Lien-hua called the Amphib Base, and, after they’d verified her clearance codes, they transferred her to Leslie Helprin, a Petty Officer 2nd Class who worked with the medical records division. It turned out Petty Officer Helprin was good at her job. It only took her a few minutes to locate the records of all Navy SEALs who’d been trained in incendiary diversionary tactics and had been treated for an ankle or leg injury on the left leg over the past five years.
I typed while Lien-hua relayed information to me from the phone. “We have twelve names, Pat. Ten men, two women. Plus a SEAL who left the service last year, honorable discharge.”
“Well, our arsonist isn’t a woman,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Posture. Frame. Weight distribution in his stride. So that gives us ten, eleven if you count the guy who left last year. Have Petty Officer Helprin email me the photos from their personnel files.
Let’s see if they match any of the faces on our videos.”
Lien-hua spoke into the phone again and then shook her head.
“No good. They don’t have photos on file.”
“How could they not have photos?”
Lien-hua relayed the question, then gave me Petty Officer Helprin’s answer. “Not in the medical files, just the personnel files. But that’s a whole different division.”
Of course it was. Typical military bureaucracy.
Our guy was into disguises anyhow. “OK, forget that for now, we can follow up on that later. See if she can get us the-wait a minute, one of them left the service last year?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Lien-hua passed the question along and then said, “February.”
“The fires started in April. Do they have an address? Maybe somewhere they’re sending his commission checks?”
Lien-hua scribbled down a street address and showed it to me.
I zoomed the computer in on the street.
The man lived only two blocks outside of the hot zone.
And his name was Austin Hunter.
Creighton Melice attached the video of Cassandra Lillo to the email message he’d prepared for Austin Hunter and pressed
“send.”
Overall, Creighton thought he did an amazing job on the piece, but he doubted Hunter would appreciate the time he’d spent to get it right. Creighton opened the door that led to the main section of the warehouse to check on Cassandra. No change. She was secure.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
Then he went back to wait for confirmation that the email had gone through. While he waited, he sharpened the narrow six-inch-long metal shiv. It would need to be sharp-very sharp-in case Shade told him to switch to Plan B.