Chapter 8: The Colonel's Last Move
For a second, nobody in the room moved.
The tape lay curled on the floor between them like a dead snake.
Then Hargrove lunged for the phone.
Doyle pulled it back, and Wes stepped in front of the Colonel with both arms out.
His nephew's hands, shaking, flat against his chest.
"Don't, Uncle Ray."
"Get out of my way, boy."
"No, sir."
"After everything I've done for you…"
"You did it for you." Wes's voice cracked, then steadied.
"You put a pen in my hand when I was twenty-two and called it family.
I'm done calling it that."
Hargrove turned on the MPs.
"Arrest him.
Arrest all of them.
Insubordination, theft of classified material…"
The MPs didn't move.
The younger one looked at the broken recorder, then at the Colonel's heel.
"Sir…
that was Sergeant Hale?"
"Corporal, you will obey a direct order…"
"Sir, my cousin was in Hale's unit."
Hargrove's gaze swept the room and found only closed faces.
For the first time all day, he looked like a man.
"I'll call the General," he said, and reached for his own phone.
"He and I have an understanding."
"Please do," said Colonel Whitlock's voice from Doyle's phone, still open.
"He's on the line with me already, Raymond.
He's been listening for the last two minutes."
The phone slipped in Hargrove's hand.
He caught it against his chest.
Boots pounded in the corridor.
The door flew open on Colonel Whitlock, sixty, white-haired and small, flanked by two investigators with folders.
Behind them, filling the hallway, stood eleven men in civilian clothes.
Some were gray.
Some had children on their hips.
All of them were staring at one woman on a bed.
"Is that her?" asked a tall man near the back, barely audible.
"That's her," Doyle said.
The man crossed the room in three strides and dropped to one knee in front of Ellie.
Then the next man did.
Then the next.
Eleven men, kneeling on the floor of a small room, as if in a church.
Hargrove saw it.
"This is theater," he said hoarsely.
"A mob, and a woman who disobeyed a direct order on the worst night of my career."
Ellie stood.
She looked at him for a long time.
"Marcus Hale had a mother, Colonel," she said.
"Did you ever tell her the truth?"
"He died in an accident."
"He died holding your road."
His mouth worked, but nothing came out.
"Colonel Raymond Hargrove," Whitlock said, "you are relieved of command, effective this moment.
You will surrender your sidearm and your badge, and you will accompany these gentlemen."
He unbuckled his belt with trembling hands.
He laid the holster in her palm and said nothing, and at the door he finally turned.
"I kept this base running for twenty years," he said to Ellie.
His voice was ruined.
"And you ended it with a two-word phrase."
"No, Colonel," she said.
"You ended it with one signature."
May you like
He walked out between the investigators.
It was the loudest silence she had ever heard.
