Secret Sanction (8 page)

“But is there something special about Smothers’s battalion?” “The men call it the old-timers’ club. There’s sort of an unwritten tradition in the Group that after five or ten years in another battalion, a lot of the sergeants put in for transfer to Smothers’s battalion.”

“Why would they do that?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer, but it never hurts to ask.

“Camaraderie, I suppose.”

We had arrived back at the chapel tent, and I could see several soldiers gathered and anxiously waiting. Father O’Reilly obviously had priestly things to do,and I’d heard everything I wanted to hear, so I thanked him and we parted ways.

As soon as he was gone, Delbert said, “That was really helpful.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked.

“He was trying to communicate motive. He’s the confessor of four men in that team, and he was trying to offer us their motive.”

“Maybe,” I said, looking over at Morrow.

“Is there something we didn’t hear?” she asked.

I pulled on my nose a bit. “That old-timers’ club thing. That bothers me.”

Delbert said,“Sounds like a good idea to me. Sort of a grouping of the elite of the elite.”

“Maybe.”

“You think there’s more?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“This is a combat unit, Delbert. A battlefield veteran is a very different breed than a green buck sergeant who might be highly trained but has never been truly tested. It’s the green guys who can get you killed. They might break under pressure. They might make mistakes, like maybe put a blasting cap in the wrong way, or use incorrect radio procedures and give away your position.”

“I still don’t get it,” Delbert said.

“The old-timers’ club sounds like a survivors’ union. A guy spends five or ten years, and he becomes eligible. He gets to spend the rest of his career with seasoned, battle-tested pros, the kind of guys who don’t make mistakes.”

“And something’s wrong with that?” Morrow asked. “Maybe not.Your chances of survival go way up, since I’d suspect the First Battalion is very choosy about who it takes and who it turns down.”

The two of them nodded, and I decided not to expose everything else I suspected. Like General Partridge mentioned earlier, I’d done time in the infantry, whereas Delbert and Morrow put on their JAG shields straight out of law school. Some things you just gotta be there to learn.

We arrived at General Charles “Chuck” Murphy’s wooden building about ten minutes later. I could have ordered Murphy to come to my building, but there were limits to how much I wanted to shove people around.There’s a fine line between being a legal barbarian in search of the truth and being a spoiled brat, and I’ve always been a stickler for nuances.

Actually, I wouldn’t know a nuance if it hit me in the face, but I didn’t want to push my luck with Murphy. At least, not yet I didn’t.

As it was, Murphy actually met us at the door, which made me damned glad I hadn’t ordered him to come see me, because this courteous, meeting-us-at-the-door thing sort of evened it out.

I said, “Morning, General.”

He said, “You look like crap, Drummond. What’s the matter, not sleeping well?”

I put on my bitchiest pout.“It’s the damned accommodations here. I’m used to an air-conditioned hotel room, with a well-stocked bar and a big double bed. These damned tents and cots are killing me.”

He emitted a very manly, contemptuous chuckle, then led us inside and up some stairs to the floor where his office was located. A burly sergeant major, who looked as though he lived in a weight room, growled something as we walked by. I kept a wide berth and hoped he didn’t bite.

The general’s office was fairly spartan for a man of his rank, containing a long field table that was being used as a desk, two smaller field tables, two metal file cabinets, and two flags, one of the American variety and the other red in color, with a big white star in the middle. A visitor was supposed to be impressed by the austere, abstemious furnishings and believe that they somehow reflected on the humble nature of the man who worked in this office. I might’ve bought it except for the two silver-framed photographs carefully arrayed on the smaller field tables: One showed the President of the United States himself pinning a general’s star on Murphy’s shoulder, and the other a much younger Chuck Murphy in a football uniform, holding a ball, kneeling beside the Heisman Trophy and grinning like a kid who was cock-sure the world was his oyster.

Five chairs had been neatly arranged in the middle of the floor, and he directed us all to have seats. With some difficulty, he lowered his large six-foot-five-inch frame into one of the chairs, crossed his legs, and folded his arms across his chest. It was a big chest, but he had long arms.

The empty chair was kind of mysterious, and I guessed that at one point he must’ve intended to have counsel there to represent him, then thought that might imply he had something to hide and therefore decided against it.

“I apologize,” he said. “I can only give you ten minutes this morning.We have an important operation going on, and my presence is required in the operations center.”

“No problem, General. You’re a busy man. We’ll make this quick.”

“Thank you.”

I paused briefly, then asked,“How long have you known Captain Sanchez?”

“I’ve commanded the group the past eighteen months. Terry was here when I arrived.”

“You approved his appointment as a team commander?” “Yes, but it was a pro forma thing.”

“Why pro forma?”

“There are four battalions in Tenth Group. It’s hard enough to know all the colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors. I recognize the names of most of the captains, but I’m afraid I don’t know them well.”

Now, if I was a more suspicious guy, I might have considered that a Rhodes scholar who’d graduated first in his class from West Point ought to have a more impressive memory than that. I might also have suspected that the general was a smart guy, and just like Will Smothers, also had caught a sudden case of selective amnesia.

I gave him a dubious look. “But was Sanchez maybe one of the ones you know well?”

“Not really. I’d recognize him on a street, but not much more than that.”

Delbert said, “Sir, could you tell us how much more than that?”

He scrunched up his face as though he had to go bottom-fishing to come up with anything. Finally, he said, “I know he’s married. I remember meeting his wife at a few of the Group functions. I know he did a good job on a few exercises, and I think I visited his team a month or two ago, before they went into Kosovo.”

Frankly this didn’t wash.And he apparently sensed our doubts. “Look, if you’d like,” he swiftly added, trying to sound and appear gracious,“I’ll ask my adjutant to go through my log and see how many times I’ve met with Sanchez over the past six months.”

I wasn’t nearly as gracious. “That would be very kind, General, but why don’t you tell your adjutant to provide us the log and we’ll do the checking?”

He said, “That log is classified and can’t be released.” “General, we all have top secret clearances with lots of strange little suffixes that allow us to look at whatever we want to look at. Right now, I’d like to look at your log.”

He appeared flustered for a moment or so, before that strong jaw pushed forward an inch or two. “If you don’t mind, Major, I’d like to talk to legal counsel before I comply.”

“Actually, sir, as the investigating authority, I am within rights to sequester that log. It is military property, and if I believe it is relevant to this investigation I can order you to turn it over.”

“I’d still like to seek advice.”

“Okay, do that, sir. But do it quickly, because I’d like to have that log before close of business today.”

His eyes got like little round ice cubes, but his lips were still smiling. “Any other questions?”

Morrow inched forward in her chair.“Could you tell us why the First Battalion is called the old-timers’ club?”

The general’s right eyebrow sort of notched up.“That? Well, it’s an old tradition with some of the sergeants in the Group. It’s harmless, really. It’s kind of a natural evolution to want to move up to a unit that has a little higher standards, that’s a little more challenging.”

“Is this encouraged within the command?”

“It’s sergeant’s business, handled by the sergeant majors within the Group. There’s no official policy on it.”

“Is it a good thing?” she asked.

“I think it has its advantages, yes. The men seem to like it. And I can tell you from my perspective, it’s a damned good thing to have one unit that’s totally reliable, that you can put in to handle the really tough missions.”

She shot me a quick sideways glance, a kind of triumphant look.

Delbert, the prosecutor, took his shot. “Sir, could you tell us who ordered the arrests of Terry Sanchez and his men?”

“I did.”

“What chain of events led to that decision?”

“When Milosevic and his people began holding daily press conferences, we realized that something had happened.”

“But how did you narrow it down to Sanchez’s team?” “Simple, really. The corpses were found inside what we call Zone Three. That’s where Sanchez’s team was operating.”

“Did you order his team out?”

“I didn’t have to. They had extricated three or four days before I ordered their arrests.”

“Why did they extricate?”

“Because the Kosovar unit they were training were all dead.” “How long had they been dead?”

“Three or four days.”

“When their Kosovars were killed, didn’t they report that immediately?”

“I believe they did. I’d have to check the operations logs to see exactly when they reported it, but I think so.”

“Then why weren’t they ordered to extricate at that point?”

“Because I made a decision to leave them in place.”

“Why?”

“Because, after their Kosovars were ambushed, Terry automatically relocated his team to a new base camp, one known only to his team. Their safety wasn’t at issue.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

“We’re training more Kosovar guerrilla units, and when we infiltrate those units into Kosovo, we might have wanted to use Sanchez’s team to perform the same Guardian Angel function with a new team. I hadn’t made a decision yet. I was keeping my options open.”

I said, “How is morale in the unit, General?”

“Great. In fact, as high as I’ve ever seen.”

“Why so high?”

He offered us a very humble smile and genuflected ever so slightly.“I’d like to take credit for it, but the truth is that soldiers are always happiest when they’re in action.”

“No disillusionment with the mission?”

“These are soldiers, Major. They don’t question the mission.” Like hell they don’t. Personally, I’d never met a soldier yet who didn’t spend every waking hour dissecting every aspect of the mission and moaning miserably about the complete idiots who designed it. Anyway, I said, “I heard you’ve had a suicide and an attempted suicide.”

“Every unit has suicides.”

“True, but you’ve had one successful and one attempt in only a few months.”

His eyes got real narrow.“Look, Major, the Group hadn’t had a suicide for three years. Our number came up. I don’t mean to sound cavalier, but go study any unit and you’ll see we’re way below average.”

“You must’ve investigated the causes of the suicides?”

“An investigating officer was appointed in the case of the successful one.”

“And what did he find?”

“The man was a staff sergeant with serious marital problems. He had a son with Down’s syndrome. He had a drinking problem, and his peers afterward described him as a borderline manic-depressive.”

“And the attempted suicide?”

“There was no investigation, but the unit commander told me that the man suspected his wife of cheating while he was stuck here.”

The general then looked down at his watch, and a pained expression instantly popped onto his face.“Listen, I’ve got to get down to the operations center.We’re doing two insertions today, and I have to be on hand.”

“Of course, General,” I said. “Sorry to take so much of your time.”

I was lying, of course. I would love to have had this guy in a room for about twelve hours, with a few hot klieg lights and some small pointy objects to jam under his fingernails. Sometimes you can just smell a lie. If anything he said was true, it was an accident.

Then again, maybe I was just jealous. Here sat this hulking Adonis, a Rhodes scholar, the youngest general in the Army, a guy people had been predicting would be a four-star ever since he wore diapers. And here was me, a run-of-the-mill major, whose bosses considered him expendable, and, believe me, there’d been no crowd of adoring fans crammed around my crib talking about the glorious future that lay ahead of me.

What I found intriguing was the gap between the time when Sanchez’s team reported that their Kosovars were all dead and when they extricated. Murphy really didn’t seem to have a good explanation for that. Give him a few days and I was sure he’d think one up, though.

I turned to Morrow right after we got out of the building.“I don’t see why the press always writes him up as such an attractive guy. I didn’t think he was so attractive, did you?”

She gave me an amused smirk.“Oh,I don’t know.Some women might find him attractive.”

“Some women?”

“Blind ones might not notice, but the rest of us would probably say he’s pretty cute.”

I had to think about that a minute. I mean, get real. How can a six-foot-five, 240-pound former right tackle be called cute?

“So what do we know?” I finally asked.

Delbert rubbed his chin and said, “We know Sanchez’s team was the pick of the litter.”

“Right.”

Morrow said, “We know that all of a sudden nobody seems to know Terry Sanchez very well.”

I said,“Yeah, a little odd, isn’t it? All of a sudden, he’s a leper.” We all thought about that, then Delbert said, “So, what’s on for this afternoon?”

“We’re going to Albania to visit a refugee camp.”

“Why? When are we going to see Sanchez and his men?” “Look, Delbert, consider that it’s a near certainty that Sanchez and his team killed thirty-five men. Worse, somebody went around afterward and did the coup de grâce, perhaps out of spontaneous rage, or perhaps in a more premeditated way to ensure there were no witnesses. Do we all agree with that?”