“Did you check your orders?”

“Sure,” he said. “Didn’t you? Panama’s the most fun I’ve had since Grenada, and now I’m staring at the sands of the Mojave? Seems to have been Garber’s personal brainwave. I thought I must have upset him. Now I’m not so sure what’s going on. Unlikely that we both upset him.”

“What exactly were your orders?” I said.

“Temporary XO for the Provost Marshal.”

“Is he there right now?”

“No, actually. He got a temporary detachment the same day I got in.”

“So you’re acting CO?”

“Looks that way,” he said.

“Me too.”

“What’s going on?”

“No idea,” I said. “If I ever find out, I’ll tell you. But first I need to ask you a question. I came across a bird colonel and a one-star over here, supposed to be heading out to you for an Armored conference on New Year’s Day. Vassell and Coomer. Did they ever show?”

“That conference was canceled,” Franz said. “We heard their two-star bought the farm somewhere. Guy called Kramer. They seemed to think there was no point going ahead without him. Either that, or they can’t think at all without him. Or they’re all too busy fighting over who’s going to get his command.”

“So Vassell and Coomer never came to California?”

“They never came to Irwin,” Franz said. “That’s for sure. Can’t speak for California. It’s a big state.”

“Who else was supposed to attend?”

“Armored’s inner circle. Some are based here. Some showed and went away again. Some never showed at all.”

“Did you hear anything about the agenda?”

“I wouldn’t expect to. Was it important?”

“I don’t know. Vassell and Coomer said there wasn’t one.”

“There’s always an agenda.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“I’ll keep my ears open.”

“Happy New Year,” I said. Then I put the phone down and sat quiet. Thought hard. Calvin Franz was one of the good guys. Actually, he was one of the best guys. Tough, fair, as competent as the day was long. Nothing ever knocked him off his stride. I had been happy enough to leave Panama, knowing that he was still there. But he wasn’t still there. I wasn’t there, and he wasn’t there. So who the hell was?

I finished my coffee and carried my mug outside and put it back next to the machine. My sergeant was on the phone. She had a page of scribbled notes in front of her. She held up a finger like she had big news. Then she went back to writing. I went back to my desk. She came in five minutes later with her scribbled page. Thirteen lines, three columns. The third column was made up of numbers. Dates, probably.

“I got as far as Fort Rucker,” she said. “Then I stopped. Because there’s a very obvious pattern developing.”

“Tell me,” I said.

She reeled off thirteen posts, alphabetically. Then she reeled off the names of their MP executive officers. I knew all thirteen names, including Franz’s and my own. Then she reeled off the dates they had been transferred in. Every date was exactly the same. Every date was December 29th. Eight days ago.

“Say the names again,” I told her.

She read them again. I nodded. Inside the arcane little world of military law enforcement, if you wanted to pick an all-star squad, and if you thought long and hard about it all through the night, those thirteen names were what you would have come up with. No doubt about it. They made up a major-league, heavy-duty baker’s dozen. There would have been about ten other obvious guys in the mix, but I had no doubt at all that a couple of them would be right there on posts farther along in the alphabet, and the other eight or so in significant places around the globe. And I had no doubt at all that all of them had been there just eight days. Our heavy hitters. I wouldn’t have wanted to say how high or how low I ranked among them individually, but collectively, down there at the field level, we were the army’s top cops, no question about it.

“Weird,” I said. And it was weird. To shuffle that many specific individuals around on the same day took some kind of will and planning, and to do it during Just Cause took some kind of an urgent motive. The room seemed to go quiet, like I was straining to hear the other shoe fall.

“I’m going over to the Delta station,” I said.

I drove myself in a Humvee because I didn’t want to walk. I didn’t know if the asshole Willard was off the post yet, and I didn’t want to cross his path again. The sentry let me into the old prison and I went straight to the adjutant’s office. He was still at his desk, looking a little more tired than when I had seen him in the early morning.

“It was a training accident,” I said.

He nodded. “So I heard.”

“What kind of training was he doing?” I asked.

“Night maneuvers,” the guy said.

“Alone?”

“Escape and evasion, then.”

“On-post?”

“OK, he was jogging. Burning off the holiday calories. Whatever.”

“I need this to sound kosher,” I said. “My name’s going to be on the report.”

The captain nodded. “Then forget the jogging. I don’t think Carbone was a runner. He was more of a gym rat. A lot of them are.”

“A lot of who are?”

He looked straight at me.

“Delta guys,” he said.

“Did he have a specialization?”

“They’re all generalists. They’re all good at everything.”

“Not radio, not medic?”

“They all do radio. And they’re all medics. It’s a safeguard. If they’re captured individually, they can claim to be the company medic. Might save them from a bullet. And they can demonstrate the expertise, if they’re tested.”

“Any medical training take place at night?”

The captain shook his head. “Not specifically.”

“Could he have been out testing comms gear?”

“He could have been out road testing a vehicle,” the captain said. “He was good with mechanical things. I guess as much as anyone he looked after the unit’s trucks. That was probably as close as he got to a specialization.”

“OK,” I said. “Maybe he blew a tire, and his truck fell off the jack and crushed his head?”

“Works for me,” the captain said.

“Uneven terrain, maybe a soft spot under the jack, the whole thing would be unstable.”

“Works for me,” the captain said again.

“I’ll say my guys towed the truck back.”

“OK.”

“What kind of truck was it?”

“Any kind you like.”

“Your CO around?” I said.

“He’s away. For the holidays.”

“Who is he?”

“You won’t know him.”

“Try me.”

“Colonel Brubaker,” the captain said.

“David Brubaker?” I said. “I know him.” Which was partially true. I knew him by reputation. He was a real hairy-assed Special Forces evangelist. According to him the rest of us could fold our tents and go home and the whole world could hide behind his handpicked units. Maybe some helicopter battalions could stay in harness, to ferry his people around. Maybe a single Pentagon office could stay open, to procure the weapons he wanted.

“When will he be back?” I said.

“Sometime tomorrow.”

“Did you call him?”

The captain shook his head. “He won’t want to be involved. And he won’t want to talk to you. But I’ll get him to reissue some operational safety procedures, as soon as we find out what kind of an accident it was.”

“Crushed by a truck,” I said. “That’s what it was. That should make him happy. Vehicular safety is a shorter section than weapons safety.”

“In what?”

“In the field manual.”

The captain smiled.

“Brubaker doesn’t use the field manual,” he said.

“I want to see Carbone’s billet,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I need to sanitize it. If I’m going to sign off on a truck accident, I don’t want any loose ends around.”

Carbone had bunked the same way as his unit as a whole, on his own in one of the old cells. It was a six-by-eight space made of painted concrete and it had its own sink and toilet. It had a standard army cot and a footlocker and a shelf on the wall as long as the bed. All in all, it was pretty good accommodations for a sergeant. There were plenty around the world who would have traded in the blink of an eye.