The world is changing. I had always been a loner, but at that point I started to feel lonely. And I had always been a cynic, but at that point I began to feel hopelessly naive. Both of my families were disappearing out from under me, one because of simple relentless chronology, and the other because its reliable old values seemed suddenly to be evaporating. I felt like a man who wakes alone on a deserted island to find that the rest of the world has stolen away in boats in the night. I felt like I was standing on a shore, watching small receding shapes on the horizon. I felt like I had been speaking English, and now I realized everyone else had been speaking a different language entirely. The world was changing. And I didn't want it to.
Summer came back three minutes later. I guessed she had been hiding around a corner, waiting for Willard to leave. She had folds of printer paper under her arm, and big news in her eyes.
"Vassell and Coomer were here again last night," she said. "They're listed on the gate log."
"Sit down," I said.
She paused, surprised, and then she sat where Willard had.
"I'm toxic," I said. "You should walk away from me right now."
"What do you mean?"
"We were right," I said. "Fort Bird is a very embarrassing place. First Kramer, then Carbone. Willard is closing both cases down, to spare the army's blushes."
"He can't close Carbone down."
"Training accident," I said. "Carbone tripped and fell and hit his head."
"What?"
"Willard's using it as a test for me. Am I with the program or not?"
"Are you?"
I didn't answer.
"They're illegal orders," Summer said. "They have to be."
"Are you prepared to challenge them?"
She didn't reply. The only practical way to challenge illegal orders was to disobey them and then take your chances with the resulting general court-martial, which would inevitably become a mano a mano struggle with a guy way higher on the food chain, in front of a presiding judge who was well aware of the army's preference that orders should never be questioned.
"So nothing ever happened," I said. "Bring all your paperwork here and forget you ever heard of me or Kramer or Carbone."
She said nothing.
"And speak to the guys who were there last night. Tell them to forget what they saw."
She looked down at the floor.
"Then go back to the O Club and wait for your next assignment."
She looked up at me.
"Are you serious?" she said.
"Totally," I said. "I'm giving you a direct order."
She stared at me. "You're not the man I thought you were."
I nodded.
"I agree," I said. "I'm not."
She walked out and I gave her a minute to get clear and then I picked up the folded paper she had left behind. There was a lot of it. I found the page I wanted, and I stared at it.
Because I don't like coincidences.
Vassell and Coomer had entered Bird by the main gate at six forty-five in the evening of the night Carbone had died. They had left again at ten o'clock. Three and a quarter hours, right across Carbone's time of death.
Or right across dinnertime.
I picked up the phone and called the O Club dining room. A mess sergeant told me the NCO in charge would call me back. Then I called my own sergeant and asked her to find out who was my opposite number at Fort Irwin, and to get him on the line. She came in four minutes later with a mug of coffee for me.
"He's all tied up," she said. "Could be half an hour. His name is Franz."
"Can't be," I said. "Franz is in Panama. I talked to him there face-to-face."
"Major Calvin Franz," she said. "That's what they told me."
"Call them back," I said. "Double-check."
She left my coffee on my desk and went back out to her phone. Came in again after another four minutes and confirmed that her information had been correct.
"Major Calvin Franz," she said again. "He's been there since December twenty-ninth."
I looked down at my calendar. January 5th.
"And you've been here since December twenty-ninth," she said.
I looked straight at her.
"Call some more posts," I said. "The big ones only. Start with Fort Benning, and work through the alphabet. Get me the names of their MP XOs, and find out how long they've been there."
She nodded and went back out. The NCO from the dining room called me back. I asked him about Vassell and Coomer. He confirmed they had eaten dinner in the O Club. Vassell had gone with the halibut, and Coomer had opted for the steak.
"Did they eat on their own?" I asked.
"No, sir, they were with an assortment of senior officers," the guy said.
"Was it a date?"
"No, sir, we had the impression it was impromptu. It was an odd collection of people. I think they all hooked up in the bar, over aperitifs. Certainly we had no reservation for the group."
"How long were they there?"
"They were seated before seven-thirty, and they got up just before ten o'clock."
"Nobody left and came back?"
"No, sir, they were under our eye throughout."
"All the time?"
"We paid close attention to them, sir. It was a question of the general's rank, really."
I hung up. Then I called the main gate. Asked who had actually eyeballed Vassell and Coomer in and out. They gave me a sergeant's name. I told them to find the guy and have him call me back.
I waited.
The guy from the gate was the first to get back to me. He confirmed he had been on duty all through the previous evening, and he confirmed he had personally witnessed Vassell and Coomer arrive at six forty-five and leave again at ten.
"Car?" I asked.
"Big black sedan, sir," he said. "A Pentagon staff car."
"Grand Marquis?" I asked.
"I'm pretty sure, sir."
"Was there a driver?"
"The colonel was driving," the guy said. "Colonel Coomer, that is. General Vassell was in the front passenger seat."
"Just the two of them in the car?"
"Affirmative, sir."
"Are you sure?"
"That's definite, sir. No question about it. At night we use flashlights. Black sedan, DoD plates, two officers in the front, proper IDs displayed, rear seat vacant."
"OK, thanks," I said, and hung up. The phone rang again immediately. It was Calvin Franz, in California.
"Reacher?" he said. "What the hell are you doing there?"
"I could ask you the exact same question."
The phone went quiet for a beat.
"No idea what the hell I'm doing here," he said. "Irwin's all quiet. It usually is, they tell me. Weather's nice, though."
"Did you check your orders?"
"Sure," he said. "Didn't you? Panama's the most fun I've had since Grenada, and now I'm staring at the sands of the Mojave? Seems to have been Garber's personal brainwave. I thought I must have upset him. Now I'm not so sure what's going on. Unlikely that we both upset him."
"What exactly were your orders?" I said.
"Temporary XO for the Provost Marshal."
"Is he there right now?"
"No, actually. He got a temporary detachment the same day I got in."
"So you're acting CO?"
"Looks that way," he said.
"Me too."
"What's going on?"
"No idea," I said. "If I ever find out, I'll tell you. But first I need to ask you a question. I came across a bird colonel and a one-star over here, supposed to be heading out to you for an Armored conference on New Year's Day. Vassell and Coomer. Did they ever show?"
"That conference was canceled," Franz said. "We heard their two-star bought the farm somewhere. Guy called Kramer. They seemed to think there was no point going ahead without him. Either that, or they can't think at all without him. Or they're all too busy fighting over who's going to get his command."
"So Vassell and Coomer never came to California?"
"They never came to Irwin," Franz said. "That's for sure. Can't speak for California. It's a big state."
"Who else was supposed to attend?"
"Armored's inner circle. Some are based here. Some showed and went away again. Some never showed at all."
"Did you hear anything about the agenda?"
"I wouldn't expect to. Was it important?"
"I don't know. Vassell and Coomer said there wasn't one."
"There's always an agenda."
"That's what I figured."
"I'll keep my ears open."
"Happy New Year," I said. Then I put the phone down and sat quiet. Thought hard. Calvin Franz was one of the good guys. Actually, he was one of the best guys. Tough, fair, as competent as the day was long. Nothing ever knocked him off his stride. I had been happy enough to leave Panama, knowing that he was still there. But he wasn't still there. I wasn't there, and he wasn't there. So who the hell was?
I finished my coffee and carried my mug outside and put it back next to the machine. My sergeant was on the phone. She had a page of scribbled notes in front of her. She held up a finger like she had big news. Then she went back to writing. I went back to my desk. She came in five minutes later with her scribbled page. Thirteen lines, three columns. The third column was made up of numbers. Dates, probably.
"I got as far as Fort Rucker," she said. "Then I stopped. Because there's a very obvious pattern developing."
"Tell me," I said.
She reeled off thirteen posts, alphabetically. Then she reeled off the names of their MP executive officers. I knew all thirteen names, including Franz's and my own. Then she reeled off the dates they had been transferred in. Every date was exactly the same. Every date was December 29th. Eight days ago.
"Say the names again," I told her.
She read them again. I nodded. Inside the arcane little world of military law enforcement, if you wanted to pick an all-star squad, and if you thought long and hard about it all through the night, those thirteen names were what you would have come up with. No doubt about it. They made up a major-league, heavy-duty baker's dozen. There would have been about ten other obvious guys in the mix, but I had no doubt at all that a couple of them would be right there on posts farther along in the alphabet, and the other eight or so in significant places around the globe. And I had no doubt at all that all of them had been there just eight days. Our heavy hitters. I wouldn't have wanted to say how high or how low I ranked among them individually, but collectively, down there at the field level, we were the army's top cops, no question about it.
"Weird," I said. And it was weird. To shuffle that many specific individuals around on the same day took some kind of will and planning, and to do it during Just Cause took some kind of an urgent motive. The room seemed to go quiet, like I was straining to hear the other shoe fall.
"I'm going over to the Delta station," I said.
I drove myself in a Humvee because I didn't want to walk. I didn't know if the asshole Willard was off the post yet, and I didn't want to cross his path again. The sentry let me into the old prison and I went straight to the adjutant's office. He was still at his desk, looking a little more tired than when I had seen him in the early morning.
"It was a training accident," I said.
He nodded. "So I heard."
"What kind of training was he doing?" I asked.
"Night maneuvers," the guy said.
"Alone?"
"Escape and evasion, then."
"On-post?"
"OK, he was jogging. Burning off the holiday calories. Whatever."
"I need this to sound kosher," I said. "My name's going to be on the report."
The captain nodded. "Then forget the jogging. I don't think Carbone was a runner. He was more of a gym rat. A lot of them are."
"A lot of who are?"
He looked straight at me.
"Delta guys," he said.
"Did he have a specialization?"
"They're all generalists. They're all good at everything."
"Not radio, not medic?"
"They all do radio. And they're all medics. It's a safeguard. If they're captured individually, they can claim to be the company medic. Might save them from a bullet. And they can demonstrate the expertise, if they're tested."
"Any medical training take place at night?"
The captain shook his head. "Not specifically."
"Could he have been out testing comms gear?"
"He could have been out road testing a vehicle," the captain said. "He was good with mechanical things. I guess as much as anyone he looked after the unit's trucks. That was probably as close as he got to a specialization."
"OK," I said. "Maybe he blew a tire, and his truck fell off the jack and crushed his head?"
"Works for me," the captain said.
"Uneven terrain, maybe a soft spot under the jack, the whole thing would be unstable."
"Works for me," the captain said again.
"I'll say my guys towed the truck back."
"OK."
"What kind of truck was it?"
"Any kind you like."
"Your CO around?" I said.
"He's away. For the holidays."
"Who is he?"
"You won't know him."
"Try me."
"Colonel Brubaker," the captain said.
"David Brubaker?" I said. "I know him." Which was partially true. I knew him by reputation. He was a real hairy-assed Special Forces evangelist. According to him the rest of us could fold our tents and go home and the whole world could hide behind his handpicked units. Maybe some helicopter battalions could stay in harness, to ferry his people around. Maybe a single Pentagon office could stay open, to procure the weapons he wanted.
"When will he be back?" I said.
"Sometime tomorrow."
"Did you call him?"
The captain shook his head. "He won't want to be involved. And he won't want to talk to you. But I'll get him to reissue some operational safety procedures, as soon as we find out what kind of an accident it was."
"Crushed by a truck," I said. "That's what it was. That should make him happy. Vehicular safety is a shorter section than weapons safety."
"In what?"
"In the field manual."
The captain smiled.
"Brubaker doesn't use the field manual," he said.
"I want to see Carbone's billet," I said.
"Why?"
"Because I need to sanitize it. If I'm going to sign off on a truck accident, I don't want any loose ends around."
Carbone had bunked the same way as his unit as a whole, on his own in one of the old cells. It was a six-by-eight space made of painted concrete and it had its own sink and toilet. It had a standard army cot and a footlocker and a shelf on the wall as long as the bed. All in all, it was pretty good accommodations for a sergeant. There were plenty around the world who would have traded in the blink of an eye.
Summer had had police tape stuck across the doorway. I pulled it down and balled it up and put it in my pocket. Stepped inside the room.
Special Forces Detachment D is very different from the rest of the army in its approach to discipline and uniformity. Relationships between the ranks are very casual. Nobody even remembers how to salute. Tidiness is not prized. Uniform is not compulsory. If a guy feels comfortable in a previous-issue fatigue jacket that he's had for years, he wears it. If he likes New Balance running shoes better than GI combat boots, he wears them. If the army buys four hundred thousand Beretta sidearms, but the Delta guy likes SIGs better, he uses a SIG.
So Carbone had no closet full of clean and pressed uniforms. There were no serried ranks of undershirts, crisp and laundered, folded ready for use. There were no gleaming boots under his bed. His clothing was all piled on the first three-quarters of the long shelf above his cot. There wasn't much of it. It was all basically olive green, but apart from that it wasn't stuff that a current quartermaster would recognize. There were some old pieces of the army's original extended cold-weather clothing system. There were some faded pieces of standard BDUs. Nothing was marked with unit or regimental insignia. There was a green bandanna. There were some old green T-shirts, washed so many times they were nearly transparent. There was a neatly rolled ALICE harness next to the T-shirts. ALICE stands for All-Purpose Lightweight Carrying Equipment, which is what the army calls a nylon belt that you hang things from.
The final quarter of the shelf's length held a collection of books, and a small color photograph in a brass frame. The photograph was of an older woman who looked a little like Carbone himself. His mother, without a doubt. I remembered his tattoo, sliced across by the K-bar. An eagle, holding a scroll with Mother on it. I remembered my mother, shooing us away into the tiny elevator after we had hugged her goodbye.
I moved on to Carbone's books.
There were five paperbacks and one tall thin hardcover. I ran my finger along the paperbacks. I didn't recognize any of the titles or any of the authors. They all had cracked spines and yellow-edged pages. They all seemed to be adventure stories involving prototype airplanes or lost submarines. The lone hardcover was a souvenir publication from a Rolling Stones concert tour. Judging by the style of the print on the spine it was about ten years old.
I lifted his mattress up off the cot springs and checked under it. Nothing there. I checked the toilet tank and under the sink. Nothing doing. I moved on to the footlocker. First thing I saw after opening it was a brown leather jacket folded across the top. Underneath the jacket were two white button-down shirts and two pairs of blue jeans. The cotton items were worn and soft and the jacket was neither cheap nor expensive. Together they made up a soldier's typical Saturday-night outfit. Shit, shave, and shower, throw on the civilian duds, pile into someone's car, hit a couple of bars, have some fun.
Underneath the jeans was a wallet. It was small, and made out of brown leather that almost matched the jacket. Like the clothes above it, it was set up for a typical Saturday night's requirements. There were forty-three dollars in cash in it, sufficient for enough rounds of beers to get the fun started. There was a military ID card and a North Carolina driver's license in it, in case the fun concluded inside an MP jeep or a civilian black-and-white. There was an unopened condom, in case the fun got serious.
There was a photograph of a girl, behind a plastic window. Maybe a sister, maybe a cousin, maybe a friend. Maybe nobody. Camouflage, for sure.
Underneath the wallet was a shoe box half-full of six-by-four prints. They were all amateur snapshots of groups of soldiers. Carbone himself was in some of them. Small groups of men were standing and posing, like chorus lines, arms around each other's shoulders. Some shots were under a blazing sun and the men were shirtless, wearing beanie hats, squinting and smiling. Some were in jungles. Some were in wrecked and snowy streets. All showed the same tight camaraderie. Comrades in arms, off duty, still alive, and happy about it.
There was nothing else in Carbone's six-by-eight cell. Nothing significant, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing explanatory. Nothing that revealed his history, his nature, his passions, or his interests. He had lived his life in secret, buttoned down, like his Saturday-night shirts.
I walked back to my Humvee. Turned a corner and came face-to-face with the young sergeant with the beard and the tan. He was in my way, and he wasn't about to move.
"You made a fool out of me," he said.
"Did I?"
"About Carbone. Letting me talk the way I did. Company clerk just showed us some interesting paperwork."
"So?"
"So we're thinking now."
"Don't tire yourself out," I said.
"Think this is funny? You won't think it's funny if we find out it was you."
"It wasn't."
"Says you."
I nodded. "Says me. Now get out of my way."
"Or?"
"Or I'll kick your ass."
He stepped up close. "Think you could kick my ass?"
I didn't move. "You're wondering whether I kicked Carbone's ass. And he was probably twice the soldier you are."
"You won't even see it coming," he said.
I said nothing.
"Believe me," he said.
I looked away. I believed him. If Delta put a hit on me, I wouldn't see it coming. That was for sure. Weeks from now or months from now or years from now I would walk into a dark alley somewhere and a shadow would step out and a K-bar would slip between my ribs or my neck would snap with a loud crack that would echo off the bricks around me, and that would be the end of it.
"You've got a week," the guy said.
"To do what?"
"To show us it wasn't you."
I said nothing.
"Your choice," the guy said. "Show us, or make those seven days count. Make sure you cover all your lifetime ambitions. Don't start a long book."