Lee Child - The Enemy

He led me past the E-ring guard and we turned left into the corridor and walked a little way. Then we stepped into a suite and I met the woman with the voice. She looked more or less like I had predicted. She was wearing civilian clothes. A dark suit so severe it was more formal than a uniform. But she sounded even better in person than she had on the phone.

“Coffee, Major?” she said.

She had a fresh pot brewed. I guessed she had clicked the switch at about eleven fifty-three, so it had finished perking at midnight exactly. I guessed the Chief of Staff’s suite was that sort of place. She gave me a saucer and a cup made of transparent bone china. I was afraid of crushing it like an eggshell.

“This way,” the Chief of Staff said.

He led me into his office. My cup rattled on its saucer. His office was surprisingly plain. It had the same painted concrete walls as the rest of the building. The same type of steel desk I had seen in the Fort Bird pathologist’s office.

“Take a seat,” he said. “If you don’t mind, we’ll make this quick. It’s late.”

I said nothing. He watched me.

“I got your message,” he said. “Received and understood.”

I said nothing. He tried an icebreaker.

“Noriega’s top guys are still out there,” he said. “Why do you suppose that is?”

“Thirty thousand square miles,” I said. “A lot of space for people to hide in.”

“Will we get them all?”

“No question,” I said. “Someone will sell them out.”

“You’re a cynic.”

“A realist,” I said.

“What have you got to tell me, Major?”

I sipped my coffee. The lights were low. I was suddenly aware that I was deep inside one of the world’s most secure buildings, late at night, face-to-face with the nation’s most powerful soldier. And I was about to make a serious accusation. And only one other person knew I was there, and maybe she was already in a cell somewhere.

“I was in Panama two weeks ago,” I said. “Then I was transferred out.”

“Why do you think that was?”

I took a breath. “I think the Vice-Chief wanted particular individuals on the ground in particular locations because he was worried about trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“An internal coup by your old buddies in Armored Branch.”

He was silent for a long moment, and then he said, “Would that have been a realistic worry?”

I nodded. “There was a conference at Irwin scheduled for New Year’s Day. I believe the agenda was certainly controversial, probably illegal, maybe treasonous.”

The Chief of Staff said nothing.

“But it misfired,” I said. “Because General Kramer died. But there were potential problems from the fallout. So you personally intervened by moving Colonel Garber out of the 110th and replacing him with an incompetent.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So that nature would take its course and the investigation would misfire too.”

He sat still for another long moment. Then he smiled.

“Good analysis,” he said. “The collapse of Soviet communism was bound to lead to stresses inside the U.S. military. Those stresses were bound to manifest themselves with all kinds of internal plotting and planning. The internal plotting and planning was bound to be anticipated and steps were bound to be taken to nip potential trouble in the bud. And as you say, there were bound to be tensions at the very top that led to moves and countermoves.”

I said nothing.

“Like a game of chess,” he said. “The Vice-Chief moves, and I countermove. An inevitable conclusion, I suppose, because you were looking for a pair of senior individuals in which one outranks the other.”

I looked straight at him.

“Am I wrong?” I said.

“Only in two particulars,” he said. “Obviously you’re right in that there are huge changes coming. CIA was a little slow to spot Ivan’s imminent demise, so we’ve had less than a year to think things through. But believe me, we’ve thought them through. We’re in a unique situation now. We’re like a heavyweight boxer who’s trained for years for a shot at the world title, and then we wake up one morning and find our intended opponent has dropped dead. It’s a very bewildering sensation. But we’ve done our homework.”

He leaned down and opened a drawer and struggled out with an enormous loose-leaf file. It was at least three inches thick. It thumped down on his desktop. It had a green jacket with a long word stenciled on it in black. He reversed it so I could read it. It said: Transformation .

“Your first mistake is that your focus was too close,” he said. “You need to stand back and look at it from our perspective. From above. It’s not just Armored Branch that is going to change. Everyone is going to change. Obviously we’re going to move toward highly mobile integrated units. But it’s a bad mistake to see them as infantry units with a few bells and whistles tacked on. They’re going to be a completely new concept. They’ll be something that has never existed before. Maybe we’ll integrate attack helicopters too, and give the command to the guys in the sky. Maybe we’ll move into electronic warfare and give the command to the guys with the computers.”

I said nothing.

He laid his hand on the file, palm down. “My point is that nobody is going to come out of this unscathed. Yes, Armored is going to be professionally devastated. No question about that. But so is the infantry and so is the artillery, and so is transport, and so is logistics support, and so is everyone else, equally, just as much. Maybe more, for some people. Including the military police, probably. Everything is going to change, Major. There will be no stone unturned.”

I said nothing.

“This is not about Armored versus the infantry,” he said. “You need to understand that. That’s a vast oversimplification. It’s actually about everyone versus everyone else. There will be no winners, I’m afraid. But equally therefore, there will be no losers. You could choose to think about it that way. Everyone is in the same boat.”

He took his hand off the file.

“What’s my second mistake?” I said.

“I moved you out of Panama,” he said. “Not the Vice-Chief. He knew nothing about it. I selected twenty men personally and put them where I thought I needed them. I spread them around, because in my judgment it was fifty-fifty as to who was going to blink first. The light units, or the heavy units? It was impossible to predict. Once their commanders started thinking, they would all realize they have everything to lose. I sent you to Fort Bird, for instance, because I was a little worried about David Brubaker. He was a very proactive type.”

“But it was Armored who blinked first,” I said.

He nodded.

“Apparently,” he said. “If you say so. It was always going to be a fifty-fifty chance. And I guess I’m a little disappointed. Those were my boys. But I’m not defensive about them. I moved onward and upward. I left them behind. I’m perfectly happy to let the chips fall where they may.”

“So why did you move Garber?”

“I didn’t.”

“So who did?”

“Who outranks me?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“I wish,” he said.

I said nothing.

“What does an M16 rifle cost?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Not a lot, I guess.”

“We get them for about four hundred dollars,” he said. “What does an Abrams M1A1 main battle tank cost?”

“About four million.”

“So think about the big defense contractors,” he said. “Whose side are they on? The light units, or the heavy units?”

I didn’t answer. I figured the question was rhetorical.