The General's Daughter

CHAPTER

TWO

The post armory. A cornucopia of American high-tech military goodies—things that go boom in the night.

I was on undercover assignment at the armory in the early morning hours near the time when Ann Campbell was murdered, which is why I caught the squeal, as my civilian counterparts would say. Some weeks earlier, I had assumed the duties and outward appearances of a slightly seedy supply sergeant named Franklin White, and with a real seedy supply sergeant named Dalbert Elkins, we were about to close a deal to sell a few hundred M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, and sundry other dangerous items from the armory to a group of Cuban freedom fighters who wanted to overthrow Mr. Fidel Castro, the Antichrist. In fact, the Hispanic gentlemen were Colombian drug dealers, but they wanted to make us feel better about the transaction. Anyway, I was sitting in the armory at 0600 hours, conversing with my coconspirator, Staff Sergeant Elkins. We were talking about what we were going to do with the $200,000 we would split. Sergeant Elkins was actually going to jail for the rest of his life, but he didn’t know that, and men have to dream. It’s my unpleasant duty to become their worst nightmare.

The phone rang, and I picked up the receiver before my new buddy could grab it. I said, “Post armory, Sergeant White speaking.”

“Ah, there you are,” said Colonel William Kent, the post provost marshal, Fort Hadley’s top cop. “I’m glad I found you.”

“I didn’t know I was lost,” I replied. Prior to my chance encounter with Cynthia, Colonel Kent was the only person on the post who knew who I was, and the only reason I could think of for him to be calling me was to tell me I was in imminent danger of being found out. I kept one eye on Sergeant Elkins and one on the door.

But as luck would have it, it wasn’t as simple as that. Colonel Kent informed me, “There’s been a homicide. A female captain. Maybe raped. Can you talk?”

“No.”

“Can you meet me?”

“Maybe.” Kent was a decent sort of guy, but like most MP types, he wasn’t overly clever, and the CID made him nervous. I said, “I’m working, obviously.”

“This is going to take priority, Mr. Brenner. It’s a big one.”

“So is this.” I glanced at Sergeant Elkins, who was eyeing me carefully.

Kent said, “It was General Campbell’s daughter.”

“My goodness.” I thought a moment. All my instincts said to avoid any cases that involved the rape and murder of a general’s daughter. It was a lose-lose situation. My sense of duty, honor, and justice assured me that some other sucker in the special unit of the CID could handle it. Somebody whose career was down the toilet anyway. I thought of several candidates. But, duty and honor aside, my natural curiosity was aroused. I asked Colonel Kent, “Where can I meet you?”

“I’ll meet you in the provost building parking lot and take you to the scene.”

Being undercover, I shouldn’t be anywhere near the provost marshal’s office, but Kent is annoyingly dense. I said, “Not your place.”

“Oh… how about the infantry barracks? The Third Battalion HQ. It’s on the way.”

Elkins, tense and paranoid already, was getting fidgety. I said to Kent, “Okay, sweetheart. Ten minutes.” I hung up and said to Sergeant Elkins, “My girlfriend. Needs some lovin’.”

Elkins looked at his watch. “Kinda late… or early…”

“Not for this little gal.”

Elkins smiled.

As per armory regulations, I was wearing a sidearm, and, satisfied that Elkins was cooled out, I unhooked the pistol belt and left it there as per post regulations. I didn’t know then that I would need a weapon later. I said to Elkins, “Might be back.”

“Yeah, okay. Give her one for me, boy.”

“Sure thing.”

I had left my Blazer back at the trailer park, and my POV—that’s Army talk for privately owned vehicle, not point of view—was now a Ford pickup truck, issued to me for my current impersonation. It was complete with shotgun rack, dog hair on the upholstery, and a pair of hip waders in the back.

So off I went, through the main post. Within a few minutes I was into the area of the Infantry Training Brigade, long wooden World War II era barracks, mostly deserted now and looking dark and spooky. The cold war is over, and the Army, while not exactly withering away, is definitely downsizing, and the combat arms branches—the infantry, armor, and artillery, the reason for the Army’s existence—are taking the biggest cuts. The CID, however, dealing as it does with crime, is a growth organization.

As a young private, I graduated Advanced Infantry Training School here at Fort Hadley many years ago, then went to Airborne School and Ranger School at Fort Benning, not far from here. So I’m an Airborne Ranger—the ultimate weapon, a killing machine, mean, lean, death from the skies, good to go, and so on. But I’m a little older now and the CID suits me fine.

Ultimately, even government institutions have to justify their existence, and the Army was doing a good job of finding a new role for itself in knocking around pissant countries who get out of line. But I’ve noticed a certain lack of esprit and purpose in the officers and men who had always felt that they were the only thing standing between the Russian hordes and their loved ones. It’s sort of like a boxer, training for years for the title match, then finding out that the other contender just dropped dead. You’re a little relieved, but there’s also a letdown, a hollow place where your adrenaline pump used to be.

Anyway, it was that time of day that the Army calls first light, and the Georgia sky was turning pink, and the air was heavy with humidity, and you could figure out it was going to be a ninety-degree day. I could smell the wet Georgia clay, the pine trees, and the aroma of Army coffee wafting out of a nearby mess hall, or as we call it now, a dining facility.

I pulled off the road and onto the grassy field in front of the old Battalion Headquarters. Colonel Kent got out of his official olive-drab car, and I got out of my pickup truck.

Kent is about fifty, tall, medium build, with a pockmarked face and icy blue eyes. He’s a bit stiff at times, not clever, as I said, but hardworking and efficient. He’s the military equivalent of a chief of police, commanding all the uniformed military police at Fort Hadley. He’s a stickler for rules and regulations, and, while not disliked, he’s not anyone’s best buddy.

Kent was all spiffy in his provost marshal’s uniform with his white helmet, white pistol belt, and spit-shined boots. He said to me, “I have six MPs securing the scene. Nothing has been touched.”

“That’s a start.” Kent and I have known each other about ten years, and we’ve developed a good working relationship, though in fact I only see him about once a year when a case brings me to Fort Hadley. Kent outranks me, but I can be familiar with him, actually give him a hard time, as long as I’m the investigating officer on the case. I’ve seen him testify at courts-martial, and he’s everything a prosecutor could ask for in a cop: believable, logical, unemotional, and organized in his testimony. Yet, there’s something about him that didn’t play right, and I always had the feeling that the prosecutors were happy to get him off the stand. I think, maybe, he comes across as a little too stiff and unfeeling. When the Army has to court-martial one of its own, there is usually some sympathy, or at least concern, for the accused. But Kent is one of those cops who only sees black and white, and anyone who breaks the law at Fort Hadley has personally affronted Colonel Kent. I actually saw him smile once when a young recruit, who burned down a deserted barracks in a drunken stupor, got ten years for arson. But the law is the law, I suppose, and such a brittle personality as William Kent has found his niche in life. That’s why I was a little surprised to discover that he was somewhat shaken by the events of that morning. I asked him, “Have you informed General Campbell?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you’d better go to his house.”

He nodded, not very enthusiastically. He looked awful, actually, and I deduced that he’d been to the scene himself. I informed Colonel Kent, “The general is going to have your ass for delaying notification.”

He explained, “Well, I didn’t have a positive identification until I saw the body myself. I mean, I couldn’t go to