Best to ignore it, and hope no one else sees it.

Transferring this unit from Fort Gordon three years back was a logistical and personnel nightmare, but one does what one has to do, especially when the dim higher-ups dragged them here from Georgia to make some assistant secretary of defense or congressman happy.

So he did what had to be done. Which is always a good way to manage one’s life in the Army.

The phone in the plain and powerful office rings.

He picks up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“What’s going on? It looks like it’s falling apart.”

He knows his caller is thousands of miles away, and he’s amazed once again at how clear and crisp the voice is.

“It is falling apart,” he replies.

“What are you doing about it?”

He says, “I’m fixing it.”

“You better.”

The caller hangs up.

No matter.

He moves his hands across the desk again.

So smooth and powerful.

CHAPTER 21

CAPTAIN ROSARIA Vasquez is sitting in her government-issued GMC sedan, balancing a cup of Cumberland Farms coffee in one hand while flipping through the service file of Captain Amy Cornwall, reading and reflecting, looking for those little bits of information that will stand out, make her take notice, that little thread she hopes she can pull that will lead to a string out there somewhere, and not just a bit of nothing.

But so far, nothing is what she’s finding.

Born in Maine, joined the Army after high school, finished college in Maine, had a variety of schools and assignments, assigned to an infantry unit, one tour in Iraq, went through the sixty-two-day Ranger school—one of only a few women who managed to pass—and then ended up in military intelligence.

Two tours in Afghanistan—including the last one that resulted in the death of a Taliban prisoner—but otherwise reasonably routine.

Rosaria goes through the file, again and again.

Different schools—one thing about the Army is that if you want to learn, they are ready to offer it to you, one of the reasons she loves her service so—and it all seems routine. Scratch that, Captain Cornwall is a fine officer, with a bright future ahead of her.

So why did she bail out with her husband and kid?

Over the Afghanistan investigation?

Doesn’t make sense.

Nothing she saw of Cornwall in this folder stands out, all her time is accounted for—the different dates, the different schools and assignments. Everything—

Hold on.

She flips through the pages again.

Odd.

Just before her last deployment to Afghanistan, she went on an exchange mission, to Fort Campbell in Kentucky, one of the largest Army bases in CONUS—continental United States.

What kind of mission?

Hard to tell.

Lots of abbreviations and acronyms.

It looks like it was a unit assigned to work with an Air National Guard section that had deployed from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

What was Captain Cornwall doing in Kentucky?

And the biggest question…she was assigned there for six months.