President's assassin sd-5

by Brian Haig

  Incidentally, I found it both instructive and disconcerting to be on the other side of the table, observing the behavior of military officers through civilian eyes. The military is a brotherhood, or, these days, I guess, a brother-sisterhood. Even though most of the men in this room dressed like civilians, and even looked like civilians, they did not think or act like civilians. Jennie and I were here to stick our noses into an institutional embarrassment, and from their aloofness, shifty gazes, and occasional conversational hesitations, clearly we were not part of the tribe, nor were our efforts appreciated. Nobody was going to lie or deliberately misinform us, but getting the full truth could prove difficult.

  I kicked Jennie under the table. She looked up at me, and I twirled my finger through the air. It took a moment before she got it. She reached into her pocket, withdrew her tape recorder, and placed it on the table. The officers all stared at it. She did not turn it on, but it sat there, a warning that only truth better be spoken inside this room.

  Jennie smiled at them and said, "A completely harmless formality."

  It didn't go over particularly well.

  Anyway, we chitchatted a while about the murders, and I offered them a condensed version of the Jason Barnes story while we waited for Colonel Johnson to return with those three files. The coffee came and my mood brightened.

  Despite his job title, General Tingle, it turned out, was a fairly amiable and even charming guy, with a good gift for gab, and he even tried out a few jokes on us, though his timing was off and they came off a little flat. You could tell he was a little unfocused and stressed, thinking ahead about how it was going to look for Uncle Sam's Army when word got out that weapons intended to kill Al-Qaeda assholes and bad Iraqis had been used to exterminate important members of the U.S. executive and judiciary branches.

  For some weird reason, I thought of the inscription on the side of the directional Claymore mine that reads, "Point this side toward the enemy." Yet in every conflict there is always the guy who's exhausted or nervous or hurrying, and the enemy moves into his sights, and he squeezes the triggering mechanism, and ten thousand tiny pellets fly up his own ass.

  Despite the best precautions and the best intentions, sometimes shit just happens.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Colonel Johnson returned, and in his beefy fists were three thick files. General Tingle suggested we adjourn to the long conference table in the corner of his office. A general's wish is your command, and we got up and rearranged ourselves.

  Tingle read each file first, then me, and I handed them to Jennie, who slid them down the table to Colonel Johnson. Having perused many CID files, Tingle and I raced through, whereas Jennie kept thumbing around, searching for the relevant pages and passages.

  We were nearly halfway through when another gent wandered into the office. He wore a gray suit and was about twenty years younger than the other agents, nor did he look really sneaky, just slightly shifty. He walked directly to the far corner of the room, and Colonel Johnson left the table and the two of them engaged in a quick whispered conversation.

  As I read, I learned that the M72 Light Antitank Weapon comes stored in boxes of two, and the Bouncing Betty mine- the proper nomenclature being the M16A2 mine-comes stored in boxes of four. Thus it seemed a fair assumption that Jason and his pals had at least one more LAW, at least three more Bouncing Bettys, and, hopefully, no suitcase nukes or canisters of anthrax some idiot packed in the wrong box. But it happens.

  One theft occurred from an arms storage bunker located at Fort Hood, Texas. The bunker was inventoried on November 16-everything on hand and shipshape-and was then re-inventoried on December 16, a perfunctory monthly check done by a lieutenant detailed from a local infantry battalion. During the second inventory, the lieutenant noted that three containers of 81mm mortar rounds, two containers of LAWs, and three boxes of M16A2 mines that were present for duty at the first inventory were now AWOL, and he dutifully filed an appropriate Oh-Shit report.

  The second open case was a bit more interesting, and from our perspective, more hair-raising. At 2:00 a.m. on the night of December 22, a flatbed truck pulled up to the Port of Galveston Pier 37 Roll-on, Roll-off Terminal. The driver dutifully showed the night guard a set of authorization documents and was allowed entry to the facility. Three bulk containers were loaded on board the truck's flatbed, and the vehicle and crew drove off into the steamy night. One container held forty boxes of LAWs, another held sixty containers of M16A2 mines, and the third held forty M16 automatic rifles. A routine check the next morning revealed that nobody in existence had dispatched the truck, and with the impressive clarity of hindsight it was swiftly concluded that the authorization documents were forgeries, and expert ones.

  I truly hoped this wasn't the one. Jason and his pals could have enough stuff to turn D.C. into Baghdad.

  On the other hand, the earmarks were there-superior organization, boldness, and cleverness. Not good.

  The last theft was more ambiguous, more haphazard, and for its sheer brazenness, in a way the most ingenious. On February 9, also at Fort Hood, three different units engaged in marksmanship training on three different firing ranges reported the disappearance of munitions. An infantry unit at a LAW range reported two boxes of M72 LAWs mysteriously missing. Twenty minutes later, an engineer unit training at an explosives range reported that one box of M16A2 mines, a twenty-pound container of C4 plastic explosive, and two boxes of blasting caps were on the lam. And within minutes, a different infantry unit at a third range reported that twenty M203 grenades, as well as an M203 grenade launcher, were missing.

  The reports rolled into the headquarters, the post commander went nuts, and a post-wide lockdown was immediately initiated. Within three hours, two range control inspectors were found, hog-tied with tent cord, in a small ravine beside a tank trail. Their unhappy story was that they had stopped on the trail to help a uniformed soldier who flagged them down, who then approached their humvee, suddenly whipped out a handheld Taser, and efficiently dispatched them both to la-la land. Their humvee and their range control armbands were stolen. The humvee turned up the next morning ditched beside another tank trail.

  This theft was unsettling and curious, but of the three cases the one from Galveston had the ugliest possibilities. If Jason had that much stuff, an all-out assault on the White House was a possibility. Looking first at me, then at Jennie, General Tingle asked, "Well… any conclusions?"

  I was sure the question was rhetorical. We didn't have a clue.

  Tingle turned and requested the most recent arrival to join us. Back to us, he explained, "Chief Warrant Eric Tanner, our resident expert in munitions and weapons security. One of our top investigators."

  We all shook hands. Without any ado, Eric Tanner made a sweeping announcement, suggesting, "If international terrorists are behind these murders, you're wasting your time with all three of these cases."

  Jennie glanced at me, and then informed him, "Our lead suspect is a Secret Service agent named Barnes. If there's a connection to foreign terrorists, it's only financial."

  "Okay." He considered that a moment, then asked, "Accomplices?"

  "Three we know of, possibly more. Barnes appears to be the mastermind. At least one woman is involved."

  Eric raised an eyebrow but did not comment on that news.

  I asked, "Why are you so sure these thefts didn't involve foreign terrorists?"

  "Start with the first case at Fort Hood, the bunker theft. Here's what happened. The munitions bunker has a double lock system. It's electronically monitored whenever it's opened." He looked at me and said, "You get it, right?"

  "The thefts occurred during an authorized entry."

  From the corner of my eye I saw Tingle nod and Tanner continued, "The bunker was opened only once between the two monthly inventories, by a quartermaster team-a sergeant and three privates-delivering fifty containers of 5.56 ammo. It might interest you to know that this is our most common form of munitions thefts."
/>   "I thought the case remained open."

  "It is." Tingle again nodded, and Tanner explained, "We interrogated the four soldiers. Nobody confessed, though obviously at least one of them's lying. Nearly always in cases like this, it was a crime of opportunity. So now the thief has to locate a buyer, and we're watching all four of them."

  I thought about that a moment. "Isn't that… a little passive?"

  He gave me a sneaky smile. "Each of the four will soon be approached by a fat-cat arms merchant from the Middle East-one of our guys. He's already in Killeen, the town outside the base, casing his targets."

  "I see."

  "We know how to cover our asses, Mr. Drummond."

  General Tingle coughed into his hand.

  Eric Tanner shrugged, and continued, "The case at Galveston, on the other hand… well, you read the case file. These were professionals. They knew exactly when to arrive, where the containers were located, and had expert forgeries. The combination of the large quantity of the munitions and the level of criminal sophistication made us more concerned than usual."

  "As it should."

  "So after we reported it to the Bureau, we also notified your people at the Agency, Mr. Drummond."

  Colonel Johnson got into the act, informing me, "About three weeks later, your people got word to us that a government military platoon in Colombia walked into a minefield and two soldiers were killed. The descriptions of the incident indicated the killing devices were Bouncing Bettys. They also reported a sharp step-up in vehicular ambushes by FARC rebel units using short-range rockets."

  Eric surmised, "So we know where the weapons ended up."

  "But not," General Tingle concluded, looking sharply at Tanner, "who orchestrated the theft." He turned back to me and asked, "Do you believe this Barnes is in some way connected to the Colombian FARC rebels?"

  "No. Rule it out." So now we were down to the third and final case, the second theft at Fort Hood. These were all crafty men, and I doubted this was serendipity.

  Colonel Johnson, who appeared to be Tingle's executive assistant, asked, "Anybody need a refill?"

  While we refreshed our cups, Chief Tanner said, "Let's talk for a moment about what happened at Fort Hood on February 9"

  Jennie glanced at her watch. "Let's do."

  "But I'd like to precede that discussion with a little background. Around Fort Hood-around all our bases-are crime rings that feed off our troops, our families, and our equipment. Insurance fraud rings, phony mortgage and car loan setups, prostitution, and even burglary rings. Some of these parasites are strictly amateur hour. Others are incredibly shrewd. In those cases where the crimes cross boundaries between our bases and the surrounding communities, we work closely with local police forces, and often, with the FBI."

  He paused to see if we had any questions. We didn't, and he continued, "At Fort Hood, we have a ring specializing in munitions and weapons thefts. Once or twice a year they pull off something. This has been going on for… about five years. A file cabinet in my office is crammed with various investigations we believe are all interrelated."

  Jennie asked, "And you believe the February 9 incident and those cases are also related?"

  "I'm sure of it." Becoming more animated, he bent forward and explained, "Here's what's interesting. This group never repeats the same thing twice. For a long time, nobody even realized we were dealing with a ring. The thefts were so different, and occurred so infrequently, you couldn't detect a common MO."

  Colonel Johnson grabbed my left arm and confided, "Ignore his modesty. It was Eric who uncovered the common thread."

  This compliment brought a happy beam to Tanner's face. Jennie leaned toward him and asked, "What is that common thread?"

  "The very fact that no two thefts are alike. I'm sure that's by design. These are smart people with a certain flair for stagecraft, and a characteristic boldness I've come to regard as their calling card."

  Jennie thought about that a moment. She said, "Interesting theory. Give us an example."

  "Okay, take this February 9 incident. They probably came on post wearing uniforms, using forged military ID cards. Range control personnel are authority figures. They wear special armbands that allow them access to all ranges and license to poke around for safety violations, and to inspect and inventory munitions. So they hijack a range control vehicle, they show up at these three ranges, and they pilfer ammo while everybody thinks they're just doing their job."

  I tried to picture this in my mind. In truth, it was a diabolically clever way to steal from the Army. Range control people tend to be mostly senior sergeants who, despite their lower rank, are feared by the young officers who run firing ranges, because, as Tanner mentioned, their mission involves hunting for safety and procedural problems, and if they find them, they have the clout to shut down the range and cite the young officers. This tends not to go down well with the officers' superiors. But neither does having weapons and ammunition stolen right under your nose, and I was sure that three young officers at Fort Hood were busily sending their resumes to career placement firms.

  Tanner continued, "In fact, the thefts weren't even noticed till the end of the day, as units were closing up the ranges and doing their final inventories. By then, these crooks are swigging beers at the Lone Star Bar and Grill, laughing at how stupid we are." After a moment, he reflected, "These people really have balls."

  I sized up Eric Tanner for a moment. Clearly, this case was personal for him. That wasn't necessarily bad; neither was it necessarily good. It's healthy to feel some outrage over the crime. In the tough cases, that's what keeps you putting one foot in front of another to the end. But to get to the end, logic is the fuel, and emotion a poisonous indulgence.

  As I said, Mr. Tanner was young, mid- to late twenties, I'd guess, and sort of baby-faced, so it was hard to pin down. Also, he was cocky, or at the least very sure of himself, if there's a difference. He spoke well, and presented his findings and his views in a linear, forceful fashion, which is sometimes the sign of a clear mind, and other times the trademark of a blowhard. But General Tingle, and Eric's peers, and Eric's superiors all thought highly of him, or he wouldn't have his responsibilities. For sure, he wouldn't have a seat at this table.

  Still, as a prosecutor, I had a strong preference for older CID agents on the stand. Age implies wisdom and seasoning, whereas youth suggests greenness and impulsiveness, which make juries jittery. Physical impressions might be shallow or even misleading, but they are a factor, and they count. Eric Tanner should grow a mustache.

  I looked at General Tingle and commented, "This was an inside job."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Because Fort Hood's the largest base in the country. Because it contains hundreds of miles of range roads and many dozens of ranges. Because your perps understand how range management works, they're familiar with the tank trails, and because it looks like they knew which units were firing on which ranges that day"

  "All good points."

  "Come on, General. Don't tell me you missed this."

  General Tingle found it amusing that some outside dunce could figure this out. He grinned at me and said, "Hold that thought."

  Tanner added, "It might also interest you to know, Mr. Drummond, that the soldier who flagged down the range control vehicle was a woman."

  "Oh. You got a description?"

  "Better. Early thirties, slender, medium height, long blond hair wrapped in a tight bun. A looker, too-the witnesses all agreed on that point. In fact, we obtained reliable composite sketches of both her and her male accomplice from the hijacked range control crew, and from the witnesses at the ranges." Eric allowed us a moment to absorb that, and then suggested, "Off the top of my head, I think this case, and I think this ring, fits the parameters you're looking for."

  "Because of the woman?"

  He hesitated, and then leaned toward me. "Well-what if this same group is working with this guy Barnes?"

  Jennie, however, looked at
Eric and said, "Slow down, champ. You're driving way too fast."

  I said to Jennie, "What bothers you?"

  "Everything." She looked at the faces around the room. "Criminal Science 101-cases are connected by commonalities, not disparities." She fixed her chilly blue eyes on Eric. "You said you suspect a ring because no two thefts were alike. That kind of counterintuitive logic is the antithesis of sound police work."

  From a technical and procedural standpoint, she was correct. Also, it was instructive to note from the expressions around the room that nobody really appreciated an outsider coming into the inner sanctum to announce that one of the fair-haired boys was full of crap. Least of all Eric, who responded, a bit defensively," I know the science, Agent Margold. But there are times when you have to throw the manuals out the window."

  "Do you?"

  "Yes. After five years of weapons and munitions thefts, all targeting the same base, all showing unusual creativity, all evidenced by a strong awareness of base procedures and vulnerabilities… I'm sure these cases are connected."

  Jennie did not immediately reply She studied Eric, and then said, "I worked Behavioral Science at Quantico for five years before I got this job. You know what we hated?"

  When nobody else pitched in, I said, "What?"

  "A city gets ten unsolved female murders in a year. The detectives come under intolerable pressure to achieve a few closures. Pretty soon, somebody cleverly rationalizes that because it's the same crime, because of the common sex of the victims, because of the common province of the murders, they're all related, and some horrifying serial killer is behind it. So they notify us, and we jump through our ass, and fly out a team, and we spend weeks poring over everything. They get the heat off themselves by shifting it to us. Problem is, it's not one killer, it's a bunch of killers. Also a waste of time."

  Everybody grew quiet. Jennie stared at Eric. "So I'd like to know more about how you tied this together."

  Being the diplomatic type, I turned to Eric. "Give us an example of another theft."