I traded glances with Jennie. Not good. The weapons could provide us a lead we desperately needed, and we definitely needed to learn what kind of nasty surprises Barnes might have in store. A lot of things go boom in the night, but some booms turn night into day.

But the general had another point to make. "During peacetime, our accountability, and our follow-up to thefts and losses, are exceptionally good. But what's seriously important in times of peace often becomes trivial when people are fighting and dying. So don't get your hopes up."

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."