The Good Lieutenant by Whitney Terrell Read Free Book Online

He’d figured out by then why it didn’t fit. Every time he stretched the fabric down around his belly button, he could smell Fowler’s scent drifting up out of it. Then he cut-and-pasted Colonel Seacourt’s email into the top line, CC’d everybody except McKutcheon, and typed:
    Sir,
    I am the project coordinator for the mobile camera network. There has been a miscommunication between myself and Major McKutcheon. The camera system has been fully tested and is ready for deployment. I will have it outside the offices of the 16th Engineer Brigade at 0800 hours tomorrow morning, ready for pickup.
    Sincerely,
    LT Dixon Pulowski
    Then he hit send.
    *   *   *
    Patrol Base Fortitude was no larger than a high school football stadium, set out in a bean field forty miles north of Camp Tolerance, surrounded by blast walls, domed by empty sky. Fowler handed the note to Captain Masterson on the doorstep of the farmhouse that served as his TOC. Her convoy had arrived the night before and she could feel her soldiers watching from the barren infield as she explained how Pulowski had gotten the note, and why it might be a clue to Beale’s abduction. It could be nothing, she admitted, but she’d like to talk to his interpreter just to be sure. Masterson listened, forefinger rubbing his tallow cheeks, and then abruptly headed toward the base’s motor pool—followed by Fowler, who didn’t know what else to do. Once they were out of sight, Masterson veered right toward a concrete hut with sandbagged windows. Out front, his first lieutenant, Anderson, stood quickly from a plastic chair.
    â€œAll right.” Masterson stopped short of the building’s door, which had been fitted with a shiny brass lock. “Trust me, Lieutenant. This is not something you’re going to be excited about. The advice I’m giving you is to go home and forget it.”
    â€œYessir,” Fowler said. “I just—”
    â€œDo you know where we are, Lieutenant?”
    â€œWe’re at the intersection of Route Tender and Route Trap.”
    â€œActually, this base is on the border between the Al-Tamimi tribe, which is Shi’ite, and the Al-Dulaymi tribe, which is Sunni. It’s like having an apartment in Watts between the Bloods and the Crips. All those guys at the schoolhouse? Sunni. Except for Faisal, no Shi’ites came. So trust me when I say you have no idea where you are.”
    Fowler returned this stare bluntly for a few moments, asserting—what, exactly, she wasn’t sure. That she was as capable of being overconfident and condescending as Masterson? That she hoped he knew more about the local population than he did about South Central L.A.? Then she said: “Sir, I already requested backup. They’re coming out. All I want to do is talk to your interpreter. Is there some problem with that?” As she spoke, she felt a pinch on the insides of her wrists so strong that she rubbed them.
    Masterson wrinkled his forehead as if still uncertain what to do with her. He glanced back at Anderson, who was unlocking the building.
    â€œYou’re free out here, sir,” she said, scrambling to register some argument that he might take seriously. “You’re free to operate.”
    â€œOh, yeah,” Masterson said grimly. “Freedom—that’s what we’re all about, Lieutenant. The problem is we got too much of it around here.”
    If this was a joke, or even an unexpectedly intelligent comment, Fowler couldn’t tell it from his face. Instead, as Anderson’s bald head disappeared into the dark shed, Fowler noticed Masterson fiddling with a roll of black electrical tape that he’d earlier removed from his pocket. He fitted a strip over the stitched FOWLER on her fatigues, tearing it with his teeth, then tossed the roll to his lieutenant as he reemerged. This made the cuffed figure who shuffled along beside Anderson, accompanied