The German Informant
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<h1 class="center" id="c2">CHAPTER ONE</h1>
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<div>Specialist 4 Dwayne Morton woke with a snort and looked around him. The small office he sat in was no different than when he had drifted off. His clipboard still lay at his elbow, the security log attached to it awaiting his next entry. His last simply noted the departure of the civilian cleaning crew at 4:00 AM, or 0400 hours military time. He was relieved that the duty sergeant had not discovered him during his inadvertent nap. Glancing up at the large clock hung on the wall, Dwayne saw that it was now 0517 hours. There remained almost three hours in his shift, a fact that did little to lift his spirits.</div>
<div class="indent">“Army sucks,” he whispered with feeling. This was not supposed to have been his assignment—he had just completed a week’s tour of midnight to eight shifts, and by rights, should have been rotated to the much coveted day duty. But, as usual, the army, or more accurately, his first sergeant, had screwed everything up for him when Danny Boyle came down with appendicitis.</div>
<div class="indent"><i>It wasn’t his fault that Danny’s appendix burst</i>, he thought, and there were plenty of other MPs to choose from in their company. It was just that Dwayne was having a little trouble with the company runs lately, was falling behind during PT sessions. Top was a fitness fanatic—the old fart had to be forty, and he still ran five miles a day—who does that?</div>
<div class="indent">Glancing down at his waistline, Dwayne had to acknowledge that he had readjusted his duty belt twice since arriving in-country six months before—the damn beer and pastry diet here in Deutschland was kicking his ass and he had been no lightweight to begin with.</div>
<div class="indent">Standing, he stretched and yawned widely, then snatched up his flashlight. Standard Operating Procedure on site security stated that foot patrols of the parking lot and office complex should occur hourly, though not at regular intervals, in order to avoid establishing a predictable pattern. Sleeping on duty was punishable by Article 15 regulations and could result in loss of pay or demotion.</div>
<div class="indent">Slapping on the iconic white helmet liner with MP printed in black on the front, Dwayne threw open the door and staggered out into the parking lot. His last check had been almost an hour and a half before. He expected the duty sergeant to be rounding the corner any moment, as he always checked the sentries at least twice a night and Dwayne had not seen him since shortly after coming on duty.</div>
<div class="indent">Noticing that one of the sodium lamps that lit the parking lot had burned out, Dwayne made a mental note to log the observation and complete a work order to have the bulb replaced. Satisfied with the lot, Dwayne turned to his left and began to walk toward the three story office building that overlooked it. Then he saw the car, a Volkswagen Jetta, parked in front of the entrance, and his steps faltered in surprise. The lot had been empty earlier, he was sure of it.</div>
<div class="indent">Was it possible that one of the German cleaning crew had forgotten something in the building and come back for it? Had they driven past him as he slept? <i>But it could have happened while he was making his last rounds</i>, he thought, <i>desperate for a preferable alternative</i>.</div>
<div class="indent">This was one of the faults in the procedure—he couldn’t be in two places at once. Each time he was inside checking the offices he was away from the lot. Of course, he was supposed to check the lot each time he returned, but he had exited the building from the rear after his last inspection and come back to his office from the other side and hadn’t bothered. For Christ’s sake he wasn’t supposed to be on nights anyway!</div>
<div class="indent">Switching on the flashlight, he shined it at the windows, the beam revealing an interior empty of occupants. That was a relief, at least. He gave each of the vehicle’s four doors a tug, finding each locked in its turn, preventing him from getting inside and finding the registration. If he could only discover the owner and give them a call, maybe he could get the damned car out of there before it was discovered by his supervisor. He kicked a tire with his spit-shined jump boots. “Goddamnit,” he muttered.</div>
<div class="indent">Walking to the rear of the VW, he played the light across the registration plate. It was German alright. Wedging the flashlight between his elbow and his body, he pulled out pen and pad with his free hand to jot the number down.</div>
<div class="indent">Headlamp beams swept across the small lot, accompanied by the familiar grind of a jeep’s engine. When they came to rest on Dwayne, the vehicle raced across the asphalt, skidding to a halt just feet from the MP, and transfixing him in their illumination.</div>
<div class="indent">“Whose fucking vehicle is that, specialist?” Duty sergeant Calvin Auster demanded, leaping from the jeep. He was hardly older than Dwayne, no more than twenty-eight, but every inch the lifer, his uniform immaculate, his leather polished and gleaming. Having enlisted to escape the Brooklyn ghetto of Bedford-Stuyvesant, it was his firm intent to never return there. Black and lean, he glared at the chubby specialist as if he had placed the car there himself in order to thwart the sergeant.</div>
<div class="indent">“I just found it, sarge,” Dwayne began, hastily coming up with a plausible chain of events. “It was here when I came out of the office building.”</div>
<div class="indent">“And when was that?”</div>
<div class="indent">“Just now—I finished making my rounds in there and found it here with no one around. I was writing down the registration number to call it in,” he lied, holding out his notepad as proof of his honorable intentions.</div>
<div class="indent">Sergeant Auster looked unimpressed. Glancing at his watch, he snapped, “In less than an hour personnel will begin to arrive here, specialist, and in less than an hour I want this fuckin’ piece of civilian shit towed out of here and impounded. Is that clear?”</div>
<div class="indent">Dwayne nodded, “Yes, sergeant.”</div>
<div class="indent">“I will not have some goddamn colonel climbing up my ass today because you let some German loser ditch his car in our lot, do you hear me, Specialist Morton?”</div>
<div class="indent">“Loud and clear, sarge,” Dwayne responded.</div>
<div class="indent">The irate sergeant turned on his heels and began to climb back into his jeep. As he fired up the engine once more, he stared at the VW for a moment, then said, “Have dispatch run that vehicle thoroughly before you remove it, specialist. HQ’s been warning everybody to be extra cautious since that German officer got whacked in Hamburg a few weeks ago.”</div>
<div class="indent">Dwayne nodded, though it was not entirely clear to him what he was expected to do—tow the car, or not?</div>
<div class="indent">The sergeant began to reverse at the same high rate of speed he had arrived, then slammed on the brakes once more. He studied the VW in silence as if something was troubling him. “Get on the radio and request a bomb-sniffing K-9, Morton,” Auster said quietly. “Tell them I said so. You stay here and keep everybody out of the parking lot until it’s been swept.”</div>
<div class="indent">“Not let anybody get to their offices, sarge?” Dwayne asked. He could already picture the ass-reaming every officer that showed up was going to give him. “Not even officers?”</div>
<div class="indent">“You heard me correctly, specialist,” the sergeant snapped, then added in a softer tone, “I’ll be back as soon as I finish up doing spot checks—twenty minutes, or so. I’ll be back long before the brass arrives in any case, so don’t worry, I’ll handle the heat.”</div>
<div class="indent">Dwayne was both relieved and grateful.</div>
<div class="indent">The sergeant sped off in the direction of the Staff Duty NCO’s office.</div>
<div class="indent">With a sigh, Dwayne removed his portable radio from its belt holder and called in the request to dispatch, placing heavy emphasis that the order came from Sergeant Auster. After only a very few minutes he was told that the K-9 officer and his dog would be enroute shortly, and that he was to hold the fort in the meantime.</div>
<div class="indent">“Wilco,” he replied, fishing a package of cigarettes from his cargo pocket and firing up a smoke. He could see that his hands were shaking a little. Taking a deep draw to settle his nerves, he plopped his wide rump onto the trunk lid of the Jetta. He was not surprised to hear the springs groan a little at his formidable burden, but the loud click that followed was puzzling.</div>
<div class="indent">Rising and turning, Dwayne was only in time to witness the fireball erupting from the car and engulfing him like a blowtorch, the explosion blowing out every window of the office building. Like a flaming comet, he traveled some fifty yards to land smoking and smoldering outside the same door he had stepped through only minutes before, his leather boots the only bit of clothing left intact, his body charred black, his face burned away. He had only two and a half hours left in his shift.</div>
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