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Puller gave her his number

“Oh, John?”

“Yeah?”

“I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for”

“Me too”

Chapter

12

PAUL ROGERS HAD walked around the perimeter of Fort Monroe He had done this a dozen tis on the last circuit that he had failed to see on the first In some ways the place looked like a Hollywood back-lot set of a s was the film crew and actors

This had been his playground of sorts thirty years ago He’d been in his twenties, alone, confused, intimidated

He was still alone But he was no longer confused or intimidated

He eyed the terreplein that ran around the fort He had often run around this strip of grass and knew that it was one point two th Constructed over a sixteen-year period, the fort, also known as “the Gibraltar of the Chesapeake,” had walls that extended over a mile and encoun mounts could still be seen These were the Endicott batteries that had replaced the cannon in the fort Rifled barrels had led to the fortress cannons being rendered obsolete Ships could fire froe The Endicott batteries had been brought in to fix that problem Then with the invention of the airplane even the Endicotts becaic and operational attributes of the fort were pretty much exhausted It beca and doctrine” after that, and indeed became the Army’s center for those two intertwined disciplines

As he looked down at the water in the ers could see that nearly two hundred years of silt buildup had shortened the depth, already fairly shallow, to the point where at low tide he could see a sandbar

He stared out over the narrow channel where the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia had fought the first naval duel between ironclads The channel was shallow and the deeper part was on the Fort Monroe side, so the ships co the shore there He remembered that the aircraft carriers would corounds

Back then Rogers had learned as much about Fort Monroe’s history as he could Across that same channel three slaves had rowed across at the start of the Civil War and asked for refuge The garrison coreed When the Confederates, under a white flag, had shown up and demanded their return under the recently passed federal law about runaway slaves, Butler, a foriven the rebels a lesson in the nuances of the law Since they had seceded froer entitled to the protections of federal law And since the slaves were being used in the war effort against the Union, Butler was treating them as contraband to be kept by the United States Word of this reached the ears of ee status as “contraband” in what became known as “Freedom’s Fortress”

Rogers’s walk had taken hihthouse It had been built in 1802 and still worked, hthouse on the Chesapeake Bay

Rogers re he had been required to clihthouse all the way up to the top railing In the dead of night no less

He had succeeded He could re out at the vastness of the bay and the ocean beyond and thinking that his future was truly limitless That he was special, when he never had been before

On his walk Rogers saw the old arsenal that had made bullets and bombs for the Union He passed the stone and arch-ed St Mary’s Church where he had worshipped as a youngman

Afterward, he had not wanted to worship anything or anyone It was all changed He was all changed

He clambered up on top of a wall to see the Chesapeake Bay better He had spent days out there treading water, swi in all possible weather They had pushed him Broken him Rebuilt him

And broken hiain

He hopped down off the wall

After a while they hadn’t bothered to fix him anymore

He rubbed his head But the pains were now more consistent and more frequent He didn’t knohy He walked back to the van and drove off, passing by a row of officers’ quarters

A world of memories had flooded back to him as soon as he had seen Fort Monroe But none like the ones he had recollected when he stopped in front of as known back then as Building Q It was set off in a ree buffers of eh periates with aruards Their job had been to keep some folks out and other folks in

He was one of the other folks

Unlike s around here, Building Q was not e lot inside the fence was full of cars The lights inside were on As he watched, so, and lit up a cigarette

The concertina wire reuards He wondered if the electronic security system was still active

He didn’t think about this for a casual reason

He was co back to break into the place

After that Rogers was pretty certain of his strategy

As he watched, the sarette and walked back to the door He used a key card access to gain entry, pulled open the door, and went back to whatever work he was doing inside

So there is electronic security as well