Secret Sanction (44 page)

“Then what happened?” she asked, still with her hand on top of his.

“Around eight, he gave Persico the signal they were coming. Persico was controlling the fires and he waited till the lead vehicle got right over the two antitank mines planted in the road. The explosion sent this big truck catapulting in the air. I remember watching it flip, end over end, like a little Tonka toy.” His hands fluttered through the air to show us how the truck flipped. “It was really a sight, you know? Then we opened up. It lasted only seven or eight minutes, then we left.”

Morrow got up and walked back to her seat at the table beside me. Nobody said anything for a moment. I thought about everything he’d said. Everything made sense now. Well, maybe not everything.

I said, “Terry.”

He looked at me. I tried to sound as gentle and comforting as Morrow had been.

“Someone went through after the ambush was over and shot the Serbs in the head. Was that you?”

He looked at me in shock. “No,” he said.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“I swear.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“None of us did. I was shooting, just like everyone else. But as soon as Persico shot off the flare to order us to cease fire, we all stopped. Then we all left and started running for the rally point, a mile or so behind the ambush site.”

I said, “And were there still some Serb survivors?”

“Yeah. I never lied about that, you know? There were still a few down there firing back at us.”

I was confused. This made no sense. If there were still survivors firing their weapons when the whole team was headed for the rally point, then who shot them in the head? We all grew quiet. I stared around at the walls for about a minute and tried to think what else to ask.

Imelda suddenly lifted herself out of her chair and approached Morrow and me. She got to the edge of the table, then leaned toward us as though we were judges and she was a lawyer seeking conference in a courtroom.

She whispered,“Ask him how long the Serbs was still shooting. Just ask him that.”

Then she returned to her seat. I looked quizzically at Morrow, and she stared back at me.

I said, “Terry, can you remember how long you heard the Serbs still shooting, after you and the rest of the team were headed for the rally point?”

He rested his chin on his hand and placed the elbow on his knee, then stared down at the floor. He might’ve been Rodin’s
Thinker
, only there was no purity of contemplation, only anguish on this man’s face.

“A while,” he finally said.

“How long a while?” I asked, finally realizing what Imelda might have figured out.

He rubbed his hands over his face.“I don’t know, maybe two minutes. Then there was this pause, then we could hear it off in the distance again. But we were getting farther away, and the terrain was hilly, and it sounded like little pops echoing through the hills. Might not even have been shooting, you know?”

“Assume it was. Why do you think they were still firing?” “I don’t know. I guess maybe because it was an ambush, and we were pretty well hidden in our positions. Maybe they thought we were still there.”

“Okay,” I said.

Morrow said,“Terry, now there’re only a few more questions left. How are you doing?”

“All right,” he said, but he looked terrifically relieved to know this was almost over. He’d gone back to that odd leg-rubbing motion.

“When you all got back to Macedonia and were debriefed, why did you decide to lie?”

He suddenly looked pathetically uncomfortable. So uncomfortable, in fact, that he didn’t seem willing to answer.

That’s when I knew. I said,“Terry, did you make a deal with your team out there?”

He kept staring at the floor and was rubbing his hands on his legs a little more frantically, and I finally figured out why he was doing that. His conscience was impelling the motion. He was trying to rub the guilt off his hands, or erase it from his soul.

“Terry, please answer. Did you make a deal with your team?” He mumbled something, but I couldn’t make it out.

“What?” I said.

“Yes, we made a deal.”

I said,“Is that why you went along with the ambush, Terry? Is that why you bought them the time with Smothers? You wanted them to do that ambush, didn’t you? You knew it was a violation of orders, that if they killed Pajocovic and his men they’d be facing court-martial when you all made it back. You knew that if they did that, they would have as much to hide as you? You knew, then, that the team would cover for you, because they needed you to cover for them.”

He kept staring at the floor, and that was an answer in itself. I looked at Morrow, and she stared back at me. There was nothing more to be gained by talking with Terry Sanchez. We now knew everything he knew.We knew everything, except the most crucial thing. Who killed the last of the Serbs?

Chapter 32

A
fter Imelda escorted Sanchez back to his cell, we all desperately needed to take the edge off. I ordered everyone to take a break. Imelda and her ladies went off in search of a coffee machine.I asked Imelda to notify the Air Force warden that I wanted to see him. And I asked her to bring back two cups of coffee, one for Morrow and one for me.

Morrow and I were a little dazed. Most trials don’t have all the pathos and theatrics and emotional hysterics that are depicted in all those TV and movie courtroom battles. The truth is, what happens in the courtroom is rarely a battle; it is far more like watching water become ice. Most trials are as well-orchestrated as a Kabuki dance. They bore you almost to death. A smart lawyer knows to always get a good night’s sleep before a court date, because of the stifling somnolence and the fact that judges can get pretty cranky when you nod off in their court. That is, if the judge is awake to catch you. Everything’s tightly scripted, because the last thing any lawyer wants is to have his witnesses up there freewheeling it. While a little spontaneity might make for a more interesting trial, lawyers aren’t looking to be interested. They’re looking to win. Besides, even most of the uncoached folks who climb up onto a witness stand aren’t real interesting, because most folks just aren’t. In fact, they’re less interesting than they might normally be because the lawyers and the judge are making them speak factually, devoid of the lively opinions and exaggerations that lend a little spice and spunk to ordinary conversation. About everything that needs to be sorted out gets sorted out long before the case gets to court, so there are rarely any surprises.

Add to that, one of the rules of being a lawyer is to never, ever utter a single-syllable word if a more stuffy, five-syllable word can suffice. And displays of emotion are anathema, something that’s cleaved out of you by the second year of law school, or else you’re not allowed to proceed. I mean, just think about how many really interesting lawyers you ever met in your life. Don’t think it improves when you put two or more together in a room.

That was the world Morrow and I inhabited from day to day. A world of few surprises, sparse drama, a tedious world where your emotions are almost going in reverse. We were both a little startled and disoriented.We felt like someone who had spent their whole life riding a tricycle on backcountry roads, then suddenly got thrust behind the wheel of a twelve-cylinder Maserati on an L.A. freeway.

It’s one thing to have suspicions about what happened out there. It’s another thing altogether to have a witness flesh it out for you, firsthand, in full-blown emotional Technicolor. Particularly a witness who’s afflicted with gangrene of the soul. There’s a stench to gangrene, and it gets into your mental nostrils and lingers there a while. We both sat quietly at the table for a few minutes. Then Morrow pulled out her trusty pad of yellow legal paper and began making notes.

I watched her write for a few moments, then said, “About that Pudley thing this morning, I’m sorry.”

She giggled a little, but it didn’t sound like her heart was in it.

I added, “I’m also sorry about last night. I drank too much. I didn’t do anything . . . uh, you know . . . like, anything too forward when we got to my bedroom, did I?”

What I hoped she’d say was, well, yes, actually you did. A very naughty thing, too, and you did it four or five times, you animal, but the truth is, I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I sure hope you do it again.

Instead, she said,“Don’t worry.You were snoring before you hit the bed.”

I said, “Yeah. My ribs were hurting like hell.”

“It wasn’t your ribs,” she said, still writing.

“Yeah it was.”

“It was your conscience.”

“No it wasn’t,” I lied. “It was my ribs. These ones,” I said, pointing at my side.

“You’re not as absolute as you like to pretend,” she said, still jotting notes.“You like these men. They’re just like you and that bothers you. Admit it.”

I thought about that a moment. I’m not the deep, introspective, sensitive type. Every attempt I ever made to fathom my own psyche, I just ended up like one of those rats lost in a maze of twisted turns and dead alleys. But okay, so they were a little like me. Maybe a lot like me. The difference was, I’d never mutinied against my senior officers, I’d never let my troops do something I could later blackmail them for, I’d never cut deals with my troops, and I’d never murdered a bunch of wounded men. Those, to me, were fairly gaping distinctions.

She put down her pen and turned to me.“You know, you’re the right man to head this investigation, but you’re also the wrong man. You’ve shared some experiences with them. No ordinary lawyer, like me, could ever have hoped to comprehend what happened out there. For the same reason, though, you can’t look at them impartially.”

I stared back at her. This sounded a little too much like psychoanalysis to me. That was Morrow’s problem. The reason her eyes were so damned sympathetic-looking was because she was so damned sympathetic, and she was probing here for a fresh customer.

I said, “Was that why you wore that dress last night?” “What?”

“That was it, wasn’t it?” I said. “The skimpy dress, that sexy nectar you rubbed on.You thought I needed to get my mind off it. You thought I needed to be saved.”

She blushed ever so lightly. “Well, didn’t you? The way you were drinking? Did you really think I didn’t know you’d put down a couple before I even got there? Your breath reeked.”

“My ribs hurt,” I said.

“Your ribs, my ass,” she said.“You should see your face when these men are testifying. You’re completely absorbed in it. This is too personal for you.”

Fortunately, Imelda and her ladies walked back in at that moment, because my lips were just parting, and I wasn’t the least bit sure even I wanted to hear what I was about to say. Imelda approached our table with two cups of steaming java. Mine had been prepared just the way I liked it, with just enough coffee to legitimize my addictions for sugar and cream.

I grabbed Imelda’s sleeve before she could return to her seat. “Hey, Imelda,” I whispered.

“What?”

“You ever hear of a Pudley?”

She sort of snorted once or twice. “Hell, who ain’t never heard of Pudleys. Why? You a Pudley?”

“Absolutely not,” I insisted. “I’m more like a Humongo.” “Um-hmm,” she said, walking back to her chair. It wasn’t one of those “um-hmms” like yep, you sure as hell look like you’re packing a Humongo to me. It was the other kind of “um-hmm.”

Morrow was grinning when, fortunately, there was a knock at the door and she had to force herself to stifle it and appear like a sober, buttoned-down attorney.

The door opened and the chubby Air Force warden stuck his head in. He had this awfully tentative expression on his face, as if he was deathly afraid of me.

“You beckoned me, sir?” he asked.

“Damn right! Get in here,” I bellowed, and he nearly bounced through the doorway. He approached our table, walking gingerly, like a man with pins sticking through the soles of his shoes.

I said, “Is there a psychiatrist on this base?”

“Yes,” he said. “There’s one over at the base hospital, in the flight surgeon’s office.”

“You get him over here today. I want him to spend time with Captain Sanchez. Also, I want you to institute a suicide watch on him. You do have procedures for that, don’t you?”

He nodded vigorously.

I bent forward and peered intently into his face. “Haven’t you noticed that he’s experienced a very severe weight loss?”

“Uh . . . no, I hadn’t noticed.”

“But surely you’ve noticed that he’s very depressed?”

“No, I, uh, I hadn’t noticed that, either.”

“Then listen closely. If he manages to kill himself or loses even one more ounce, I’ll see that you’re charged with gross negligence. Do I make myself clear?”

“Uh, yes, sir ...or, er, yes, Major.”

“Get out of here,” I said.

He scurried quickly away and his overweight butt shook like Jell-O.

I’d just done the best I could for Terry Sanchez. I wasn’t sure it was going to help, though. When a man walks all over his own image of himself the way he had, something dies inside. Sanchez was rotting away from the center, because he had compromised nearly every principle he believed in.

Most of the fault for that lay on his own increasingly skinny shoulders. But some of that fault fell on Smothers and Murphy. Smothers, because he allowed his sense of personal loyalty to overrule his judgment and gave Sanchez a team. He never should’ve done that. It was one of those all-too-common instances of doing something for all the right reasons with all the wrong consequences. It was a disservice to the men, because Sanchez wasn’t up to leading them.It was a disservice to Sanchez for the very same reason. He was bound to fail.

Murphy’s blame came from another source altogether. He had allowed his group to continue its policy of treating the First Battalion like it was some kind of privileged private men’s club. An exclusive old-timers’ club. Since Persico and his sergeants all felt handpicked and had all been together for so many years, and those bonds had been calcified by so many shared experiences, any newcomer, even a newly appointed team leader, was likely to be treated like an unproven outsider. The sergeants and warrants in the First Battalion were all convinced they were something special. They had isolated and blocked out Terry Sanchez. When that sense of isolation was compounded by the pressures of a combat situation, it became too much for the human spirit to bear. Particularly when that spirit was a little frail and pappy in the first place. The result was the pitiful picture of Terry Sanchez we had just seen.