Reacher. All over the world people were dying, in the early part
of January 1990.
In the end it took us more than an hour to get to irwin. I
guessed it was true what people said about LA highways. The
post looked the same as it usually did. As busy as always. It
occupied a huge acreage of the Mojave desert. One or other of
the armoured cavalry regiments lived there on a rotating basis
and acted as the home team when other units came in to
exercise. There was a real spring training atmosphere. The
weather was always good, people always had fun in the sunshine
playing with the big expensive toys.
‘You want to take care of business right away?’ Franz asked.
‘Are you keeping an eye on them?’
He nodded. ‘Discreetly.’
‘So let’s have breakfast first.’
A U.S. Army O Club was the perfect destination for people
half-starved on airline food. The buffet was a mile long.
Same menu as in Germany, but the orange juice and the fruit
platters looked more authentic in California. I ate as much as an
average rifle company and Summer ate more. Franz had already
eaten. I fuelled up on as much coffee as I could take. Then I
pushed back from the table. Took a deep breath.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go do it.’
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We went back to Franz’s office and he made a call to his guys.
They told him Marshall was already out on the range, but
Vassell and Coomer were sitting tight in a VOQ rec room. Franz
drove us there in his Humvee. We got out on the sidewalk. The
sun was bright. The air was warm and dusty. I could smell all
the prickly little desert plants that were growing as far as the
eye could see.
Irwin’s VOQ looked like it had been built by the same motel
contractor that had gotten the XII Corps contract in Germany.
There were rows of identical rooms around a sandy courtyard.
On one side was a shared facility. TV rooms, table tennis,
lounges. Franz led us in through a door and stepped to one side
and we found Vassell and Coomer sitting knee-to-knee in a pair
of leather armchairs. I realized I had seen them only once
before, when they came to my office at Bird. That seemed
disproportionate, considering how much time I had spent thinking
about them.
They were both wearing crisp new BDUs in the revised
desert camouflage, the pattern people were calling chocolate
chip. They both looked just as fake as they had in their woodland
greens. They still looked like Rotary Club members.
Vassell was still bald and Coomer was still wearing eyeglasses.
They both looked up at me.
I took a breath.
Senior officers.
Harassment.
It could be you that goes to jail.
‘General Vassell,’ I said. ‘And Colonel Coomer. You are under
arrest on a charge of violating the Uniform Code of Military
Justice in that you conspired together and with other persons to
commit homicide.’
I held my breath.
But neither one of them had a reaction. Neither one of them
spoke. They just gave it up. They just looked resigned. Like the
other shoe had finally dropped and the inevitable had finally
happened. Like they had been expecting this moment from the
start. Like they had known for sure it was coming all along. I
breathed out. There were supposed to be all kinds of stages in a
person’s reaction to bad news. Grief, anger, denial. But these
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guys were already through all of that. That was clear. They
were right there at the end of the process, butted hard up
against acceptance.
I cued Summer to complete the formalities. There were
all kinds of things from the Uniform Code that you had to
spell out. All kinds of advisements and warnings. Summer ran
through them better than I would have. Her voice was clear
and her manner was professional. Neither Vassell nor Coomer
responded at all. No bluster, no pleading, no angry protestations
of innocence. They just nodded obediently in all the right
places. Got up out of their chairs at the end without even being