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
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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 manoeuvres,’ 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
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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 tyre, 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.