The Enemy

The Special Forces adjutant was an asshole, but he was human too. He 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.

“Carbone was bad enough,” the adjutant said. “But this is unbelievable. Is there a connection?”

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?”

“Every chance he got.”

“Does his wife play golf?”

The adjutant nodded. “They play together.”

Then he paused.

“Played,” he said, and then he went quiet and looked away from me. I pictured Brubaker in my mind. I had never met him, but I knew guys just like him. One day they’re talking about how to angle a claymore mine so the little ball bearings explode outward at exactly the right angle to rip the enemy’s spines out of their backs with maximum efficiency. Next day they’re wearing pastel shirts with small crocodiles on the breast, playing golf with their wives, maybe holding hands and smiling as they ride together along the fairways in their little electric carts. I knew plenty of guys like that. My own father had been one. Not that he had ever played golf. He watched birds. He had been in most countries in the world, and he had seen a lot of birds.

I stood up.

“Call me if you need me,” I said. “You know, if there’s anything I can do.”

The adjutant nodded.

“Thanks for the visit,” he said. “Better than a phone call.”

I went back to my office. Summer wasn’t there. I wasted more than an hour with her personnel lists. I made a shortcut decision and took the pathologist out of the mix. I took Summer out. I took Andrea Norton out. Then I took all the women out. The medical evidence was pretty clear about the attacker’s height and strength. I took the O Club dining room staff out. Their NCO had said they were all hard at work, fussing over their guests. I took the cooks out, and the bar staff, and the MP gate guards. I took out anyone listed as hospitalized and nonambulatory. I took myself out. I took Carbone out, because it wasn’t suicide.

Then I counted the remaining check marks, and wrote the number 973 on a slip of paper. That was our suspect pool. I stared into space. My phone rang. I picked it up. It was Sanchez again, down at Fort Jackson.

“Columbia PD just called me,” he said. “They’re sharing their initial findings.”

“And?”

“Their medical examiner doesn’t entirely agree with me. Time of death wasn’t three or four in the morning. It was one twenty-three A.M., the night before last.”

“That’s very precise.”

“Bullet caught his wristwatch.”

“A broken watch? Can’t necessarily rely on that.”

“No, it’s firm enough. They did a lot of other tests. Wrong season for measurable insect activity, which would have helped, but the stomach contents were exactly right for five or six hours after he ate a heavy dinner.”

“What does his wife say?”

“He disappeared at eight that night, after a heavy dinner. Got up from the table and never came back.”

“What did she do about it?”

“Nothing,” Sanchez said. “He was Special Forces. Their whole marriage, he’ll have been disappearing with no warning, the middle of dinner, the middle of the night, days or weeks at a time, never able to say where or why afterward. She was used to it.”

“Did he get a phone call or something?”

“She assumes he did, at some point. She’s not really sure. She was in the spa before dinner. They’d just played twenty-seven holes.”

“Can you call her yourself? She’ll talk to you faster than civilian cops.”

“I could try, I suppose.”

“Anything else?” I said.

“The GSWs were nine-millimeter,” he said. “Two rounds fired, both of them through and through, neat entry wounds, bad exit wounds.”

“Full metal jackets,” I said.

“Contact shots. There were powder burns. And soot.”

I paused. I couldn’t picture it. Two rounds fired? Contact shots? So one of the bullets goes in, comes out, loops all the way around, comes back, and drops down and smashes his wristwatch?

“Did he have his hands on his head?”