Tripwire

“I need to get to a phone,” she said, worried.

“We can call your husband, if you want,” the doctor said, neutrally.

“No, I’m not married. It’s a lawyer. I need to call somebody’s lawyer.”

The doctor looked at her and shrugged.

“OK, down the hall. But be quick.”

Sheryl walked to the bank of phones opposite the triage bay. She called the operator and asked for collect, like Marilyn had told her to. Repeated the number she’d memorized. The phone was answered on the second ring.

“Forster and Abelstein,” a bright voice said. “How may we help you?”

“I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Chester Stone,” Sheryl said. “I need to speak with his attorney.”

“That would be Mr. Forster himself,” the bright voice said. “Please hold.”

While Sheryl was listening to the hold music, the doctor was twenty feet away, at the main desk, also making a call. Her call featured no music. Her call was to the NYPD’s Domestic Violence Unit.

“This is St. Vincent’s,” she was saying. ”I’ve got another one for you. This one says she walked into a damn door. Won’t even admit she’s married, much less he’s beating on her. You can come on down and talk to her anytime you want.”

THE FIRST ITEM in the file was Victor Hobie’s original application to join the Army. It was brown at the edges and crisp with age, handwritten in the same neat left-handed schoolboy script they had seen in the letters home to Brighton. It listed a summary of his education, his desire to fly helicopters, and not very much else. On the face of it, not an obvious rising star. But around that time for every one boy stepping up to volunteer, there were two dozen others buying one-way tickets on the Greyhound to Canada, so the Army recruiters had grabbed Hobie with both hands and sent him straight to the doctor.

He had been given a flight medical, which was a tougher examination than standard, especially concerning eyesight and balance. He had passed A-1. Six feet one inch, 170 pounds, twenty-twenty vision, good lung capacity, free of infectious diseases. The medical was dated early in the spring, and Reacher could picture the boy, pale from the New York winter, standing in his boxers on a bare wooden floor with a tape measure tight around his chest.

Next item in the file showed he was given travel vouchers and ordered to report to Fort Dix in two weeks’ time. The following batch of paperwork originated from down there. It started with the form he signed on his arrival, irrevocably committing himself to loyal service in the United States Army. Fort Dix was twelve weeks of basic training. There were six proficiency assessments. He scored well above average in all of them. No comments were recorded.

Then there was a requisition for travel vouchers to Fort Polk, and a copy of his orders to report there for a month of advanced infantry training. There were notes about his progress with weapons. He was rated good, which meant something at Polk. At Dix, you were rated good if you could recognize a rifle at ten paces. At Polk, such a rating spoke of excellent hand-to-eye coordination, steady muscle control, calm temperament. Reacher was no expert on flying, but he guessed the instructors would have been fairly sanguine about eventually letting this guy loose with a helicopter.

There were more travel vouchers, this time to Fort Wolters in Texas, where the U.S. Army Primary Helicopter School was located. There was a note attached from the Polk CO indicating Hobie had turned down a week’s leave in favor of heading straight there. It was just a bald statement, but it carried an approving resonance, even after all those years. Here was a guy who was just about itching to get going.

The paperwork thickened up at Wolters. It was a five-month stay, and it was serious stuff, like college. First came a month of preflight training, with heavy academic concentration on physics and aeronautics and navigation, taught in classrooms. It was necessary to pass to progress. Hobie had creamed it. The math talent his father had hoped to turn toward accountancy ran riot through those textbook subjects. He passed out of preflight top of his class. The only negative was a short note about his attitude. Some officer was criticizing him for trading favors for coaching. Hobie was helping some strugglers through the complex equations and in return they were shining his boots and cleaning his kit. Reacher shrugged to himself. The officer was clearly an asshole. Hobie was training to be a helicopter pilot, not a damn saint.

The next four months at Wolters were airborne for primary flight training, initially on H-23 Hillers. Hobie’s first instructor was a guy called Lanark. His training notes were written in a wild scrawl, very anecdotal, very un-military. Sometimes very fu

He finished Wolters overall second in his class, rated outstanding, just behind an ace called A. A. DeWitt. More travel vouchers had them heading out together, over to Fort Rucker in Alabama, for another four months in advanced flight training.

“Have I heard of this guy DeWitt?” Reacher asked. “The name rings a bell.”

Conrad was following progress upside down.

“Could be General DeWitt,” he said. “He runs the Helicopter School back at Wolters now. That would be logical, right? I’ll check it out.”

He called direct to the storeroom and ordered up Major General A. A. DeWitt. Checked his watch as the phone went back down. “Should be faster, because the D section is nearer his desk than the H section. Unless the damn master sergeant interferes with him again.”

Reacher smiled briefly and rejoined Jodie thirty years in the past. Fort Rucker was the real thing, with brand-new front-line assault helicopters replacing the trainers. Bell UH-1 Iroquois, nicknamed Hueys. Big, fierce machines, gas turbine engines, the unforgettable wop-wop-wop sound of a rotor blade forty-eight feet long and twenty-one inches wide. Young Victor Hobie had hurled one around the Alabama skies for seventeen long weeks, and then he passed out with credits and distinctions at the parade his father had photographed.

“Three minutes forty seconds,” Conrad whispered.

The ru

“I can’t let you see this,” Conrad said. “The general’s still a serving officer, right? But I’ll tell you if it’s the same DeWitt.”

He opened the file at the begi

Reacher nodded. Glanced out of the window. The sun was falling away into afternoon.

“You guys want some coffee?” Conrad asked.

“Great,” Jodie said. Reacher nodded again.

Conrad picked up the phone and called the storeroom.

“Coffee,” he said. “That’s not a file. It’s a request for refreshment. Three cups, best china, OK?”

The ru