The Enemy

figured he was
already
in a car,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said again. “I did.”
    “You figured he drove out on the track with Carbone, hit him in the head, arranged the scene, and then drove back here to the post. Your reasoning was pretty good. And where we found the crowbar kind of confirmed it.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “And then we figured he parked his car and went about his business.”
    “Correct,” she said.
    “But he can’t have parked his car and gone about his business. Because now we’re saying he drove straight to Columbia, South Carolina, instead. To meet with Brubaker. Three-hour drive. He was in a hurry. Not much time to waste.”
    “Correct,” she said again.
    “So he didn’t park his car,” I said. “He didn’t even touch the brake. He drove straight out the main gate instead. There’s no other way off the post. He drove straight out the main gate, Summer, immediately after he killed Carbone, somewhere around nine or ten o’clock.”
    “Check the gate log,” she said. “There’s a copy right there on the desk.”

    We checked the gate log together. Operation Just Cause in Panama had moved all domestic installations up one level on the DefCon scale and therefore all closed posts were recording entrances and exits in detail in bound ledgers that had preprinted page numbers in the top right-hand corner. We had a good clear Xerox of the page for January fourth. I was confident it was genuine. I was confident it was complete. And I was confident it was accurate. The Military Police have numerous failings, but snafus with basic paperwork aren’t any of them.
    Summer took the page from me and taped it to the wall next to the map. We stood side by side and looked at it. It was ruled into six columns. There were spaces for date, time in, time out, plate number, occupants, and reason.
    “Traffic was light,” Summer said.
    I said nothing. I was in no position to know whether nineteen entries represented light traffic or not. I wasn’t used to Bird and it had been a long time since I had pulled gate duty anywhere else. But certainly it seemed quiet compared to the multiple pages I had seen for New Year’s Eve.
    “Mostly people reporting back for duty,” Summer said.
    I nodded. Fourteen lines had entries in the
Time In
column but no corresponding entries in the
Time Out
column. That meant fourteen people had come in and stayed in. Back to work, after time away from the post for the holidays. Or after time away from the post for other reasons. I was right there among them: 1-4-90. 2302, Reacher, J., Mjr, RTB.
January fourth, 1990, two minutes past eleven in the evening, Major J. Reacher, returning to base.
From Paris, via Garber’s old office in Rock Creek. My vehicle plate number was listed as:
Pedestrian.
My sergeant was there, coming in from her off-post address to work the night shift. She had arrived at nine-thirty, driving something with North Carolina plates.
    Fourteen in, to stay in.
    Only five exits.
    Three of them were routine food deliveries. Big trucks, probably. An army post gets through a lot of food. Lots of hungry mouths to feed. Three trucks in a day seemed about right to me. Each of them was timed inward at some point during the early afternoon and then timed outward again a plausible hour or so later. The last time out was just before three o’clock.
    Then there was a seven-hour gap.
    The last-but-one recorded exit was Vassell and Coomer themselves, on their way out after their O Club dinner. They had passed through the gate at 2201. They had previously been timed in at 1845. At that point their Department of Defense plate number had been written down and their names and ranks had been entered. Their reason had been stated as:
Courtesy visit.
    Five exits. Four down.
    One to go.
    The only other person to have left Fort Bird on the fourth of January was logged as: 1-4-90, 2211, Trifonov, S., Sgt. There was a North Carolina passenger vehicle plate number written in the relevant space. There was no time in recorded. There was nothing in the reason column. Therefore a sergeant called Trifonov had been on-post all day or all week and then he had left at eleven minutes past ten in the evening. No reason had been recorded because there was no directive to inquire as to why a soldier was leaving. The assumption was that he was going out for a drink or a meal or for some other form of entertainment.
Reason
was a question the gate guards asked of people trying to