What the hell—?!
Billings saw the grenade, and he tried to get out through the other door—
There was a muffled
Without thinking, Stevens reached for his side arm.
“Belay that, Sarge! It’s just puke gas. You behave, you’ll be telling the story to your buddies over beer tonight. But move crooked, and you bleed out right here and now. They don’t pay you enough, you know.”
Stevens nodded. “Yeah. I hear you.” He moved his hand away from his gun’s butt.
Twenty seconds later, the kiosk door opened. The night wind cleaned out the vestiges of the greenish smoke to reveal Billings on his knees, heaving his guts out, the partially digested remains of his most recent meal splashed all over the floor in front of him. Stevens hated emetic gas. It was worse than pepper spray, though not as bad as DG—diarrhea gas. Put that together with PG, the dreaded P-G-D-G double-ended spew combo? Oh, that was messy, messy. . . .
The driver ran into the kiosk, and used a cuff-strap and manacle on the still-vomiting Billings.
“Turn around, put your hands behind you.”
Stevens did as he was told. He felt the cool touch of a plastic wrist-cuff wrap around his wrists. He thought about lunging backward and trying to knock the guy silly, a head butt to the nose, but even as the thought crossed his mind, a second car skidded to a stop to his right, and five guys piled out, hooded and goggled and dressed in black, armed with submachine guns.
His mama didn’t raise any foolish children. Sergeant Theodore M. Stevens lost the idea of further resistance in a big hurry. These guys knew what they were doing.
The massive gate swung open.
How could they do that? The gate, like the kiosk door, was keyed to thumbprints—this watch, his, Billings’s, and those of the OOD back in the MP HQ, plus their relief. Nobody else was supposed to be able to open this kiosk or gate if they weren’t in the system.
Somebody’s head was gonna roll for this, for damn sure.
He sure hoped it wouldn’t be his. . . .
1
Four-Star Army General Patrick Lee Hadden—should have had five stars, but the continuing War on Terror wasn’t an officially declared conflict. There hadn’t been one of those for a long time, not since WWII.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a most unhappy man. He said, “Okay, you’ve seen recordings we did with the MP sergeant and his PFC, and other personnel inside Fort Stephens. You’ve seen the reconstruction as put together by our computer people. What you did not see were the actual recordings from the gate camera, or any other security cameras on the base, because the attackers shut those off just as easily as they did everything else, including opening the gates and getting into the base.”
Net Force Commander Thomas Thorn nodded. “Yes, sir. And you want to know how they did it.” They were alone in Thorn’s office, which was pretty amazing—Hadden could have called the meeting in his office. There was no way Thorn could have turned down that invitation.
“No, I don’t give a rat’s ass how they did it. What I want to know is
Thorn didn’t smile. When the Chairman of the JCOS said something like this, he might be joking. Then again, he might not be. And since Thorn and all of Net Force had left civilian control, shifted from being a branch of the FBI to the military, General Hadden was their master. Thorn didn’t like it, but he had to either live with it or leave, and he wasn’t ready to walk out just yet.
“The Army’s computer people tell me what happened, and even how it happened, in theory, but that’s not what I need. I want these bastards tracked down.”
“You’ve got some pretty good people in the Army.”
“That’s right, we do. But your people are better—and
Hadden must have seen it on his face. Not that it would have taken a particularly perceptive man to see that. Thorn’s surprise—and his anger—were undoubtedly very apparent. “It’s a new technicality,” Hadden said. “You’re heading up a military outfit now, son. And besides, we’ve promoted Abe Kent to general and he reports to you. You need a commission and a rank higher than his, so no more ‘Commander.’ You are now ‘General Thorn.’ Two stars to Abe’s one.”
Still stunned, Thorn said, “You can’t do that! You can’t
“Son, if I want, I can get a million GIs, swabbies, jarheads, flyboys, and National Guardsmen to stand on their heads and whistle ‘Dixie’ in four-part harmony. The President will have to sign off on it, of course, but the new Terrorist Powers Act gives me all kinds of leeway. I’ll have the paperwork put through—it’s a done deal.”
Thorn blinked. Whoa. This was getting really strange. But, as he thought about it, it did make a certain twisted sense—from their point of view, anyway.
“Can you do this job, Thorn?”
“General” Thorn gave him a little half smile and nod. “If it can be done, yes, sir. I’ll have Jay Gridley contact the Army computer experts and pick it up.”
“Good.” Hadden stood. Thorn stood, too. “My aide will provide the information. Your man will go through you and General Ellis.”
He turned and marched out of the room, leaving Thorn standing there alone.
“
A thought hit him. Some of all this, now that they were no longer part of the FBI, was tolerable because he knew he could walk away if it ever got too bad. But now that he was in the military, could he still quit if he wanted to?
Damn.
Marissa was going to
There were two guards inside the kiosk at the south entrance, and a third man outside.
Lying in the wet grass in his gillie-suit, Carruth watched the guards through powerful binoculars, the magnification such that he could see the faces of all three. They looked bored.
You’d think the Army would be on high alert after the hit in Oklahoma. But that was the Army—they weren’t the Navy. . . .
The ex-SEAL grinned.
He thumbed the LOSIR microphone to narrowcast a message to Hill. The light used to transmit wouldn’t be
