by Kat Martin
“You got an idea that’s gonna get us paid and save our asses?”
“We gotta find ’em first, but yeah. We’ll get our money and better yet, we won’t get dead.”
Digger walked over to the breakfast bar, where a six-pack of empty Coors bottles lined up on the counter like dead soldiers. “I’m listening. But this idea better work or instead of the girl, Weaver will be gunning for us.”
NINE
After coffee in the room the following morning, they headed back to the base, pulling into a McDonald’s drive-through for a Sausage McMuffin with Egg on the way.
Jessie had noticed that Bran’s personal clock ran a few minutes early, which put them ahead of schedule for their ten o’clock appointment with Brigadier General Samuel Holloway, US Army director of Chemical Materials Activity, her father’s direct superior.
After a brief wait, his assistant, a young soldier with a slender build and wheat-blond hair, led them down the hall to his office, which was pretty much standard military, with framed commendations on the wall and family photos on the desk.
General Holloway rose from the chair behind his desk. He was around five-ten, with graying brown hair, very straight posture, and a severe expression. Jessie had read all about him, fifty-six years old, highly decorated, married, with two grown children who each had two kids of their own. He’d been in charge of both US chemical storage depots, Colorado and Kentucky, for the past four years.
“Ms. Kegan. Let me start by saying I’m sorry for your loss.” He turned to Bran. “Captain Garrett, I assume you’re here unofficially, as Ms. Kegan’s companion.”
“Actually, I’m here as Ms. Kegan’s bodyguard. So far there have been two failed attempts on her life.”
The general’s gray-brown eyebrows drew down in a frown. He studied the bruise on Brandon’s cheek and the cut next to his lower lip. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“We believe the attempts have something to do with Colonel Kegan’s death,” Bran said.
“That’s right, General,” Jessie added. “Finding the truth about what happened to my father is the reason we’re here.”
Holloway rounded his desk, giving himself a moment to consider the information. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me what’s going on.”
“That’s the problem, General,” Bran said as they sat down in the visitor chairs across from his desk . “We don’t know what’s going on.”
“We’re hoping you can help us figure it out,” Jessie added.
Seated once more, the general’s gaze swung to her. “Do you mind if I call you Jessie? Through your father, I feel as if we’ve already met.”
“I would prefer it, General.”
“I must tell you, Jessie, the CID began an investigation as soon as the theft of the munitions was reported. Everything they came up with pointed to your father as the man behind the crime.”
“What about after he died?” she asked. “Has the CID continued to investigate?”
“We need to know who else was involved, so yes, the investigation is ongoing. Unfortunately, so far very little new information has turned up.”
“How were the weapons stolen?” Bran asked. “I mean, physically moved off-site.”
The general’s cool blue gaze didn’t waver. “I’m afraid that’s classified information, Captain.”
“So what can you tell us, General?” Jessie asked.
Holloway leaned back in his chair. “I can give you a little basic information you might not know. The fact is, chemical weapons were never actually used by the United States. But they were stockpiled after World War II at a number of bases. In 1985, Congress ordered the destruction of all the aging munitions.”
“I’m aware,” Bran said.
“The Alamo facility was built to eliminate the weapons stored in underground bunkers on the site. When the project is completed, the depot will be closed.”
“In the meantime, however,” Bran said, “someone was able to gain access and steal an unknown quantity of those weapons—an amount, I’m guessing, that is not a number you would like known to the public.”
The general’s features tightened.
Bran leaned toward him. “The army needs to find out where those munitions have been taken and recover them. We need to prove Colonel Kegan was not involved in the crime. I suggest we work together to our mutual benefit. What do you say, General?”
Holloway’s lips thinned. Clearly he didn’t like being pressed. “Knowing you would be here today, Captain, I took a look at your service record. I know you were Delta, that you were in Afghanistan and God knows how many other places around the globe. You have an impressive list of commendations and medals that rival the best of our soldiers. Before you were injured and left the army, you were clearly a valuable asset to your country.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Here’s what I can tell you. The munitions are normally transported by truck from the bunkers they’re stored in to the destruction facility. In this case, the truck carrying the weapons was diverted, plundered, then put back into service. Its payload was missing and not discovered until several weeks later. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I understand there was a computer glitch,” Jessie said. “That’s the reason the theft wasn’t discovered right away. Clearly someone hacked your inventory system and made changes to cover the disappearance.”
The general’s already straight posture stiffened even more. “Who told you that?”
Jessie just smiled. “Like you, General, there are things I’m not at liberty to say.”
The general rose abruptly from his chair, putting an end to the meeting. “I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m out of time. As I said to you before, Jessie, I’m sorry for your loss. On a personal level, I liked your father very much.”
She and Bran also rose to their feet. “Then you’ll be pleased when his innocence is proven,” Jessie said.
A muscle ticked in Holloway’s cheek. “In regard to the threats against your life...has it occurred to you that whoever stole the weapons might believe your father gave you information about the theft, something they don’t want revealed?”
“Has it occurred to you, General, that the men who are trying to kill me don’t want me to continue my investigation because they don’t want me to find out who actually stole the weapons?”
The general fell silent. His gaze turned to Bran. “I can talk to the provost marshal, see if I can arrange some sort of military protection for Jessie.”
“Since we have no idea who’s trying to kill her or who we can trust, at present it’s not a good idea.”
The general gave a curt nod of agreement. “Perhaps you’re right.”
He spoke to Jessie. “I can’t guarantee how any of this is going to shake out, but I can assure you of one thing—you won’t find a man whose skills make him more capable of protecting you than Captain Garrett.”
“I know,” Jessie said softly.
“Thank you for your time, General,” Bran said. “If there’s anything more you can share with us, I hope you will.”
The general remained stoic as Jessie left the office and walked next to Bran back to the SUV. He hadn’t given them much, but maybe he didn’t know a whole lot more himself. Didn’t mean she was giving up. She was the daughter of a colonel in the US Army. Retreat wasn’t an option.
Jessie sat quietly as Bran pulled out of the parking lot.
“It’s almost noon,” he said. “Let’s get some lunch before we drive down to the depot.”
The facility was an hour southwest on I-25, and Jessie had to admit food sounded good. “I like that idea.”
Using the disposable phone, she got on the internet as they drove out of town. On Tripadvisor, she found a Mexican restaurant called La Fiesta that had a ton of five-star reviews.
Mexican music pl
ayed in the background and piñatas hung from the ceiling as they walked inside. A pretty dark-haired woman in black slacks and a white blouse seated them at a corner table and took their orders, a taco and enchilada for Jessie, chile verde with homemade tortillas for Bran. Both of them ordered iced tea.
“I love Mexican food,” Bran said, biting into a chunk of pork wrapped in a tortilla.
“Me, too.” Jessie snagged a crispy tortilla chip and crunched it down. But as she ate the delicious meal, her mind strayed back to their meeting with the general and his mention of Bran’s military record.
She took a sip of iced tea. “I know you left the army after you were wounded in Afghanistan, but I never really knew what happened.”
Bran swallowed the bite of chile verde he had taken. Wariness crept into his features. “Your dad never said?”
“He didn’t like to talk about it.”
“Neither do I.”
“Do you think maybe you could, just this once? I’d really like to know.”
Bran’s features tightened. When he looked at her, pain surfaced in his beautiful blue eyes. With a sigh, he leaned back in his chair. “Being Danny’s sister, I guess you have a right to know.”
She thought of Danny and her throat tightened. Bran glanced away and she could almost see his mind spinning, flashing backward in time to a day he desperately wanted to forget.
“I was wounded in the same skirmish that killed your brother. Maybe you already knew that. Maybe your dad told you.”
“He said you were badly injured in the battle.”
A muscle worked in his jaw. “At the time Danny was shot, we were fighting side by side in a remote, abandoned Afghan village. The intel was lousy and the mission went sideways. There was gunfire all around, pinning us down. Danny spotted two enemy soldiers rushing up behind us, like they came right out of nowhere. I should have seen them, but I didn’t—not until Danny spun and fired.”
Bran fell silent, his eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder, as if he were watching a movie playing in his head.
“What happened then?” she gently prompted, afraid he wouldn’t say more.
Bran looked at her, something dark and terrifying in his eyes. When he spoke, the words tumbled out frantically, as if he couldn’t get them said fast enough.
“Danny took the bullet that was meant for me. He died instantly. I was hit three times before the bastard came at me with a knife. I took him out for Danny. I carved him into pieces and I was glad.”
Shock held her immobile.
For several moments, neither of them spoke. Then as if he was coming out of a trance, Bran shook his head. “I made it. Danny didn’t. That’s pretty much it.”
There was far more to it than that. But she could see what talking about it had cost him, could still recall his pain-ravaged face. She wanted to reach out and touch him, make it all go away.
She noticed a faint tremor in the hand that held his fork.
“You make it sound like it was your fault,” she said softly.
“It could have been. I’ll never know for sure.”
“The army didn’t think so.” Her dad had told her that much.
“No.”
She reached out and covered his trembling fingers, stilling the motion. “It was war, Bran. There’s no way to know what’s going to happen.”
The turbulence returned to his beautiful eyes. “We were like brothers, Jess. You don’t get much closer than two men fighting together in combat. I would have taken a bullet for him. As it turned out, Danny ended up taking one for me.”
She swallowed past the thickness in her throat. “That’s what brothers do, Bran. They look out for each other.”
He made no reply. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded gruff. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I mean it. He’d be glad you’re alive.” She smiled at him softly. “So am I.”
Some of the anguish seemed to fade from the lines of his face. She had read about survivor’s guilt. Bran had loved Danny. He would always carry a thread of guilt that he had come home and his friend had not. It made her heart hurt to think of it. She was coming to care for Bran far more than she should, though she knew it was a mistake.
He went back to eating, shoveling in the food with more gusto than before. She hoped their talk had eased his mind a little. The last thing her brother would have wanted was for his friend to suffer.
They finished the meal and headed outside, their thoughts returning to the trouble they were facing. Their meeting at the depot with project manager Robert De La Garza lay ahead.
Jessie hoped the conversation would be more productive than the last time she was there.
TEN
The Alamo Chemical Depot, fifty miles southwest of Fort Carson, sat on twenty-three thousand acres of flat, arid land dotted with sagebrush. Concrete bunkers beneath mounds of grass-covered earth housed the weapons set for destruction.
The plant itself was an eighty-five-acre facility composed of buildings, storage units, and pipelines created specifically to destroy one of the last two remaining US chemical stockpiles.
Bran had done his homework on the facility, digging up as much as he could off the internet. It helped that Jessie had been to the depot when her father was commander and had learned so much about it.
Carol Mason, Robert De La Garza’s administrative assistant, was a dark-haired woman in her thirties, a civilian, like the rest of the employees at the plant. She led them to a beige, flat-roofed, unremarkable structure, where men and women in yellow hard hats, the Weidner emblem on the front, roamed the grounds. Employees working inside the actual destruction facility wore full-body hazmat suits, including gloves and helmets.
“The chemicals are destroyed by a neutralization process,” Carol explained as they walked. “Followed by a biotreatment procedure. It’s all done with the use of sophisticated robots.”
“From what I understand,” Bran said, “not all the weapons can be destroyed that way.”
“That’s right. There’s a second procedure, an explosive system that’s used for problematic munitions whose deteriorated condition won’t allow them to be destroyed by the automated system.”
Carol paused in front of a door. “We’re here. Mr. De La Garza is expecting you.” She opened the door and Bran walked past her into a simply furnished office with a desk, metal file cabinets, and a black ergonomic computer chair. A pair of metal-framed chairs upholstered in beige vinyl sat in front of it. A single window behind the desk looked out on a series of huge stainless pipes and more flat-roofed buildings.
Robert De La Garza rose from behind his desk, tall and lean, with the olive skin and coarse black hair of his Hispanic heritage. Introductions were made and De La Garza shook Bran’s hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“Thank you for seeing us,” Bran said.
De La Garza turned to Jessie. “I’m surprised to see you back here, Jessie. I thought I’d answered your questions when you came to me before, but apparently not to your satisfaction. Have a seat.”
She sat down and Bran sat down beside her.
“I was hoping by now you’d have more details on how the theft was actually accomplished,” Jessie said.
De La Garza leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as he considered his reply. “I suppose you deserve to know as much as I’m at liberty to tell you.”
Bran tried to get a read on him, but he was careful to school his features. De La Garza was a powerful man in a powerful position. The theft of deadly chemical weapons was a black mark against him that could destroy his career.
“Our assumption at this point,” he began, “is that the operation was carried out by a small number of people. We aren’t sure how many. As you probably know, trucks loaded by soldiers at the bunker sites are used to transport the munitions to the destruction facility. On the
day of the theft, the truck was loaded as usual, but instead of following the normal routine, the driver simply drove away.”
“No one noticed when the truck didn’t show up at its destination?” Bran asked.
“A GPS tracker monitors all the vehicles’ locations. Twenty-three thousand acres is a huge parcel of land. There was a programming glitch that allowed the truck to go missing without anyone noticing. Apparently it was unloaded somewhere off-site, then returned to the plant.”
“Why weren’t the missing weapons noticed when the truck finally arrived?” Jessie asked.
“Our facility is highly automated. When the trucks reach the plant, they aren’t unloaded manually. A mechanized system does the work. The computer registered delivery of the munitions, and the driver returned to the field for another load, and so on until the end of the day.”
“So the vehicle arrived empty,” Bran said, “but the weapons weren’t discovered missing for more than two weeks.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s when Charles Frazier found the computer discrepancy and reported the missing munitions to my father,” Jessie added.
“Why didn’t Frazier come to you?” Bran asked.
“He was respecting the chain of command. I’m in charge of civilian operations. The weapons belong to the military. Unfortunately, your father decided not to immediately report the theft.”
Jessie straightened in her chair. “Because he wanted to be sure it wasn’t just another computer glitch.”
“So he said. However, Charles Frazier believed it was critical to public safety to make the theft of the weapons known.”
“What about the driver?” Bran asked. “Where is he now? He must have been arrested.”
“Rollie Owens. He quit before the theft was discovered, said he had a better job offer. Someone was hired to take his place and that was the end of it. The police interviewed a number of individuals and put out a warrant for Owens’s arrest, but so far there’s been no sign of him. And the fact is, this is primarily a matter for the military.”
