CAPTAIN UNSER HADN’T ELABORATED on what would happen if I stepped out of line. He hadn’t had to. One glance at my service record would tell him that I was up for promotion and that another stripe meant the difference between my staying with an active unit in Afghanistan and being assigned back to Fort Benning more or less permanently. I’d be an instructor at Ranger School, or if Unser was really out for me, placed on some sort of administrative duty. He was smart enough to know that a desk job would be worse than tossing me into the brig.

Ganz dropped me off at my truck, where I’d left it near Cristiana Liotti’s apartment. It was midafternoon. The truck had a parking ticket on its windshield, and someone had run a key down the side of the paint.

I sat in the driver’s seat with the window open to the cold air and took out my phone. I brought up Google and typed “TALOS ROBBERY.”

Over eighty thousand hits. Mother of God.

It wasn’t just news. It had been national news, if only for a short time. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about it, even half a world away. Although back in February the shit had been hitting every fan in sight in Kandahar. America could have been invaded by aliens and it would have been a week before we knew.

Still, it took me ten minutes just to scan through the first dozen pages of results and figure out what was relevant. Every blogger and news service had long articles on the topic. I went with the local papers first.

DIAMONDS STOLEN FROM ARMORED CAR IN RAVENSDALE

Posted: Feb 19 3:30 p.m.

An armored car was forcibly stopped and robbed by armed suspects on Wednesday morning in Ravensdale. According to officials, the Securiguard armored car had been hired by Talos Industrial Equipment to deliver a shipment of tool-grade diamonds from the U.S. Customs Air Cargo holding facility at Sea-Tac Airport Customs Depot. The car was driving along 281st SE Kent-Kangley Road when it was stopped, police said.

“The car braked to allow a school bus driven by suspects to pull out of a parking lot,” said Sgt. Walter Hodgins. “Then a second truck came from behind the armored car and trapped it.”

The driver and a second guard were confronted by robbers armed with what may have been automatic weapons. Neither guard exited the front of the armored car, and there were no injuries. The rear door to the armored car was forced open, possibly by use of explosives.

Investigators are still determining how many robbers were present and precisely how much was taken. Police stated that the suspects were described as wearing dark hooded sweatshirts and dark pants and were of average build.

“This robbery was in a spread-out suburban area, away from buildings and people,” Sgt. Hodgins said. “We are seeking witnesses who may have seen the suspects leaving the area.”

Anyone with information about the robbery can call King County CrimeStoppers at 206.555.2030 or text CRIMES. Tipsters remain anonymous and may qualify for a cash reward.

I could translate the last paragraph of the article easily enough: The police have nothing solid to go on, and they are hoping for a miracle.

And then they got one. Maybe not the kind they were imagining.

And later that same day, there was an update:

There was a lot more from the news services during the last part of February. Updates on where the school bus had been stolen from. Escalating offers of reward from Talos. A few outraged editorials, both conservative and liberal. And follow-up blurbs about the criminal records of Orren and McGann, the two dead robbers. Orren had done some minor county time in his youth, for car theft and burglary. He seemed to work exclusively around Seattle.

Burt McGann was more of a mystery. And more of a hard case. He’d done two years in Indiana for assault with intent and had been suspected of “other violent crimes,” as the police spokesperson put it. Not the kind of cowboy that Dono would usually choose to work with.

The real meat on the Web was from private sources. Six million dollars of missing diamonds provoked a lot of interest. There were whole blogs devoted to the crime and scores of low-res pictures taken by passersby on the day of the robbery.

One Web page in particular, run by an elderly crime buff in southern Washington, had done an expert job of finding the best photos. I studied them carefully and then started the truck.

I wanted to see the scene for myself.

RAVENSDALE WAS ONLY A few miles from Covington, down Highway 516 which turned into Kent-Kangley Road as it went due east. I drove along its length until I spotted the church steeple that had been visible in the background of photographs I’d looked at.

The gray afternoon was edging into evening, and the tall trees surrounding the road hastened the sunset. A cold night wind had already started to kick up from the west, and it bit at my cheeks as I got out of the truck and looked at the road. I had maybe another thirty minutes of decent light. The school bus that had forced the armored car to stop had pulled out of the church’s parking lot.

I walked back up the road toward the church entrance, thinking about the sequence of events during the robbery. The pictures showed multiple angles on the armored car, which had not been the big silver tank that I’d imagined but a white reinforced panel van. It made sense. Securiguard wasn’t hired to deliver stacks of cash to dozens of ATMs. They were making a single drop of eighty kilos of industrial stones.

Fast and discreet, I’m sure they had thought. Until the school bus pulled out and they’d been forced to hit the brakes. Then the real fun had begun.

The armored van had been wedged solid between the bus and a flatbed truck in back. The flatbed had a bumper extension on the front of it, set low enough that it wouldn’t block the rear doors on the van.

Force the armored van to stop cold. An instinctive reaction, when there might be kids on the school bus. Come up behind the van fast with the flatbed and its heavy bumper. On the asphalt of the road, there were thick, dark hash marks of abraded rubber. Bam.

Other photos had shown the back of the armored van. One of the doors was completely off, lying on the road. I had recognized the black scoring and almost clean punched holes where the door’s hinges had been as the sign of shape charges, probably C-4 or Semtex. BAM again.

The score had been as slick as shit through a goose. At least until the three men had reached the abandoned hangar to trade one getaway car for another with less heat, and Orren and McGann had killed each other.

I stepped off the road to let a Volvo sedan go by. A boy in the backseat wearing a bright yellow cap made a face at me as it cruised past.

Okay. Think about the scene the way Dono might have.

A remote location, away from cameras and witnesses. Inside information, of course, to know about the diamonds and exactly when they were due. A lot of prep work, with multiple vehicles preset, and explosives to boot.

All of that felt like Dono. Careful and considered.

On the flip side, there was the human factor, which he’d always despised. Orren and McGann, maybe getting greedy, maybe just freaking out with the adrenaline high. One of them twitches wrong. A third and fourth BAM.

Incredibly good fortune for the third robber, if you wanted to look on the bright side. They might just as easily have aced him as well.

But there was something else bothering me about the score. I backed up and played the scene through my mind again. Not like a crook this time. Like a soldier.

The two points of view weren’t dissimilar, at least when it came down to tactical choices. Adequate cover. Clear fields of fire. Methods of extraction.

Both lenses showed me the same picture.

It had been a weak plan.

Three men in the crew. One to drive the school bus and cover the guards in the cab of the armored car. One to drive the flatbed and cover the road behind. While the last man would need to drive up in the getaway car, set the charges, and unload more than one hundred and seventy pounds of diamonds.

There should have been at least one more man. Sitting at the wheel of the running getaway car, watching the road in front. At the first sign of any trouble, the three men could pile into the car and be out of sight in ten seconds.

Without that fourth set of eyes, a large part of their horizon was left unwatched. Very risky. Almost unthinkable, for a man like Dono.

Almost.

And that was the conclusion that my mind kept circling back to. Even without knowing that the bugs connected my grandfather to Cristiana Liotti, or her torture and murder, that pretty much clinched her as the inside source on the robbery. Even discounting all of Dono’s odd behavior lately.

It just felt like the old man. Almost like I could catch the scent of his shaving cream, still at the scene.

Shit, Dono. What was it? Reliving your wild years? Why suddenly start gunslinging like liquor-store trash?

With six million in stones and three partners, you would have expected to clear at least a million if you were running the show. Was that kind of money simply worth rolling the dice?

The wind heightened in pitch but didn’t give me any answers. I walked back to the truck, over the permanent black scars left on the road.