‘Where?’
‘Somewhere it’s going to take a bunch of archaeologists a
hundred years to find.’
‘Is my Humvee OK?’
‘Better than Marshall’s,’ I said.
I found my bag and an empty VOQ room and took a long hot
shower: Then I transferred all my pocket stuff to a new set of
BDUs and trashed the damaged ones. I figured any quartermaster
would agree they were deteriorated beyond reasonable
future use. I sat on the bed for a while. Just breathed in,
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breathed out. Then I walked back to Franz’s place. I found
Summer there. She was looking radiant. She was holding a new
file folder that already had a lot of pages in it.
‘We’re on track,’ she said. ‘JAG Corps says the arrests were
righteous.’
‘Did you lay out the case?’
‘They say they’ll need confessions.’
I said nothing.
‘We have to meet with the prosecutors tomorrow,’ she said.
‘In D.C.’
‘You’ll have to do it,’ I said. ‘I won’t be around.’
“Why not?’
I didn’t answer.
‘You OK?’
‘Are Vassell and Coomer talking?’
She shook her head. ‘They haven’t said a word. JAG Corps
is flying them to Washington tonight. They’ve been assigned
lawyers.’
‘There’s something wrong,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It’s been way too easy.’
I thought for a moment.
‘We need to get back to Bird,’ I said. ‘Right now.’
Franz lent me fifty bucks and gave me two blank travel
vouchers. I signed them and Leon Garber countersigned them
even though he was thousands of miles away in Korea. Then
Franz drove us back to LAX. He used a staff car because his
Humvee was full of Marshall’s blood. Traffic was light and it
was a fast trip. We went in and I swapped the vouchers for seats
on the first flight to D.C. I checked my bag. I didn’t want to
carry it this time. We took off at three o’clock in the afternoon.
We had been in California eight hours exactly.
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TWENTY-FOUR
F
LYING EAST THE TIME ZONES STOLE BACK THE HOURS WE HAD gained going west. It was eleven o’clock at night at
Washington National when we landed. I reclaimed my
duffel from the carousel and we took the shuttle to the long
term lot. The Chevy was waiting there right where we left it. I
used some of Franz’s fifty bucks and we filled the tank. Then
Summer drove us back to Bird. She went as fast as always
and took the same old route, down 1-95, past all our familiar
reference points. The State Police barracks, the place where the
briefcase was found, the rest area, the cloverleaf, the motel,
the lounge bar. We were timed in through Fort Bird’s main gate
at three in the morning. The post was quiet. There was a night
mist clamped down all over it. Nothing was stirring.
‘Where to?’ Summer said.
‘The Delta station,’ I said.
She drove us around to the old prison gates and the sentry let
us in. We parked in their main lot. I could see Trifonov’s red
Corvette in the darkness. It was all on its own, near the wall
with the water hose. It looked very clean.
‘Why are we here?’ Summer said.
‘We had a very weak case,’ I said. ‘You made that point
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yourself. And you were right. It was very weak. The forensics
with the staff car helped, but we never really got beyond
purely circumstantial stuff. We can’t actually put Vassell and
Coomer and Marshall at any of the scenes. Not definitively.
We can’t prove Marshall ever actually touched the crowbar. We
can’t prove he didn’t actually eat the yogurt for a snack. And we
certainly can’t prove that Vassell and Coomer ever actually
ordered him to do anything. If push came to shove, they could
claim he was an out-of-control lone wolf.’
‘So?’
‘We walked in and confronted two senior officers who were
doubly insulated from a very weak and circumstantial case.
What should have happened?’
‘They should have fought it.’
I nodded. ‘They should have scoffed at it. They should have
laughed it off. They should have gotten offended. They should
have threatened and blustered. They should have thrown us