Looking up from his map study, Lightfoot watched his colonel for a moment. “I’m sure there’s a good reason why we’re sitting here, violating several articles of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.”

While continuing to work on the letter, Nancy explained. “Some of the folks who are in the Guard also work for the phone company. Knowing full well that there’d be efforts to pass information out of the state via phone lines and cell links, they have set up a program that sorts all outgoing calls from Idaho and list those calls made to certain area codes. Given that list the COMSEC folks working with intelligence are able to pick out calls made to military installations and federal agencies within those area codes.”

“Okay,” Lightfoot responded as he watched Nancy place the cup of coffee down. “So what’s that got to do with escape and evasion and reading the Governor’s mail?”

“Oh, the two are separate issues,” she said as she carefully pried up the flap of the envelope so as not to tear it. “But the INSUM mentioned that several calls were made from a pay phone outside of Idaho City this morning to the headquarters of 2nd Battalion, 517th Parachute Infantry as well as its brigade headquarters at Fort Bragg.”

Lightfoot instantly made the connection between this tidbit of information and her request to consider where he would go if he was trying to escape and evade. Turning his attention back to the map, he renewed his evaluation of the problem with greater enthusiasm. Meanwhile Nancy pulled the letter from the envelope and began to read it.

“Here,” Lightfoot announced as he laid his finger on the map. “I’d go up here, northeast of town into the mountains away from everyone where I could hide but not so far away that it would take forever to come back down.”

Nancy looked over from the letter to where he was pointing. “Okay, good. But where, exactly, do you think they are?”

Lightfoot looked over at his colonel. “Doesn’t that letter say?”

Taking care to fold the letter as it had been, she put it back into the envelope. “I was hoping that it would give me a hint but it’s not about the phone calls. It seems the AG agreed with the conclusion the Intel folks put forth in the INSUM.”

“Which was?”

Nancy looked up at Lightfoot. “They stated that there is no reason to suspect that there is any significance to the random calls made to those particular numbers. Unless further calls are made to the numbers at Bragg from the same locations, additional analysis of the information is unnecessary.”

“But you think otherwise,” Lightfoot stated.

“Given what I’ve told you, don’t you?” she came back.