Her right eye is the only one open. Even with the bullet wounds in her chest and her soaking-wet T-shirt from her spilling blood, the haircut makes her look ten years younger and oh so vulnerable.

“I told you that, back at the library…I wanted to help…you and your family…”

“You could have done that by staying away or going back to Quantico.”

Her eye flutters shut, opens up again.

She manages a smile. Her lower lip is frothy red with blood.

“That would be running away…and I wasn’t going to do that…I have no family…I thought for a long time the Army was my family…I was so wrong…They kicked me to the curb like a piece of trash…”

Tom has an arm around me.

The sirens are getting louder.

I squeeze her hand again. “Hang on, Vasquez. The EMTs are coming. Hang on.”

She says, “Captain…I need to warn you…need to tell you something…”

A long, drawn-out wheeze.

Tom says, “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Be quiet,” I say to him, and then I squeeze her hand again.

“Vasquez? What is it? What do you want to warn me about?”

Her other eye opens up, and both eyes wander and then lock in on me.

“Captain…is that your husband? Your daughter? Your…family?”

“Yes, yes it is,” I say.

“Oh, so beautiful,” she whispers. “So beautiful…”

Her eyes close and then she’s gone.

CHAPTER 89

CHAPTER 89

IN HIS Army career, Major Bruno Wenner has seen lots of odd things, but he’s sure this afternoon’s meeting is going to be one of the strangest events he’s ever seen, three days after a firefight in Florida brought everything about Captain Amy Cornwall to a fiery head. He and five others are in a small, secure conference room in Fort Belvoir, and they are all waiting on Captain Amy Cornwall, who should have been here five minutes ago.

At the head of the table is his boss, Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Denton, in dress uniform, and with each passing minute of Cornwall’s absence, his face grows redder and redder. At his left are a colonel and brigadier general from the Judge Advocate Group, a male and female, and across the table are three quiet men in expensive-looking dark-gray suits, white shirts, and red neckties, like they had been dispatched from some government-central tailor shop. The near man, with a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles and blinking eyes that make him look like an owl, says he’s from the Department of Defense. In the middle is a quiet man with closely trimmed dark-brown hair, who says he’s from the FBI. And the last civilian looks bored and has a dark tan, and claims he’s an observer from the Department of the Army.