She quickly wrote down a number and hung up and dialed the phone. “Captain Love, please. Yes, I’ll wait.” In a moment, Lannie came on the line.
“Lannie, it’s me.”
“Hey, babe. What’s shaking?”
“That’s what I called to ask you. I heard there’s some kind of alert going on. You know anything about it?”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I’ve got my sources.”
Lannie laughed. “So who is he?”
“C’mon, Lannie. What do you know?”
“You heard right. It came down from Department of the Army. Big-time. People are bouncing off the walls up here.”
“The downsizing commission’s behind it.”
“Right again. We’ve got to get the 24th in the field by 0600. They’re going out to the Harmony Church training area. They’re going up against the 29th Infantry in a combat competition. It’s real hush-hush. The whole thing’s supposed to look like a regular alert till they hit the field; then they’re going to pull the trigger and give them ops orders and turn ‘em loose. Not even the General knew it was coming. He’s going out of his mind.”
“Are you going?”
“Does the snow fall in Manitoba on the black bears in the woods? I’ll call you and let you know what’s going on.”
“That’d be great, Lannie. Thanks.”
“Gotta go, Kara.” She hung up.
Kara dialed the number Mace gave her. He answered.
“It’s some kind of a combat contest. They’re going to run you guys out to the field, and just when you think you’re going to turn around and go back, they’re going to give you an ops order. You’re going up against the 24th.”
“No shit. You’re sure about this?”
“Yeah. Do me a favor, will you? Keep an eye on Parks. I don’t think he’s going anywhere as long as you guys are in the field.”
“Will do.”
She heard another truck engine start, and a voice yelled, “Sarge! You’re wanted up front!”
“I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Mace . . . wait.”
“Gotta go.”
“Mace, I—”
He hung up.
She walked into the kitchen and put on water for a cup of coffee. Spooning some instant into a cup, she poured the boiling water and opened her briefcase, spreading her notes on the kitchen table. It was time to assemble the facts of the Sheila Worthy murder as she knew them, and to note what she didn’t know.
She flipped through a yellow legal pad to a blank page. At the top she wrote, “Sheila Worthy time line.” She shuffled through her notes, checking the times she had recorded.
2100—Sheila leaves Cornelia Apts. Witness: Lt. Carrington.
2130—Beckwith leaves Officers Club. Witness: Capt. Taylor.
2145—Beckwith arrives at child-care center. Witness: Mrs. Bennett.
2200—Beckwith arrives at home. Witness: Mrs. Beckwith.
2330—Sheila’s car spotted in river. Witness: Kara and Mace.
2350—Sheila removed from car. Witness: Kara and Mace.
2358—Helicopter lands, Sheila taken to hospital. Witness: Kara and Mace.
0017—Sheila pronounced dead at hospital. Witness: Maj. Hollaway.
0030—Beckwith enters hospital. Witness: Me.
Kara stared at the page. Mrs. Beckwith had said her husband got home at 2200, but Mrs. Bennett had said he arrived at the child-care center around 2145. With children injured and the roof blown off, he must have stayed longer than fifteen minutes. She made a note to check how long it took to drive from the child-care center to General Beckwith’s quarters.
She tapped the page with her pen. She was sure Mrs. Beckwith was lying about what time her husband got home. He was alone in his staff car that night. There had to be some kind of records kept on usage of the staff car. She knew drivers signed the cars out from the motor pool. She wondered if mileage was noted on the sign-out sheets. She wondered if anyone saw the general that night in his staff car.
There was work to be done. Kara made a vow. She would fill in every gap in the time line the night Sheila was killed. The truth was in the details. Somewhere on that time line were the moments when Sheila was stabbed in the neck and panicked and drove into the river. If she filled in the gaps, she knew she’d find those moments and she’d find the killer.
Chapter Seventeen
The sun was shining brightly out the window of the Chief of Staff’s office when General Ranstead walked in carrying a thick briefing book and a roll of maps. The office was huge, on the southeast side of the Pentagon building, overlooking the Capitol in the distance. The chief, General Paul Carson, was sitting at the head of a conference table at one end of the office. His aide was talking on the phone, and several colonels were sitting along the sides of the table.
“Have you got the plan, Jack?”
“Yes, sir.” Handing the map to one of the colonels, he took the seat at the far end of the table and put the briefing book down on the table. “I did it just like you said, sir. We sprang an alert on them and you’ll deliver the ops order in the field. They never knew what hit them.”
“Great. That’s exactly what I wanted.”
“I’ve got only one question, sir. I’ve run this ops order out in two directions, like you said. Operation Hell-fire is a standard assault-and-defend exercise. Third Army would defend the objective, and Fifth Army would have the job of taking them out. Operation Native Son is the peacekeeping exercise. Units of the Third Army would be the peacekeepers, and Fifth Army units would be the partisans. The problem I have is this, sir. We haven’t run one of these peacekeeping exercises before. I’m wondering if it’s fair to Generals Beckwith and King to spring a brand-new exercise on them with such short notice.”
General Carson chuckled. “That’s the whole point. It’s not fair. I don’t want these guys doing a song and dance they’ve soft-shoed through a hundred times before. I want them hanging out there, wondering what in the hell hit them. One of them is going to be sitting in this chair in a couple of months. I want to see if either one or both of them panics when we hit them with the plan.”
“Well, sir, if anything’s going to panic them, this is.”
“Excellent. I spoke to the Secretary about it yesterday. He’s going on-site. The President has asked him to be his eyes and ears on this thing. He’s feeling a lot of heat from the Hill on this appointment. Did you see Meet the Press on Sunday morning?”
“No, sir. I was down on the Rappahannock, fishing.”
“Lucky you. Maldray was on there pushing Beckwith, and that Democrat from Wisconsin . . . what’s his name?”
“Fuegel.”
“Right. Fuegel was on there pushing King. The Secretary told me the President feels this whole thing has gotten way too political. He wants a military spin put on the selection of the next chief of staff. You know how the Republicans are always chipping away at him on Defense issues. Well, he knows he’s vulnerable, and the last thing he wants is to be seen as making a political appointment to a sensitive military position such as this one.”
“Things have changed since you were appointed, haven’t they, sir?”
“I don’t recall this kind of naked politicking six years ago.”
“No, sir. But Maldray ruffled his feathers when you were reappointed three years ago.”
“That’s right. He did.”
General Ranstead smiled as he opened the briefing book. “All right then, sir. You say the President wants a military spin? I think Operation Native Son is just what the doctor ordered.”
“Run it down for me, Jack.”
“Sir, what we’ve done is put a modern twist on a classic situation. King’s 29th Infantry Regiment will hold this ground here.” General Ranstead leaned over the table and tapped the map with a metal pointer. “His people will be the fierce partisan guerillas in the fictional country of Blucania. They’ve held the territory for three years and used their positions to terr
orize the surrounding citizenry, which opposed them in the bitter civil war that has been going on for more than six years. Somewhere far from their position, in the capital city of Cernivitzia, a peace treaty has been signed that has yielded their territory as part of an overall regional settlement of the conflict. Beckwith and his partisans aren’t happy about it. They don’t want to make peace. They want to hang onto your turf and continue to make war on your sworn enemies.”
He tapped another spot on the map. “General Beckwith’s 24th Infantry will be NATO peacekeepers. It will be their job to dislodge General King and his Blucanian partisans from their hard-won and fiercely held territory. Here’s where it gets interesting, sir. The earth has shifted under the feet of the modern American fighting man. They’re giving us situations like Haiti and Somalia and Bosnia, and it’s no longer our job to go in there and kill everything that moves and call it a victory. These situations are political, and the role the Army is being asked to play has become increasingly subtle. Success isn’t measured in dead bodies counted, or tons of ordnance rained down on target. That’s where the scoring of the exercise comes in. We’re going to try something new. We’ll use the laser scoring system we’ve used in countless other field exercises, but we’re going to total the scores in a completely different way. Beckwith’s partisan fighters have been hardened in the civil war, but we’re going to tell them they are facing a vastly superior force of peacekeepers. It has been made clear to the peacekeepers that any kind of serious resistance to the peacekeeping efforts will be met with massive retaliation. Therefore, King’s methodology of resistance will have to be closer to escape and evasion than to conventional warfare. It’ll be his job to make it as difficult as possible for General Beckwith’s troops to move him out of his positions without resorting to conventional warfare. The fact is, if King’s partisans start shooting up the woods, the peacekeepers are going to rain down holy hell on their heads, and they will sustain unacceptable losses. So General King’s task is going to be keeping his troops under control. If his partisans start slaughtering peacekeepers, they’re going to be cleared to use their superior firepower, and he’s lost the game.”
General Carson stood up and studied the map. “What about Beckwith? What’s his dilemma?”
“General Beckwith’s job is to displace the partisans from the area as nonviolently as possible. He will be empowered to respond to partisan attacks with massive retaliation, but he’ll score higher if his peacekeepers surround and subdue the partisans. In this exercise we will score a partisan unit as successfully displaced if General Beckwith’s troops surround the unit and score a capture. On the other hand, we’ll score General King’s partisans as successfully holding their ground if they can avoid being surrounded and captured. Killing the enemy isn’t the point in this exercise. Surrounding and subduing him is. We’re going to score this thing just like an election. We’re giving them forty-eight hours. If the majority of the partisans haven’t been captured at the end of that time, King wins. If Beckwith’s peace-keepers have surrounded the majority of the partisans, he wins.” General Ranstead looked up. “What do you think, sir?”
“How are we going to score a capture, Jack?”
General Ranstead took a magic marker and outlined a large area on the map. “We’re giving them a zone of operations that is approximately fifteen square miles. This will represent the territory seized in the civil war. If General King keeps his partisans inside this zone without being surrounded and captured by Beckwith’s peace-keepers, his men will win the exercise. King will be free to do whatever he wants inside the fifteen-square mile area, including surrounding and capturing General Beckwith’s units. My scorekeepers will accompany every unit down to company level, and they’ll make the determination as to whether or not a unit has been surrounded.”
“So either Beckwith or King will be able to score captures of the other’s units?”
“Right, sir.”
“It’s brilliant, Jack. These guys aren’t going to know what hit them. When can we pop this thing?”
“I’ve got it set up for 2300 hours tonight, sir. My feeling is, if we wait another day or two, word about the exercise is bound to get out. You know the Pentagon, sir. This place leaks like a rusty pipe.”
General Carson laughed. “Do it, Jack. Set up a plane and let’s go down together. I want to see their faces when we give them the ops order.”
General Ranstead closed the briefing book as one of the colonels rolled up the map.
“Consider it done, sir.”
Chapter Eighteen
“Frank, have you got a minute?”
Hollaway looked up blankly from his desk. “Sure. Come on in.” Kara flopped onto his sprung-seat sofa. Hollaway put away the paperwork he had been studying. “You had lunch yet? We could go over to the PX and pick up a couple of biscuits. Everyone on post is out in the field on alert. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”
“No, thanks.” She dug into her briefcase. “I’ve been going through Sheila Worthy’s personal effects, Frank.”
“Right. How’s it going?”
“Did you know she had a cell phone?”
Hollaway looked half-startled. “We didn’t find one in her car.”
“It must have been one of those hand-held jobs, got washed away in the flood.”
“That makes sense.”
“I got Southeastern Air-Tone to pull her bill, Frank. There are two very interesting calls she made the day she died.” Kara handed him several pages, stapled together. He flipped through the bill.
“You’ve identified these calls?”
“I ran a reverse on every one of them. Her office, her apartment, the local 76 station, making an appointment for an oil change. Then we come to the two calls I high-lighted in yellow.”
“What are they?”
“They’re calls to the secure switchboard on post, Frank.”
“What does that mean?”
“She called the switch, and they patched her through on a secure line to someone else.”
“I know they’ve got a secure-patch system here, but—?”
“Frank, she was calling someone with access to a secure line. Look at the time of the calls.”
“2240, 2242.”
“Evans said she died sometime between 2100 and when we found her at 2345. She was in her car, Frank, talking on her cell phone. These were the last calls she would ever make, and she was calling the guy she was going to meet out there. How many people do you figure have phones that tie in to the secure lines on this post, Frank?”
“I don’t know, but I could find out.”
She passed another page across his desk. “I already did. Twelve. Six of them general officers. King. His deputy, Michaels. Beckwith, his deputy, Simons. Seger, commander of the Infantry School. His deputy, Lanford. Then there’s your boss, Colonel Desadiro. And the garrison commander, Colonel Porche. There are four other secure lines in each MP substation around the post.”
“Maybe she dialed a wrong number.”
“She called the secure switch twice. She knew where she was calling.”
Hollaway studied the page. “Yeah.”
“Sheila made these calls only minutes before she died. None of these men are named Parks or Taylor. We’ve got a new set of suspects, Frank.”
“No, we don’t. If she made these calls to a secure phone just before she died, how could one of these men be out there close enough to kill her?”
Kara paused. He had a point. Hollaway rubbed his chin. “Maybe she was calling one of the MP substations. Maybe she saw something, an accident or a downed tree, and she was reporting it.”
“If all she was doing was reporting an accident, why would she call the secure switch, Frank? Why didn’t she just dial 911?”
“Good point.”
“This thing could drop the killer right in our laps if we could figure out where those calls went.”
“I know.” Hollaway paused, leaning back in his chair. �
��You don’t actually think one of these guys killed her, do you? I mean, these are the six or eight most powerful men on this post.”
“We’ve got to go where the investigation takes us. I think we’ve got to canvass every person with a phone tied into the secure switch.”
“Do you really expect that the killer is just going to up and admit he received her call? I mean, that would be tantamount to an admission of guilt.”
“Then we’ve got to do it some other way. Maybe there’s a computer tied in there we don’t know about. Maybe we can trace these two calls past the switchboard.”
“I just have a hard time looking at this list with six generals on it, thinking one of them might be the killer.”
“Let’s keep this between us for the time being, huh, Frank? I mean, if we’re wrong, and it gets out we’re looking at these guys as suspects, that would be the end of both of our careers.”
“You’re right about that.”
Kara stood, straightening her skirt. “Frank, we’re going to get this guy. You know that, don’t you?”
“I sure hope so.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Hey, Sarge! The captain’s lookin’ for ya! He’s gonna have my ass if I don’t—”
“I’m coming, Radley. Where is he?”
“He’s up front in the lead vehicle, Sarge. Somethin’s up. I don’t know what it is, but the captain, he’s real eager I get you up there.”
Radley, a skinny little guy from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, was Mace’s right-hand man in the platoon. He’d been in the Army for a couple of enlistments and had found a home as an E-4 squad leader. His enormous dark brown eyes gave him an uncanny ability to see in the dark, making him especially useful in night maneuvers. He could make out terrain features at great distances on nights when cloud cover obscured the moon and stars.
Mace and Corporal Radley made their way along the line of Humvees and trucks idling at the side of the road. The company’s vehicles were the last ones in the long battalion convoy. They found Lieutenant Parks and Captain Long sitting in the right front seat of the company-command Humvee talking on the radio. When the captain saw Mace, he signed off and handed the receiver to his RTO.
Heart of War Page 18
