Tripwire

bucks for him to have his first flight in one. It was an old Bell, a crop duster. After that, all he wanted to be was a helicopter pilot. And he decided the Army was the best place to learn how.”
    He slid another photograph out of the folder. Passed it across. It showed the same boy, now twice the age, grown tall, still grinning, in a new fatigues, standing in front of an Army helicopter. It was an H-23 Hiller, an old training machine.
    “That’s Fort Wolters,” Hobie said. “All the way down in Texas. U.S. Army Primary Helicopter School.”
    Reacher nodded. “He flew choppers in ‘Nam?”
    “He passed out second in his class,” Hobie said. “That was no surprise to us. He was always an excellent student, all the way through high school. He was especially gifted in math. He understood accountancy. I imagined he’d go to college and then come into partnership with me, to do the book work. I looked forward to it. I struggled in school, Major. No reason to be coy about it now. I’m not an educated man. It was a constant delight for me to see Victor doing so well. He was a very smart boy. And a very good boy. Very smart, very kind, a good heart, a perfect son. Our only son.”
    The old lady was silent. Not eating the cake, not drinking the coffee.
    “His passing out was at Fort Rucker,” Hobie said. “Down in Alabama. We made the trip to see it.”
    He slid across the next photograph. It was a duplicate of one of the framed prints from the mantel. Faded pastel grass and sky, a tall boy in dress uniform, cap down over his eyes, his arm around an older woman in a print dress. The woman was slim and pretty. The photograph was slightly out of focus, the horizon slightly tilted. Taken by a fumbling husband and father, breathless with pride.
    “That’s Victor and Mary,” the old man said. “She hasn’t changed a bit, has she, that day to this?”
    “Not a bit,” Reacher lied.
    “We loved that boy,” the old woman said quietly. “He was sent overseas two weeks after that photograph was taken.”
    “July of ‘68,” Hobie said. “He was twenty years old.”
    “What happened?” Reacher asked.
    “He served a full tour,” Hobie said. “He was commended twice. He came home with a medal. I could see right away the idea of keeping the books for a print shop was too small for him. I thought he would serve out his time and get a job flying helicopters for the oil rigs. Down in the Gulf, perhaps. They were paying big money then, for Army pilots. Or Navy, or Air Force, of course.”
    “But he went over there again,” Mrs. Hobie said. “To Vietnam again.”
    “He signed on for a second tour,” Mrs. Hobie said. “He didn’t have to. But he said it was his duty. He said the war was still going on, and it was his duty to be a part of it. He said that’s what patriotism meant.”
    “And what happened?” Reacher asked.
    There was a long moment of silence.
    “He didn’t come back,” Hobie said.
    The silence was like a weight in the room. Somewhere a clock was ticking. It grew louder and louder until it was filling the air like blows from a hammer.
    “It destroyed me,” Hobie said quietly.
    The oxygen wheezed in and out, in and out, through a constricted throat.
    “It just destroyed me. I used to say: I’ll exchange the whole rest of my life, just for one more day with him.”
    “The rest of my life,” his wife echoed. “For just one more day with him.”
    “And I meant it,” Hobie said. “And I still would. I still would, Major. Looking at me now, that’s not much of a bargain, is it? I haven’t got much life left in me. But I said it then, and I said it every day for thirty years, and as God is my witness, I meant it every single time I said it. The whole rest of my life, for one more day with him.”
    “When was he killed?” Reacher asked, gently.
    “He wasn’t killed,” Hobie said. “He was captured.”
    “Taken prisoner?”
    The old man nodded. “At first, they told us he was missing. We assumed he was dead, but we clung on, hoping. He was posted missing, and he stayed missing. We never got official word he was killed.”
    “So we waited,” Mrs. Hobie said. “We just kept on waiting, for years and years. Then we started asking. They told us Victor was missing, presumed killed. That was all they could say. His helicopter was shot down in the jungle, and they never found the wreckage.”
    “We accepted that then,” Hobie said. “We knew how it was. Plenty of boys died