The Enemy: A Reacher Novel by Lee Child

Author:Lee Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Espionage, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Fiction, Suspense, Thrillers, Crime, Thriller
ISBN: 9780440423003
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

SIXTEEN

We gave Trifonov his steyr back and livf him out at the Delta gate. He probably signed the gun back in and then legged it to his room and picked up his book. Probably carried on reading right where he left off. We drove on and parked the Humvee in the MP motor pool. Walked back to my office. Summer went straight to the copy of the gate log. It was still taped to the wall, next to the map.

"Vassell and Coomer," she said. "They were the only other people who left the post that night."

"They went north," I said. "If you want to say they threw the briefcase out of the car, then you have to agree they went north. They didn't go south to Columbia."

"OK," she said. "So the same guy didn't do Carbone and Brubaker. There's no connection. We just wasted a lot of time."

"Welcome to the real world," I said.

The real world got a whole lot worse when my phone rang twenty minutes later. It was my sergeant. The woman with the baby son. She had Sanchez on the line, calling from Fort Jackson. She put him through.

"Willard has been and gone," he said. "Unbelievable."

"Told you so."

"He pitched all kinds of hissy fits."

"But you're fireproof."

"Thank God."

I paused. "Did you tell him about my guy?"

He paused. "You told me to. Shouldn't I have?"

"It was a dry hole. Looked good at first, but it wasn't in the end."

"Well, he's on his way up to see you about it. He left here two hours ago. He's going to be very disappointed."

"Terrific," I said.

"What are you going to do?" Summer asked.

"What is Willard?" I said. "Fundamentally?"

"A careerist," she said.

"Correct," I said.

Technically the army has a total of twenty-six separate ranks. A grunt comes in as an E-1 private, and as long as he doesn't do anything stupid he is automatically promoted to an E-2 private after a year, and to an E-3 private first class after another year, or even a little earlier if he's any good. Then the ladder stretches all the way up to a five-star General of the Army, although I wasn't aware of anyone except George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower who ever made it that far. If you count the E-9 sergeant major grade as three separate steps to acknowledge the Command Sergeant Majors and the Sergeant Major of the Army, and if you count all four warrant officer grades, then a major like me has seven steps above him and eighteen steps below him. Which gives a major like me considerable experience of insubordination, going both ways, up and down, giving and taking. With a million people on twenty six separate rungs on the ladder, insubordination was a true art form.

And the canvas was one-on-one privacy.

So I sent Summer away and waited for Willard on my own. She argued about it. In the end I got her to agree that one of us should stay under the radar. She went to get a late dinner.

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.