Reacher still had hold of Hobie’s bones. The radius and the ulna from his right arm, neatly socketed on the lower end like nature intended, savagely smashed and splintered at the upper end by a fragment of his own rotor blade. Hobie had studied the leading edge of that blade and seen that it was capable of smashing through tree limbs as thick as a man’s arm. He had used that inspiration to save other men’s lives, over and over again. Then that same blade had come folding and whirling down into his own cockpit and taken his hand away.
“He was a deserter,” he said. “Technically, that’s what he was. He was a serving soldier and he ran away. But a decision was taken not to go after him. Had to be that way. Because what could the Army do? If they caught him, what next? They would be prosecuting a guy with an exemplary record, nine hundred ninety-one combat missions, a guy who deserted after the trauma of a horrendous injury and disfigurement. They couldn’t do that. The war was unpopular. You can’t send a disfigured hero to Leavenworth for deserting under those circumstances. But equally you can’t send out the message that you’re letting deserters get away with it. That would have been a scandal of a different sort. They were still busting plenty of guys for deserting. The undeserving ones. They couldn’t reveal they had different strokes for different folks. So Hobie’s file was closed and sealed and classified secret. That’s why the personnel record ends with the last mission. All the rest of it is in a vault, somewhere in the Pentagon.”
Jodie nodded.
“And that’s why he’s not on the Wall,” she said. “They know he’s still alive.”
Reacher was reluctant to put the arm bones down. He held them, and ran his fingers up and down their length. The good ends were smooth and perfect, ready to accept the subtle articulation of the human wrist.
“Have you logged his medical records?” he asked Newman. “His old X rays and dental charts and all that stuff?”
Newman shook his head. “He’s not MIA. He survived and deserted.”
Reacher turned back to Bamford’s casket and laid the two yellow shards gently in one comer of the rough wooden box. He shook his head. “I just can’t believe it, Nash. Everything about this guy says he didn’t have a deserter’s mentality. His background, his record, everything. I know about deserters. I hunted plenty of them.”
“He deserted,” Newman said. “It’s a fact, it’s in the files from the hospital.”
“He survived the crash,” Reacher said. “I guess I can’t dispute that anymore. He was in the hospital. Can’t dispute that, either. But suppose it wasn’t really desertion? Suppose he was just confused, or groggy from the drugs or something? Suppose he just wandered away and got lost?”
Newman shook his head. “He wasn’t confused.”
“But how do you know that? Loss of blood, malnutrition, fever, morphine?”
“He deserted,” Newman said.
“It doesn’t add up,” Reacher said.
“War changes people,” Newman said.
“Not that much,” Reacher said back.
Newman stepped closer and lowered his voice again.
“He killed an orderly,” he whispered. “The guy spotted him on the way out and tried to stop him. It’s all in the file. Hobie said ‘I’m not going back,’ and hit the guy in the head with a bottle. Broke his skull. They put the guy in Hobie’s bed and he didn’t survive the trip back to Saigon. That’s what the secrecy is all about, Reacher. They didn’t just let him get away with deserting. They let him get away with murder.”
There was total silence in the lab. The air hissed and the loamy smell of the old bones drifted. Reacher laid his hand on the shiny lip of Bamford’s casket, just to keep himself standing upright.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“You should,” Newman said back. “Because it’s true.”
“I can’t tell his folks that,” Reacher said. “I just can’t. It would kill them.”
“Hell of a secret,” Jodie said. “They let him get away with murder?”
“Politics,” Newman said. “The politics over there stunk to high heaven. Still do, as a matter of fact.”
“Maybe he died later,” Reacher said. “Maybe he got away into the jungle and died there later. He was still very sick, right?”
“How would that help you?” Newman asked.
“I could tell his folks he was dead, you know, gloss over the exact details.”
“You’re clutching at straws,” Newman said.
“We have to go,” Jodie said. “We need to make the plane.”
“Would you run his medical records?” Reacher asked. “If I got hold of them from his family? Would you do that for me?”
There was a pause.
“I’ve already got them,” Newman said. “Leon brought them with him. The family released them to him.”
“So will you run them?” Reacher asked.
“You’re clutching at straws,” Newman said again.
Reacher turned around and pointed at the hundred cardboard boxes stacked in the alcove at the end of the room. “He could be already here, Nash.”
“He’s in New York,” Jodie said. “Don’t you see that?”
“No, I want him to be dead,” Reacher said. “I can’t go back to his folks and tell them their boy is a deserter and a murderer and has been running around all this time without contacting them. I need him to be dead.”
“But he isn’t,” Newman said.
“But he could be, right?” Reacher said. “He could have died later. Back in the jungle, someplace else, maybe faraway, on the run? Disease, malnutrition? Maybe his skeleton was found already. Will you run his records? As a favor to me?”
“Reacher, we need to go now,” Jodie said.
“Will you run them?” Reacher asked again.
“I can’t,” Newman said. “Christ, this whole thing is classified, don’t you understand that? I shouldn’t have told you anything at all. And I can’t add another name to the MIA lists now. The Department of the Army wouldn’t stand for it. We’re supposed to be reducing the numbers here, not adding to them.”
“Can’t you do it unofficially? Privately? You can do that, right? You run this place, Nash. Please? For me?”
Newman shook his head. “You’re clutching at straws, is all.”
“Please, Nash,” Reacher said.
There was silence. Then Newman sighed.
“OK, damn it,” he said. “For you, I’ll do it, I guess.”
“When?” Reacher asked.
Newman shrugged. “First thing tomorrow morning, OK?”
“Call me as soon as you’ve done it?”
“Sure, but you’re wasting your time. Number?”
“Use the mobile,” Jodie said.
She recited the number. Newman wrote it on the cuff of his lab coat.
“Thanks, Nash,” Reacher said. “I really appreciate this.”
“Waste of time,” Newman said again.
“We need to go,” Jodie called.
Reacher nodded vaguely and they all moved toward the plain door in the cinder-block wall. Lieutenant Simon was waiting on the other side of it with the offer of a ride around the perimeter road to the passenger terminals.
15
FIRST-CLASS OR NOT, the flight back was miserable. It was the same plane, going east to New York along the second leg of a giant triangle. It was cleaned and perfumed and checked and refueled, and it had a new crew on board. Reacher and Jodie were in the same seats they had left four hours earlier. Reacher took the window again, but it felt different. It was still two and a half times as wide as normal, still sumptuously upholstered in leather and sheepskin, but he took no pleasure in sitting in it again.
The lights were dimmed, to represent night. They had taken off into an outrageous tropical sunset boiling away beyond the islands, and then they had turned away to fly toward darkness. The engines settled to a muted hiss. The flight attendants were quiet and unobtrusive. There was only one other passenger in the cabin. He was sitting two rows ahead, across the aisle. He was a tall, spare man, dressed in a seersucker short-sleeve shirt printed with pale stripes. His right forearm was laid gently on the arm of the chair, and his hand hung down, limp and relaxed. His eyes were closed.