‘And?’ Reacher asked.
‘He disappeared the night before they were due to move him to Saigon.’
‘He disappeared?’
Newman nodded. ‘Just ran away. Got himself out of his cot and lit out. Never been seen since.’
‘Shit,’ Reacher said.
‘I still don’t understand the secrecy,’ Jodie said.
Newman shrugged. ‘Well, Reacher can explain it. More his area than mine.’
Reacher still had hold of Hobie’s bones. The radius and the ulna from his right arm, neatly socketed on the lower end like nature intended, savagely smashed and splintered at the upper end by a fragment of his own rotor blade. Hobie had studied the leading edge of that blade and seen that it was capable of smashing through tree limbs as thick as a man’s arm. He had used that inspiration to save other men’s lives, over and over again. Then that same blade had come folding and whirling down into his own cockpit and taken his hand away.
‘He was a deserter,’ he said. ‘Technically, that’s what he was. He was a serving soldier and he ran away. But a decision was taken not to go after him. Had to be that way. Because what could the Army do? If they caught him, what next? They would be prosecuting a guy with an exemplary record, nine hundred ninety-one combat missions, a guy who deserted after the trauma of a horrendous injury and disfigurement. They couldn’t do that. The war was unpopular. You can’t send a disfigured hero to Leavenworth for
deserting under those circumstances. But equally you can’t send out the message that you’re letting deserters get away with it. That would have been a scandal of a different sort. They were still busting plenty of guys for deserting. The undeserving ones. They couldn’t reveal they had different strokes for different folks. So Hobie’s file was closed and sealed and classified secret. That’s why the personnel record ends with the last mission. All the rest of it is in a vault, somewhere in the Pentagon.’ Jodie nodded.
‘And that’s why he’s not on the Wall,’ she said. ‘They know he’s still alive.’
Reacher was reluctant to put the arm bones down. He held them, and ran his fingers up and down their length. The good ends were smooth and perfect, ready to accept the subtle articulation of the human wrist.
‘Have you logged his medical records?’ he asked Newman. ‘His old X-rays and dental charts and all that stuff?’
Newman shook his head. ‘He’s not MIA. He survived and deserted.’
Reacher turned back to Bamford’s casket and laid the two yellow shards gently in one corner of the rough wooden box. He shook his head. ‘I just can’t believe it, Nash. Everything about this guy says he didn’t have a deserter’s mentality. His background, his record, everything. I know about deserters. I hunted plenty of
them.’
‘He deserted,’ Newman said. ‘It’s a fact, it’s in the files from the hospital.’
‘He survived the crash,’ Reacher said. ‘I guess I can’t dispute that any more. He was in the hospital. Can’t dispute that, either. But suppose it wasn’t really
desertion? Suppose he was just confused, or groggy from the drugs or something? Suppose he just wandered away and got lost?’
Newman shook his head. ‘He wasn’t confused.’
‘But how do you know that? Loss of blood, malnutrition, fever, morphine?’
‘He deserted,’ Newman said.
‘It doesn’t add up,’ Reacher said.
‘War changes people,’ Newman said.
‘Not that much,’ Reacher said back.
Newman stepped closer and lowered his voice again.
‘He killed an orderly,’ he whispered. ‘The guy spotted him on the way out and tried to stop him. It’s all in the file. Hobie said I’m not going back and hit the guy in the head with a bottle. Broke his skull. They put the guy in Hobie’s bed and he didn’t survive the trip back to Saigon. That’s what the secrecy is all about, Reacher. They didn’t just let him get away with deserting. They let him get away with murder.’
There was total silence in the lab. The air hissed and the loamy smell of the old bones drifted. Reacher laid his hand on the shiny lip of Bamford’s casket, just to keep himself standing upright.