Lee Child: The Enemy

“I was misinformed,” I said.

“That doesn’t alter the fact, I’m afraid.”

“Your witness is dead.”

“He left a signed affidavit. That stands forever. That’s the same as if he were right there in the courtroom, testifying.”

I said nothing.

“It comes down to a simple question of fact,” the colonel said. “A simple yes or no answer, really. Did you do what Carbone alleged?”

I said nothing.

The colonel stood up. “You can talk it over with your counsel.”

I glanced at the captain. Apparently he was my lawyer. The colonel shuffled out and closed the door on us. The captain leaned forward from his chair and shook my hand and told me his name.

“You should cut the colonel some slack,” he said. “He’s giving you a loophole a mile wide. This whole thing is a charade.”

“I rocked the boat,” I said. “The army is getting its licks in.”

“You’re wrong, Reacher. Nobody wants to screw you over this. Willard forced the issue, is all. So we have to go through the motions.”

“Which are?”

“All you’ve got to do is deny it. That throws Carbone’s evidence into dispute, and since he’s not around to be cross-examined, your Sixth Amendment right to be confronted by the witness against you kicks in and it guarantees you an automatic dismissal.”

I sat still.

“How would it be done?” I said.

“You sign an affidavit just like Carbone did. His says black, yours says white, the problem goes away.”

“Official paper?”

“It’ll take five minutes. We can do it right here. Your corporal can type it and witness it. Dead easy.”

I nodded.

“What’s the alternative?” I said.

“You’d be nuts to even think about an alternative.”

“What would happen?”

“It would be like pleading guilty.”

“What would happen?” I said again.

“With an effective guilty plea? Loss of rank, loss of pay, backdated to the incident. Civilian Affairs wouldn’t let us get away with anything less.”

I said nothing.

“You’d be busted back to captain. In the regular MPs, because the 110th wouldn’t want you anymore. That’s the short answer. But you’d be nuts to even think about it. All you have to do is deny it.”

I sat there and thought about Carbone. Thirty-five years old, sixteen of them in the service. Infantry, Airborne, the Rangers, Delta. Sixteen years of hard time. He had done nothing except try to keep a secret he should never have had to keep. And try to alert his unit to a threat. Nothing much wrong with either of those things. But he was dead. Dead in the woods, dead on a slab. Then I thought about the fat guy at the strip club. I didn’t really care about the farmer. A busted nose was no big deal. But the fat guy was messed up bad. On the other hand, he wasn’t one of North Carolina’s finest citizens. I doubted if the governor was lining him up for a civic award.

I thought about both of those guys for a long time. Carbone, and the fat man in the parking lot. Then I thought about myself. A major, a star, a hotshot special unit investigator, a go-to guy headed for the top.

“OK,” I said. “Bring the colonel back in.”

The captain got up out of his chair and opened the door. Held it for the colonel. Closed it behind him. Sat down again next to me. The colonel shuffled past us and sat down at the desk.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s wrap this thing up. The complaint is baseless, yes?”

I looked at him. Said nothing.

“Well?”

You’re going to do the right thing.

“The complaint is true,” I said.

He stared at me.

“The complaint is accurate,” I said. “In every detail. It went down exactly like Carbone described.”

“Christ,” the colonel said.

“Are you crazy?” the captain said.

“Probably,” I said. “But Carbone wasn’t a liar. That shouldn’t be the last thing that goes in his record. He deserves better than that. He was in sixteen years.”

The room went quiet. We all just sat there. They were looking at a lot of paperwork. I was looking at being an MP captain again. No more special unit. But it wasn’t a big surprise. I had seen it coming. I had seen it coming ever since I closed my eyes on the plane and the dominoes started falling, end over end, one after the other.

“One request,” I said. “I want a two-day suspension included. Starting now.”

“Why?”

“I have to go to a funeral. I don’t want to beg my CO for leave.”

The colonel looked away.

“Granted,” he said.

I went back tomy quarters and packed my duffel with everything I owned. I cashed a check at the commissary and left fifty-two dollars in an envelope for my sergeant. I mailed fifty back to Franz. I collected the crowbar that Marshall had used from the pathologist and I put it with the one we had on loan from the store. Then I went to the MP motor pool and looked for a vehicle to borrow. I was surprised to see Kramer’s rental still parked there.

“Nobody told us what to do with it,” the clerk said.

“Why not?”

“Sir, you tell me. It was your case.”

I wanted something inconspicuous, and the little red Ford stood out among all the olive drab and black. But then I realized the situation would be reversed out in the world. Out there, the little red Ford wouldn’t attract a second glance.

“I’ll take it back now,” I said. “I’m headed to Dulles anyway.”

There was no paperwork, because it wasn’t an army vehicle.

I leftFort Bird at twenty past ten in the morning and drove north toward Green Valley. I went much slower than before, because the Ford was a slow car and I was a slow driver, at least compared to Summer. I didn’t stop for lunch. I just kept on going. I arrived at the police station at a quarter past three in the afternoon. I found Detective Clark at his desk in the bullpen. I told him his case was closed. Told him Summer would give him the details. I collected the crowbar he had on loan and drove the ten miles to Sperryville. I squeezed through the narrow alley and parked outside the hardware store. The window had been fixed. The square of plywood was gone. I looped all three crowbars over my forearm and went inside and returned them to the old guy behind the counter. Then I got back in the car and followed the only road out of town, all the way to Washington D.C.

I tooka short counterclockwise loop on the Beltway and went looking for the worst part of town I could find. There was plenty of choice. I picked a four-block square that was mostly crumbling warehouses with narrow alleys between. I found what I wanted in the third alley I checked. I saw an emaciated whore come out a brick doorway. I went in past her and found a guy in a hat. He had what I wanted. It took a minute to get some mutual trust going. But eventually cash money settled our differences, like it always does everywhere. I bought a little reefer, a little speed, and two dime rocks of crack cocaine. I could see the guy in the hat wasn’t impressed by the quantities. I could see he wrote me off as an amateur.

Then Idrove to Rock Creek, Virginia. I got there just before five o’clock. Parked three hundred yards from 110th Special Unit headquarters, up on a rise, where I could look down over the fence into the parking lot. I picked out Willard’s car with no trouble at all. He had told me all about it. A classic Pontiac GTO. It was right there, near the rear exit. I slumped way down in my seat and kept my eyes wide-open and watched.

He cameout at five-fifteen. Bankers’ hours. He fired up the Pontiac and backed it away from the building. I had my window cracked open for air and even from three hundred yards I could hear the rumble of the pipes. They made a pretty good V-8 sound. I figured it was a sound Summer would have enjoyed. I made a mental note that if I ever won the lottery I should buy her a GTO of her own.