Maybe it was a trick of the poetic imagination he’d inherited from his Irish immigrant grandfather, a teller of many tales, but something about this silent procession through the bowels of the Pentagon struck him as eerie—as though he were nothing but a ghost drifting through this massive military bureaucratic machine. Jet lag brought on by an overnight flight from the Middle East only intensified this weird sense of disembodiment, as did the preemptory orders he’d received to report here today for “further debriefing on the Wath Incident.”

Flynn honestly wasn’t sure what more there was to analyze about the tribal ambush and its aftermath. He and the other survivors had spent days with Air Force and DoD investigators. Every observation, word, and action they could recall had been relentlessly probed, questioned, and challenged in an effort to develop a clearer and more detailed picture of how the attack unfolded and how it was repelled. The precision-guided munitions used to destroy the downed C-130 and its cargo had also obliterated every scrap of physical evidence, so all that was left were differing and imperfect human memories.

With Flynn in tow, the gray-shirted police officer turned right into a narrower hallway, one of the five concentric rings that ran around each floor of the huge building. Two Marine sergeants in camouflage battle dress uniforms stood on guard outside a door a few yards farther on.

“This is Captain Nicholas Flynn, USAF, reporting here as ordered,” the police officer announced. “You have him?”

The older of the two Marine noncoms nodded. “I relieve you of the responsibility, Sergeant,” he said formally. Without any further word, the policeman turned around and walked away.

Curiouser and curiouser, Flynn thought, raising an eyebrow in surprise. He offered the two sentries a dry smile. “So I’m your ‘responsibility’ now? Is that some kind of new DoD code word for ‘prisoner’?”

“Couldn’t say, sir,” the younger Marine sergeant replied woodenly. He held out a hand. “May I have your cell phone, please?” He nodded toward the door and its adjoining electronic card reader and ten-key pad. “That’s a secure room. Per SOP, no personal electronic devices are allowed inside.”

Wordlessly, Flynn handed over his phone and watched the guard stash it in a lockbox. Then he stood still while the noncom patted him down, making a final check for any additional prohibited devices. He glanced at the door. The usual alphanumeric code used to identify rooms inside the Pentagon had been covered over by another sign: i-con (t).

“Icon?” he asked.

“Intelligence Conference,” the older sergeant explained.

With the (t) signaling that it was only a temporary use of this particular facility, Flynn realized. Maybe even just for today’s scheduled exercise in once again plowing the same stony ground of trying to figure out exactly what had gone wrong in the Libyan desert.

The Marine swiped his ID card through the reader and rapidly punched in a code on the pad. With an audible click, the door unlocked. “Go right on inside, sir,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”