The Best Defense

by Todd A. Stone

  Val held up her hand. “I know,” she said quietly. “Unless you slept with him.”

  Christine just stared, astonished that Val would understand.

  Val gave a sad, knowing nod. “Sexual blackmail finds its way into the Army too, Tampier. You’re not the first woman to have to deal with it, trust me. And the sorry part is that you won’t be the last.”

  Val read Christine’s question in the young lieutenant’s eyes.

  “Yes, Lieutenant, me too. A long time ago. The story’s the same; the details just change. It goes something like this: a young, pretty, and very unsure of herself officer finds herself in trouble, either by her own mistake or by being set up. She’s concerned about her career, concerned about living up to all the expectations that her family has for her and that she has for herself. Then someone sets her up for a fall. She sells herself short rather than admit failure. When it’s all over, she feels very used and very cheap, and by the time she works up the guts to do something about it the jerk is gone, out of country, maybe out of the Army, or so much time has passed that the woman feels that no one will believe her. It’s not the norm, but it happens more often than we’d like to believe.”

  There was a knock on the door. The duty NCO’s runner brought them their coffee. Val nodded silently and the soldier understood—officer talk. He sat the two cups down and was gone. Val downed about a third of hers before she continued.

  “So he got you to have sex with him,” Val said, leaning forward. “Probably only once, right?”

  Christine nodded.

  “Yeah, another notch on the bedpost. Then the jerk gives you a key to his office and desk, and tells you to check them nightly, that part of your ‘extra training’ is to inspect for unsecure documents and secure them, and that he’ll check on you each morning, or something like that, right?”

  Another nod.

  “So he covers his ass and makes you an accessory. Not too clever, but it was enough to keep you quiet.” Val sat back. Christine’s gaze once again fell to the floor.

  “You get over it the best you can,” Val said. “How? By realizing you’re not alone. By forgiving yourself—this scumbag had you pegged and he’d obviously pulled this before. He’s a pro. The shame is his, not yours.” She took another sip of coffee. “In the basic course they don’t teach you much about what to do in these kind of situations, do they?”

  “No, Ma’am. I took a special course in how to service nuclear warheads, but nothing like this.”

  Val nodded. “What we need to do is press charges, although it won’t do much good; Major McRyen is Mr. McRyen by now. Resigned for the good of the service.”

  Christine nodded again, her face set in anger. She’s getting mad, Val thought, that’s good. It’s the first step. The second step is getting back to work.

  “Lieutenant Tampier, I can guarantee you that I did not take that report from the Ops safe.” She ran her eyes over the ransacked office. “A fact which you can attest to. Since I don’t have it, and you obviously don’t have it, then who does? Who else has access to that safe?”

  Christine thought for a moment. “Only Sergeant Speers and Specialist Crawford, Ma’am. But I checked the security paperwork. Nobody’s logged in to the Ops section this weekend, and nobody’s logged in as having opened the safe. The last entry is when you and I closed it on Friday.”

  “Have you called in Speers and Crawford?”

  “I figured I’d find it in here.”

  Val snorted. “Let’s get those two in here.” She stood and opened her door.

  “Staff duty!”

  The sergeant hustled down the hall.

  “You go find Sergeant Speers and Specialist Crawford. First, though, you go by the checkpoint and you see if either, or both, of them have left the depot this weekend. Whatever you find out, you say nothing to Speers or Crawford, you just bring them straight here.”

  “I’ll call the barracks to see if they’re there.”

  “Negative. You go personally, and take your runner. You two drag those individuals here, if necessary.”

  “But Ma’am…”

  She waved her off. “We’ll leave the door open. We can hear the phones from here; we’ll cover them. Now hustle up, I want that info and those people here ASAP!”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” A few minutes later two sets of footsteps went down the hall and out the headquarters’ front door.

  “Now,” said Val as she settled back into her chair, “we wait.”

  ~*~

  Luka waved and smiled as he stuffed his pass back in to his pocket and the checkpoint guards motioned him forward. The heavy wire gates to the depot slid open and he drove through. Luka pulled into the headquarters’ parking lot. He stopped the car, pulled the key to the building’s back door from his pocket, then took a moment to calm himself. Inside his coat the munitions report felt like a lead weight. Yet why worry, he thought—had he not entered the compound and the headquarters on many Sundays before? Had not the previous commander given him a special, personally signed pass with authorization to do so? Luka shook his head. How many people, he wondered, really believed the American major’s thin story that the envelopes Luka routinely left on McRyen’s desk contained nothing more than English language versions of Russia Today and The World Dispatch? He snorted. The pictures inside the packet he delivered each weekend would never make it to the pages of any magazine sold over the counter, but there was no accounting for taste. And the American had dutifully left the necessary documents where Luka could find and photograph them while his office received its special, weekend cleaning.

  No one suspected, thought Luka as he walked to the back entrance and unlocked it, no one cared. Only the depot’s sergeant major remained hostile and suspicious, but the major had quickly put him in his place—out to pasture.

  Luka smiled to himself, his confidence growing. This would be easy. He had only to replace the documents, then he could begin his weekend chores. There would be no more information, of course, but he would have to maintain the ritual of tidying up on Sunday until the other operatives identified the new commander’s weakness.

  And she is a woman, Luka said to himself. Finding her weakness should be quite simple.

  As quietly as he could, he padded down the hallway. Then he stopped and smiled again. The duty sergeant and her assistant were nowhere in sight. The headquarters was quiet. He let out a low chuckle, then took a key to the Ops section door from his pocket.

  Ziven would be pleased.

  The new boss would be pleased.

  With a click of the tumblers and a creak from the worn hinges, the door opened. Luka slid inside, closed the door behind him, and moved to the safe.

  ~*~

  Inside the commander’s office, both Val and Christine sat lost in their own thoughts, so much so that the sound of footsteps in the hallway failed to penetrate their heavy curtains of concentration. In fact, a full minute passed before the sounds of Luka’s stifled laugh and the Ops section door opening and closing finally sank in and registered. Val’s eyes narrowed. She sat up slowly.

  Christine started. “What is it?”

  Val put her finger to her lips, then rose and motioned for Christine to follow her. Noiselessly, the two women walked down the hall, Val’s eyes and ears searching to pinpoint something that she only felt was there. From inside the Ops section came the dull clunk of the safe’s handle sliding into the open position. Val stopped, laid one hand on the Ops section door handle and slowly, painstakingly turned it—the door was shut, but not locked. She looked at Christine, raised one hand, and gestured. The lieutenant nodded her understanding—they would go in together. Val took two breaths to steel herself, grimacing at what she might find inside—which soldier would be the rat?—and slowly slid the door open.

  ~*~

  Luka had the report back in its folder and the door half-closed when he heard Christine’s voice behind him.

  “Luka!”

  He jumped up and spun around.
Two American officers stood in the doorway.

  Val frowned. So there’s our rat, and the rat can hear.

  Luka’s mind raced as he saw the American major walk through the door, the lieutenant coming up alongside her to block his exit. There would be no talking his way out of this, for to talk meant to blow his cover entirely. But it was blown already, Luka decided as the women came closer. All that mattered now was to get out.

  He searched the room for an escape. The windows were barred, and they were too small to jump through in any event. The only way out was through the two Americans. He maneuvered behind the office desks, shoving chairs in between himself and his pursuers, pitching coffee cups at them as he tried to line up a clear shot to the door. The two women ducked, but still came closer. He pulled a file drawer from a cabinet and hurled it at Val, then ripped a phone from the wall and flung it at the lieutenant.

  “Just give it up, Luka, or whoever you are,” the American major said to him. “We’ve got your ass surrounded. You won’t make it out of here.”

  His eyes narrowed. “That, bitch,” he spat out, “is where you are wrong.” He grabbed a letter opener from a nearby desk. A poor weapon, thought Luka, but it might serve the purpose.

  “I’ll take the left, Ma’am,” said the lieutenant, “you head right.” She broke from Val’s side to flank him. Luka grinned.

  “No!” shouted the major. “Stay with me!”

  But Christine’s move gave Luka his opening. He snatched a coffeepot from its stand and sent it flying toward Val, and as she ducked he scrambled over the top of the desks, taking a swipe with the letter opener at Christine. She jumped back, leaving his way clear. Pulling chairs behind him to slow them down, he was out the Ops section door. He dashed down the hallway, their shouts behind him. For an instant he slowed and turned his head to see the two women coming out of the office, not hearing the creak of the headquarters front door as it opened.

  As he turned his head forward, the last thing he remembered seeing was a huge, rain-soaked figure in a sweat suit standing squarely in front of him. A fraction of a second later Luka, moving at a dead run, took the steel I-beam of Denight’s extended fist squarely between his eyes.

  ~*~

  With a roaring headache and two armed soldiers to keep him company, Luka sat bound and gagged in a small office.

  Two doors away in Val’s office, Christine punched numbers into Val’s computer while her boss did her best to resist her sergeant major’s hard sell.

  “Now, Ma’am,” said Denight, his voice a mixture of tent meeting preacher’s and used car salesman’s, “since you’ve taken over, you’ve made a lot of changes. You’ve done damn near everything right. In just a few short weeks you’ve made this depot more efficient and more effective, and it’s going to get nothing but better, I can tell you, because the troops are cussing you something awful.”

  “Thank you. I think.”

  “You’re welcome, Ma’am. You’ve also been very efficient with this security breach, Ma’am. Are we not conducting a one hundred percent inventory of all classified material, and did you not increase the security level by two stages? Did you wait to see what might happen, Ma’am, or did you move to save time by getting these actions going right away?”

  “Of course we took several actions at once, Sergeant Major. But I still don’t see...”

  “No, Ma’am, apparently you don’t,” Denight said, his voice going lower and quieter for effect. “We are being inefficient. We are wasting precious time. How long did the did the intel folks say it would be before they could get here to pick up our rat?”

  “They have to call in and then drive or get a chopper here. Depending on when they leave, they won’t be here for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “There you have it. We’re wasting valuable time. I don’t need twenty-four hours. I only need about thirty minutes. If you and the lieutenant here will just leave me alone with that scumbag for half an hour, I’ll have more information out of him than the embassy people, or his own people, will get from him in four days.”

  “Sergeant Major!”

  Denight held up his hand. “I won’t leave a mark on him—ones that we can’t explain, anyway. And I won’t hurt him—much.”

  Christine looked up from her computer, glancing first at Val, then at Denight, then back to Val.

  “That sonofabitch is the enemy,” Denight continued, jerking his thumb to point at the office down the hall. “He would have iced you both without a second thought. He knows something and moreover, something’s in the wind. I can feel it, just like in ‘Nam when Uncle Ho’s boys were out there, but you couldn’t see them. You knew they were coming for you but you didn’t know when. You let me at him for thirty minutes, nah, make it fifteen, and I’ll have him singing like a damn canary bird.”

  There was a long, heavy silence. Then Val slowly propped her elbows on the desk, laced her fingers, and stared straight at Denight. Christine kept her eyes on her commander.

  “We play by the rules,” said Val.

  “He didn’t. Whoever he works for won’t either. And you’ve already broken some of the rules.”

  “No.”

  “Goddamnit, Ma’am,” blurted out Denight, exasperated, “there’s too much at stake here!”

  Val glanced at Christine, then looked Denight straight in the eyes. “You’re right, there’s entirely too much at stake. So I say ‘no,’ and I expect your support, a hundred and ten percent.”

  An NCO knocked on Val’s door and entered.

  “Ma’am, there are two Russian Special Security people at the gate—here’s their IDs and paperwork.” She handed her the papers. “They say they’ve come to pick up the prisoner.”

  Chapter Eight

  Headquarters building

  Infernesk Munitions Depot

  Val and Denight watched the depot’s gates close behind Luka and his two Russian escorts. Denight knit his brows and scowled—the two agents were doing their best to take in the depot’s layout without seeming to look around. A strong, cold wind had chased away most of the rain, and cloud shadows and sunshine took turns with the depot.

  Denight stood outside, watching as the Russian agents slid the handcuffed Luka into their sedan’s back seat. The sedan did a neat three-point turn, then sped away. The clouds let the sun have its turn. Val turned to go back to the headquarters building, but Denight stared first at the mountain shoulders around Castle Infernesk’s tower, then after the Russian auto, then back at the green mountainside.

  “C’mon, Sergeant Major. Let’s see how Ops is doing putting the pieces back together.”

  For a few steps they walked without speaking, then Val broke the awkward silence.

  “They’re efficient, Sergeant Major, you have to give them that. They showed up here briefed and with prisoner custody paperwork in hand. And they got here quickly.” She checked her watch. “CENTCOM said our people couldn’t get here for at least twenty-four hours.”

  He turned to look down the empty road, then ran his eyes over the mountain hillsides ringing the depot. The sun had managed to force a temporary hole in the clouds. A tiny glint of the sun off something shiny sparkled for a second among the green, then was gone. Inside him something registered, and Denight stiffened and clenched his fists. “Too damn quickly, Ma’am. Somethin’ ain’t right.”

  Inside Val’s office, they found Christine pushed back from her computer, her mouth turned down at the corners.

  “Lieutenant, what did your number crunching turn up?”

  “I was right, Ma’am. I only wish I wasn’t. I’ve run this three times. We simply don’t have enough thermite grenades to neutralize more than ten percent of the nuclear rounds. And that’s only half the problem.”

  Val scowled. “Why don’t we have enough?”

  “The nearest I can tell, Ma’am, it’s because the Russian Army keeps two sets of books.”

  Denight scratched his head. “You want to explain that?”

  “Every R
ussian nuclear capable unit was authorized so many thermite grenades, depending upon their mission and the number of sensitive weapons they have,” Christine said. “Our units do the same. Those grenades are part of a munitions destruction kit. The idea is that if the unit is about to be overrun, they set a thermite grenade on the nuke round and neutralize it, rather than let it fall into the bad guys’ hands—which would mean our guys. So far so good. But when all the artillery and missile units deactivated, they had to turn in their basic loads of ammo.”

  “So to clear their paperwork,” Denight said, “the thermite went with the ammo they turned in while their nukes came here. And the thermite can’t be in two places at once.”

  “Most of it would have eventually gone to a conventional munitions storage facility. Plus, thermite has a shelf life; if you keep the grenades too long they become unstable. So units turned them in for destruction, and because of budget cuts they never reordered, or those orders were a low priority and are still waiting to be filled. That’s what happened to ours.”

  “How do you know?” Val asked.

  Christine blushed. “Because I’m the nuke officer, Ma’am. When I first got here I checked our thermite inventory. Every one of our grenades was near or at the end of its shelf life, and a full case of them was outdated by more than two years. We even had some leakers. So I had to turn them all in. We got a valid ‘due in’ document number on our requisition, though.”

  “That piece of paper won’t do us much good if we have to use it on those rounds.”

  “No, Ma’am,” Christine replied, looking crestfallen.

  “Hey, don’t sweat it, Lieutenant,” interjected Denight. “Your ol’ sergeant major here can work wonders with just a little C4 and a little time. If you don’t believe me, you can ask the Charlies who were in a bunker complex in the central highlands. I blew them so sky high I imagine a few pieces of them floated over this way.”

  Christine half smiled. “Nice try, Sergeant Major, but it won’t work. You need a thin stream of molten metal to slice through the steel jacket and fuse the uranium core. If you blow it to pieces, you spread lethal radioactive material all over the area. And yes, Ma’am, I ran the numbers on the amount of C4 we have versus the minimum amount necessary to destroy the rounds—given that it was technically possible, which it’s not. We’re short by half a ton.”