„I love you“ were the last words I said to my wife. It was the morning of Thursday, July 6th. Who could forget that day?

I was halfway through my daily commute when my mobile phone rang.

„Colonel Brandon, INSCOM“

„Sir, you are requested at HQ immediately, Sir. Order of General Wilson.“

„On my way. ETA 20 minutes.“

It was going to be a long day.

I lived off-site, and the drive to Fort Belvoir was usually pleasant. That day, it was a bit less so than usual, with the drizzle and the overcast sky. Little did I know what was about to come.

„Colonel, take a seat.“ I was welcomed into the conference room already occupied by General Wilson, acting commander of INSCOM as well as two other Colonels and four Majors under him. Major Simmons brought me to my assigned seat with the briefing material waiting for me.

I flipped through the pages, picking up the most important information before settling in for a full read. Two more Majors were still due to arrive, according to the name plates on their seats, but the General started the meeting within minutes, and I had managed only half of the papers.

„Yesterday evening“, Colonel Roberts summed up the events, „A senior official at an army research facility was found AWOL. The research subject of the facility is biological weapons, and several containers with live material were found to be missing.“

„Is the FBI on the case?“, one of the Majors asked.

„Due to the sensitive nature of the material, the army is handling this as an internal matter. Military police has searched the suspects residence during the night and is still questioning his wife. This meeting was called due to a finding of the early morning. General?“

The general sat upright in his seat and addressed the small group: „He took precautions to secure his home computer with hard drive encryption and he wiped his phone before leaving it in his office. We can’t get his credit card transactions without a court order, which would mean involving the FBI. But early in the morning we involved the NSA and got a copy of his last text messages. There were confirmation messages for two credit card transactions from last week among them, which indicate that he booked two flights. The amounts given point to international flights. Our suspect is planning to leave the country.“

Colonel Roberts continued: „My team is trying to narrow down the possible flights and sift through the evidence we found and the statements of his wife. We are also reviewing footage of traffic cameras trying to find his car. He probably dumped it somewhere and took a rental, but we cannot be certain of that until we get his credit card data. We will compile a profile of the suspect and send to all of you.

„The bad news is that the stuff that he took should not have been there. Its existence is a violation of the Biological Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act. Everything in that lab is classified as Top Secret and we cannot allow anyone without the necessary clearance to even find out what went missing. That is why we cannot involve the FBI, not even under a pretence. If they find our man and arrest him, they will likely also find the bio-weapon material. So this one is on us.“

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„Colonel Brandon“, the general turned to me, „You will lead the investigation in and around the research facility. A helicopter is waiting for you and your team.

„Colonel Manning“, he turned to the third Colonel in the room, „You will work with the CBP. Put him on the watch list for the border guards so we know the moment he shows his passport at an airport. Set up a plan and a team for arresting him safely, as we have to assume he carries the bio-weapon on his body.

„Dismissed.“

Two hours later, we touched down near the research lab and a car brought me and a small team to the facility, which had been put under lockdown by its deputy security chief.

Five hours later, we had conducted our initial observation and interviews and had a reasonably good picture of the timeline of events.

Six hours later, General Wilson had a preliminary report on his desk and I took my first break of the day and made time for a phone call to my wife, who had only gotten a few text messages during the helicopter flight so far. I couldn’t tell her where I was and how long I would be, but this had happened to us before. I was certain by then that I would not be home that night.

A conference call was scheduled a little after my break and we exchanged our progress so far. Manning had compiled a profile of our suspect and it alarmed us all. A typical high-performance individual possibly approached by the enemy. His wife passed all interviews and wasn’t a suspect. We found no evidence of other co-conspirators, either. Roberts had success with one of the travel agencies who had caved in under pressure and gave the flight details without a proper court order. The second one had a lawyer and insisted on proper procedure. This was anyway a breakthrough and the reason for the conference call. Our suspect had booked a flight from Toronto, Canada to Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Amsterdams Schiphol Airport is one of the busiest airports in Europe, with connecting flights almost everywhere. They were planning to add a sixth runway.

But we had his exact flight times. Mannings team would work with the Customs and Border Protection to monitor the likely border crossings into Canada. General Wilson would work his connections and try to get the Canadians to arrest our suspect when he showed up at the airport.

Roberts and my team would continue our investigation. The whole flight bookings might be a ruse, I thought. For a smart guy in charge of the security of a secret military base, they were just not hidden well enough.

The entire call lasted half an hour, and was followed up by encrypted mails containing the reports of everyone so far. I distributed the material around my team for reading and took to the compiled profile myself.

We spent two more hours on the base, investigating camera footage, conducting interviews and checking several times both our suspects office and the lab that had contained the pathogens.

At around nine in the evening, I arrived at a small hotel nearby. The base was a research facility and had no housing. After a long phone call to my wife, I showered and went to bed.

We spend all of the next day following clues and collecting evidence, but to no avail. Then we got the call from the other unit that he had not shown up for the flight. It was neither entirely surprising nor expected with certainty, but it gave our investigation a renewed focus.