered, glancing over his shoulder for cops, and pitch the thing onto the demil line before Lambry had time to think about it. Lambry was a dumb ass; it should work.
He looked again at his watch and then pulled a portable cell phone out of his briefcase and punched in the DRMO number, followed by the extension for the demil control room. The phone rang five times before it was picked up. Lambry’s voice came over the line, barely audible over the shattering noise of the machine. “Demil. Lambry.”
“It’s me. How much longer on the run?”
“Thirty minnits, mebbe. You got sumpthin’?”
“We’ve got us a big problem. I’m driving in. I’ll come over there.
Nobody around, is there?”
“Naw. Whut kinda big problem?”
“Tell you when I get there, Bud,” Carson replied, then hung up. Five.minutes later, he was walking across the tarmac, carrying the red packing tube with the fake cylinder inside. The outside lay-down area was lighted with large rose quartz halogen security lights. He walked confidently across the tarmac, the noise of the demil machine, which the crew all called “the Monster,” getting louder — as he approached. Then he stopped. There would be no way to talk in there, not with the Monster going full bore. Instead, he went over to the adjacent warehouse, the one from which the Monster was fed, and let himself in through the keypad lock system.
The lights were on in the feed-assembly area. He checked to make sure no one else was in the building. The feed belt was running, and he could see that there were about sixty feet of material left on this shift’s demil run. The belt was crawling forward at about two miles per hour, slowly enough to give the machine in the next building time to chew.
Even with the rubber noise-barrier strips in the opening between the two buildings, the racket from the Monster was crashingly loud.
He walked over to the steel door connecting the warehouse and the demil building. He looked through the small window in the door, but it revealed only the business end of the Monster, with its gaping maw at the end of the belt, and those seven huge band-saw blades descending voraciously into the materials consigned to destruction. He couldn’t go through, for only the demil operator had the keys. Mounted just to the right of the door was a telephone. Looking around again to make sure no one else was in the warehouse, he punched in the control console number.
“Demil. Lambry.”
“Leave it running and come next door, Bud,” he said, almost shouting.
“We’ve gotta talk. And we don’t have much time.”
He hung up before Lambry could protest. He stepped away from the connecting door and walked — back over to the conveyor line near the screened opening of the inter building aperture. A minute later, there.was a shadow of movement in the small window in the door, and Bud Lamdry stepped through, wearing his hearing protectors and hard hat above his long-nosed face. He saw Carson and paused, as if unsure of what was going on; then he came over, his eyes widening at the sight of the red tube.
Carson hastily explained that the sale was off, that the client had backed out. They were saying the thing was much too hot, too dangerous.
“They said we’d better destroy the damn thing before the Army finds out.
They suggested we put it through the demil machine. They also told me not to be there when it goes into the Monster.” “Why?” Bud said, an anguished expression on his face. “That thang’s gotta be worth some money some wheres!” Carson shook his head. “They said no way. Too hot. Too dangerous. Said there’d be hell to pay when the Army found out it was missing. That they’d execute someone for losing it, much less for.trying to sell it.