brake lights could be seen at certain angles. So for maximum stealth, you have to walk—or jog. So he puts the Cherokee in four-wheel drive and pulls into the pines where Jordan Field Road and Rifle Range Road intersect. He gets out and heads south on Rifle Range Road on foot.”
“This is supposition.”
“Partly. Partly it’s intuition and detection, and partly it’s just the logical solution to a standard field problem. We’ve all been to the same schools, and we’ve all been through these night exercises. You have to consider your mission, the weather, distances, time, security, and all that, and you have to know, for instance, when to stay with your motor transportation, and when to dismount and hump the bush.”
“Okay, he dismounts, and walks or jogs.”
“Right. By this time, it’s somewhere between 0115 and 0130 hours. Colonel Moore has already traveled the road and is waiting for Ann Campbell. That much we know for sure. General Campbell has not yet received the phone call. Kent is double-timing along the road, looking for the headlights of the humvee up ahead. But, at some point, Ann turned her lights off and has now reached rifle range six and has met Colonel Moore.” I put an “X” to mark rifle range six.
Cynthia, still sitting on the bed, seemed unimpressed with my cartography. She asked, “What is Bill Kent thinking about now? What is his purpose?”
“Well… he’s very curious about why she’s out there alone, though he knows she could be just checking the last guard post. If this is the case, he will meet her coming back, stand in the road, and confront her. He had a taste of rape a few weeks ago, and he might be thinking of doing it again.”
“She’s armed.”
“So is he.” I added, “Even in modern relationships, you should never pull a gun on your date. Especially if she’s armed, too. However, he thinks he can handle it. Maybe he just wants to talk.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t want to meet an ex-lover on a lonely road. I’d run him over.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But he doesn’t know how women think. He can’t relate to how she might feel about him following her and his waylaying her. All he knows is that they’re lovers, and this is special to him. His wife’s out of town, and he’s a horny, lovesick jerk. He wants to talk. Really he wants to have sex with her, one way or the other. He is what we call sexually obsessed.”
“So he walks down the lonely, dark road, looking for her humvee.”
“Right. The other thing that he gets into his mind is that she’s out there for a sexual rendezvous with someone else. This would not be out of character for Ann Campbell, and Bill Kent’s heart is pounding at the thought of surprising her with a lover, and he’s nuts with jealousy. Sound right to you?”
“If you say so.”
“Okay, by now it’s around 0215 hours, and Colonel Moore has made the recorded call to General Campbell, has tied up Ann Campbell, and is waiting near the latrines for the general to show up. Bill Kent is on his own mission, and he’s following the manual. He knows that he can see the headlights of a car at least a half mile away on the dark, straight road, so a car traveling at, say, forty-five miles an hour could be on him in less than a minute unless he sees its headlights first. So every thirty seconds or so, he looks back over his shoulder. At about 0215, he in fact sees headlights behind him, and he drops into the drainage ditch on the side of the road and waits for the car to pass.”
“He thinks this is her lover.”
“Probably. In some perverse way, he would like to catch her
She nodded. “There is that type. Half the rapists I interview claim the women enjoyed it. None of the women ever seconded that.”
“Right. But to be a little fair to Bill Kent, Ann Campbell never disabused him of that notion.”
“True. But the letter to his wife should have told him that she was finished with him. But, okay, he’s as crazy as she was. So he sees the car pass him.”
“Right. Coming up the road at about 0215 with its headlights on.
Cynthia commented, “So here we have two high-profile guys—Colonel Kent and General Campbell—sneaking around at night in their wives’ cars.”
“Right. If everyone on post knew your staff car, and you had the unofficial radio call sign of Randy Six, you might choose alternate transportation as well.”
“I might just stay home. Okay, so at this point, Kent speeds up his pace. Meanwhile, Moore is running back along the log trail, gets into his car at range five, and heads north on Rifle Range Road, back toward post. But he didn’t see Kent walking toward him.”
“No,” I replied. “Kent was either past rifle range five by now, or Kent spotted the headlights as Moore came across the gravel field, and Kent dropped into the ditch again. By this time, Kent figures that his girlfriend is entertaining a procession of lovers, one every fifteen or twenty minutes, or, more likely, he’s confused.”
“Confused or not,” Cynthia replied, “he’s thinking the worst. He’s not thinking that she may just be doing her job, or that maybe she’s in danger, or that perhaps the two vehicles were unrelated to her. He’s sure she’s out there fucking. Is that what you would think?”
“Absolutely. I’m all man. I think too much with the little head, and not enough with the big head.”
Cynthia laughed despite herself. “Okay, enough. Go on.”
I sat back in the chair and thought a moment. “All right… it’s at this point that we can’t know exactly what happened. Kent rounds the bend where rifle range five and six connect, and up ahead in the moonlight he sees two vehicles parked on the road—the humvee and the Buick that passed him from behind. We know that by this time the scene between father and daughter is unfolding, or maybe it’s finished.”
Cynthia said, “In either case, Kent stayed where he was.”
“Yes, we know for sure that Kent did not dash up on this scene and discover that the Buick on the road had brought General Campbell to rifle range six. Kent watched from a distance—say, two or three hundred meters—and he may have heard something, because the wind was blowing from the south. But he decided not to make a complete fool of himself, not to get into a possible armed confrontation with another man.”
“Or,” Cynthia said, “the exchange between father and daughter
“Quite possible. At this point, the general’s car comes toward him, without headlights, and Kent again drops into the drainage ditch. This is the only way it could have happened—with Kent on foot—because neither Moore nor the general saw any other vehicle.”
“And when the general’s car passes, Bill Kent stands and walks toward Ann Campbell’s humvee.”
“Right. He’s moving very quickly, maybe with his sidearm drawn, ready for anything—rape, romance, reconciliation, or murder.”
We sat a moment, she on the bed, me in the chair, listening to the rain outside. I was wondering, and I’m sure Cynthia was, too, if we’d just fashioned a noose for an innocent man in the privacy of our own room. But even if we didn’t have the details just right, the man himself had as much as told us, or signaled to us, that he’d done it. There was no mistaking his tone, his manner, and his eyes. But what he was also saying is that she deserved it, and we’d never prove he did it. He was wrong on both counts.
Cynthia got out of the lotus position and let her legs dangle over the foot of the bed. She said, “And Kent finds Ann Campbell staked out on the range, probably still crying, and he can’t figure out if she’s been raped, or just waiting for the next friend to keep his appointment.”
“Well… who knows at that point? But he definitely walked out to her, slowly, as Cal Seiver said, and he definitely kneeled beside her, and she was not happy to see him.”
“She was frightened out of her mind.”
“Well… she’s not the type. But she’s at a disadvantage. He says something, she says something. She, thinking her father has abandoned her, may have settled in for a long wait, knowing that the guard truck would be by at about 0700 hours, and she’s considered this possibility, and she thinks this would be a good payback for
