"I remember you saying something about fuel the last time we talked about this." Edgar said, trying to push things along.

     "I was just getting to that," Jerome said, as he put the chalk back down, "According to the 'experts', when two planes hit the towers at the World Trade Center, they created a flame so hot that it melted the metal foundations which was claimed to be 'the official cause' of their record collapse. While I'm ready to debate that part right now, there are photos that show the pentagon after the fire was put out. I downloaded them off the internet for you to look at." Jerome took out some photos and started to pass them around.

     "That would explain why the printer is out of toner." Tuck said as Jerome handed a copy of the photo over to Edgar.

     "I think we can afford a little more now," Edgar retorted as he began to inspect the photo of the post-attack pentagon, "I don't understand, what exactly are looking for here?"

     Jerome walked up and pointed to a small corner of his photo. Edgar couldn't make out what it was so he grabbed a magnifying glass and took a closer look. He inspected the corner that Jerome had pointed at for a few moments and then he saw it.

     "Son of a bitch." Edgar said as he made the discovery.

     On the third floor of the Pentagon, there was a filing cabinet with a computer monitor stashed on top of it. Both are almost on the edge of where the gap of damage began and were clear as day to look at. There was one thing missing from this room and Edgar could tell immediately: fire damage. Both the cabinet and the monitor were not even singed, and the wall behind the monitor was white as if it had been painted that day... all inconsistent with a fire that Jerome was describing.

     "This doesn't look right, these things look brand new." Edgar concluded as he handed the photo for Tuck to look at.

     "Every one of the planes involved in the attacks was scheduled to make cross continental flights." Jerome reminded the detectives. "They all left the east coast and were direct flights to California, which means Flight 77's fuel tanks were near capacity when it hit the Pentagon. That means the plane was carrying over eight thousand gallons of jet fuel that would and should have been ignited on impact. Can anyone here look at these photos and think that the damage on these rooms is consistent with a fire that has that much fuel involved?"

     Jerome paused for a moment to let that question digest. Edgar himself while not full convinced started to get that nagging feeling in the back of his head. Something was starting to look rotten in the state of Denmark.

     "What kind of fire would that much fuel make?" Jessica asked, pretty much hanging off every word Jerome was saying.

     "There was a study done by the Environmental Assessment Association concerning this issue," Jerome said, "And their findings were quite remarkable. According to the EAA, the amount of fuel that was remaining on Flight 77 should have burned for days and reduced most of that wing of the Pentagon to ashes. All that rocket fuel also should have had a BTU rate of over eighty-six million. The EAA also stated that the fire should have been over three thousand degrees, so we're talking a fire almost as hot as napalm. They also concluded that the velocity of the plane and the impact should have reduced that portion of the Pentagon to a pancake. That amount of rocket fuel also should have resulted in the removal of soil from the front yard of the Pentagon, as it should have been considered a hazardous spill and quarantined off for weeks until cleaned up. Yet none of the Pentagon's front yard was damaged, nor was some parts of the inside, as you can see on those photos. So what happened to the fuel? If this was a terrorist attack, I doubt the attackers would have dumped any fuel before crashing. They would have wanted this sucker to be fully loaded for impact so that the fire would do as much damage as possible, which would explain why they selected cross continental flights for their attacks. So the damage that we see in these photos puts into question of what hit the pentagon because it's not damaged enough to be by something that had that much fuel. This doesn't make sense, and doesn't fit just like an airliner with a wingspan of over a hundred and twenty feet doesn't fit into a sixty five foot hole."

     "So you don't think a plane hit the pentagon?" Jessica asked somewhat bewildered by the suggestion. She was so used to believing what she was told by everyone since that tragic day. The government and the media kept telling her what to believe and after hearing it so many times, she believed it without question. After seeing her mom, she was willing to at least listen to anything regardless of how weird it sounded.

     "I don't think so," Jerome confirmed for her, "The blast, fire and damage the building took is more consistent with a cruise missile than a plane. It would explain why there was no fuel to burn up the wing, and why there were little or no plane pieces on the ground in front of the building."

     "So who fired the missile?" Tuck asked someone intrigued by the notion, "I doubt Al Queda had that kind of firepower in their arsenal."

     "They don't," Edgar answered this time.

     "Correct," Jerome agreed, "If it wasn't a plane and indeed a missile, then it would suggest that someone besides the usual suspects conducted the attack on the Pentagon. The number one suspect for this is the our own government."

     There were a few soft chuckles from some of the other workers in the outer offices as they were listening as well.

     "I know this sounds off the charts crazy," Jerome said, as he could understand why there were some doubters. "But I'm serious."

     "Do you have any idea what you just suggested?" Tuck asked.

     "I think he pretty much just accused Uncle Sam of setting his own house on fire," Edgar agreed, "That's a pretty bold accusation, sport."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

     "Who else would have the ability to know if any part of the Pentagon was undergoing renovations?" Jerome asked. "If that part of the building was hit intentionally, who besides someone on the inside has that kind of sophisticated guidance system capable of hitting a target that precisely? And even if it was another nation with that kind of missile, how could they sneak them into the country and into WashingtonD.C. for that matter? Is there anyone else who would be able to launch that kind of missile and have it remain undetected until it was too late? If you can name someone who can do all that and get away with it, I'm all ears."

     There was no response to his question, so Jerome continued.

     "On order to set up a missile and hit a building that quickly undetected means that person doing it had to know the people doing the detecting and made them look the other way," Jerome added, "They're also the only people who could conduct this kind of quick action in co-ordination with the New York attacks."

     "You're not trying to say that they attacked New York as well, are you?" Edgar said, with a hint of disbelief himself.

     "While there are just as many theories surrounding New York, I'm not going there right now because I want to focus on the Pentagon." Jerome answered, "I'm working with the premise that the Pentagon was attacked to make sure that the assault in New York wouldn't be panned by critics as an isolated incident. One attack could have been brushed off by the general public as a one time thing. Hitting two cities in the same day turned what would have been one isolated incident into nationwide mass hysteria. This makes sense because the people in power used that hysteria to push some very radical agendas that would have never passed prior to 9/11. You have to remember the Pentagon was never hit until an hour after the planes hit their targets in the big apple. That means a military or black ops team in charge of setting up this attack had less than an hour to set up their rocket and slam it into the building. That kind of set up is not easy, so there is the possibility that the government had advance knowledge of the attacks that were going to occur in New York."

     "So like Pearl Harbor theory," Edgar suggested, "The government let the bloodshed go ahead to get the outcry they needed for war?"

     "That's pretty cold, even for our government." Tuck added, as he tried to get a feel for what Jerome was accusing the system of.

     "Well, everyone who watched the 9/11 Commission hearings know that the title of that August 6th security brief was "Bin Laden wants to strike America" so this isn't a very tough theory to prove." Jerome said, "Half of the government knew Bin Laden wanted to attack. That's not much of a stretch so we'll go with it; they knew something was up and could have easily set this up to put their own icing on the cake."

     "So this was our missile?" another detective asked, while rubbing his head in clear frustration.

     "Regardless of how the missile came into the picture," Jerome carried on, unwilling to let the doubt and questions get to him, "All I know is that the damage that building took doesn't match what the government is asking us to believe. This is where most of conspiracy theories get their life from. We don't think the story sticks and look for the answers ourselves, and if the answer doesn't match with the official story, so be it."

     "So what do you think happened to the plane?" Edgar asked trying to keep up.

     "And the passengers?" Jessica asked somewhat eager to hear the answer to this as well.

     "It's a question that a lot of people have been thinking about for a while." Jerome said as he walked back to the chalk board, "Two of the most popular theories is that Flight 77 was either shot down by fighter jets or diverted to a different airport, stowed and later torn apart."

     "If the plane was shot down buy fighters, why wouldn't the government take credit for it and claim victory over the terrorists?" Tuck asked, somewhat lost at this point.

     "Would you want to take credit for shooting your own civilians out of the sky less than a year into your first term in the oval office?" Jerome said trying to slap some sense into the private workers, "Would anyone here really vote for a President who gave the command to shoot down a plane full of innocent civilians?" no one raised their hand, "I didn't think so, and neither did they."

     "Yet the plane wasn't shot down, was it?" Edgar asked, very confident he was on the right page.

     "Well, up until now... most people working on the theories didn't know for sure." Jerome said, trying to be as honest as he could, "But if Ms. Johnson is right and it really was her mother she saw at the vigil, then that would support the latter of the two suggestions. So we should work with the theory that the plane was diverted and stashed away. So if the passengers were not killed by a fighter jet or a collision with the Pentagon, they must have been placed into what I can only speculate is a covert relocation program."

     "This doesn't make any sense," Another detective in the offices said, "Why bother with that kind of advanced program? Wouldn't that just make exposure and the chances of getting caught greater?"

     "Chances are it does," Jerome conceded, "But you could argue that not killing the passengers could work as an insurance policy in case those involved are in fact caught red-handed. Which would you rather be found guilty of: relocating a hundred people against their will or murdering them? I guess if the government is ever caught they could always say, 'Look, we're not that bad. They're still here!' and act like everything is all right. It gives them an attempt to act moral in the face of something that is completely off the charts immoral." Jerome seemed to be in the zone as he took a sip of water and continued to rant on, "This is the only working theory that makes sense, pretty much covers all the bases, and fits with Ms. Johnson's story. The government is the only power big enough to pull something of this size off. They already have a relocation program in place, so it's not hard to imagine them using it to relocate less than a hundred people from this flight. So if they're alive as Ms. Johnson has testified too, then we can locate her and by doing so expose the government's web of lies and prove to the public what really happened!"

     Everyone paused for a moment and finally it was Tuck who spoke first, "Wasn't that a little too melodramatic?"

     "You think so?" Jerome said.

     "Just a smidge, sport." Edgar said as everyone had a good laugh at the young man's expense. At that moment out of the corner of his eye, Edgar realized there was someone else in the conference room he hadn't noticed before. Devon was standing close to the door, being abnormally quiet.

     "Hey," Devon said, when he noticed Edgar looking at him.

     "Hey," Edgar replied, trying to act cool. "How long have you been there?"

     "Long enough to know what kind of mess you're trying to get us involved in." Devon said not looking too impressed, "We need to talk about this, right now."

     Tuck tried to say something, but Edgar raised his hand and stopped him in mid-sentence, "Of course, we can talk this over in my office."

      Everyone watched in silence as Edgar and Devon exited the conference room and strolled across the lobby and into the office and the door was closed with a stiff slam. What they heard next surprised them all because it was the last thing they expected to hear.