Child, Lee – The Enemy

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

148

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

149

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.

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