The Enemy

were
trying
to make a point, instead of just going ahead and making one. Maybe trying too hard.”
    Norton said nothing.
    “Too much,” I said again. “Like shooting someone, then strangling him, then stabbing him, then drowning him, then suffocating him, then beating him to death. It’s like they were decorating a damn Christmas tree with clues.”
    She stayed quiet. She was watching me, deep inside her pool of light. Maybe assessing me.
    “I have my doubts about the belt,” she said. “Autoeroticism isn’t exclusively homosexual. All men have the same orgasms physiologically, gay or not.”
    “The whole thing was faked,” I said.
    She nodded, finally.
    “I agree with you,” she said. “You’re a smart guy.”
    “For a cop?”
    She didn’t smile. “But we know as officers that to permit homosexuals to serve is illegal. So we better be sure we’re not letting a defense of the army cloud our judgment.”
    “It’s my job to protect the army,” I said.
    “Exactly,” Norton said.
    I shrugged. “But I’m not taking a position. I’m not saying this guy definitely wasn’t gay. Maybe he was. I really don’t care. And maybe his attackers knew, maybe they didn’t. I’m saying either way, that’s not why they killed him. They wanted it to look like the reason. But they weren’t really
feeling
it. They were feeling something else. So they larded on the clues, in a rather self-conscious way.”
    Then I paused.
    “In a rather academic way,” I said.
    She stiffened.
    “An academic way?” she said.
    “Do you guys teach anything about this kind of stuff in class?”
    “We don’t teach people how to kill,” she said.
    “That’s not what I asked.”
    She nodded. “We talk about it. We have to. Cutting off your enemy’s dick is as basic as it gets. It’s happened all through history. Happened all through Vietnam. Afghan women have been doing it to captured Soviet soldiers for the last ten years. We talk about what it symbolizes, what it communicates, and the fear it creates. There are whole books about the fear of grotesque wounds. It’s always a message to the target population. We talk about violation with foreign objects. We talk about the deliberate display of violated bodies. The trail of abandoned clothing is a classic touch.”
    “Do you talk about yogurt?”
    She shook her head. “But that’s a very old joke.”
    “And the asphyxiation thing?”
    “Not on the Psy-Ops courses. But most of the people here can read magazines. Or they can watch porn on videotape.”
    “Do you talk about questioning an enemy’s sexuality?”
    “Of course we do. Impugning an enemy’s sexuality is the whole point of our course. His sexual orientation, his virility, his capability, his capacity. It’s a core tactic. It always has been, everywhere, throughout history. It’s designed to work both ways. It diminishes him, and it builds us up by comparison.”
    I said nothing.
    She looked right at me. “Are you asking me if I recognized the fruits of our lessons, out there in the woods?”
    “I guess I am,” I said.
    “You didn’t really want my opinion, did you?” she asked. “That was all preamble. You already knew what you were seeing.”
    I nodded. “I’m a smart guy, for a cop.”
    “The answer is no,” she said. “I did not recognize the fruits of our lessons, out there in the woods. Not specifically.”
    “But possibly?”
    “Anything’s possible.”
    “Did you meet General Kramer when you were at Fort Irwin?” I asked.
    “Once or twice,” she said. “Why?”
    “When did you last see him?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Not recently?”
    “No. Not recently. Why?”
    “How did you meet him?”
    “Professionally,” she said.
    “You teach your stuff to Armored Branch?”
    “Irwin isn’t exclusively Armored Branch. It’s the National Training Center too, don’t forget. People used to come to us there. Now we go to them.”
    I said nothing.
    “Does it surprise you we taught Armored people?”
    I shrugged again. “A little, I guess. If I was riding around in a seventy-ton tank, I don’t suppose I’d feel a need for any more of a psychological edge.”
    She still didn’t smile. “We taught them. As I recall General Kramer didn’t like it if the infantry was getting things his people weren’t. It was an intense rivalry.”
    “Who do you teach now?”
    “Delta Force,” she said. “Exclusively.”
    “Thank you for your help,” I said.
    “I didn’t recognize