Sweepers

by P. T. Deutermann

  Vannoyt glared at her and Karen left, closing the door forcefully behind her. The EA looked up at her with the beginnings of a smirk on his face, saw her expression, and retreated back to his paperwork. Karen went to the far end of the outer office, over by the front door, sat down, and tried to compose herself Her professional talent and good looks had carried her a long way into the inner and senior circles of the Navy JAG world, but she had just learned that there was-at least one private club of which she was definitely not a member.

  And her move to become Sherman’s counsel-where the hell had that come from? It changed everything. She was no longer working for Carpenter as far as the Sherman case was concerned. It also split her efforts from Train’s: Train was working for the JAG. You better call him. Tell him what’s happened.

  She got up and asked to use a phone, and one of the yeomen turned his telephone around on his desk. She dialed Train’s number in Aquia.

  Hiroshi answered.

  “He’s not here,” Hiroshi said. “He took your car.”

  Karen swore softly under her breath. “Going where, Hiroshi?”

  “Cherry Hill. He took Gutter.”

  Karen thanked him, hung up, and went back to her seat.

  I knew it. He is going after that kid. At least he has the dog with him.

  She hoped that the kid was all he ran into up there in the weeds. She concentrated on summoning up what she knew about the military law of individual rights. That’s almost an oxymoron, she thought.

  Train drove slowly up the dirt track, finally coming upon two more trailers sprawled across a muddy clearing. He saw three large motorcycles parked under a makeshift lean-to.

  Two men were changing the rear tire on a fourth motorcycle by the side of the dirt road, and the larger one of them straightened up as the Explorer came into view.

  Train slowed as the big ihan moved into the lane to block the way. He looked to be in his early forties, and he was dressed in greasy jeans, combat boots, and a filthy sleeveless undershirt. Emphasis on big, Train thought as he stopped.

  Gorilla-sized, maybe slightly less intelligence. He had a full flowing black beard that reached his chest and an oily ponytail of equal length hanging down his neck like a drowned rat. His glaring eyes bulged dangerously The other man looked positively anorexic, with thin, pale arms showing below an olive drab T-shirt that flapped over ancient Army fatigue trousers and scabrous sandals. There was something wrong with his face, as if it had been knocked sideways a long time ago and badly reset. Train thought he saw a thin line of drool visible on his chin. He remained crouching by the bike, watching the bearded one’ the way a smaller dog watches a larger one around the food bowl. - Train stopped the Explorer and ordered Gutter, who was lying in the rightrear seat, to stay down. Then he got out, leaving his door open. “The hell you want?” demanded the big man after spitting a brown glop of chewing tobacco into the dirt right in front of Train. His pawlike hands were twitching as if they were longing for the feel of an ax handle.

  “I’m going up this hill,” Train said equably. He concentrated on Beard while keeping an eye on Drool.

  Beard hunched his considerable shoulders and leaned forward. “The hell you are., Bud. This here’s private. Turn that piece a Yuppie shit around and git your ass outta here.”

  “Or?’ I

  “Or?’ ” The man exclaimed in mock surprise, straightening up.

  “Or!” He grinned down at Drool then, as if his morning had just been made. “Or I’ll throw your ass and that Ford down the goddamn hill. How’s that sound to you, asshole?” As he spoke, he reached down to pick up a tire and then began to smack it gently into his left palm.

  Train spoke one -word, and Gutter came out of the car to stand next to Train, who quietly gave him the growl command.

  When Gutter rumbled, Drool dried right up and began to scuttle backward, away from the motorcycle, on -his hands and heels. Beard frowned.

  “Which one of you is rare?” Train asked.

  Beard was still frowning. ““Fuck’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

  “Dog here likes his meat rare,” Train explained, eyeing Drool. “So which one of you is rare?”

  That did it for Drool, who bolted for the trailer, not stopping until he was safely through the flimsy metal door. Both Train and Beard heard him lock it. ‘fsounds like he locked it,” Train announced. “Guess that means you’re rare.” He raised his hand as if to give Gutter a command, and Gutter obliged by notching up the volume and showing another yard or so of teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, Train saw a shade flutter across the single front window in the trailer.

  “Hey, man, hey, wait a goddamn minute here,” the big man complained, backing up now, the tire iron dropping conspicuously out of his hand.

  “You wanna go up the goddamn hill, play in the snakes, that’s cool. You go right the hell ahead. We didn’t mean nothin’, awright?”

  Train silenced the dog and flashed his ID. “I’m a federal agent,” he said. “You go back in your trailer with your girlfriend there, and you stay in there until you hear me leave. I’ll be leaving the dog on watch when I get up there.

  You or anybody else goesup there will be disemboweled.

  You understand disemboweled, do you?” The big man continued to back up, his eyes still locked on the dog.

  “Yeah, right. Got it. No problem.” Then he turned and walked quickly to the door and beat on it for Drool to open up. The whole trailer shook.

  He was still banging on the trailer when Train got back into the Explorer and resumed his climb up the hill, with Gutter outside, trotting conspicuously alongside the car.

  After fifteen minutes of cooling her heels in the front office, Karen was startled when the buzzer went off on the EA’s desk. He picked up a black handset, listened attentively, and then said, “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. ” He hung up the phone and looked over at Karen.

  “The DCNO would like you to come in,” he announced.

  Karen took a deep breath, got up, and walked back over to the closed door leading into Kensington’s office, ignoring the curious stares from the office staff. She knocked once and then opened the door.

  Kensington was now sitting at his desk, his uniform coat still buttoned up. His face was tight with anger. Sherman was standing in front of the desk, and the other two admirals were sitting in adjacent chairs to one side. The, tension in the room was palpable, reinforced by Sherman’s expression of defiance. Karen walked over to stand beside Sherman, trying to keep the nervousness out of her own face.

  “All right,” Kensington snapped. “She’s here., Now I want an answer.”

  Sherman turned to her. “They want to know where I was on Thursday and Friday. I don’t think they need to know that. “

  “Why does it matter?”

  Karen asked the room at large, stalling for time.

  “Because the admiral was technically an unauthorized absentee from his place of duty-to wit, the selection board,” Carpenter interjected. “We assume he had a good and sufficient reason for being so absent, but that assumption rests on his willingness to tell us what that reason was.

  Beyond so-called compelling personal circumstances, that is.”

  Karen did not like the fact that she was coming into this conversation cold, but she made her decision. “You do not have to reveal the reason, especially under these circumstances, I I she said, making it clear that she thought “these circumstances” had something of the flavor of a kangaroo court to them.

  “Now look here, young lady,” Kensington began, but she ignored him. “I need to confer with Admiral Sherman,” she announced. “Privately. Excuse us, please. We’ll be right back. Admiral?” She took Sherman by the elbow and steered him toward the door.

  “Goddamn it, JAG, she works for you. Do something,” Kensington protested, but Admiral Carpenter had a peculiar look on his face and was starting to shake his head. Karen pelled Sherman through the door of the inner office and pro then out into
the A-ring corridor, pulling the outer door shut as she went through.

  “What’s the deal?” she asked.

  He sigped. “Mcnair’s told them everything. They want me to put my papers in. Ask for early retirement. If I don’t, they’re going to proceed against me for disappearing without notice. It would probably start with some kind of psych evaluation at Bethesda. Kensington started in with some kind of bullshit about how concerned they were about this Galantz situation. How they had lost confidence in my ability to focus on my duties with this extreme personal threat hanging over my head. How it would make the Navy look bad if I were to be hauled into a courtroom, an admiral in uniform, for being involved in two murders.”

  “But Carpenter knows that’s a lie,” she argued. “He knows full well you’re not a suspect and that you were never involved.”

  Sherman nodded as two commanders walked by, trying hard not to stare.

  “I pointed that out. But strangely enough, Admiral Carpenter has had very little to say in there,” he said. He paused for a moment. “And I’m not about to beg him to speak up. If this is a setup, then he’s part of it’ ” Karen recalled what Galanti had said about the admirals being part of this. “But why?” she said. “You’re one of them. You’re a flag officer.

  Why aren’t they protecting you?

  Why are they so ready just to let you go over the side?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t done anything, other than bolt the other day.

  And that wasn’t from fear of Galantz, but from overwhelming disappointment. You make flag, it’s not supposed to be this way., Karen.

  Hell, at, this point, I’m ready to do what they want.”

  “You shouldn’t do that. You should fight them.”

  “But how? I don’t know where I stand. Kensington said he just got off the phone with the Vice Chief. If there’s a four-star against me, there’s no point in fighting it.”

  Karen tried to make him look at her, but he resisted.

  “You don’t know that,” she said. “He may just have said that. He may have been talking to the Vice about’t something entirely unrelated.

  You said it yourself. You worked for all those years to wear these stars. At great personal cost, may I remind you.”

  He looked at her then, and she saw in his eyes that he had crossed an important psychological bridge and was now prepared to bum it. He took her hands. “Karen, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? The career has been everything. For all those years, it was my career, my advancement. I was always so very important, so very busy. And now my wife’s in an institution, and my son is in league with my worst enemy. All for-what?

  Preserving my almighty stars?” He dropped her hands, and the emotion seemed to leak out of him. “To hell with these people.”

  “Is there anybody else you can talk to?” she asked. “Any other flag officers?”

  He laughed. “My contemporaries are all guys against whom I competed for the first star. Now we’re competitors for the second star. If that three-star in there has put the word out, nobody in this building is going to return my calls.”

  The door to the outer office opened, and a yeoman stuck his head out.

  “Sir? The admiral was-“

  “Yeoman?” Sherman barked.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Bring me a pair of scissors.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Looking baffled, the yeoman retreated back into the office.

  “Where’s von Rensel?” Sherman asked. “He’s … he’s gone looking for Jack, I think. He was supposed to wait at his house until we got back or he heard from Mcnair.”

  Sherman nodded. The yeoman returned with a pair of scissors. Karen could see the EA standing at his desk, trying to see what was going on out in the corridor. Sherman pulled out his wallet and extracted his ID card.

  He took the scissors and cut the ID card into four pieces. He handed the pieces and the scissors over to the yeoman. “Give these to your boss.

  Tell him I’ve gone to look for my son.”

  “But,-sir, the admiral-“

  “Tell him what I said, young man. Tell him Captain Sherman left with his lawyer.”

  Train stopped short of the clearing containing the decrepit trailer and checked his watch: just past 1:00 P.m. He looked around. He was standing behind a large scraggly bush, which put him mostly in the shadows. There were no sounds coming from the trailer, and the woods both above and below the trailer were silent and strangely devoid of birds and insects.

  He wondered briefly about all the talk of snakes.

  Gutter stood by his left side, ears up, eyes alert. Train eased the Glock out of its waistband holster, checked the chamber, and then sent the dog forward to scout the place out. Gutter trotted into the clearing surrounding the trailer, stopped, and then put his nose down and began to cover the ground between the trailer and the plastic-covered hootch to the right, where Karen had said she first found Jack.

  Train considered crouching down but then dismissed the idea. He was simply too big to hide behind anything much smaller than a house anyway.

  The place felt abandoned. He had thought he had seen the dark silhouette of a fallen-in house up there among the trees near the top, and there were signs that there had once been a road or a driveway, now entirely overgrown, beyond the dead tree. Gutter disappeared behind the trailer and then reappeared a minute later on the far side.

  Train considered his options. The dog would find anyone hiding outside the trailer, although not necessarily someone inside the trailer. Karen said the guy rode a motorbike, and there was no motorbike in sight. As the day warmed up, the aroma from all the trash around the trailer was becoming stronger, accompanied by the whine of flies. He could not imagine someone living like this, and yet he knew that there were lots of other trailers just like this in these parts. The dog came loping back to him, and Train, satisfied that no one was lying in wait ahead, decided to go check out the trailer itself He looked over at the huge dead tree lying across the road, then took Gutter back to it, instructing him to stay down underneath the trunk. Train was pretty sure he could handle Jack if he was in I that trailer, and while he would have preferred to keep Gutter with him, he wanted the Dobe between him and those two thugs down below.

  He could always call him in if there was trouble. GUTTLVR flopped obediently onto his belly, giving Train a mildly resentful look.

  Train patted him, reinforced the command, and then walked down the path lea . ding to the trailer, proceeding carefully, with the Glock in his right hand but held down by his side. He went straight up to the door, -knocked, and then stepped back, holding the gun behind his back. He kept looking around the clearing to make sure no one was moving, hoping that Gutter still had a view of the clearing. He knocked again and called out Jack’s name. Nothing moved inside the trailer. He knocked a third time, more forcefully, making the side of the trailer rattle. Then he tried the door handle and found the door unlocked.

  He looked around again and then pushed the door in, hard enough that it banged all the way back to the wall. He called Jack’s name again and then listened carefully, but there were no sounds coming from the trailer. The gun pointed up now, he went into the trailer. He felt the floor sag beneath his feet as he took shallow breaths against the stink of rotting food and’filthy clothes. The interior looked a lot like the exterior, and the trailer had a definite sewage problem somewhere.

  It felt empty. He checked out the other two rooms and bathroom, staying out of the tiny kitchen for fear of the mess he would find there. He looked around. The place was little more than an aluminum cave; all it needed was a pile of bones in one comer. But there was no one here.

  He went back to the clearing and checked on Gutter, who was still on command, then focused on what looked like a ruined house a hundred yards or so up the hill from. the downed oak tree. It took ten minutes to push through all the undergrowth, and he was careful about where he put his feet.

  It was only early afternoon, b
ut already there were shadows forming under the trees. The house was a total wreck. Two enormous stone chimneys at either end were the only things vertical about it. It appeared to have . been a two-story woodframe house with porches running around three sides, but the second floor and the roof had long ago subsided into the Pound floor. The porches sagged and dropped like old spiderwebs. The steps were long gone, although the stone supports were still there. The ground-floor window frames were deformed and empty of glass and sash, and he thought he could see parts of the ground-floor ceiling sagging down into the front rooms. The front door was missing, leaving an asymmetric black hole facing the dying trees out front.

  He walked around three sides of the house, but there were no signs of life or the detritus of vagrants. Huge old vines roped up the remains of the porches, and some had even gone inside. He was about to go back down the hill when a squirrel burst out practically from beneath his feet, giving him a good scare. The squirrel hightailed it up one of the old trees and Train watched it go damned near all the way to the top, which is when he saw the antenna. At first, it didn’t register. He moved closer to the tree, peering through the branches, and there it was, a radio antenna of some kind.

  And a wire, cleverly concealed in the ragged bark of the tree, descended the tree and disappeared in the underbrush.

  He rooted around the base of the tree, found it, saw which way it was pointed, and followed the route with his eyes until he found it again, disappearing under one of the porches. Well, well. Ruined, but not necessarily abandoned.

  Still holding the Glock, he made his way around to the front steps.

  Balancing himself, he climbed up the stone step supports and then tiptoed across the bare floor joists of what had been the front porch and approached the open doorway.

  The old wood creaked ominously under his weight, but just inside the door, he hit pay dirt again: There was a piece of plywood resting over the open floor joists about six feet inside that doorway. He eased his way through the doorway and saw that both front rooms on either side were filled with the wreckage of the second floor. Heaps of plaster and broken boards pointing every which way were all piled onto the ground floor. But straight ahead, in what looked like a main hallway, there was more plywood, ending in a closed door that seemed to be surprisingly intact.