by Lee Child
“Their planners? No way.”
“What do they think about the future?”
“I have no idea. And I don’t care. The future belongs to the infantry.”
Dessert was apple pie, and then we had coffee. It was the usual excellent brew. We slid back from the future into present-day small talk. The stewards moved around, silently. Just another evening, in an Officers’ Club four thousand miles from the last one.
“Marshall will be back at dawn,” Swan told me. “Look for a scout car at the rear of the first incoming column.”
I nodded. Figured dawn in January in Frankfurt would be about 0700 hours. I set my mental alarm for six. Lieutenant Colonel Simon said good night and wandered off. Summer pushed her chair back and sprawled in it, as much as a tiny person can sprawl. Swan sat forward with his elbows on the table.
“You think they get much dope on this post?” I asked him.
“You want some?” he said.
“Brown heroin,” I said. “Not for my personal use.”
Swan nodded. “Guys here say there are Turkish guest workers in Germany who could get you some. One of the speed dealers could supply it, I’m sure.”
“You ever met a guy called Willard?” I asked him.
“The new boss?” he said. “I got the memo. Never met him. But some of the guys here know him. He was an intelligence wonk, something to do with Armor.”
“He wrote algorithms,” I said.
“For what?”
“Soviet T-80 fuel consumption, I think. Told us what kind of training they were doing.”
“And now he’s running the 110th?”
I nodded.
“I know,” I said. “Bizarre.”
“How did he do that?”
“Obviously someone liked him.”
“We should find out who. Start sending hate mail.”
I nodded again. Nearly a million men in the army, hundreds of billions of dollars, and it all came down to who liked who. Hey, what can you do?
“I’m going to bed,” I said.
My VOQ room was so generic I lost track of where I was within a minute of closing my door. I hung my uniform in the closet and washed up and crawled between the sheets. They smelled of the same detergent the army uses everywhere. I thought of my mother in Paris and Joe in D.C. My mother was already in bed, probably. Joe would still be working, at whatever it was he did. I said six A.M. to myself and closed my eyes.
Dawn broke at 0650, by which time I was standing next to Summer at XII Corps’ east road gate. We had mugs of coffee in our hands. The ground was frozen and there was mist in the air. The sky was gray and the landscape was a shade of pastel green. It was low and undulating and unexciting, like a lot of Europe. There were stands of small neat trees here and there. Dormant winter earth, giving off cold organic smells. It was very quiet.
The road ran through the gate and then turned and headed east and a little north, into the fog, toward Russia. It was wide and straight, made from reinforced concrete. The curbstones were nicked here and there by tank tracks. Big wedge-shaped chunks had been knocked out of them. A tank is a difficult thing to steer.
We waited. Still quiet.
Then we heard them.
What is the twentieth century’s signature sound? You could have a debate about it. Some might say the slow drone of an aero engine. Maybe from a lone fighter crawling across an azure 1940s sky. Or the scream of a fast jet passing low overhead, shaking the ground. Or the whup whup whup of a helicopter. Or the roar of a laden 747 lifting off. Or the crump of bombs falling on a city. All of those would qualify. They’re all uniquely twentieth-century noises. They were never heard before. Never, in all of history. Some crazy optimists might lobby for a Beatles song. A yeah, yeah, yeah chorus fading under the screams of their audience. I would have sympathy for that choice. But a song and screaming could never qualify. Music and desire have been around since the dawn of time. They weren’t invented after 1900.
No, the twentieth century’s signature sound is the squeal and clatter of tank tracks on a paved street. That sound was heard in Warsaw, and Rotterdam, and Stalingrad, and Berlin. Then it was heard again in Budapest and Prague, and Seoul and Saigon. It’s a brutal sound. It’s the sound of fear. It speaks of a massive overwhelming advantage in power. And it speaks of remote, impersonal indifference. Tank treads squeal and clatter and the very noise they make tells you they can’t be stopped. It tells you you’re weak and powerless against the machine. Then one track stops and the other keeps on going and the tank wheels around and lurches straight toward you, roaring and squealing. That’s the real twentieth-century sound.
We heard the XII Corps’ Abrams column a long time before we saw it. The noise came at us through the fog. We heard the tracks, and the whine of the turbines. We heard the grind of the drive gear and felt fastpattering bass shudders through the soles of our feet as each new tread plate came off the cogs and thumped down into position. We heard grit and stone crushed under their weight.
Then we saw them. The lead tank loomed at us through the mist. It was moving fast, pitching a little, staying flat, its engine roaring. Behind it was another, and another. They were all in line, single file, like an armada from hell. It was a magnificent sight. The M1A1 Abrams is like a shark, evolved to a point of absolute perfection. It is the undisputed king of the jungle. No other tank on earth can even begin to damage it. It is wrapped in armor made out of a depleted uranium core sandwiched between rolled steel plate. The armor is dense and impregnable. Battlefield shells and rockets and kinetic devices bounce right off it. But its main trick is to stand off so far that no battlefield shell or rocket or kinetic device can even reach it. It sits there and watches enemy rounds fall short in the dirt. Then it traverses its mighty gun and fires and a second later and a mile and a half in the distance its assailant blows up and burns. It is the ultimate unfair advantage.
The lead tank rolled past us. Eleven feet wide, twenty-six feet long, nine and a half feet tall. Seventy tons. Its engine bellowed and its weight shook the ground. Its tracks squealed and clattered and slid on the concrete. Then the second tank rolled by. And the third, and the fourth, and the fifth. The noise was deafening. The huge bulk of exotic metal buffeted the air. The gun barrels dipped and swayed and bounced. Exhaust fumes swirled all around.
There were altogether twenty tanks in the formation. They drove in through the gate and their noise and vibration faded behind us and then there was a short gap and a scout car came out of the mist straight toward us. It was a shoot-and-scoot Humvee armed with a TOW-2 antitank missile launcher. Two guys in it. I stepped into its path and raised my hand. Paused. I didn’t know Marshall and I had only ever seen him once, in the dark interior of the Grand Marquis outside Fort Bird’s post headquarters. But even so, I was pretty sure that neither of the guys in the Humvee was him. I remembered Marshall as large and dark and these guys were small, which is much more usual for Armored people. One thing there isn’t a lot of inside an Abrams is room.
The Humvee came to a stop right in front of me and I tracked around to the driver’s window. Summer took up station on the passenger side, standing easy. The driver rolled his glass down. Stared out at me.
“I’m looking for Major Marshall,” I said.
The driver was a captain and his passenger was a captain too. They were both dressed in Nomex tank suits, with balaclavas and Kevlar helmets with built-in headphones. The passenger had sleeve pockets full of pens. He had clipboards strapped to both thighs. They were all covered with notes. Some kind of score sheets.
“Marshall’s not here,” the driver said.
“So where is he?”
“Who’s asking?”
“You can read,” I said. I was wearing last night’s BDUs. They had oak leaves on the collar and Reacher on the stencil.
“Unit?” the guy said.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Marshall went to California,” he said. “Emergency deployment to Fort Ir
win.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Try to be.”
“Last night sometime.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“I’m honestly not sure.”
“What kind of an emergency have they got at Irwin?”
“I’m not sure about that either.”
I nodded. Stepped back.
“Drive on,” I said.
Their Humvee moved out from the space between us, and Summer joined me in the middle of the road. The air smelled of diesel and gas turbine exhaust and the concrete was scored fresh white by the passage of the tank tracks.
“Wasted trip,” Summer said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Depends exactly when Marshall left. If it was after Swan’s phone call, that tells us something.”
We were shunted between three different offices, trying to find out exactly what time Marshall left XII Corps. We ended up in a second-story suite that housed General Vassell’s operation. Vassell himself wasn’t there. We spoke to yet another captain. He seemed to be in charge of an administrative company.
“Major Marshall took a civilian flight at 2300,” he said. “Frankfurt to Dulles. Seven-hour layover and on to LAX from National. I issued the vouchers myself.”
“When?”
“As he was leaving.”
“Which was when?”
“He left here three hours before his flight.”
“Eight o’clock?”
The captain nodded. “On the dot.”
“I was told he was scheduled for night maneuvers.”
“He was. That plan changed.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.”
I’m not sure seemed to be XII Corps’ standard-issue answer for everything.
“What’s the panic at Irwin?” I said.
“I’m not sure.”
I smiled, briefly. “When were Marshall’s orders issued?”
“At seven o’clock.”
“Written?”
“Verbal.”
“By?”
“General Vassell.”
“Did Vassell countersign the travel vouchers himself?”
The captain nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “He did.”
“I need to speak to him,” I said.
“He went to London.”
“London?” I said.
“For a short-notice meeting with the British Ministry of Defense.”
“When did he leave?”
“He traveled to the airport with Major Marshall.”
“Where’s Colonel Coomer?”
“Berlin,” the guy said. “Souvenir hunting.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “He went to the airport with Vassell and Marshall.”
“No,” the captain said. “He took the train.”
“Terrific,” I said.
Summer and I went to the O Club for breakfast. We got the same corner table we had used the night before. We sat side by side, backs to the wall, watching the room.
“OK,” I said. “Swan’s office called for Marshall’s whereabouts at 1810 and fifty minutes later he had orders for Irwin. An hour after that he was off the post.”
“And Vassell lit out for London,” Summer said. “And Coomer jumped on a train for Berlin.”
“A night train,” I said. “Who goes on a night train just for the fun of it?”
“Everybody’s got something to hide,” she said.
“Except me and my monkey.”
“What?”
“The Beatles,” I said. “One of the sounds of the century.”
She just looked at me.
“What are they hiding?” she said.
“You tell me.”
She put her hands on the table, palms down. Took a breath.
“I can see part of it,” she said.
“Me too.”
“The agenda,” she said. “It was the other side of the coin from what Colonel Simon was talking about last night. Simon was salivating about the infantry taking Armored down a peg or two. Kramer must have seen all of that coming. Two-star generals aren’t stupid. So the Irwin conference on New Year’s Day was about fighting the opposite corner. It was about resistance, I guess. They don’t want to give up what they’ve got.”
“Hell of a thing to give up,” I said.
“Believe it,” she said. “Like battleship captains, way back.”
“So what was in the agenda?”
“Part defense, part offense,” she said. “That’s the obvious way to do it. Arguments against integrated units, ridicule of lightweight armored vehicles, advocacy for their own specialized expertise.”
“I agree,” I said. “But it’s not enough. The Pentagon is going to be neck-deep in position papers full of shit like that, starting any day now. For, against, if, but and however, we’re going to be bored to death with it. But there was something else in that agenda that made them totally desperate to get Kramer’s copy back. What was it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either,” I said.
“And why did they run last night?” Summer asked. “By now they must have destroyed Kramer’s copy and every other copy. So they could have lied through their teeth about what was in it, to put your mind at rest. They could even have given you a phony document. They could have said, Here you go, this was it, check it out.”
“They ran because of Mrs. Kramer,” I said.
She nodded. “I still think Vassell and Coomer killed her. Kramer croaks, the ball is in their court, in the circumstances they know it’s their responsibility to go out and round up all the loose paperwork. Mrs. Kramer goes down as collateral damage.”
“That would make perfect sense,” I said. “Except that neither one of them looked particularly tall and strong to me.”
“They’re both a lot taller and stronger than Mrs. Kramer was. Plus, you know, heat of the moment, pumped up with panic, we could be seeing ambiguous forensic results. And we don’t know how good the Green Valley people are anyway. Could be some family doctor doing a two-year term as coroner, and what the hell would he know?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But I still don’t see how it could have happened. Take out the drive time from D.C., take out ten minutes to find that store and steal the crowbar, they had ten minutes to react. And they didn’t have a car, and they didn’t call for one.”
“They could have taken a taxi. Or a town car. Direct from the hotel lobby. And we’d never trace it. New Year’s Eve, it was the busiest night of the year.”
“It would have been a long ride,” I said. “Big fare. It might stand out in some driver’s memory.”
“New Year’s Eve,” she said again. “D.C. taxis and town cars are all over three states. All kinds of weird destinations. It’s a possibility.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “You don’t take a taxi on a trip where you break into a hardware store and a house.”
“No reason for the driver to have seen anything. Vassell or Coomer or both could have walked into that alley in Sperryville on foot. Come back five minutes later with the crowbar under their coat. Same thing with Mrs. Kramer’s house. The cab could have stopped on the driveway. All the action was around the back.”
“Too big of a risk. A D.C. cabdriver reads the papers same as anyone else. Maybe more than anyone else, with all that traffic. He sees the story from Green Valley, he remembers his two passengers.”
“They didn’t see it as a risk. They weren’t anticipating a story. Because they thought Mrs. Kramer wasn’t going to be home. They thought she would be at the hospital. And they figured no way would a couple of trivial burglaries in Sperryville and Green Valley make it into the D.C. papers.”
I nodded. Thought back to something Detective Clark had said, days ago. I had people up and down the street, canvassing. There were some cars around.
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe we should check taxis.”
“Worst nigh
t of the year,” Summer said. “Like for alibis.”
“It would be a hell of a thing,” I said. “Wouldn’t it? Taking a cab to do a thing like that?”
“Nerves of steel.”
“If they’ve got nerves of steel, why did they run away last night?”
She was quiet for a moment.
“That really doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Because they can’t run forever. They must know that. They must know that sooner or later they’re going to have to turn around and bite back.”
“I agree. And they should have done it right here. Right now. This is their turf. I don’t understand why they didn’t.”
“It will be a hell of a bite. Their whole professional lives are on the line. You should be very careful.”
“You too,” I said. “Not just me.”
“Offense is the best defense.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“So are we going after them?”
“You bet your ass.”
“Which one first?”
“Marshall,” I said. “He’s the one I want.”
“Why?”
“Rule of thumb,” I said. “Chase the one they sent farthest away, because they see him as the weakest link.”
“Now?” she said.
I shook my head.
“We’re going to Paris next,” I said. “I have to see my mom.”
nineteen
We repacked our bags and moved out of our VOQ rooms and paid a final courtesy visit to Swan in his office. He had some news for us.
“I’m supposed to arrest you both,” he said.
“Why?” I said.
“You’re AWOL. Willard put a hit out on you.”
“What, worldwide?”
Swan shook his head. “This post only. They found your car at Andrews and Willard talked to Transportation Corps. So he knew you were headed here.”
“When did you get the telex?”
“An hour ago.”
“When did we leave here?”
“An hour before that.”
“Where did we go?”
“No idea. You didn’t say. I assumed you were returning to base.”
“Thanks,” I said.
