Through the hatch seam, the twin yellow fog lamps of a six-ton cargo truck crawled around the corner of the fuel depot. It was moving without its clearance lights, grinding through low gear to keep the engine exhaust muffled behind the earthen embankment. It stopped thirty paces short of the incinerator apron, its front tires angled toward the ditch.
The passenger door cracked open. Sergeant Harlan dropped down into the wet gravel, carrying a twenty-foot industrial tow chain looped over his shoulder and a five-gallon red fuel canister in his right hand. Two corporals followed him from the rear bench, their trench coats cinched tight against the swamp dampness, both carrying standard short-barreled pump shotguns.
Neither of them checked the road back to the gate. They knew the wire was locked.
"They aren't here to search the bunker," Cole whispered, leaning close enough for his breath to brush my collar. "They’re chaining the loading doors to pull the whole timber crib down, dumping the gas, and setting it off from the cab."
"They have to open the pit first," I said. "The fire won't take the avionics through three inches of reinforced aggregate. Harlan has to drop the fuel directly onto the pallet seals."
I pulled the three torn ledger pages from my service cap and pressed them into Cole’s left palm. The stiff paper was cool against my skin, the red grease pencil marks standing out dark and thick under the narrow bead of ambient light.
"Take Toby through the rear drainage culvert," I told him.
Cole did not move his hand. His jaw set hard. "Colonel, the south gate detail won't let an agent and an AWOL private cross the cattle guard without an escort officer. If I show up at the division perimeter alone with those sheets, Sterling’s paperwork says Toby is dead and I’m an armed deserter carrying stolen files."
"You aren't going to the south gate," I said.
I reached down, unhooked the brass passkey from my utility belt, and laid it on top of the folded ledger leaves. It was the master key for the civilian transformer shed behind the motor pool—the relay that routed commercial power from the county grid into Camp Vora’s auxiliary lines before it touched the military substations.
"The county inspector’s sedan is parked behind the transformer house until zero-seven-hundred," I said. "The telephone line from the public power company runs overhead into the switchboard. Cut the military tap with your side cutters, lift the receiver, and call the Provost Marshal’s regional intake at Fort Meade. Give them the contract suffix from the crate: RAY-LOG-8842-AV. Tell them Major Sterling has four pallets of stolen avionics staged in the medical burn pit, and the destruction certificates are signed in his handwriting."
"And when Harlan breaches this hatch?" Cole asked, his eyes locked on mine.
"He won't breach it from the back," I said. "He thinks we went down the main swale toward the marsh."
I didn't wait for him to argue. I caught Toby Miller by the canvas loop of his field harness and pulled him up to the mouth of the rear pipe.
"Miller," I said, looking into the boy's hollow, grey face. "Listen to me. The moment you clear the iron grate, you keep your eyes on Agent Cole’s heels. You don't look back at this stack. If you hear diesel fire behind you, you run for the wire fence behind the civilian pole line. You understand me?"
Miller touched the empty linen patch on his chest where his name tag had been ripped away, then swallowed hard and nodded once. "Yes, ma'am."
"Go," I told Cole.
Cole took the boy’s sleeve and backed into the round darkness of the concrete culvert, the soles of their boots dragging quietly through the silty water until the sound was swallowed by the pipe.
I turned back to the hatch.