“Okay,” Stafford said, turning around. “I know this is short notice and somewhat mysterious. But here’s what I need first: a tour of this place.
Conducted by you, if you can spare the time.”
As if I have a choice, Carson thought. “Sure,” he said.
“Second, I’d prefer that the staff not know who I am, or, more specifically, what I am.”
He had dark blue eyes, a faintly ruddy Nordic face, and a prominent chin. He looked right at you. Carson was determined to meet Stafford’s eyes. He willed all thoughts of the cylinder — which was hidden, at the moment, all of eight feet away — right out of his mind.
“Once we’ve done the walkabout,” Stafford continued, “I’ll need to make a couple of calls, then maybe we can go to lunch somewhere and I’ll fill you in. Right now I suggest you tell people I’m from DLA headquarters, which, in a sense, is true. Maybe say I’m an auditor. And if there’s a spare empty office, I’d appreciate being able to camp out there.”
Every cooperation, DLA had ordered. Carson nodded, punched the intercom, and told the secretary that he would be taking Mr. Stafford out into the material bays for about an hour. He asked her to set up the assistant manager’s office, which was empty, for Mr. Stafford’s use. She asked whose name she should put on the sedan requisition, since Carson already had a Fort Gillem motor-pool vehicle. Carson told her that Stafford was an auditor from DLA headquarters. She needed Stafford’s grade, and Carson raised his eyebrows at Stafford.
“Fifteen” was the reply. Carson passed that to the secretary.
OS-Fifteen, Carson thought. Three grades senior to him. He knew all about grade creep in Washington, but this guy was no midlevel gumshoe.
He felt the familiar grab in his stomach, but he suppressed it with a deep breath. There was no way they could know.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s walk around a bit.”
When they stepped into the cavernous warehouse, Stafford was glad he had kept his coat on; it was almost cold. The injured tendons in his right arm duly protested.
“Okay,” Carson began. “DRMO stands for Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. Basically what we do here is collect all sorts of stuff from a variety of organizations in the Defense Department.
Technically, surplus defense material, but the word stuff really covers it better. The material is anything the Defense Department no longer needs — surplus raw materials, obsolete repair parts, broken equipment components, or even the equipment itself, office furniture, general supplies. Anything that a DOD agency or military service deems surplus to its operations is supposed to end up in a DRMO.”
“Where you guys auction it off, right?”
“Well, not initially. Remember the R in DRMO. It stands for reutilization. The first thing we do after initial classification is to advertise in-house to all the government agencies what we’ve got here.
“Government’ includes both federal and state agencies, by the way. That way, for example, if an agency is looking for some replacement desks, or maybe a window air conditioner, they can come to the DRMO and see if we have one. They can then requisition it, and get it basically at no cost.
Saves the agency money, and the stuff gets recycled.”
“I had a surplused desk in the Pentagon once,” Stafforrj said. “But as I recall, it was brand-new.”
“That happens,” Carson replied. “The surplused material doesn’t have to be worn-out or even used to come here, although it usually is. It might be a case where an agency buys ten new desks but then loses a fight over office space with another organization, so they can only use eight of them. We’d get two brand-new desks to put out for reutilization. But most of the stuff that comes here of that nature, especially office furniture, is very used and pretty dilapidated, as you’re going to see.”
Two warehouse workers came by on a forklift, forcing Carson to wait for a moment for the noise to subside. Stafford noticed that they didn’t wave to Carson or greet him, which he thought was odd. Workers in a forty-man organization would normally at least acknowledge the boss. On the other hand, Wendell Carson was about as plain vanilla a civil servant as one could find, almost a caricature of a government bean counter.
“The important items, monetarily,” Carson was saying, “are the material that comes in designated to go through the demil process. Demil is short for demilitarization. I guess I need to back up a little. When material first comes in, it has to be classified. Some is going to go directly to the general public auctions: building supplies, pipe, wire, bricks, lumber, cans of roofing tar, barrels of lubricating oil, things like that. But some of it’s fully serviceable military equipment.
Obsolete maybe, but functional. Things like tank gun sights, machine-gun barrels, radar components, fire-control computers, components that’ve been re placed by a new weapons system acquisition but which still work or could be made to work.”
“Who classifies it?” Stafford asked. His arm was aching and he was ready to start walking.
“The organization that sends it down to us is supposed to classify it.
But we are supposed to double-check it. Especially after that helicopter gunship flap in Texas — remember that?”
Stafford did remember. Some guys in Texas had been able to buy enough helicopter parts at a DRMO public auction to reassemble completely a fully operational Army attack helicopter. The press had had a field day with it.
“So anyway, if it comes with a demil tag, or if we determine that it should be demilitarized, we have a separate facility that handles that.
We’ll see that after we see some more warehouses.”
They started walking. The first warehouse was filled with steel racks that went from floor to ceiling. On them was every kind of thing the government bought. Stuff, Stafford thought. Stuff was exactly the right word.
“This is one of the public auction areas,” Carson said. “This material has been through initial categorization and the reutilization process.”
Stafford was amazed at the variety: typewriters, coils of wire, boxes of bolts, ancient computers, adding machines, mattresses, chairs, rolls of printing paper, black-and-white televisions, a box of fluorescent lightbulbs, some of which looked used, new and used airplane tires, and a military vehicle’s olive drab fueling hose.
“This is the junk man, flea market end of the spectrum,” Carson said as they walked down an aisle between the racks. “It’s been available for viewing for five days, and the public auction will be held Tuesday.” He looked at his watch. “I guess that’s tomorrow. The bigger items are outside in the lay-down area.”
“And the high-value military components?”
“That begins in the next warehouse. In a way, the DRMO is set up as an assembly line. Material comes in all the time, sometimes by the freight-car load. Goes into the receiving and general storage area for cataloging and classification. High-value, serviceable, but nondemil material goes into warehouses one and two.
Large, high-value components that have to be derailed go to warehouse five, which is attached to the demil facility. Intrinsically lethal, or HAZMAT, demil materials go to warehouse four, which is right next to five. The warehouses have different levels of security depending on what’s in them. TV cameras, that sort of thing.”
” ‘Intrinsically lethal’? ‘HAZMAT’?”