up on it instantly.
“Amy,” she says sharply.
“Yes.”
“What’s going on?”
I keep quiet.
Freddy says, “Amy…is this professional? Or personal?”
I talk through the tears. “As personal as it gets.”
CHAPTER 20
IN THE plain but comfortable office at Fort Belvoir with a sign on the door that says LT. COL. DENTON COMMANDING/297TH MILITARY INTELLIGENCE BATTALION, he sits at the wide and clean desk, slowly rubbing his hands against the polished surface, knowing that if a subordinate were to walk in, right at this moment, he or she would give him an odd look, but he doesn’t care.
A clean desk to call your own is one of the perks of getting this high up the ladder, this high up the pecking order, that slippery pyramid of command and responsibility.
Oh, yes, responsibility indeed.
Lots of burdens of command, both professional and personal, and while the professional burdens are widely known, evaluated, discussed, and probed, the personal are never examined. It is like a big crack in a home’s foundation that is never talked about, for fear it will bring something rotten into the open. Like the dreams, the memories of sharp explosions, the taste of someone else’s blood on your lips, and the trembling that sometimes happens so fast and so hard you retreat to the nearest latrine so no one can see you.
Best to ignore it, and hope no one else sees it.
Transferring this unit from Fort Gordon three years back was a logistical and personnel nightmare, but one does what one has to do, especially when the dim higher-ups dragged them here from Georgia to make some assistant secretary of defense or congressman happy.
So he did what had to be done. Which is always a good way to manage one’s life in the Army.
The phone in the plain and powerful office rings.
He picks up the receiver.
“Yes?”
“What’s going on? It looks like it’s falling apart.”
He knows his caller is thousands of miles away, and he’s amazed once again at how clear and crisp the voice is.
“It is falling apart,” he replies.
“What are you doing about it?”
He says, “I’m fixing it.”
“You better.”
The caller hangs up.
No matter.
He moves his hands across the desk again.
So smooth and powerful.
CHAPTER 21
CAPTAIN ROSARIA Vasquez is sitting in her government-issued GMC sedan, balancing a cup of Cumberland Farms coffee in one hand while flipping through the service file of Captain Amy Cornwall, reading and reflecting, looking for those little bits of information that will stand out, make her take notice, that little thread she hopes she can pull that will lead to a string out there somewhere, and not just a bit of nothing.
But so far, nothing is what she’s finding.
Born in Maine, joined the Army after high school, finished college in Maine, had a variety of schools and assignments, assigned to an infantry unit, one tour in Iraq, went through the sixty-two-day Ranger school—one of only a few women who managed to pass—and then ended up in military intelligence.
Two tours in Afghanistan—including the last one that resulted in the death of a Taliban prisoner—but otherwise reasonably routine.
Rosaria goes through the file, again and again.
Different schools—one thing about the Army is that if you want to learn, they are ready to offer it to you, one of the reasons she loves her service so—and it all seems routine. Scratch that, Captain Cornwall is a fine officer, with a bright future ahead of her.
So why did she bail out with her husband and kid?
Over the Afghanistan investigation?
Doesn’t make sense.
Nothing she saw of Cornwall in this folder stands out, all her time is accounted for—the different dates, the different schools and assignments. Everything—
Hold on.
She flips through the pages again.
Odd.
Just before her last deployment to Afghanistan, she went on an exchange mission, to Fort Campbell in Kentucky, one of the largest Army bases in CONUS—continental United States.
What kind of mission?
Hard to tell.
Lots of abbreviations and acronyms.
It looks like it was a unit assigned to work with an Air National Guard section that had deployed from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
What was Captain Cornwall doing in Kentucky?
And the biggest question…she was assigned there for six months.
Left after four.
Ahead of schedule.
But why?
She smiles when she sees a familiar name attached to another form.
CAPT. A. MITCHUM.
She closes the folder.
That’s what civvies never, ever understand about military service. You can have friends across the world at various stations and bases, like an archipelago of relationships and friendships. It is odd to be transferred somewhere without having an acquaintance there to welcome you. In a usual time and place, to talk