The Network

From a borrowed hangar, fired officer John Washington III is building a picture he cannot yet prove. On a corkboard wall he has pinned photographs of twelve men, surveillance notes, and Norfolk flyover photographs - a trawler, antennas, and trucks on a pier - around a single name: Operation Sentinel. Watched in shifts by Marsh's people in rotating sedans, John works with pilot Dutch to follow the twelve men's routines, but they have only the outside: ships, buildings, and gear. What they lack is the middle - the requisitions, memos, and budget lines that run an operation on paper. John turns to Ruth Adler, a Pentagon logistics secretary who types seventy words a minute and has quietly passed him scraps for years. Ruth agrees to help, at real risk to herself and her college-age daughter, Denise, and her first copied requisition reaches their cutout post office box: $180,000 for special logistics, with no project name, approved by General Voss's office for naval facilities in the Tidewater area. Four people are now set against twelve, and against the White House.

Book 2 of The Authorization series by John Washington III.