officer and several middle-ranking officers worked at individual consoles, keeping abreast of ongoing operations and developments by watching and responding to operational reports and situations in various regions and commands at home and abroad. The atmosphere was “24/7 busy normal.” Computers hummed, telephones chimed softly, clerks carefully ordered the endless flow of paper, and officers, each responsible for a particular part of the world or some special function, spoke matter-of-factly to distant stations and other officers crammed into the NDHQ labyrinth.
Behind the main room, communications clerks, or comms clerks, as they were universally called, constantly monitored and operated the global Canadian Forces communications network, receiving and sending scores of messages mostly in secure and coded formats. Both sections of NDOC were hooked into the adjacent National Defence Intelligence Centre, a facility where even greater security prevailed, and “need to know” rules were even more closely defined.
Once Dobson finished his morning briefing, complete with the inevitable PowerPoint slides, at 6:45, he would walk down the hall and up the back stairs to the office of the deputy chief of the defence staff. The DCDS, Lieutenant General Carl Gervais, was (nominally, some said) the senior operations officer in the Canadian Forces. Together they would go over the details and discuss likely questions and answers on operational matters that he and Gervais would address at the 0730 meeting in Conference Room B on the thirteenth floor of NDHQ.
Over the past two years, Dobson had learned that Gervais liked to look as though he were in control and handle every question brought up by his boss, the chief of the defence staff, or any of the dozen or so officers and civilian assistant deputy ministers gathered around the large conference table. But Dobson knew also that Gervais expected him to jump in quickly if Gervais’s sometimes shaky grasp of relevant details threatened to become apparent. As had become glaringly obvious over the years, when Gervais dumped a problem into Dobson’s lap, he left it there.
Far better to prep the old man so he could blather his way past any uncertainty and then clean up problems later. Which wasn’t easy, given Gervais’s impatience with details during briefings and indeed with briefings altogether. So, after his quick meeting with the DCDS, Ian would return to his desk, make any final amendments to the script to steer around especially obvious holes in Gervais’s knowledge, then rehearse the briefing with his assistant, who controlled the slides. At the appointed hour, he would walk over to the meeting room for his quick dog-and-pony show in front of the brass and the senior civvies.
It was just coming on 0615 hours when a call from across the room drew Dobson away from his report. Lieutenant Commander Dan Noble, halfway through a message one of the comms clerks had just handed him, called over his shoulder, “Hey, sir, I just got a flash message, a Significant Incident Report from Petawawa. You had better look at this.”
“Bugger,” Dobson said to no one in particular. Half an hour before he was to see the DCDS and what does he get? A SIR from, of course, Petawawa – that place was cursed. “What now? Did someone cut off another head at Chez Charlie’s last night or have they just found more horses on the payroll?”
“Seems a bit more bizarre, even for Petawawa, sir. A female MP has gone missing with her car and all.”
Dobson reached for the paper and read the formatted message. He paused a moment and turned to Noble. “Call the base duty officer and find out if we’re talking about a deserter or what. Have comms get the deputy base commander, Colonel Neal, on the phone, and alert the DCDS’s assistant. I might need to see the general earlier than usual.”
“Aye, sir.” Noble reached for his phone and hit the speed dial with one hand while beckoning a clerk over with the other.
Almost immediately, Dobson’s desk phone buzzed. He flipped off his desk speaker and lifted the receiver. A voice announced, “Colonel Neal on the line for you, sir.”
“Bob, Ian, glad to see someone else is up. What the hell is it this time?”
“We’re not sure yet, Ian. The MP commander was called into his office about 0330 after his people couldn’t raise this MP, Corporal Joan Newman. The desk sergeant already spent about two hours pissing around trying to find the car – figured it was broken down somewhere, had another car retrace the route she was on, the usual. They found nothing. Checked the guard house; she never left the base. And she’s not shacked up for a quickie with her boyfriend – checked that too. Then the sergeant called his CO, who went over the same searches again with more people. Still nothing. So he called me. We’re still looking. That’s all we have.”
“What do you know about the MP?”
“Good record, smart and reliable – this is way out of character.”
“So what are we dealing with? Has she gone over the hill or had an accident, or is this some criminal act? What?”
Neal bit his tongue. He’d just said they didn’t know what was happening. “Don’t know, Ian. But shit, who’d take off with a police officer?”
“Has the media caught wind of this?”
“Not so far,” Neal responded, refraining from pointing out that as it was 6:15 a.m., the only journalists out of bed were radio drive-in-show people too busy catching up on the morning papers to notice if the building they were in was on fire. “But the search has started the rumour mill and they probably will in short order.”
“Yeah, okay. Keep me posted. I have to give this to the boss ASAP and then to morning prayers. The base commander can expect a call from the DCDS in thirty minutes. You guys are top of the hit parade again. Good luck, Bob.”
Dobson put down the phone and called to Noble, “Keep on top of this; make copies of the SIR for the usual list of people but don’t send it out until I speak with the general. Call the provost marshal and ask her to be at prayers – give her the bare facts. We need a complete description of the MP detachment up there and this Newman person’s file. Now!”
Turning to the Canada Command desk officer, Ian warned her, “Cindy, get ready for an overlap in shifts for a few hours until this thing is cleared up and put away.” As he turned back to his report, he thought, not for the first time, that if the military wanted you to have a family life they would probably have issued you one … an all-purpose, completely flexible one.
Monday, August 30, 0625 hours
On the Ottawa River, five kilometres south of Fort William, PQ
Alex Gabriel’s flotilla touched down on the Quebec shore across from Petawawa. An assortment of trucks and pickups rolled down along a trail through the bush off Chemin Fort William to take on the precious cargo. A tall, sour-looking man walked towards Alex, and, pulling him aside, glanced over the packs, boxes, and weapons crates.
“What did you get?” he asked sharply.
“Much as we planned. We found the stores as described, carried away what we could and got out. We had a run-in with an MP, but she did no harm.”
“Did you shoot her?”
“Of course not! What’s the matter with you? We don’t go around shooting people out of hand.” Alex’s instant dislike for the guy grew legs. He turned to walk away. “I’ll count the stuff off the beach once I’ve seen to my people.”
“Nope. You leave that to me. My guys will take the loads from here on and we’ve got plans for the team.”
“I thought we were going to use this stuff locally.
