The Summer House
- Автор: Паттерсон Джеймс, Дюбуа Брендан
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-53955-5
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Summer House». Краткое содержание книги:
To ensure that justice is done, the Army sends Major Jeremiah Cook, a veteran and former NYPD cop, to investigate. But the major and his elite team arrive in sweltering Georgia with no idea their grim jobs will be made exponentially more challenging by local law enforcement, who resists the Army’s intrusion and stonewall them at every turn.
As Cook and his squad struggle to uncover the truth behind the condemning evidence, the pieces just won’t fit — and forces are rallying to make certain damning secrets die alongside the victims in the murder house. With his own people in the cross-hairs, Cook takes a desperate gamble to find answers — even if it means returning to a hell of his own worst nightmares...
Just as we get inside there’s another thud, and the six of us, then ten, and then more than a dozen soldiers of different ranks, stand inside.
I say to the lieutenant, “Can you tell me where Major West is, of the Seventy-Fifth Rangers?”
The lieutenant says, “I can, but I won’t. Not until the all-clear sounds. Otherwise you might have your head taken off the second you step out.”
I know I need to wait, but I look at my watch.
Time is slipping away both here and back in Georgia.
In the shadowy interior of the blast shelter, a soldier says, “Shit, I guess we pissed somebody off, huh?”
Laughter from most of the soldiers in here, but not from me.
Fifteen minutes after the all-clear sounds, I’m in the office of Major Fredericka West, Special Troops Battalion, Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment, which is nearly identical to the Ranger office in Bagram: plywood over a wood frame, homemade shelves, no windows, and locked gray metal filing cabinets. Major West is slim, with close-cropped dark-brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a worn ACU. As she moves papers around her gray metal desk, I see her left hand is furrowed with scar tissue. A set of telephones is near her elbow — for both secure and unsecure phone calls — and a military-grade laptop, like the one I’m carrying.
She looks exhausted. “This is where we waste a bunch of time talking about your trip and how you’re feeling, and do you need something to eat,” she begins, “but we don’t have time for that crap. One, I’ve got, well, a shitload of work to get through, and two, your bosses at Quantico want your ass wrapped up in silver ribbon and sent on the next flight home.”
I say, “Then why don’t I see a roll of silver ribbon on your desk?”
West grimaces, begins to talk, waits as one helicopter and then another roars overhead, disturbing the dust that’s everywhere in this small office. An M4 automatic rifle is in a weapons rack near the corner.
“You’re not being rolled in tape because we Rangers owe you one, and because I’m trying to figure out why a fire team from Fourth Battalion is being charged with a crime in Georgia similar to the one they allegedly committed here in-country.”
“In a village called Pendahar.”
She starts typing on the laptop keyboard. “Aren’t you the informed one.”
I say, “And aren’t you the pissy officer. What’s the problem, Major? I’m the one about to be brought up on charges and who’s just come in to see you after spending nearly a day in the air.”
Quiet, as her fingers work some more.
“No excuse,” she says. “Sorry. Been a rotten day in a series of rotten days, not to mention the local muj are still sending us 82-millimeter love letters. Can you give me a quick recap of what happened to Staff Sergeant Jefferson and his team in Georgia?”
I say, “A week ago seven residents of a rural house in Georgia, including a two-year-old girl, were murdered in a nighttime attack. The police reports, witnesses, and forensic evidence all led to the staff sergeant’s team. They were placed under arrest, and my team was tasked to do an investigation.”
“What did you and your team learn?”
I paused, then said, “At first it looked open-and-shut. Then we found discrepancies in the witness testimony, and those witnesses are now missing. And one of the four Rangers committed suicide while in custody.”
More typing. “Is your investigation complete?”
“I’m in Afghanistan,” I say. “Not yet.”
“Yeah, I figured that,” she says. “You’re wondering about the civilian killings in Pendahar that were linked to those same Rangers before they were sent home, correct? Seeing what happened here in Afghanistan, if it did something to their psyches that led to them repeating the atrocity in Georgia.”
“That’s been our thought,” I say.
“Then let’s take a look,” she says. “Here’s body-cam footage we managed to secure of that attack.”
West turns the computer around so we can both view the screen as it comes to life.
The footage is stamped with running numerals denoting longitude, latitude, and time, and it’s in light ghost-green night vision. I hear breathing, murmuring voices. The view comes to a wooden door set against a one-story, small stone house. I see body shapes, and somebody does something to the door. There’s a bright flare of light and the thump of an explosion.
Yells.
Shots being fired.
The view is shaky as one room is entered, another, and then another.
More gunfire.
Robed women scream, hold up their hands. Rapid fire collapses them. A young boy runs into another room, is cut down.
I see the flash of weapons.
Uniformed men.
More screams.
The video goes black.
My hands and chest feel heavy. “Can I see it again, slower? Muted?”
“Sure.”
I look through the video a second time, spotting the mottled look of the uniforms — one bearing the RANGER tab on a left shoulder — and the weapons, from an AK-47 to a pistol, and then I look at Major West’s calm yet serious face.
“Well?” she asks. “What say you?”
“It’s a fake,” I say. “Those aren’t Army Rangers.”
She nods. “Good job, for a former NYPD detective.”
West swivels the computer screen back to her. “I don’t know what happened in the States, but those Rangers sure as hell didn’t kill a houseful of civilians in Pendahar.”
Chapter 82
Afghanistan
She gives me one more stare and says, “Just out of curiosity, how did you know it was a fake? To most people I’m sure it looks pretty damn real.”
I try to swallow, fail. My throat is incredibly dry. A jet takes off outside, the noise silencing me longer in this plywood room.
When the jet engine sound drifts away, I say, “The shootings were real. The casualties look real. But those weren’t Army Rangers. The uniforms were wrong. There was a mix of regular ACUs and fatigues of the Afghan National Army. The weapons were wrong, too. I saw an AK-47 and what looked to be a Russian pistol, maybe a Tokarev.”
She slightly smiles. “But one of the shooters was wearing a Ranger tab.”
“Yes,” I say. “But you and I both know that Rangers don’t wear any unit patches in the field... and the camera froze there for a second too long, like whoever was doing the taping wanted to make a statement.”
“Good job, Major.”
“What’s the story, then? A setup?”
“That’s what we’re thinking,” she says. “Commit an atrocity, put it up on YouTube or other social media, blame the Rangers and the Crusader unbelievers defiling this holy land, blah, blah, blah. Some unlucky innocents got caught in a cross fire organized by the local Taliban. But we were lucky to have intercepted the video before it was spread around too much. Oh, there were rumblings and the start of an official investigation — which I’m closing out when you go out that door — but the Rangers were innocent. We even showed the video at a local tribal loya jirga, and the tribal leaders are on board that the Army didn’t do it.”
“But... the Rangers are accused of doing the same thing stateside.”
“Yeah,” she says. “That’s a puzzle, isn’t it?” She looks down at her notes and says, “Hold on. You said the civilians who were killed in Georgia, some of them were drug dealers. How far up did they go? Big-time players?”
I shake my head. “Some weed, some crystal meth, and fentanyl. Strictly small-time.”