Page 66 of Exit Strategy
‘That was the official story. It’s not true.’
‘So what happened?’
‘First of all you’ve got to understand a bit about Strickland. He’s smart. He’s creative. He’s determined. But most of all, he’s a man in a hurry. You’ve served. You know the army. You know what a bad combination that can be. Strickland was always butting heads. He had ideas. Good ideas, usually. Sometimes they got implemented. But even when they did, it was never fast enough for him. He was always pestering our CO to push things through. He got to be a real pain in the ass. People started calling him BBFM. Bigger, Better, Faster, More.’
‘How did he take that?’
‘He didn’t care. He just did his thing, right up until ’03, when we wound up at a base linked to Camp Ashraf, near the Iranian border. It was early in the war and the rules of engagement were still pretty much gold-plated. First and foremost was that we could not engage the enemy unless he or she presented a clear and present danger. That was taken to mean they had to be armed, which no doubt sounded great on paper in someone’s office at the Pentagon or during an ass-covering session in whatever committee in Congress was meddling at the time. But on the ground it was a disaster. It was a gift to the insurgents. Take their mortar crews. We got hit every night, without fail. And there was nothing we could do about it. The mortar operator stayed under cover where we couldn’t get to him, but his spotter could stand around in plain sight, calling in the targets on his cellphone. He was the one doing the real damage and everyone knew it, but if he wasn’t holding a gun, we couldn’t touch him.We had to watch him, taunting us, as his buddy blew the shit out of our barracks.’
‘I remember reading about that at the time. Caused a lot of bad feeling.’
‘And a lot of unnecessary casualties. So, as you might have guessed by now, being forced to abide by such a dumb rule didn’t sit well with Strickland. He came up with an idea. He wanted to track the cellphone use of the spotters in real time, which we had the ability to do. If we could show they were talking to the mortar operators during an attack, it would be reasonable to assume they were providing updates on range, bearing, etc. Then it would also be reasonable to class their phones as weapons.’
‘Then you could take them out.’
‘Exactly. Strickland’s idea was sent up the line and then, as usual, it got bogged down in the weeds. The brass spent every day weighing the optics and debating the politics, and our guys spent every night getting their asses blown off. So Strickland put pressure on our CO. He said if the method was good enough for General McChrystal and the Special Forces guys to pinpoint targets for their nightly snatch squads, it was good enough for us. Hewson agreed – Hewson was our CO back then – and the rule went into effect. It was unofficial, but everyone figured the brass would catch up one day.’
‘I’m guessing this story doesn’t have a happy ending.’
‘You’re right. A few things went off the rails. First, a soldier filed a complaint. The new rule made sense and it saved lives, but technically it was illegal. There was no getting away from that. Nothing happened at that point.I don’t have any proof, but I’m pretty sure Hewson torpedoed the complaint. Then a week later a spotter was out in the open, calling in targets on his cell. The connection to the mortar operator was confirmed and a sniper was given the green light. He took the shot. Visibility was good. There was no wind. No rain. Range was minimal. He would miss that shot one time out of a million. And that day was the one time. He had dirty ammo, he was tired, distracted, I don’t know. But he did hit something. A passing car. A civilian vehicle with eight members of the same family on board. It flipped, slid into a residential building, caught fire, then exploded. There were thirty-two dead in total.’
‘Then the shit hit the fan.’
‘Not immediately. Hewson fought like crazy to keep a lid on it. It was ultimately his ass in the sling, after all. But the deaths and the cover-up didn’t sit well with the soldier whose previous complaint had gotten quashed. She decided to break the chain of command. Blow the whistle. Strickland found out about that. He heard she’d taken a Humvee and was heading to Camp Victory. Word was she had reached out to General Jacoby himself. So Strickland jumped in another Humvee and set off after her. What happened in the end, no one really knows. It looked like Strickland caught up to her. Then, whether his breathing down her neck was a factor, or whether it was just bad luck, she triggered a roadside IED. She was closer, so she took the brunt of the explosion. She didn’t make it. Strickland did. His injuries you know about.’
‘The brass should have acted faster. They should have approved Strickland’s idea.’
‘They should have. But they didn’t. So Hewson should have stood firm. Not jumped the gun. And the rest of us? We knew the law was getting broken. I knew. I could have tried to stop it, but I didn’t. Were lives saved? Yes. I’m sure. But how many? There’s no way to know. Enough to balance out the thirty-two civilians and the whistleblower who lost theirs? Is there even an equation for something like that?’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Gilmour held up his hand for silence.
‘Can you hear that?’ he said.
There was a sound in the distance. Car engines. More than one. They were growing louder. Heading their way. Gilmour took his binoculars and scanned the horizon. He said, ‘There they are. Four pickups. Two SUVs. Incoming, less than a minute.’
Kasselwood scooted over to the center of the back seat. Reacher tipped the passenger seat down so that it was almost flat. He watched the growing dust cloud drift closer and when he could see the chrome on the lead truck’s grill glinting in the sunshine, he ducked down out of view. The dust cloud caught up to the car. The light through the windows grew dimmer and Reacher heard the convoy of vehicles rumble past. Gilmour waited thirty seconds then dropped the car into drive.He pulled away slowly, made a U-turn, and started up the road toward the mine. Reacher pulled himself a little more upright and risked a glimpse out the windshield. He could see the trucks – three Fords and a Chevy – and the SUVs – both Grand Cherokees – up ahead. They had reached the mine entrance and had fanned out in a rough semicircle facing the vehicle entrance. People were getting out. All of them were men. They were all different ages. Reacher could see guys who looked to be in their twenties, all the way up to some who must have been in their sixties. There was no unifying theme in terms of height or weight or hairstyle or clothing, but they were all carrying weapons. Reacher could see ball bats, pickax handles, nightsticks, telescopic batons. One guy had a length of two-by-four with a bunch of nails sticking out of the business end.
Gilmour was driving smoothly, trying not to attract attention. When they were fifty yards from the mine he coasted to a stop. He opened his door and slipped out. Behind him, Taylor did the same. They swapped places – Taylor behind the wheel, Gilmour in the back. Then Taylor rolled the car forward again. She tacked it onto the left-hand end of the semicircle of vehicles, just a little ahead of a battered blue F150. It had a huge dent in the rear quarter panel and instead of fixing it, the owner had a stuck a Road Runner decal at the deepest part of the cavity.
The mob was getting loud now. Not in the organized, chanting way that you get at political rallies. This sound was more primal. Sinister. Threatening. The men were milling around, circling, approaching the mine’s doors,then ebbing back, re-forming, and flowing forward again like an angry sea. Even from inside the car Reacher could feel the tension in the air, like it was full of gasoline vapor. The tiniest spark would ignite the whole thing.
One of the younger guys moved up to the vehicle door and prodded it with the end of his bat. He yelled, ‘Come out. All five of you. We know you’re in there.’
Another voice picked up on it. ‘Out. Out.’
An older guy ran forward and smashed his ax handle against the door. ‘Out. Out.’
Two more people stepped forward and started whaling on the door. Three more.
Then Reacher saw what he’d been waiting for. The mine’s personnel door was opening. ‘Now,’ he said. He slipped out of the car and darted forward. Ahead, the mine door was halfway open. Gilmour was running to his left. Kasselwood was behind him. The door kept moving. It was three-quarters open. Fully open. A man burst out. He was wearing a black uniform with a helmet and face visor. He was holding a riot shield in one hand and a baton in the other. He turned away from Reacher, toward the crowd, and started swinging the baton. He was trying to crack heads. That was clear. Another uniformed guy ran out. Then another. And another. Reacher was still heading for the door. It was still wide open. A guy in the crowd recognized Reacher. He yelled something Reacher couldn’t understand and aimed a punch at his head. Reacher brushed the guy’s fist aside and kept moving. The door was swinging closed now. It was halfway there. Three-quarters. Reacher stretched out. Thegap was narrowing. It was almost gone. He wasn’t going to get to it in time. He started to slow, so as not to slam into the wall. Then the door swung open again, harder than before. It almost hit Reacher in the face. He caught it by the leading edge and held it steady. Another guy in uniform rushed out. He was breathing hard behind his visor and his stab vest wasn’t buckled properly. He looked at Reacher, confused, then turned and dived into the mob, using his baton to clear a path toward his buddies.
Reacher went through the door first. Gilmour and Kasselwood were right behind him. After the mob scene outside they felt like they’d stepped into a monastery. The space was broad and tall and cool and quiet. It had a whitish-gray ceiling and walls, and a smooth, dusty floor. It was the mouth of the central road that had been built to carry giant trucks down to the lower level. That made it the oldest part of the mine. Marks left by pickax blades were visible on some of the surfaces from the days when the digging was done by hand. Some of the old miners had carved their initials into cracks and crevices. Redundant cable conduit still spanned parts of the ceiling from when Strickland had added better lighting after he bought the place. He had built a security barrier and converted the original reception booth on the left into a guard post. And he had added another guard post on the right-hand side of the vehicle door.
There was a guard on duty in the booth. He pulled his sidearm and rushed out. He said, ‘Stop. Step back. You are not auth—’
Kasselwood hit him in the face. It was a ferocious punch. A roundhouse, perfectly timed, with all herweight behind it. The impact knocked the guy backward. He stayed upright for a second, teetering against the wall, then he sank down and flopped forward onto his face. Kasselwood took the guy’s gun, then checked that he was still breathing.
