All the Wrong Moves (8 page)

“Thirty-eight. Twenty-nine in the Stinger Gunner/ Avenger Crew Member class, nine going through Surface-to-Air Weapons Officer training.”

“You have access to their duty history. I need to know if any of them ever trained as a sniper or served in the same unit with the men killed in the Colombian shoot-out.”

Dan wanted to tell him to take a flying leap. The signs were subtle but I picked up on them. His bulldog chin went square. His blue eyes turned arctic.

“Someone knew Hooker intended to try to get back into the U.S.,” Mitch said quietly. “When, where, how. They were waiting for him and took him out. That’s murder any way you cut it.”

He let that sink in for a few seconds before continuing.

“Whatever you and I may think of Hooker’s actions and ultimate demise, Captain, I’ve sworn to uphold the law and you to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. No one in this country, not even Patrick Hooker, deserves a self-appointed firing squad.”

Wow! That was some heavy stuff. I was feeling the weight of the Constitution on my shoulders when Dan-O scraped back his chair and dug out his wallet.

“I’ll clear your request with my CO and provide whatever information he deems releasable.” He dropped some bills on the table. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better skip lunch and get back to the school.”

Mitch and I watched him thread through the crowd, shoulders rigid, chin jutting. More than one pair of eyes cut from the captain to us.

“That went well,” I commented dryly. “Think he’ll come through with the requested information?”

“Yeah.” Mitch’s gaze followed the stiff-necked marine. “He knows I can go over his head and get it from Headquarters. Better for the school to cooperate and, if necessary, work damage control with the local authorities.”

MITCH and I departed the Smokehouse two shredded beef sandwiches and a pile of grease-soaked fries later.

I drove him back to the Ysleta station and he gave me the promised two-dollar tour. The yard was buzzing with agents coming off shift and others preparing for the afternoon muster.

Tess Garcia lifted a brow when she spotted Mitch doing tour guide duty and gave me a friendly wave. The warning she’d issued at Pancho’s kicked around in the back of my mind as I gained a distinctly sobering insight into a border patrol agent’s typical duty day. And I thought I had it rough out there in the desert!

After promising to keep Mitch posted on the EEEK data dump, I rattled off in my Bronc. The promise had nothing to do with any desire to see Agent Mitchell again. Okay, maybe a little.

First, though, I needed to check with my boss at DARPA about proprietary rights and release of said data. Turning over a re-synthesized boot print to federal authorities was one matter. Releasing everything else EEEK’s computerized brain had ingested was another.

I spent most of the afternoon in the air-conditioned comfort of my office on Fort Bliss. After checking in with my team and confirming they were hard at it, my first task was to compose and zing off a detailed email to my boss. I could have called, but he spends most of his day in meetings and I wasn’t in the mood for an extended game of telephone tag.

I also took the time to skim through several new test proposals that had landed in my in-box while I was out in Dry Springs, communing with snakes and scorpions. One looked really interesting. Non-line-of-sight goggles that supposedly would let the wearer see around corners, over obstacles and through walls. I got caught up in the specs and spent some time trying to decipher them.

I hit the Post Exchange and Commissary before leaving Fort Bliss. Thinking to reward my team for their reluctant cooperation last night—and ensure their future cooperation without having to resort to begging, pleading or whining—I stocked up on frozen pizzas for Rocky and Pro-Sport Multivitamins with high oxygen radical absorbance capacity (whatever that was!) for Sergeant Cassidy. O’Reilly got the latest issue of
Chess Moves
. Pen a Nature’s Rhythms CD featuring a collection of whale songs.

Since I was in town, I also decided to swing by my apartment and check my mail. That led to an extended session in my very own shower, which I actually had room to turn around in. I followed that unparalleled luxury with a quick wash/tumble dry of my ABUs.

Consequently it was dark when I finally headed back to Dry Springs and almost midnight when I turned off on the spur that led to our site. I was humming along with Travis Tritt when I spotted the flashing red lights in my rearview mirror. Cursing, I glanced at the speedometer and saw I was only going twenty miles over the limit. Hardly worth worrying about out here in Nowhere Land.

Still cursing, I slowed down and pulled over. Moments later, the Dry Springs Volunteer Fire Department’s only pumper roared by. The wash made my Bronco shimmy and rattle like an old tin cup.

I got a weird feeling as I watched the fire engine zoom over a small rise. It looked like it was headed straight for my site.

I shoved the Bronco into gear, stomped on the gas pedal and dug in my breast pocket for my cell phone. I was stabbing frantically at the speed dial button when I topped the rise and spotted the red glow lighting the night sky.

CHAPTER SIX

I reached O’Reilly after three frantic tries and shrieked into my cell phone.

“
Dennis!
What’s going on?”

“The lab’s on fire!”

“No one’s in there, are they!”

“No.”

His reply shoved my heart back down my throat and into my chest.

“What about the lab’s W-K unit?” I asked when I could breathe again. “Did it kick on?”

“Don’t know.”

With all our expensive test equipment, the CHUs we used as a lab had been rigged with a waterless fire suppression system that was supposed to be kind to the environment as well as our computers and electronic media. We’d never had occasion to test it before.

“Gotta go,” O’Reilly gasped, sounding close to hyperventilation. “The fire truck just pulled up.”

“I’m right behind it.”

Mere moments later I brought the Bronc to a screeching halt a safe distance from the pumper. I scrambled out, my horrified gaze on the flames leaping from the lab. Obviously, our handy-dandy, environmentally friendly fire suppression system had failed its first test.

While the DSFD volunteers un-snaked their hoses with Sergeant Cassidy’s able assistance, I raced over to the rest of my huddled squad. Pen was in the faded Stanford University T-shirt she wore to sleep in. Poor Rocky was shaking and twitching almost uncontrollably. Dennis’s frizzy hair stood straight up. Below that orange crown, he was naked except for his black-rimmed glasses and a pair of boxers. I’d never seen his pudgy, milk-white torso before and sincerely hoped I never would again.

“How did it start?”

“No idea.” He shoved his glasses up on the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. “Rock and I had hit the sack. Pen, too. Noel was still working out. He’s the one who spotted the flames and sounded the alarm.”

We all jumped as an arc of water slammed into the metal-sided CHU. With sledgehammer force, it shattered the unit’s one window. To vent the flames, I learned later. At the moment, though, it was all I could do not to groan at the thought of the expensive equipment inside getting doused.

While we watched, stunned, another emergency vehicle came careening down the spur road, its lights flashing and siren screaming. The siren cut off and the black-and-white pulled up a moment later. A tall, lanky individual in jeans and a tan shirt with one tail hanging out emerged. As he crammed on his straw Stetson, I recognized Deputy Dawg from our previous meeting.

“Lieutenant.”

I couldn’t remember his name so I acknowledged his greeting with a nod. His gaze skimmed over my companions, widening a little when it hit O’Reilly before returning to me.

“Everyone accounted for?”

“Yes.”

His relief was patently obvious. Apparently Deputy Dawg didn’t like getting up close and personal with corpses any more than I did.

It seemed like an hour but was probably only about ten or fifteen minutes until the DSFD doused the leaping flames and the fire sizzled out. I was staring in dismay at the blackened exterior shell of our lab when one of the volunteer firefighters approached. He pushed his helmet to the back of his head and squinted at me with his one good eye.

Did I mention that in addition to running the only commercial establishment in Dry Springs, Pancho also serves as its mayor and a volunteer firefighter? If not, forgive me. It’s been an eventful few days.

“We’ll go inside shortly to check for hot spots,” Pancho informed me.

Sweat poured down his face and dripped from the ends of his mustache. A hot August night is a real fun time to rig out in full protective gear.

“We notified the Fort Bliss Command Post when we got the 911 call. They have a unit on the way. Want us to poke around to see if we can determine how the fire started or wait for them?”

Geesh! Shows you my state of mind. I hadn’t even considered jurisdictional issues until this moment.

“Poke away.”

He and one of his cohorts donned self-contained breathing apparatuses. To protect against toxic fumes that often resulted from electrical fires, I was informed. Switching on high-intensity search lights, they disappeared inside the lab.

At that point I rallied my troops and mounted a belated raid on the fridge in the D-fac. We returned with bottles of water and a carton of cherry Popsicles from Pen’s private stash for the sweat-drenched volunteers. They carried their own re-hydrating supplies inside the pumper but seemed to appreciate the Popsicles.

Engine #5 from the Fort Bliss range protection fire station arrived while Pancho and his buddy were still inside the lab. I identified myself to Assistant Chief Rodriguez and his crew, then one of the Dry Springs guys gave him a situational assessment. That basically boiled down to:

“The fire’s out and we still don’t know the cause.”

Nodding, Rodriguez instructed his crew to stand down. Helmets and and self-contained breathing apparatus went back in the unit. Fire retardant turn-out coats came off.

When the team stripped down to boots, pants and T-shirts, I couldn’t help noting that, unlike the Dry Springs volunteers, these pros were almost as buff as Sergeant Cassidy. I was admiring the tableau they presented when Pancho stuck his head out the door. He’d removed his mask, so I had to assume the air inside the lab hadn’t registered any toxicity.

“Lieutenant! You wanna come see this?”

I didn’t. Not really. I knew I’d have to fill out reams of reports regarding damage to government property and dreaded what I might find inside. Consequently, my feet dragged all the way to the front door.

My first, joyous impression was that the interior didn’t look all that bad. Then Pancho swung his high-intensity beam in a slow arc and burst my bubble.

Water seeped from the scorched ceiling in silvery ropes and splattered onto the blobs of melted metal and plastic that used to be our computers. Our racks of test equipment hadn’t fared much better.

“Look’s like the fire ignited over there.”

My heart sinking, I followed the beam to Brian Balboa’s pride and joy. The mega-expensive data synthesizer would never gobble up gigabytes again.

“Could have been a short,” Pancho mused. “Or . . .”

“Or?”

“I dunno.”

He scrunched his lips and shifted them from side to side. His bushy black mustache went along for the ride.

“The scorch pattern looks off to me. We’ll have to wait until morning for a more accurate assessment, but I’m thinking the guys from Fort Bliss may want to send out their arson investigation team.”

“Arson!”

I’m ashamed to admit it now, but the first thing that jumped into my head was a composite portrait of my team. Every member of FST-3, me included, had expressed a desire to nuke, firebomb or otherwise obliterate our forward operating location at least once. Some of us more than once.

Hard on that thought came another. FST-3 had evaluated and rejected some really off-the-wall inventions. One that leapt instantly to mind was a body spray that was supposed to absorb the sun’s rays and convert them to energy pulses. After the spray raised blisters on my face and arms the size of moon craters, I’d sent a certain high school chemistry teacher what might be categorized as a slightly unprofessional rejection letter. He’d reacted with a hysterical phone call that concluded with the crash of glass beakers being hurled against walls.

There were others. I was composing a whole list of bitterly disappointed inventors in my head when I abandoned the lab and accompanied Pancho to consult with Assistant Chief Rodriguez.

NEEDLESS to say, FST-3 didn’t get much sleep that night. The third night in a row, I might point out.

Pen insisted on brewing herbal tea to soothe our frayed nerves. Thankfully, she abandoned the rest of us for bed around two-thirty A.M. Rocky, Dennis, Noel and I immediately dumped the tea and brewed a pot of coffee so strong I was sure it would put hairs on my chest.

Now I don’t want to give the impression we were nervous about this arson business. However, Sergeant Cassidy
did
remove the weight selector shaft from the Universal Gym. His jaw working, he whapped the rigid pole against his palm a few times before announcing that he was going out to patrol our site perimeter.

That left me slugging back coal-tar coffee and debating whether I should shut down operations or put in a priority requisition for a sidearm.

Lest you think the latter another of my more hare-brained notions, I should tell you that I qualified at the expert level on the military standard issue 9mm Beretta at Officer Training School. I guess I should also mention that was one of the
few
portions of the curriculum I excelled at. Doesn’t matter. The idea of strapping on a 9mm semiautomatic was very appealing at that moment.

It was close to four A.M. when I retired to the CHU I shared with Pen. Her snuffles and snorts combined with the 180-proof caffeine kept me wide awake until dawn. As a consequence I was not quite at my best when the Fort Bliss arson investigation unit arrived.