The Enemy

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.
    Summer had had police tape stuck across the doorway. I pulled it down and balled it up and put it in my pocket. Stepped inside the room.
    Special Forces Detachment D is very different from the rest of the army in its approach to discipline and uniformity. Relationships between the ranks are very casual. Nobody even remembers how to salute. Tidiness is not prized. Uniform is not compulsory. If a guy feels comfortable in a previous-issue fatigue jacket that he’s had for years, he wears it. If he likes New Balance running shoes better than GI combat boots, he wears them. If the army buys four hundred thousand Beretta sidearms, but the Delta guy likes SIGs better, he uses a SIG.
    So Carbone had no closet full of clean and pressed uniforms. There were no serried ranks of undershirts, crisp and laundered, folded ready for use. There were no gleaming boots under his bed. His clothing was all piled on the first three-quarters of the long shelf above his cot. There wasn’t much of it. It was all basically olive green, but apart from that it wasn’t stuff that a current quartermaster would recognize. There were some old pieces of the army’s original extended cold-weather clothing system. There were some faded pieces of standard BDUs. Nothing was marked with unit or regimental insignia. There was a green bandanna. There were some old green T-shirts, washed so many times they were nearly transparent. There was a neatly rolled ALICE harness next to the T-shirts.
ALICE
stands for
All-Purpose Lightweight Carrying Equipment,
which is what the army calls a nylon belt that you hang things from.
    The final quarter of the shelf’s length held a collection of books, and a small color photograph in a brass frame. The photograph was of an older woman who looked a little like Carbone himself. His mother, without a doubt. I remembered his tattoo, sliced across by the K-bar. An eagle, holding a scroll with
Mother
on it. I remembered my mother, shooing us away into the tiny elevator after we had hugged her goodbye.
    I moved on to Carbone’s books.
    There were five paperbacks and one tall thin hardcover. I ran my finger along the paperbacks. I didn’t recognize any of the titles or any of the