Lee Child: The Enemy

I fired up the Ford. Willard came out of the lot and turned toward me. I hunkered down and let him go past. Then I waited one thousand, two thousand and U-turned and followed after him. He was an easy tail. With the window down I could have done it by sound alone. He drove fairly slow, big and obvious up ahead, near the crown of the road. I stayed well back and let the drive-time traffic fill his mirrors. He headed east toward the D.C. suburbs. I figured he would have a rental in Arlington or Maclean from his Pentagon days. I hoped it wasn’t an apartment. But I figured it would more likely be a house. With a garage, for the muscle car. Which was good, because a house was easier.

It wasa house. It was on a rural street in the no-man’s-land north of Arlington. Plenty of trees, most of them bare, some of them evergreen. The lots were irregular. The driveways were long and curved. The plantings were messy. The street should have had a sign: Divorced or single male middle-income government workers only . It was that kind of a place. Not totally ideal, but a lot better than a straight suburban tract with side-by-side front yards full of frolicking kids and anxious mothers.

I drove on by and parked a mile away. Sat and waited for the darkness.

I waiteduntil seven o’clock and I walked. There was low cloud and mist. No starlight. No moon. I was in woodland-pattern BDUs. I was as invisible as the Pentagon could make me. I figured at seven the place would still be mostly empty. I figured a lot of middle-income government workers would have ambitions to become high-income government workers, so they would stay at their desks, trying to impress whoever needed impressing. I used the street that ran parallel to the back of Willard’s street and found two messy yards next to each other. Neither house was lit. I walked down the first driveway and kept on going around the dark bulk of the house and straight through the backyard. I stood still. No dogs barked. I turned and tracked along the boundary fences until I was looking at Willard’s own backyard. It was full of dead hummocked grass. There was a rusted-out barbecue grill abandoned in the middle of the lawn. In army terms the place was not standing tall and squared away. It was a mess.

I bent a fence post until I had room to slip past it. Walked straight through Willard’s yard and around his garage to his front door. There was no porch light. The view from the street was half-open, half-obscured. Not perfect. But not bad. I put my elbow on the bell. Heard it sound inside. There was a short pause and then I heard footsteps. I stood back. Willard opened the door. No delay at all. Maybe he was expecting Chinese food. Or a pizza.

I punched him in the chest to move him backward. Stepped in after him and closed the door behind me with my foot. It was a dismal house. The air was stale. Willard was clutching the stair post, gasping for breath. I hit him in the face and knocked him down. He came up on his hands and knees and I kicked him hard in the ass and kept on kicking until he took the hint and started crawling toward the kitchen as fast as he could. He got himself in there and kind of rolled over and sat on the floor with his back hard up against a cabinet. There was fear in his face, for sure, but confusion too. Like he couldn’t believe I was doing this. Like he was thinking: This is about a disciplinary complaint ? His bureaucratic calculus couldn’t compute it.

“Did you hear about Vassell and Coomer?” I asked him.

He nodded, fast and scared.

“Remember Lieutenant Summer?” I asked him.

He nodded again.

“She pointed something out to me,” I said. “Kind of obvious, but she said they would have gotten away with it if I hadn’t ignored you.”

He just stared at me.

“It made me think,” I said. “What exactly was I ignoring?”

He said nothing.

“I misjudged you,” I said. “I apologize. Because I thought I was ignoring a busybody careerist asshole. I thought I was ignoring some kind of a prissy nervous idiot corporate manager who thought he knew better. But I wasn’t. I was ignoring something else entirely.”

He stared up at me.

“You didn’t feel embarrassed about Kramer,” I said. “You didn’t feel sensitive about me harassing Vassell and Coomer. You weren’t speaking for the army when you wanted Carbone written up as a training accident. You were doing the job you were put there to do. Someone wanted three homicides covered up, and you were put there to do it for them. You were participating in a deliberate cover-up, Willard. That’s what you were doing. That’s what I was ignoring. I mean, what the hell else were you doing, ordering me not to investigate a homicide? It was a cover-up, and it was planned, and it was structured, and it was decided well in advance. It was decided on the second day of January, when Garber was moved out and you were moved in. You were put in there so that what they were planning to do on the fourth could be controlled. No other reason.”

He said nothing.

“I thought they wanted an incompetent in there, so that nature would take its course. But they went one better than that. They put a friend in there.”

He said nothing.

“You should have refused,” I said. “If you had refused, they wouldn’t have gone ahead with it and Carbone and Brubaker would still be alive.”

He said nothing.

“You killed them, Willard. Just as much as they did.”

I crouched down next to him. He scrabbled on the floor and pressed backward against the cupboard behind him. He had defeat in his eyes. But he gave it one last shot.

“You can’t prove anything,” he said.

Now I said nothing.

“Maybe it was just incompetence,” he said. “You thought about that? How are you going to prove the intention?”

I said nothing. His eyes went hard.

“You’re not dealing with idiots,” he said. “There’s no proof anywhere.”

I took Franz’s Beretta out of my pocket. The one I had brought out of the Mojave. I hadn’t lost it. It had ridden all the way with me from California. That was why I had checked my luggage, just that one time. They won’t let you carry guns inside the cabin. Not without paperwork.

“This piece is listed as destroyed,” I said. “It doesn’t officially exist anymore.”

He stared at it.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You can’t prove anything.”

“You’re not dealing with an idiot either,” I said.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “It was an order. From the top. We’re in the army. We obey orders.”

I shook my head. “That excuse never worked for any soldier anywhere.”

“It was an order,” he said again.

“From who?”

He just closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I know exactly who it was. And I know I can’t get to him. Not where he is. But I can get to you. You can be my messenger.”

He opened his eyes.

“You won’t do it,” he said.

“Why didn’t you refuse?”

“I couldn’t refuse. It was time to choose up sides. Don’t you see? We’re all going to have to do that.”

I nodded. “I guess we are.”

“Be smart now,” he said. “Please.”

“I thought you were one bad apple,” I said. “But the whole barrel is bad. The good apples are the rare ones.”

He stared at me.

“You ruined it for me,” I said. “You and your rotten friends.”

“Ruined what?”

“Everything.”

I stood up. Stepped back. Clicked the Beretta’s safety to Fire .

He stared at me.

“Good-bye, Colonel Willard,” I said.

I put the gun to my temple. He stared at me.

“Just kidding,” I said.