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The waitress came by and picked up our eain and Deveraux was left looking at ht She said, "I did a stupid thing"

I said, "What kind of stupid thing?"

"I hunt," she said "Now and then Just for fun Deer, ive the meat to the old folks, like Emmeline McClatchy They don&039;t eat well otherwise Pork, sohbor thinks to share But that doesn&039;t always happen Sohbors can&039;t afford to share"

"I remember," I said "Emmeline had deer meat in the pot ere there the first time She offered us lunch You declined"

She nodded "No point in giving and then taking away I got that deer a week ago I couldn&039;t take it back to the hotel, obviously So I used my dad&039;s place I always have, since I caood trestle But then you came up with your theory about Janice Chapht you et on the phone to HQ I had visions of Blackhawks in the air, finding every trestle in the county So I sent you off to ID the wrecked car so you would be out of the way for an hour, and I went over and dug up the blood"

"Tests would have proved it came fro would that have taken? I don&039;t even knohere the nearest lab is Atlanta, maybe It could have taken teeks or more And I can&039;t afford to be under a cloud for teeks or more I literally can&039;t afford it This is the only job I have I don&039;t knohere I&039;d get another one And voters are weird They always remember the suspicion, and they never reht about my old pal Stan Lowrey, back on post, with his want ads A brave neorld, for all of us

"OK," I said "But it was a fairly du to do"

"I knoas I panicked a little bit"

"Do you know other hunters? And other trestles?"

"Some"

"Because I still think that&039;s how those women were killed I don&039;t see how it could be done any other way"

"I agree Which is why I panicked"

"So sooner or later we et those Blackhawks in the air"

"Unless we find Reed Riley first and ask hione," I said "He&039;s probably army liaison at Thule Air Force Base by now"

"Which is where?"

"Northern Greenland," I said "The top of the world It&039;s certainly the Air Force&039;s most remote place I was there once I was on a C-5 that had a problem We had to land there It&039;s part of the distant early-warning systeot radar that can see a tennis serve three thousand et their phone nu to have to do it another way I&039;ll see what comes out of the ork the day after to in reply to that We ate our pie slowly We had tiht train was probably just easing its way out of the yards in Biloxi

Deveraux was still worried about the old man in the hotel, and she didn&039;t want to repeat her charade at the top of the stairs, so I gave her my key and we left the diner separately, ten minutes apart, which left me with the check and time for a third cup of coffee Then I strolled down the street and nodded to the guy behind the desk and headed up the stairs and tapped on my own door Deveraux opened up instantly and I stepped inside She had taken her shoes and her gun belt off, but everything else was still in place Uniforood

We went at it like a junkie heats a spoon, half-fast, half-slow, full of intense anticipation, willing to make the investment, barely able to wait for the payoff She started by taking the elastic out of her hair, shaking it loose, s at me from behind its thick dark curtain She undid the first three buttons on her shirt, and the weight of her naed the loose le of bare skin I took off my shoes and my socks and pulled my shirt tails out of my pants She put one hand on the fourth button on her shirt, and the other on the button on the waistband of her pants, and she said, "Your choice"

Which was a tough choice toand hard about it and came to a firm conclusion I said, "Pants," and she popped the button and a long ed in just her tan uniforet the same choice," and she went the other way and I took off ave her the short version, which was all about unfortunate ti at the start of my career, and a routine liaison visit to a Marine enca passed by a truck which then blew itself up near the barracks entrance, a hundred yards fro

She said, "I heard about an army MP there That was you?"

I said, "I&039;m not sure who else was there"

"You went into the ruin and helped people"

"Only by accident," I said "I was looking for a medic For ht before"

"You got the Silver Star"

"And blood poisoning," I said "I could have done without either thing"

I undid my waistband button and she undid the last of her shirt buttons and then ere in nothing but our underwear That state of affairs did not endure long We set ether and pulled the curtain We grabbed soap and shampoo and lathered up and washed each other up and down, side to side, inside and out No one on earth could have faulted our standards of hygiene, or our approach to insuring them We stayed in the shower until Toussaint&039;s tank ran cool, and then we grabbed enough towels to make sure ouldn&039;t put puddles in an She tasted warm and slick and soapy, and I&039;y We were very patient I figured the ht train was by then north of Columbus, south of Aberdeen, maybe forty miles and fortytih it there was precious little we didn&039;t know about each other I knew the way she moved, and what she liked, and what she loved She knew the saainst her ribs, and the way her ribs moved as she panted, and the difference between one kind of panting and another She got to know equivalent facts about s to do to make my skin flush red, where I liked to be touched, and what droveslow build-up, with a ti a D-Day H-Hour, like infantry the target grow large in the bo and slow, for five whole minutes Then eventually faster and harder, faster and harder, faster and harder The glass on ht on cue It shook and rattled The pipes in the walls made muffled metallic sounds The French doors shook, one sound frolass, a third from the latch The floorboards vibrated like druht side up, her sheriff&039;s star beat a tiny tattoo against the wood, the Beretta in my pocket thumped and bounced, the bed head beat on the wall in a rhythht train

Right on time

All aboard

But this ti

Not us, but the train Its sound was not the sa hard Its distant ru howl of brakes I saw in ainst the ri showers of superheated sparks in the nightti the next in front, as thelocoht, her eyes nowhere, listening hard The grinding howl kept on going, loud, , and then eventually it started to fade, partly because the train&039;s , and partly because it was finally almost at a stop

By my side Deveraux whispered, "Oh, no"

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We dressed fast and were out on the street two hts froave one to me We used the alley between the hardware store and the pharmacy, past Janice Chapman&039;s sad pile of sand, between the loan office and Brannan&039;s bar, and out to the beaten earth beyond She walked on ahead ofWhich didn&039;t surprise ed, committed, reluctant but deter to the railroad track, of course She scraht steel onto the ties She turned south I followed her I figured the engineer would be about twenty ht thousand tons And I knew a little about trains that weigh eight thousand tons Sometimes MPs are traffic cops like any other cops, but our traffic is specialized, in that it includes tank trains, which usually weigh about eight thousand tons, and part of directing traffic at that level is understanding it takes a tank train about a e et there twenty ineer did

Which was not a privilege

Although I doubted there would be , trying to match aard strides to the intervals between the ties Our flashlight bea cloud of sured ere headed right where I had already walked twice that day, where the path through the field to the east crossed the track before heading into the woods to the west Deveraux&039;s own childhood street, in effect,about the saht down and started playing her flashlight bea, and it fell to me to find it All that was left Except, I supposed, a red pulverizedwithin a hundred yards, a molecule here, a molecule there

It was a human foot, aht Not ripped or torn or ragged It was a neat straight line That line had been hit by soe subsonic pulse, like an acoustic weapon I had seen such a thing before And so had Deveraux Most traffic cops have

The shoe was still in place A polished black item, plain andwas still in place under it Its top edge looked like it had been trie opacity was dark ebony skin, ending neatly in what looked like a plaster-cast cross-section displayed in a medical school lecture hall Bone, veins, flesh

"Those were her church shoes," Deveraux said "She was a nice woman at heart I am so, so sorry this happened"

"I neverthe kid ever said to me My mom&039;s out, he said"

We sat on a tie about five yards north of the foot and waited for the engineer He joined us fifteen minutes later There wasn&039;t ht, and the briefest subli open, and then it was all over long ago

"Her church suit," Deveraux said "Black gabardine, white lining"

Then the engineer had slammed on the brakes, as he was required to by railroad policy and federal regulations and state laws, all of which were a totally pointless waste of time, in his opinion Stress on the train, stress on the track, and for what? A ot there It had happened to hied various reference nuulations, and Deveraux asked him if he was OK or wanted help in any way, but he brushed the concerns aside and set off walking north again, a mile back to his cab, not at all shaken up, just weary with routine

We walked back to Main Street, past the hotel, to the Sheriff&039;s Departht, so Deveraux let us in with a key and turned on the lights She called Pellegrino and told him to come back in on overtime, and she called the doctor and told him he had more duties to perform Neither one was happy, but both were quick They arrived alether within a matter of minutes Maybe they had heard the train too

Deveraux sent the much, and they were back within half an hour The doctor left again for his office, and Deveraux told Pellegrino to drive me to Memphis Much earlier than I had planned, but I would have wanted it no other way

63

I didn&039;t go back to the hotel I left directly fro except cash in one pocket and the Beretta in the other We saw no passing traffic No big surprise It was the dead of night, and ere far frorino didn&039;t talk He wasHe just drove He used the saht-shot east - west road through the forest, and then the minor road I had ridden in the old Chevy truck, and then the dusty two-lane I had ridden in the sagging Buick sedan We crossed the state line into Tennessee, and passed by Geruy&039;s pick-up, and then we headed through the sleeping southeast suburb and arrived in don Meot out at the bus depot and Pellegrino drove aithout a word He went around a block and I heard hisand he was gone

The early start gavechoice of buses, but the first of them didn&039;t leave for an hour So I quartered the surrounding low-rent blocks, looking for an all-night diner, and I found a choice of two I picked the same place I had used for lunch three days previously It was cheap, and it hadn&039;t killed s from pans that had been hot since the Nixon administration Fiftynorth and east

I watched the sun coht, and then I slept for the rest of the six-hour ride I got out at the saotten in three days before, at the depot on the edge of the town close to the post where I was based The town bore no obvious si, but all the saun shops, used stereo stores, each one of the on the supportive stream of Uncle Sam&039;s military dollars I walked past the at the diner half aonward I was back on post and in my quarters before two o&039;clock in the afternoon, which was ave me the chance to i I did was take a long hot shower Deveraux&039;s scent came up at me in the steam I dried off and dressed in full-on Class A uniform, soup to nuts Then I called Stan Lowrey and asked hiured if I hurried I could get to DC by dinner time, which was about twelve hours ahead of schedule And I told Lowrey to ured the er I was there, the better chance things would have to coton DC at seven o&039;clock on a Monday evening was going quiet A company tohere the company was America, and where work never really stopped, but where it moved into quiet confidential locations after five in the afternoon Salons, bars, fancy restaurants, townhouse parlors, those locations were unknown to hborhoods most likely to contain them So I skipped the kind of distant chain hotels a lowly O-4 like hts and the cleaner streets and the higher prices south of Dupont Circle Not that I was intending to pay for anything Legend had it there was a fancy place on Connecticut Avenue with a glitch in its back office, whereby uniforuests were automatically billed to the Departement that had never been canceled, or soers, no one knew But the legend said you could be in Arlington Ceht up with you

I walked there slowly, in the center of every sidewalk I used I was vigilant without appearing to be so I used store s as ht No one was paying me any attention I was crowded and jostled at ti ahead to the next thing on their long agendas I got to the hotel without any trouble and checked in under end held up, in that I was asked for no charge card or deposit All I had to do was sign a piece of paper, which I did, as clearly and legibly as possible No point in being the bait in a trap, and then hiding your light under a bushel Not that I had ever been sure what a bushel was Soht would go out anyway, for want of oxygen

I rode the elevator to er and called down and asked for dinner to be delivered Thirtya sirloin steak, which would also be billed to the Pentagon Thirty minutes after that I left the tray in the corridor and went out for a walk, just trawling, just seeing if e would pull anyone out of the shadows behind me But no one reacted, and no one followed I walked around the Circle and then quartered the blocks beyond it, passing the Iraqi Embassy at one extreme and the Colombian at the other I saw ents of various kinds, and men and women out of uniform but clearly military, and men and women in uniform, from all four branches of the service, and numerous private citizens in serious suits, but none of thehtly interested I was part of the furniture

So I went back to the hotel, and I went to bed in my luxurious room, and I waited to see ould happen the next day, which would be Tuesday, the eleventh of March, 1997

64

I woke up at seven and let the Departht I was showered and dressed and out on the street I figured this hen the serious business would begin A noon appointuy based as far away as I was ht before, and Washington hotels were easily monitored It was that kind of a city And I wasn&039;t hiding ht under any kind of small barrels So I half-expected opposition in the lobby, or right outside the street door I found it in neither place It was a fresh springI saas benign and innocent

I h the hotel supplied publications of every type I bought a Post, and a Tie, all slow and unconcerned, but there was no approach and no attack I carried the papers to a coffee shop and sat at an outside table, in full view of the whole world

No one looked at me

By ten o&039;clock I was full of coffee and had read the ink off both broadsheets and no passerby had shown any interest in an to think I had outsmarted myself with my choice of hotel A transient O-4 would normally stay in a different kind of place, of which there were sian to think it likely the opposition would be focusing on the end ofthe way Which would be more efficient for the, and exactly when

Which on, at or before twelve o&039;clock The belly of the beast Much erous Less than three miles away, but a different planet in ters

It was still a beautiful , so I walked Any day could be the last of life or liberty, so s I went south on 17th Street, past the Executive Office Building next to the White House, down the side of the Ellipse, and onto the Mall I turned away froton&039;s monument and headed for Abrahauy and found e and stepped out over the broad waters of the Poto the sa joggers were long gone, and the afternoon joggers were still at work

I stopped halfway across and leaned on the rail Always a wise precaution on a bridge Nowhere for a follower to hide They had to keep on co But there was no one behind ave it fiveon my elbows like a conteain, another three hundred yards, and I arrived in Virginia Straight ahead of ate I was there five minutes later I walked into the sea of white stones Iraves all around me Always the best way to approach the Departraveyard For purposes of perspective

I detoured once to pay ain to pay my respects to the Unknown Soldier I walked behind Henderson Hall, which was a high-level Marine place, and I caate, and there it was: the Pentagon The world&039;s largest office building Six and a half million square feet, thirty thousand people, more than seventeen miles of corridors, but just three street doors Naturally I wanted the southeast entrance For obvious reasons So I looped around, staying alert, keeping my distance, until I was able to join the thin streaot thicker as it funneled toward the doors It turned out to be a decent crowd The right kind of people, for o bad all the time, sometiot in OK, despite a little uncertainty in the lobby What I thought was an arrest tea on duty A temporary manpower surplus That was all So I , nearest to radial corridor number three, bay number fifteen John James Frazer&039;s office Senate Liaison There was no one in there with him He was all alone He told me to close the door I did He told me to sit down I did

He said, "So what have you got forto say I hadn&039;t expected to get that far

He said, "Good news, I hope"

"No news," I said

"You told e said"

"I don&039;t have the name"

"Then why say so? Why ask to see me?"

I paused a beat

"It was a shortcut," I said

And right there thetolerant And patient He called hed a little About how I couldn&039;t even get arrested Then he tried to look concerned About my state of health, maybe And certainly about my appearance The hair and the stubble He put on the kind of brusque and manly voice an uncle uses with a favorite nephew

He said, "You look terrible There are barbershops here, you know You should go use one"

"I can&039;t," I said "I&039;m supposed to look like this"

"Because of the undercover role?"

"Yes"

"But you&039;re not really undercover, are you? I heard the local sheriff rumbled you i for the general population The army is not real popular with them at the moment"

"Anyway, I expect you&039;ll be withdra In fact I&039;m surprised you haven&039;t been withdrawn already When did you last get orders?"

"Why would I be withdrawn?"

"Because matters appear to be resolved in Mississippi"

"Do they?"

"I think so The shootings outside of Kelham were clearly a case of an excess of zeal from an unofficial and unauthorized paramilitary force from another state The authorities in Tennessee will take care of all that We can&039;t really stand in their way Our powers are limited"

"They were ordered there"

"No, I don&039;t really think so Those groups have extensive underground communications We think it will prove to be a civilian initiative"

"I don&039;t agree"

"This is not debate class Facts are facts This country is overrun with groups like that Their agendas are decided internally There&039;s really no doubt about that"

"What about the three dead women?"

"The perpetrator has been identified, I believe"

"When?"

"The news becao, I think"

"Who is it?"

"I don&039;t have all the details"

"One of ours?"

"No, I believe it was a local person Down there in Mississippi" I said nothing