Red Thibodeaux is an MP sergeant on gate duty at the American compound in Santo Domingo, three days after the intervention. He has been told to log what he is told as well as what he observes, and he tries to be precise about the distinction.
The morning’s other entries, in the order he had made them:
06:14. Destroyed documents smell from the north courtyard. Consistent with paper combustion, not structural fire. Duration: ongoing as of 06:45.
07:52. Embassy officer, name withheld pending verification, departed compound via vehicle gate with attaché case and civilian clothes. Stated destination: consular liaison, ISZ perimeter. No vehicle logged for consular liaison. Heading on departure: north, not west toward ISZ.
08:30. Generator switchover, main building. Power restored to embassy standard within four minutes. Timing consistent with pre-procedure rather than emergency response.
09:11. Second generator switchover, communications wing only. Duration: eleven minutes. Longest outage of the morning. During the outage, two staff members departed via the pedestrian gate without logging credentials. Badge numbers logged from memory.
He had not been asked to log any of that. He had not been told not to. He filled the margins when the main columns ran out.
***
Red watched the jeep clear the gate and accelerate south.
He wrote the time in the log: 14:23. Heading: south on Independencia. He noted the document under Colonel Victorio’s arm, the same packet he brought in, the same neat corners. Beneath it, a darker spine. A ledger.
He wrote that too.
The corporal beside him, Pruitt, was watching a group of Dominican soldiers moving a sandbag fighting position thirty meters down the street.
“Colonel moves like he’s got somewhere to be.”
Red did not look up from the log. “He does.”
South on Independencia. That was Gazcue. Apartment buildings with tiled courtyards, laundry lines and bicycle racks, women selling oranges from wooden carts, and a school on Avenida Bolívar. Not a military district. Not an installation corridor. A residential neighborhood, the kind where the forty-three Constitutionalist personnel he had processed had told him, when he could find the phrase on the laminated card, that they lived.
He looked at the document column in his log.
He had written: Ledger, dark binding, approx. 200pp, carried under the subject’s left arm.
He tapped the pen against the page once, then closed the log.
Offer expires August 31
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