Chapter 4 - The Father
Brooke Carter had been a staff sergeant for six years. She had been a soldier for twelve. She had grown up in Lawton, Oklahoma, and she had joined the Army because her father had been in the Army, and because her father had died in the Army, and because she had wanted, from the age of eleven, to do what her father had done.
Her father's name was Sergeant First Class Isaiah Carter. He had been killed in Iraq in 2004, when Brooke was thirteen years old. He had been a cannon crewmember in the 1st Cavalry Division. He had been in a convoy when a truck in front of his rolled over a buried artillery shell that had been repurposed as an IED. He had been thirty-four years old.
Brooke had his flag. She had his medals. She had his photograph on the wall of her small house in Lawton, next to a photograph of her mother, who had died in 2018. She had a set of his dog tags that she kept in a small wooden box that he had made for her when she was eight years old.
She had never told anyone in the Army that she was Isaiah Carter's daughter. She had never told anyone because she had not wanted to be given anything she had not earned. She had wanted to be a staff sergeant because she had been good at her job, not because her father had been killed in Iraq.
She had been good at her job.
She had been very good at her job.
On the night of the incident, after the range had been cleared and the civilian trucks had been escorted off the installation and Hargrove had been arrested, Brooke drove home to her small house in Lawton and sat in her living room with her father's dog tags in her hand and did not cry.
She did not cry because she was a soldier. She had been a soldier for twelve years. She had learned a long time ago that the crying happened in the car in the parking lot after the shift, and the shift was not over. The investigation was not over. The general's inquiry was not over. The entire battalion was still in the range of what had happened on that range that morning.
She sat in her living room for an hour.
Then she went to bed.
The next morning, she was at the range at 05:30.
The range was closed. It had been closed by order of the commanding general pending the investigation. There was a military police vehicle at the north gate. There was another military police vehicle at the main gate. There was a sign on the main gate that said RANGE CLOSED — NO ENTRY.
Brooke parked her truck in the visitors' lot outside the range control building.
She walked into the range control building.
She sat down at her desk.
She picked up her range safety flag.
She put it on the desk in front of her.
And she waited.
She did not know what she was waiting for. She did not know whether anyone was going to come in. She did not know whether she was going to be called before the general or sent home or reassigned to a different installation or asked to give a statement or told to hand in her badge.
She knew one thing.
She was not going to leave the range until someone told her to leave it in writing.
At 08:00, a lieutenant walked into the range control building and said, "Staff Sergeant Carter, the commanding general would like to see you in his office at 10:00."
Brooke said, "Yes, sir."
The lieutenant said, "You are not in trouble, Staff Sergeant."
Brooke said, "Yes, sir."
The lieutenant said, "I mean it. You are not in trouble."
Brooke said, "Yes, sir."
The lieutenant looked at her.
Then he walked out.
Brooke sat at her desk.
She picked up her flag.
May you like
She held it.
And she waited.
