Silken Prey by John Sandford

Author:John Sandford [Sandford, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers
ISBN: 9780399159312
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2013-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Lucas was lying on a couch reading the Steve Jobs biography, which he’d been meaning to do for a long time, when his cell phone rang. He looked at the screen, which said it was two minutes after eleven o’clock, and “Caller Unknown.”

“Hello?”

“Don’t say anything. This is a wrong number. Look at your e-mail. Don’t call me back before tomorrow night.”

Click. Kidd was gone; the call had lasted six seconds.

• • •

LUCAS GOT OFF the couch and padded back to his study, sat down at the computer, and brought up his e-mail. He had incoming mail from the military records depository.

He clicked on it, and found two PDF documents. He clicked on the first and found a thirty-page document on Ronald L. Carver, Sgt. E-8 U.S. Army, marked “Secret.” Lucas had never been in the army, and thought E-8 was a rank, but wasn’t sure. He went out on Google to check: E-8 was a master sergeant.

The document was a mass of acronyms and it took him an hour to work through the thirty pages, going back and forth to Google, searching for definitions, making notes on a yellow legal pad.

Weather stuck her head in and said, “You’re not coming to bed?”

“Not for a while.” She was up late; not working in the morning. “Something came up.”

“Don’t drink any more Diet Coke or you’ll be up all night.”

She went away and Lucas went back to Carver. Scanning the document, he’d figured that Carver had spent three years in Iraq and two more in Afghanistan. He had a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for bravery under fire, and had been wounded at least twice, with two Purple Hearts. Neither wound had been serious. Both had been treated in-country, and he’d returned to active duty in less than a month, in each case.

Then something happened, but Lucas couldn’t tell what it was. Carver had been reprimanded—exact circumstances unspecified—and very shortly afterward had been honorably discharged.

Reading through the document a second time, he determined that Carver had been through a number of high-level training courses: he was a Ranger, he was parachute qualified, he’d taken a half-dozen courses in anti-insurgency warfare, and had spent a lot of time on “detached duty” in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Working through military sites he found through Google, he determined that Carver had made the master sergeant rank about as quickly as was possible. Then he was out.

Lucas leaned back in his chair and processed it. He thought Carver had probably been some sort of enlisted-ranks combat specialist, what the Internet military sites called an “operator.” Lucas suspected that he’d killed a lot of people—his training all pointed in that direction.

But the reprimand could cover a lot of territory. Carver, he thought, might very well have killed either the wrong person, or too many of them. With Carver’s medals, experience, and training, Lucas thought it unlikely that he’d been kicked out for rolling a joint.

• • •

IN A LOT OF WAYS, the records for Douglas Damien Dannon were parallel to Carver’s.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.