“I’ll get back to you on that,” Greet said.
“Billy—this is important.”
“I know.”
* * *
From the corner, Kaiser said, “I hope nobody stole it from Bliss.”
“It’d help to know that,” Letty said.
“Yeah, but if that stuff is gone, some poor bastard is going to get cornholed—excuse the expression—and it’ll most likely be the wrong guy.”
Greet called back a half-hour later: “General Creighton will see you at two o’clock. Please be on time.”
Kaiser stood up and said, “I’m going back to my room to read this book for a while. We’re not that far away, but if we’re talking to a two-star, we should be early—I’ll see you downstairs at one o’clock.”
* * *
The Fort Bliss headquarters building was impressive enough, done in a faux southwestern style. They were early, but Kaiser had a long amiable chat with a sergeant major about employment opportunities after the military, and the sergeant major did them the favor of taking them into Creighton’s office early.
Creighton, a tall, watery-eyed man with a permanent sunburn, pointed them at visitor chairs and said, “DHS. Are you guys bad news?”
“I hope not, sir,” Kaiser said. “We’re tracking some people, we think right-wing militia, who we think are up to serious no-good. We followed them out into the mountains back east of here, almost to I-20, and they found themselves a crack in the terrain and they used some C-4 to cut an I-beam in half. We weren’t in a position to challenge them, so we don’t know where they went. We think a bunch of them operate out of the El Paso area.”
Letty had taken her cell phone out, called up a photo with the C-4 wrapper they’d found at the site of the C-4 test, and passed it across the desk to Creighton. He looked at it and said, “Damn.”
Kaiser nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Creighton called, “Sergeant major!”
The sergeant major stuck his head in the office. “Yes, sir?”
“I want to talk to Captain Colin sometime in the next two minutes. Can you make that happen?”
The sergeant major said, “I believe so, sir.”
“And could you tell Roxanne that we’d like three cups of coffee in here . . .” He looked at Letty and Kaiser. “Or soft drinks?”
Letty said, “Coffee’s fine, thank you.”
The sergeant major disappeared, and the general turned to Kaiser. “So you were out there, snoopin’ and poopin’， with nothing but your dick in your hand . . .”
“Yes, sir, and while it’s a beautiful thing in itself, it ain’t worth a damn in a fight.”
The two men laughed and then the general apologized to Letty, saying, “Sorry about that, young lady. Old, old joke. I spotted Mr. Kaiser as a former NCO . . . what rank, Sergeant?”
“Master sergeant,” Kaiser said. “Task Force Green.”
“Really? Hell of an outfit. And now you’re DHS . . .”
The two ignored Letty as they talked Army, the general probing Kaiser’s background and assignments, until they heard hurried footfalls in the outside hallway and then the outer office. The sergeant major stepped in and said, “Captain Colin, sir.”
Captain Colin was a gawky young man, bespectacled, a heavy ring on one hand, who carried what might have been a permanent worried look. “Yes, sir?”
“Are we missing any C-4?”