14
The commanding general of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps dropped into the backseat of the sedan with a grunt and a sigh. He was very definitely not in conformance with the required physical image of the modern Army, and a week in Germany had not helped his weight problem. Car rothers got in on the left side, in deference to General Waddelfs seniority. The official sedan drove off the terminal apron and headed for the main gate.
“Jesus, these cars keep getting smaller,” Waddell complained. “Okay, Lee, where are we with that um, situation, at Anniston?”
Carrothers, eyeing the civilian driver, debriefed Wad dell hi oblique language. “The western unit is conducting a sight inventory. Should be done late tomorrow if there are no discrepancies, day after tomorrow if there is a discrepancy. The southern piece of it redid their paperwork, a sight inventory of the empty tombs, and came up with the same results.”
“Let me get this straight: Isn’t the audit done by the sending agency an audit of what the receiving agency end reports it received?”
It was late, and Carrothers had to think about that for a second. “Yes, sir. That’s how they check on each other.”
“And a sight inventory, on the other hand, physically checks to determine what’s there that wasn’t there before the last shipment.”
“Yes, sir. And if that number does not equal what the southern people came up with, then we probably habeas a corpus.”.
“Wonderful,” Waddell grunted. He was silent for a few minutes as the sedan merged onto the Beltway and headed for Alexandria, Virginia, where Waddell had a town house.
“And everyone involved has been, um …”
“Yes, sir. Everyone.”
“Good. That needs to be airtight. If either CO thinks he needs to make it more airtight, he has my permission. Whatever it takes,”
“Yes, sir.”;. “And I want to see Ambrose Fuller tomorrow first tiling.
What’s the buzz from the E-ring?”
“General Roman briefed the chief of staff. If the CSA went up his tape, I haven’t heard about it. I’ve got his EA primed to give me a heads-up.” “Good. I suspect the CSA has not told our civilian masters yet.”
The general was silent for the rest of the ride, until the.sedan delivered him to his house. While the driver waited in the car, Carrothers got out and walked up to the front door with General Waddell, where he told him what Colonel Fuller had actually said. Waddell’s face sagged.
“I knew it. Damn!” Waddell said. “Okay. We have to be proactive here, Lee. I want people to start thinking about where this thing may have wandered off to. I want a task force set up in my office. Like right now. I want Chemical Corps, intel guys, COMSEC guys, the works. But Army eyes only for now, okay? No outsiders. No JCS staffers. No god damned civilians. If we have to tent this thing, I want people I can trust to keep their mouths shut. I couldn’t say it in the car, but I got a call from the chief of staff.”
“Yes, sir?”
“And he reminded me that all things chemical are in ill repute these days. The whole world wants chemical weapons just to go away, and, by association, the experts who feed and care for chemical weapons. That’s us. The only hook we Yiave to hang our professional hats on now is in the area of defense against chemical weapons. We’re the pros. We know how. But if we lose one, we’re not the pros; we’re the assholes du your.
The Army Chemical Corps as we know and love it will be history.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that,” Can-others said. He hesitated. “But what if we have indeed lost one?”
Waddell pursed his lips and looked out onto the car cluttered street with its faux gas lamps fluttering historically in the night air. Then he looked back into Carrothers’s eyes with all the force of his thirty-five years in the Army and said, “Lose a can of Wet Eye? That just cannot happen, General.” Then he went inside.
If the motel was in Graniteville, Stafford concluded, it would necessarily have a mountain view. The entire town, what there was of it, had nothing but a mountain view, nestled as it was in a deep valley between three green-clad granite peaks. The town itself was small, consisting of one main drag that led the state road north into and around the courthouse square. All the side streets appeared to go for only a few blocks before running into one of the mountains.
He drove the white government Crown Vie carefully along the main street, which was lined with stores typical of small-town America: clothes, hardware, stationery and office supply, most complete with second-story false fronts. The traffic sign at the square directed drivers to circle the square to the right, yield to anyone coming from the left, and to continue all the way around to get to the granite quarry. From the square, there appeared to be three options: one north, one east, and a third, which led up to what looked like a quarry on one of the western slopes. The courthouse itself was a traditional Georgia landmark, red brick with lots of gingerbread, complete with a white clock tower and slant-in parking on three sides. The obligatory white marble soldier monument to the heroic Confederate dead, its back turned pointedly toward the perfidious North, leaned precariously on the eastern lawn of the courthouse.
Stafford drove all the way around the square twice, dodging pickup trucks and looking for signs for the motel.
He finally took a chance on the road leading north up and out of town between the two highest hills. As he left the square, he picked up a cop car in his rearview mirror. He passed a large Baptist church, a closed-up diner called Huddle House, a dilapidated feed store, three vacant lots, and a lumberyard as he left the town square. As he crossed a deep ravine through which a mountain stream cascaded down towards the town, the motel appeared on his right hand side. The cop car stayed with him.
He pulled into the motel parking lot and shut the car down. There was a small Waffle House diner surrounded by pickup trucks in front of the motel. The motel itself was a single line of ten rooms that stretched back toward a creek, with the office on the end nearest the diner. The motel appeared to be at least fifty years old, but the place was clean, at least on the outside. A small red neon light in the office window proclaimed that there were indeed vacancies.
He got out and stretched. It had taken a little longer than he had expected to get to Graniteville, but a brilliantly sunny day and the north Georgia mountain scenery had been worth the drive. The air was fresh and cool after the hazy heat of Atlanta. He had called Carson’s secretary and told her that he would be out for the day, but he had not told her where he was going. The cop car, something of an antique Ford Fairlane, complete with a bubblegum dome on top and a huge chromed spotlight on the driver’s side, pulled into the diner parking row. The lettering on the side of the car proclaimed longstreet county sheriff’s DEPARTMENT.
Stafford got out, put his suit jacket on, and reached back into his car for his briefcase and an overnight bag. Because of his arm, he had to pull them out one at a time. When he straightened back up, a large uniformed man was approaching him. He wore a dove gray Stetson hat and had huge black eyebrows over down-sloping dark, almost black yes, whitish gray sideburns, and a large black handlebar mustache that reminded Stafford of pictures of Wy att Earp. He wore a tan uniform shirt and trousers, brown boots, and a large chrome-plated pistol on his right hip. The expression on his face seemed generally friendly, for which Stafford was suddenly glad.