they should know. They see plenty of GSWs. Apparently they
do a lot of cleaning up every Friday and Saturday night, in that
part of town.’
‘Why was he there?’
‘No idea. Rendezvous, presumably. With someone he knew.’
‘Got a feeling about when?’
‘The body’s stone cold, the skin is a little green, and rigor is
all gone. They’re saying twenty-four or forty-eight hours. Safe
bet would be to split the difference. Let’s call it the middle of
the night before last. Maybe three or four a.m. City garbage
truck found him at ten this morning. Weekly trash collection.’
‘Where were you on December twenty-eighth?’
‘Korea. You?’
‘Panama.’
‘Why did they move us?’
‘I keep thinking we’re about to find out,’ I said.
‘Something weird is going on,’ Sanchez said. ‘I checked,
because I was curious, and there are more than twenty of us in
the same boat, worldwide. And Garber’s signature is on all the
orders, but I don’t think it’s legit.’
‘I’m certain it isn’t legit,’ I said. ‘Anything happening down
there before this Brubaker situation?’
‘Not a thing. Quietest week I ever spent.’
We hung up. I sat still for a long moment. Seemed to me that
Columbia in South Carolina was about two hundred miles from
Fort Bird. Drive southwest on the highway, cross the state line,
find I:20 heading west, drive some more, and you were there.
About two hundred miles. The night before last was the night
we found Carbone’s body. I had left Andrea Norton’s office just
before two o’clock in the morning. She could alibi me up until
197
that point. Then I had been in the mortuary at seven o’clock, for
the post-mortem. The pathologist could confirm that. So I had
two unconnected alibi bookends. But 0200 until 0700 still gave
me a possible five-hour window, with Brubaker’s likely time of
death right there in the middle of it. Could I have driven two
hundred miles there and two hundred miles back in five hours?
‘What?’ Summer said.
‘The Delta guys have already got me in the frame for
Carbone. Now I’m wondering whether they’re going to be
coming at me for Brubaker, too. How does four hundred miles
in five hours sound to you?’
‘I could probably do it,’ she said. ‘Average of eighty miles an
hour all the way. Depends on what car I was using, of course,
and road construction, and traffic, and weather, and cops. It’s
definitely possible.’
‘Terrific.’
‘But it’s marginal.’
‘It better be marginal. Killing Brubaker will be like killing
God, to them.’
‘You going over there to break the news?’
I nodded. ‘I think I have to. It’s a question of respect. But you
inform the post commander for me, OK?’
The Special Forces adjutant was an asshole, but he was human,
too. He got very still and went very pale when I told him about
Brubaker and there was clearly more to it than an anticipation
of mere bureaucratic hassle. From what I had heard Brubaker
was stern and distant and authoritarian, but he was a real father
figure, to his men individually and to his unit as a whole. And to
his unit as a concept. Special Forces generally and Delta in
particular hadn’t always been popular inside the Pentagon and
on Capitol Hill. The army hates change and it takes a long time
to get used to things. The idea of a ragtag bunch of hunter
killers had been a hard sell at the outset, and Brubaker had
been one of the guys doing the selling, and he had never let up
since. His death was going to hit Special Forces the way the
death of a president would hit the nation as a whole.
‘Carbone was bad enough,’ the adjutant said. ‘But this is
unbelievable. Is there a connection?’
198
I looked at him.
‘Why would there be a connection?’ I said. ‘Carbone was a
training accident.’
He said nothing.
‘Why was Brubaker at a hotel?’
‘Because he likes to play golf. He’s got a house near Bragg
from way back, but he doesn’t like the golf there.’
‘Where was the hotel?’
‘Outside of Raleigh.’
‘Did he go there a lot?’