Tripwire

a dead crab.
    “Allen was one of the three they picked up,” Newman said.
    Reacher nodded, sadly. The sixth casket was a burn victim. His name was Zabrinski. His bones were calcinated and small.
    “He was probably a big guy in life,” Newman said. “Burning can shrink your bones by fifty percent, sometimes. So don’t write him off as a midget.”
    Reacher nodded again. Stirred through the bones with his hand. They were light and brittle. Like husks. The veining left them sharp with microscopic ribbing.
    “Injuries?” Newman asked.
    Reacher looked again, but he found nothing.
    “He burned to death,” he said.
    Newman nodded.
    “Yes, I’m afraid he did,” he said.
    “Awful,” Jodie whispered.
    The seventh and final casket held the remains of a man named Gunston. They were terrible remains. At first Reacher thought there was no skull. Then he saw it was lying in the bottom of the wooden box. It was smashed into a hundred pieces. Most of them were no bigger than his thumbnail.
    “What do you think?” Newman asked.
    Reacher shook his head.
    “I don’t want to think,” he whispered. “I’m all done thinking.”
    Newman nodded, sympathetic. “Rotor blade hit him in the head. He was one of the three they picked up. He was sitting opposite Bamford.”
    “Five and three,” Jodie said quietly. “So the crew was Hobie and Kaplan, pilot and copilot, Bamford the crew chief, Soper and Tardelli the gunners, and they went down and picked up Allen and Zabrinski and Gunston.”
    Newman nodded. “That’s what the files tell us.”
    “So where’s Hobie?” Reacher asked.
    “You’re missing something,” Newman said. “Sloppy work, Reacher, for somebody who used to be good at this.”
    Reacher glanced at him. DeWitt had said something similar. He had said sloppy work for somebody who was once an MP major. And he had said look closer to home.
    “They were MPs, right?” he said suddenly.
    Newman smiled. “Who were?”
    “Two of them,” Reacher said. “Two out of Allen and Zabrinski and Gunston. Two of them were arresting the other one. It was a special mission. Kaplan had put two MPs in the field the day before. His last-but-one mission, flying solo, the one I didn’t read. They were going back to pick them up, plus the guy they’d arrested.”
    Newman nodded. “Correct.”
    “Which was which?”
    “Pete Zabrinski and Joey Gunston were the cops. Carl Allen was the bad guy.”
    Reacher nodded. “What had he done?”
    “The details are classified,” Newman said. “Your guess?”
    “In and out like that, a quick arrest? Fragging, I suppose.”
    “What’s fragging?” Jodie asked.
    “Killing your officer,” Reacher said. “It happened, time to time. Some gung ho lieutenant, probably new in-country, gets all keen on advancing into dangerous positions. The grunts don’t like it, figure he’s after a medal, figure they’d rather keep their asses in one piece. So he says ‘charge,’ and somebody shoots him in the back, or throws a grenade at him, which was more efficient, because it didn’t need aiming and it disguised the whole thing better. That’s where the name comes from, fragging, fragmentation device, a grenade.”
    “So was it fragging?” Jodie asked.
    “The details are classified,” Newman said again. “But certainly there was fragging involved, at the end of a long and vicious career. According to the files, Carl Allen was definitely not flavor of the month.”
    Jodie nodded. “But why on earth is that classified? Whatever he did, he’s been dead thirty years. Justice is done, right?”
    Reacher had stepped back to Allen’s casket. He was staring down into it.
    “Caution,” he said. “Whoever the gung ho lieutenant was, his family was told he died a hero, fighting the enemy. If they ever find out any different, it’s a scandal. And the Department of the Army doesn’t like scandals.”
    “Correct,” Newman said again.
    “But where’s Hobie?” Reacher asked again.
    “You’re still missing something. One step at a time, OK?”
    “But what is it?” Reacher asked. “Where is it?”
    “In the bones,” Newman said.
    The clock on the laboratory wall showed five-thirty. Not much more than an hour to go. Reacher took a breath and walked back around the caskets in reverse order. Gunston, Zabrinski, Allen, Soper, Bamford, Tardelli, Kaplan. Six grinning skulls and one headless bony set of shoulders stared back up at him. He did the round again. The clock ticked on.