Eileen Reed - Ground Zero Part 2

Rosen had finished editing and was looking over a printout of his file. He'd propped a foot up on a nearby chair and was sipping from a bottle of purified water. Rosen was a health nut. He never drank coffee or soda, which was a mystery to Eileen. How did he get going in the morning?

"Yes?"

"You want to go look at this Pendleton guy? He's a month dead, been lying in the bushes."

"Oh boy," Rosen said. "Is this another one of those so-you-wanna-be-a-detective tests you guys keep coming up with?"

"No, I just want to see if you'll puke," Eileen said innocently.

Peter O'Brien, hanging up his coat on a hook, snorted with laughter. There were damp rings under his armpits and the back of his neck was beaded with sweat.

"Grow up," Rosen said. He didn't smile, but his black eyes glittered. That was his version of a laugh.

"You should go," O'Brien said. "Who knows? Maybe Eileen will puke."

Eileen was opening her mouth for a sizzling reply when Harben yelled her name.

"I don't puke," she said loftily to O'Brien. "And if I do, I'll make sure to puke on you."

"You puke on kiddie rides at the carnival," O'Brien returned automatically. He was already typing his own access code and pulling crumpled notes out of his pockets. O'Brien never managed to remember his notebook, so he ended up writing notes on any piece of paper he could scrounge. This eccentricity was a great source of amus.e.m.e.nt to Eileen and exasperation to Harben, but O'Brien managed to do a good job with his ATM slips and his grocery receipts.

Harben, on the phone again, was holding the receiver away from his ear.

"I'll have a detective out immediately," he said. Eileen could hear the tiny frantic buzzing from the receiver, the excited tones of the speaker.

"That's fine, she'll sign whatever she needs to, she has a security clearance. Yes, she's our Military Liaison. Yes, she has a lot of experience with these cases." Harben looked soberly at Eileen, who started grinning. "I'll get her out there. Don't disturb the scene, understand? Don't clean up anything, don't touch a thing."

Harben hung up the phone gently and the tiny voice, still squawking, stopped.

"Security clearance, sir?"

"There's been a murder at Schriever Air Force Base," Harben said.

"Schriever?" Eileen asked in surprise. There was never trouble at Schriever. Peterson Air Force Base, sometimes, Fort Carson, all the time, but Schriever, never. It was too small and too distant from everywhere else to be much trouble. Eileen, in fact, had never seen Schriever. It was out on the eastern prairie somewhere.

"Schriever. Some civilian Defense Department woman got herself murdered and that calm, collected voice you just heard was Major Jeff Blaine, Chief of Security." Eileen grinned again. Harben's expression didn't change. Eileen had learned in her first year under Harben that Harben never laughed at his own jokes, or even smiled at them. But he didn't mind if you did.

"She's in some top-secret area with cla.s.sified information just oozing out of the walls, if the good Major can be believed. He'll be briefing you on the information, you'll have to promise never to tell, et cetera."

"Okay. I guess this takes priority over the Pendleton case?"

"Yes, it does. In fact, the Major tells me the Air Force Office of Special Investigations will not be able to get out there for at least today, so you are on your own. Their Major Still-well is at some conference in Alabama and they're only one person deep in the OSI at Peterson."

"So he'll show up in a day or so and take this off my hands?"

"Correct, Eileen. But you'll have to write all the new standard Military Liaison reports on the investigation and file them."

"Great, boss," Eileen said, and sighed.

"Get on the road, ma'am," Harben said, and flapped a bony hand. "I hear it's a long drive to Schriever. Oh, and one other thing," he added as Eileen turned for the door.

"Sir?" Eileen asked politely.

"Get their shoes all muddy, Eileen. That's what you're there for."

s.p.a.ce Command, Schriever Air Force Base.

"Jake, h.e.l.lo," Colonel Olsen said in tones of relief. He held out a hand, and they shook firmly. They were both the same rank, so military protocol allowed them to call each other by their first names. They knew each other from Germany as well. Their daughters became fast friends in grammar school and were now attending the same high school in the Springs. Willmeth took a look around the Gaming Center. Blaine had them all in their seats. The Civilian Gamers were all sitting at the back of the room. No one looked well. No one was speaking. One was openly sobbing. The room was noisy with the hum of the air-conditioning fans, but that was all. The huge screen still showed the Earth. Willmeth spotted the one closed door. Olsen noticed his glance and nodded slightly.

"Major Blaine is collecting the police detective at the gate," Willmeth said in a low voice. "He'll be here soon, and we can get everyone out of this room."

"We stopped the simulation and shut down the systems outside the base," Olsen spoke quietly in return. "But this is going to f.u.c.k us up in Was.h.i.+ngton, Jake."

"I know, Brad," Willmeth said. "As soon as the police release you from the scene, I've got a secure phone set up. We'll get on the horn and do some damage a.s.sessment."

"Good," Olsen said in satisfaction. "Thank you."

There was nothing more to be said. There would be action, later on, and reports to be written and meetings to attend, but for now there was nothing more. The two colonels stood and watched the Earth and the drifting pattern of simulated nuclear fallout.

Manitou Springs, Colorado.

George Tabor was taking a walk. With him trotted Fancy, his English spaniel. The spaniel loved her Thursday-morning walks. Meandering up and down the hilly streets of Manitou Springs, they brushed by overgrown lilac bushes and stepped over an occasional cracked piece of pavement.

Tuesdays they walked downtown, which was interesting but not nearly as pleasant to the young dog. The smells weren't as good.

George sat down for a moment or two at his regular stopping point, a low rock wall near Manitou Springs Avenue. It was a pleasant place to sit. The wall was shaded in the summer, sunny in the winter, and had a pretty view of the downtown area. Additionally, there was a crack in the stonework that occasionally contained a small beige cloth bag. George scratched his knee and leaned back and scooped the bag out of the crack and into his pocket.

He didn't always search the stone. If there were no bike chained to a light post downtown, or if it had a flat rear tire, he wouldn't have stopped by the stone at all. But the bike was there, sitting on fat k.n.o.bby tires, looking cheerful. George felt cheerful, looking at it. Something good, he thought, and absently rubbed his spaniel's ears. Perhaps something very good.

The bag retrieved, he finished his walk briskly, as he always did. The spaniel leaped happily into the backseat of his car and George drove home through the mild summer morning, humming softly along with the radio.

As a child, he'd thought he wanted to be an American. He was a capitalist by birth, it seemed. He'd made pocket change holding places in food lines before he could read a book. He had a thousand ideas about making money. Life would be so easy if he lived in America, he thought. Then in George's adolescence he revised his opinion on America. He could see, even with his limited vision, that the Soviet Union wouldn't hold together much longer. He might be able to live out the uncomfortable years of a Soviet breakup in some nice place like Great Britain or America, working as a spy for his country. Eventually he could come home to a freshly liberated Russia. A man who knew the workings of capitalism might do very well.

George never wavered once he decided what he wanted to do. At twenty-five, to all appearances a dedicated GRU officer, he made the ridiculously easy entry through Canada with papers declaring him to be the American George Tabor. He never looked back.

By the time he had focused on stealing secrets from the Missile Defense program time, his theory about the dissolution of the Soviet Union was proving to be correct. George's contacts started to change. An East German spy took him to a lavish dinner at the Broadmoor. After the first former Soviet satellite started to pay for information, George started probing for more. The new Russian Republic became a customer instead of a master. He expanded, like a good capitalist, to include the new countries that were once satellites of the former Soviet Union. A contact in j.a.pan made a very polite request and delivered a staggering amount of money. George was very good at his job. In the post-Cold War world of espionage, he was in his element. And absolutely everybody wanted to steal missile-defense information from the Americans.

Posing as a headhunter for a defense contractor, George had obtained a phone directory from a janitor at the Ballistic Missile Defense Center. The phone listing he received wasn't cla.s.sified, but it was still a hit. It contained names, phone numbers, and supervisors' names. Eventually, after hours tracing supervisor to supervisor, George figured out each employee's field: operations, administration, engineering, security.

George made discreet phone calls. He interviewed several applicants in his modestly plush office near Garden of the G.o.ds park. He was searching for a person with a grudge. Or a person who needed money. Or even a person who knew someone who needed money.

Six months after the handy little pink directory fell into his hands, he had his contact. George worked on the contact like a fine fly fisherman-a sport he'd recently taken up and found very pleasant. Hooking a trout was like landing a contact into a top-secret installation. He got the same kind of thrill. The contact he found had an immense ego. The contact hadn't been given a promotion in a long time. The contact needed money. George commiserated. George soothed. George asked for some sensitive information-just as a way to get a better idea of the program, so he could steal away good people and put them into better jobs. The contact delivered. The hook was set.

When he asked for cla.s.sified information, the contact knew who he was. And didn't care. The packet was delivered. It was very good. The contact was in the bag.

George and Fancy entered George's apartment. His spaniel shook free of the leash and raced toward her water bowl as though afraid someone would s.n.a.t.c.h it away if she didn't get there in moments. Silly dog, George thought fondly. He shut his front door and locked it. He didn't have to draw the shades. He drew them every morning before his walk as a matter of routine. Finally, at last, he drew the savory little bag from his pocket.

The smile, like the Ches.h.i.+re cat's, was the last to leave. His eyes widened and his face muscles sagged in disbelief. Finally the smile winked out. He crumpled the piece of paper so tightly, he would have a bruised palm later. He said a very American word, with a very American inflection. He said it again. Then he picked up the phone and, after a moment, dialed a number from memory.

"Yes?" a voice said briskly.

"Is this 387-7754?"

There was a pause.

"No," the voice said heavily.

"Sorry."

George cradled the phone gently and began to pack.

4.

The Pentagon.

"There's been a what?" The Admiral's voice, unbelieving, was nearly shrill.

"A murder, sir. At the War Game Center. That's what stopped the Game."

There was a long pause. The Admiral turned to look out the windows. He had an office at the E level, which gave him one of the prettier views of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. His face was thin and wrinkled. His sharply creased uniform was immaculate.

"Have the s.h.i.+ps been notified of the stand-down?"

"Yes, sir, I gave the abort code and we've verified that all the components have received the code. The s.h.i.+ps are standing by. We had an All Deploy sent to the Brilliant Pebbles-"

"All Deploy? All of them?" The Admiral's voice climbed toward shrill again.

"Yes, sir. Listen, sir. We knew mistakes like that could happen during the progress of a Game. All Deploy was considered one of the mistakes that could happen. We've sent the stand-down command to the Pebbles, and they're functioning. That's actually quite encouraging, and gives us a lot of data."

"Well, that's something, at least." The Admiral held the phone against his ear and patted his stomach with his free hand. He was rubbing against a network of burn scars, a souvenir of an Iraqi sh.e.l.l that was more accurate than most. The scars no longer hurt, but it was a nervous habit to touch and rub at them. The rubbing soothed him.

"We've had word out to the DIA to find out if they've gotten feedback on this."

"Was this-this was a death? Or was this a murder?"

"A murder, sir. One of the civilian Gamers was stabbed to death, or at least that's what it looked like to me." Olsen didn't like admitting his vision problems.

"All right, then. You aborted the duds in flight. We know the Germans think we were testing our early radar warning against rogue submarines. No one has to know we lost the Game. Everything but the ground interceptors worked perfectly."

"Perfectly, sir," Colonel Olsen said.

"All right. Make sure your OSI team is a bright one. Make sure they know what they're looking for. Who's on the case right now?"

"Civilian police, sir. The Police Liaison."

"Civilian?"

"The Schriever police don't have the resources to investigate a murder. The Peterson investigations officer is in Alabama on a case and couldn't fly into Colorado in less than six hours. Federal law requires we get a.s.sistance from the Police Liaison in homicides. There's only one person, and she's ex-military. Air Force pilot."

"Ahh," the Admiral grunted. "Better. I guess it'll have to do. What's this detective's name?"

"Reed, sir. Eileen Reed."

"Check her out."

"Yes, sir. I've already sent the request."

"Thanks, Brad. We'll see you tomorrow here at the Pentagon. We'll have to set up for another Game."

"Yes, sir."

The Admiral pushed the intercom b.u.t.ton that connected him to his secretary.

"Get me Mills at the CIA, Delores," he said, and hung up the phone. He turned to contemplate the pretty view, his hand absently patting his stomach. In less than a minute, the phone rang.

"Mills," Kane said into the phone. "There's been another murder."

Schriever Air Force Base.

It was a long drive. Eileen fought noon traffic south on Academy Boulevard and turned east on Platte Avenue. The city soon gave way to long stretches of hot, dry open land. She turned off Platte and aimed her Jeep down Highway 94. The open stretches of land became a ranch. Cattle dotted rolling hills, grazing on long brown prairie gra.s.s. She thought about Captain Bernie Ames.

They'd met when they'd been forced to bunk together in the overcrowded bachelor quarters in Minot, North Dakota. Bernie loved to talk. Eileen loved to listen. They were fantastically different. Bernie grew up in inner-city Chicago; Eileen was raised on a Wyoming ranch. Bernie, short and round, busty and loud, confessed that she always wanted to look just like Eileen. Eileen, tall and gawky, frozen into silence by any crowd greater than two people, confessed that she always wanted to be just like Bernie.

Bernie would no more have flown her plane into a mountain than she would have put her clothes on backward. Bernie was a fighter. She was not the suicidal type. She loved to fly, she loved to crack jokes, she loved food and men and movies and every delicious part of her life. There had to be a reason she flew her plane into a mountain.