him was like trying to stem an avalanche with a barbedwire fence.
Uniformed soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines of every rank pushed past on both sides, hurrying onward toward a staircase leading up to ground level. Civilians dressed in everything from business suits to electrician’s coveralls joined them in equal or greater numbers. Strange faces streamed by in a dizzying, never-ending parade More than twenty thousand military and civilian workers labored inside the labyrinthine five-sided building, and right now most of them seemed to be pouring up and out of the Washington, D.C., area’s subway system in a lemminglike rush to start the workweek.
Thorn found himself moving forward with the noisy throng propelled onward almost against his will, constantly jostled by elbows and by muttered, impersonal apologies as people bumped into him. He could feel himself tensing up.
He didn’t like crowds. He never had even as a child.
Thorn hated the feeling of anonymity, of being nothing more than a faceless member of the same herd. He’d worked hard all his life to excel, to stand out from those around him. You couldn’t do that as part of a crowd.
Even worse, you lost total control over your own movements and actions. Like a naval convoy reduced to sailing at the speed of the slowest ship, any large group tended to act at the level of the lowest common denominator. No matter what the reason, if enough people in a mob started moving in a particular direction, you either moved with them or you got trampled.
Thorn narrowly avoided a collision with a coffee-carrying Navy captain apparently deep in his own morning fog. He shook his head. This was crazy. Every soldier in Delta Force knew the importance of teamwork but their teamwork was based on a clear understanding of each man’s distinctive strengths and skills. The only skill involved here seemed to be in putting one foot in front of the other with your eyes open. He had the sudden sinking feeling that he was going to miss the tight-knit professional community at Delta’s Fort Bragg compound more than he’d ever imagined.
Beyond the staircase the stream of civilians and military personnel arriving for work began to assume some semblance of order, forming into long lines to funnel through the security station guarding the Pentagon’s main entrance. Everyone entering the building had to flash a badge toward the bored-looking Department of Defense guards manning the station.
With a sense of relief, Thorn veered out of the line he’d been stuck in and headed for a desk near the guard post.
One of the DOD policemen behind the desk looked up from the sports section of the Washington Post. “Can I help you, Colonel?”
“Sure hope so.” He held out his military identity card. “My name’s Thorn. I’m taking up a new post here, but I don’t have a pass yet.” He nodded toward the enormous entrance hall visible beyond the security station. “Plus I’m not real eager to wander around in there without a native guide.”
The cop smiled in agreement. “It’s a hell of a maze, all right, sir.” He took Thorn’s ID and flipped open a thick book in front of him.
“Right. Let’s see if we can find out where you’re supposed to go.”
Squinting back and forth between the card and the book, the policeman ran his finger down a long list of names, ranks, internal addresses, and phone numbers. “Thomas… Thompson…”
His finger stopped moving. “Yep. Here you are, Colonel. JSOC Intelligence Liaison Unit. Director: Thorn, Peter, NMI.”
NMI. No middle initial. That was the bureaucratic abbreviation used to fill in forms for those without middle names. Thorn knew that wasn’t really accurate in his case. He had been born and baptized with a middle name Aloysius. But the name had been his mother’s choice. He’d dumped it when he was eleven, right after she divorced his father and vanished to “find herself.” That was just a year after his dad had come home from Vietnam, and just two years before they went to Iran.
He squared his shoulders, shrugging off the flash of pain that always came with remembering those events even after all this time. He’d survived. His father had survived. And he knew lots of people who were worse off. A whole lot worse off.
The DOD policeman picked up a phone from his desk and punched in a five-digit internal number. “Intelligence Liaison? Yeah, this is the main entrance security station. Listen, your new CO is here.” He listened to the voice on the other end and then turned to Thorn.
“They’re sending someone up to meet you, Colonel.”
Thorn nodded his thanks and stepped back from the desk to wait. He was conscious of curious looks from some of those shuffling past him on their way to work. But not from many. Colonels were a dime a dozen in the Pentagon. Here you evidently had to have three or more stars on your shoulder boards before anyone paid any attention to you.
He’d been waiting for more than ten minutes with rapidly diminishing patience when his “guide” finally showed up. A young red-haired man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, a loosely knotted blue tie, and a security badge clipped to his shirt pocket came zooming out through the entrance, dodged through the crowd funneling in, and hurried over to the desk.
“Colonel Thorn?” the young man asked anxiously, clearly out of breath.
“That’s right.”
“I’m Mike McFadden, sir. One of your junior analysts. The Maestro… uh, Mr. Rossini… sent me up to get you in.” McFadden swallowed.
“Sorry it took so long, but it’s quite a hike.”
Seen up close, the analyst’s appearance inspired even less confidence. Pens and what looked like a pack of chewing gum bulged behind his security badge, and the bottom of his tie showed signs of having been dunked in coffee or a cola not long before. There were even tiny traces of powdered sugar caught in the scraggly mustache McFadden seemed to be trying to grow.
Thorn sighed inside. Like every other special warfare operative, he’d never been a spit-and-polish fanatic, but this was going to take some getting used to. Strike that, he thought, looking at McFadden again. This was going to take a lot of getting used to. He cleared his throat, searching for something diplomatic to say. “You must be very, very good at your job, Mike.’
“Sired “Never mind.” Thorn motioned toward the security checkpoint.
“Lead on, Macduff.”
“That’s McFadden, sir…” The young man stopped and grinned suddenly.
“Oh. I get it. Shakespeare. Right.”
The analyst moved off again, ushering him through the checkpoint and metal detectors. He paused on the other side. “Where to exactly, Colonel? Want to pick up your building pass first? Or go straight to the office?”
Thorn made a quick decision. He needed to find out just what and who he was dealing with in his job. “The office.”
McFadden nodded rapidly and led him past a row of shops selling everything from books to toiletries, walking fast at a pace that almost bordered on a trot. Thorn was glad to see that. It made him think that the red-haired young man might not have just been making excuses for his own tardiness earlier.
Within minutes he was sure of it.
By then they’d gone up and down so many ramps, staircases, and identical corridors that Thorn was starting to feel totally, hopelessly lost. A sign on one wall reading “C-Ring” gave him the only clue to their current whereabouts. They were in the third of the Pentagon’s five concentric rings. Swell. That narrowed it down to somewhere within a few hundred thousand square feet. Real useful.
McFadden held open the door to another staircase. “We’re almost there, Colonel. Like I said, it’s quite a hike.”
Thorn followed him down the stairs and out another door. He stopped dead in his tracks.
They were in a basement corridor. Fluorescent lights glowed overhead at wide intervals. Some were out. Others flickered wildly, throwing misshapen shadows against walls painted a faded institutional green and off the bare concrete floor. Electric trolleys piled high with tools, machinery, and boxes of files whirred by in both directions.
Thorn looked up. The low ceiling was a tangled maze of girders, pipes, and wiring. He lowered his gaze to McFadden. “Is this a shortcut?”
