by Kathy Reichs
The specification under 133 referred to the same time and place but alleged that the accused engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer in unlawfully shooting said Ahmad Ali Aqsaee.
The second 458 alleged identical offenses as to one Abdul Khalik Rasekh. Both forms were signed by Colonel Andrews.
The chronology showed that after Colonel Andrews preferred charges, RCT 6 rotated back to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, home of the Second Marine Division.
Once at Lejeune, Colonel Andrews appointed Lieutenant Colonel Frank Keever as Article 32 investigating officer and detailed Major Christopher Nelson as government counsel and Major Joseph Hawthorn as counsel for the accused.
Lieutenant Colonel Keever called the Article 32 hearing into session two months after RCT 6 returned to Lejeune. The file contained a transcript of the proceedings. I skimmed through it.
Hawthorn made a motion for continuance until an exhumation could be performed. Nelson objected, saying no exhumation was likely. There was discussion, after which Keever denied the motion.
The government’s first witness was Grant Eggers, now out of the military. His testimony seemed in agreement with the statements he’d made to Gunny Sharp and the NCIS special agents.
To satisfy my curiosity, I read the portion of Hawthorn’s cross-examination dealing with Eggers’s motivation in accusing Gross.
Hawthorn: You’re a civilian?
Eggers: Yes, sir.
Hawthorn: Is the reason you did not re-up the fact that Lt. Gross gave you a poor performance evaluation and told you that he would oppose your promotion to sergeant?
Eggers: No, sir. He did tell me that, but it was not the reason I did not reenlist.
Hawthorn: He demoted you, didn’t he?
Eggers: No, sir. He reassigned me from fire team leader to SAW gunner, but I still had the same rank and pay.
Hawthorn: No one else in your platoon said they’d seen the LNs shot in the back, did they?
Eggers: No one else was in a position to see it.
Hawthorn: Did you actually see rounds strike those men in their backs?
Eggers: That’s how it appeared to me, sir. They were being spun around by the impact of the bullets, but it looked like they were hit in the back.
Hawthorn: Would you describe Lt. Gross as a liar?
Eggers: Generally, no. But he has a lot at stake here.
The second government witness was Donald Drew, one of the NCIS special agents who’d examined the scene and interviewed marines. He testified an entire day, but added little.
The government concluded with testimony from three platoon members who said there had been an intense firefight during which they felt in peril, but that the fire came from the hillside, not from the area of the houses.
With that, the government rested.
The following morning, Major Hawthorn informed Keever that he’d received word that the Afghans had decided to let an exhumation go forward, and made a motion that the hearing be recessed pending an autopsy. After lengthy discussion, Keever reversed himself and agreed to a sixty-day recess, during which Hawthorn was to provide regular updates. Should an exhumation and autopsy be completed sooner, the hearing would resume immediately. Keever declared the hearing in recess.
I turned to the final document in the dossier, a handwritten page that appeared to have been torn from a journal.
And my interest level leapt.
The journal entry was written by the man himself.
July 15. 1142 AFT
Got into the shit last night. Ambushed on a cordon and knock. AK fire raining down. Usual Muj spray and pray shooting. Burn a lot of ammo, forget about aim.
We didn’t know what to expect in Sheyn Bagh. Patrols had taken heat in the area, harassment by ambushes and IEDs. Intel had it weapons and explosives were stored in the vil. Our mission was to surprise the LNs at dusk, take the stuff before they used it on us.
We swept in, set up and began to toss the place. Adrenaline was pumping, and my guys were wired. The LNs didn’t greet us with love.
We’d searched a couple houses when an RPG exploded. Two of my guys yelled they were hit. Rounds started peppering down from the hillside. AKs for sure. I ordered my men to take cover and return fire.
For a while the scene was all noise, streaming tracers, and flying debris. BA was no hits from the AKs, two WIAs from the RPG. No EKIAs or EWIAs. Two collateral KIAs in the vil. Our fire. Yours truly the shooter.
I paused for more alphabetic decryption. BA was battle assessment. KIA and WIA were easy—killed in action, wounded in action. I decided EK and EW referred to enemy casualties.
I see it every time I close my eyes. Two Muj rushing me, screaming about Allah. Only seconds to react. I figured the fucksticks were wired to blow. Gave them their tickets for the A train to martyrdom.
The hillside snipers went apeshit, but we had fire superiority. Eventually they shot their wad and disappeared.
WTF? The search found nothing strapped to the dead Muj. Couldn’t have known that. Bedlam. Rounds hitting everywhere. Split-second choice. Easy decision. My ass over theirs.
I keep replaying it in my head. What did I hear? What did I see?
Gunfire. Shouting. Some wannabe martyr yelling Allah Akbar. Two LNs in disdahas rushing straight at me. Shit. You have to lay them flat.
Who knows what the assholes intended? I ordered them to stop. They kept coming. I made sure the sorry bastards went down and stayed down. Emptied my clip.
Eggers had my six when the shitstorm started. Why the fuck didn’t he turn his M-249 on the two coming at me? No big surprise. The guy’s a train wreck.
While the Muj hauled ass, Doc and I checked the guys who were hit. They’d taken shrapnel, but could travel. We loaded them into the 7-ton, along with Doc and one fire team, and took off for Delaram.
Eggers is blowing smoke. Shortly before Sheyn Bagh, I had to shitcan him from fire team leader down to SAW gunner. He argued, but I told him my mind was made up.
How many warnings does the jackass deserve before he gets someone killed? Piss-poor inspections before taking his squad on patrol. Failures to properly search and secure areas under his responsibility. Improper deployments of his fire team in action. Guy’s a fuckup waiting to happen.
Yesterday Eggers proved me right. His failure to take decisive action could have cost me my ass. If those Muj had been packing, I’d be going home in a box.
It’s not like I wanted to waste those guys. Jesus. I’m practically puking about it. But it was a righteous kill. They were a clear threat.
Eggers doesn’t get it. Doesn’t think like a Marine. Or act like a Marine. CIVCAS from a mission sucks. But collateral damage is part of war.
I don’t trust Eggers and he doesn’t like me.
THE MH-60 BLACKHAWK LIFTED OFF, then banked low between shale and limestone cliffs on the start of its three-hundred-mile run to Sheyn Bagh.
That was my best guess of the distance. Welsted had tried to fill me in, but between the throb of the rotors and the wind whooshing against the airframe, conversation wasn’t happening. And lip-reading isn’t one of my skills.
It was early, just past 0600, but after a bad night’s sleep I was ready to move. Wall-to-wall nightmares. Katy’s voice calling from darkness amid the thud of artillery shells. Birdie purring from the bottom of a deep well. Other scenarios, equally bizarre. The same images looping over and over.
I’d dressed in the predawn darkness, then bolted for a quick breakfast. After donning my IBA, I’d rendez-voused with Blanton and Welsted at the flight line.
The Blackhawk was a marvel of military engineering. Fourteen million dollars’ worth of bulletproof steel and Lexan glass, powered by a pair of massive turboshaft engines.
We were sharing the bird with a half dozen soldiers. Stoic faces, intense eyes. Packed in like badass sardines in a tin. Welsted said they were going someplace north of Sheyn Bagh to quell a disturbance. She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t press.
Th
e Blackhawk elevated at dizzying speed and hurtled toward our destination. The sun rose along the curve of the earth, throwing up spikes of early-morning light. The land was beautiful, the way Artic tundra can be beautiful. A narrow river looked like a dark ribbon twisting across the arid emptiness.
My gaze shifted to Welsted, then to Blanton. Something in their posture indicated a deep mutual dislike. When their eyes met they immediately jumped elsewhere, like magnets repulsing. The air between them crackled with pent-up tension.
I’d sensed the friction yesterday but couldn’t pinpoint the source. Only an insistent tickle at the base of my brain stem telling me that something was off.
Did they have opposing views on the exhumation? Were they unhappy about being ordered into danger in a village of potentially hostile Muslims? Or was it personal?
Forget it. Focus on the task at hand.
I glanced out the Blackhawk’s side window. The bulletproof glass was scarred with milky slashes where antiaircraft rounds had hit and ricocheted off. I charted the terrain below, wondered if anyone had us in his sights.
Concentrated on putting that out of my mind, too.
Thanks to a strong tailwind, we arrived at Delaram early, just before 0800. The Blackhawk’s blades whipped up fans of yellow dust as we touched down. Blanton disembarked first, followed by the soldiers. All scuttled across the landing zone with heads lowered, shoulders hunched to the wind.
I followed Welsted off, sand stinging my face and collecting in the corners of my eyes. As the soldiers loaded onto a convoy truck and departed, Blanton waved us over to an idling Humvee with two grit-coated marines, one at the wheel, the other riding shotgun.
“World’s biggest freakin’ sandbox.” Blanton pulled a wry smile.
Welsted breezed past us into the vehicle. Blanton and I joined her in the backseat.
The Humvee rumbled down an unpaved road that lay bleached and bone-white from the passage of military convoys. Nothing much to see. Sand molded by the wind into spiny formations. Stunted trees bearing withered fruit. The charred remains of a car half buried on the shoulder.
Our driver was young, Katy’s age. No, younger. His cheeks were furred with peach fuzz. Shotgun wasn’t much older.
I wondered what the parents thought of their sons being out here. A trapdoor sprung inside my head and suddenly I was seeing the hit-and-run vic back in Charlotte. The one with the pink barrette and kitty purse. The one in a body bag.
I glanced right and caught Blanton looking at me, eyes narrow, maybe even unfriendly. Calculating? If so, calculating what? What angle was there to play? Why would Blanton’s goal, or that of NCIS, be any different from mine? From Welsted’s?
Probably nothing. Blanton had made it clear he didn’t like moving outside the wire. Maybe he was spooked. God knows I felt removed from my element. Everyone was keyed up. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of his cold, appraising eyes.
The Humvee hit a VCP, a vehicle checkpoint that was nothing more than a cement pillbox. A pair of soldiers sat on folding chairs, sweating though the sun was barely up. One rose and trotted over, aviator shades hooding his eyes.
Welsted presented some documents. The soldier scanned them, then bent for a better view of the Humvee’s interior.
“NCIS?”
Welsted tipped her head toward Blanton.
“Anthropologist?”
This time I got the nod.
The tinted shades swiveled my way. Lingered several beats. More hostility? Impossible to tell, since I couldn’t see the guy’s eyes. Did they figure I was there to buttress the prosecution of Second Lieutenant Gross? Paint him as a murderer? Stir up the locals once again and make everyone’s job harder and more dangerous?
The soldier waved us through.
“We’re nearly there.” Welsted spoke without turning her head. “The village isn’t much to look at. Typical of the sort you’ll see in this province. Herding, some small-scale farming. Under normal circumstances you wouldn’t find any open resentment.”
“We aren’t going in under normal circumstances.”
“No, Mr. Blanton, we are not.”
Blanton’s jaw went rigid. Was the friction due to the same jurisdictional jockeying I was used to seeing in Charlotte and Montreal? Army versus Navy? Military versus civilian? I found the thought strangely calming.
No one spoke for a bumpy five or six minutes. Then, “I won’t call these people ignorant, because that’s wrong, not to mention potentially dangerous.” Welsted squinted at the heat-shimmer rising at the horizon.
“But the life they lead is simple. We make a point of respecting their customs, insofar as they don’t interfere with our own objectives.”
“Which are?” I asked.
“Objective one is to protect the free world. Objective two, our specific goal in this operation, is to make sure that United States personnel acted properly in the pursuit of objective one.”
After several more miles of nonconversational hitching and swaying, Sheyn Bagh took shape in the distance, a compound of squat stone structures enclosed within a low stone wall on three sides, backed up to a very steep hill on the fourth.
Welsted was right. The place wasn’t much to look at. Unless your taste in architecture swung toward stark minimalism. But the setting was otherworldly.
Sheyn Bagh lay at the foot of a prominence, the south side of which rose sharply, maybe two hundred feet, to a mesa studded with oddly shaped boulders. The slope, more cliff than hill, was composed of peculiar, peaked formations that resembled upright ladyfinger cookies of differing heights. In the hazy morning light I could make out tiny holes in the rocks, like honeycomb. As we drew nearer those holes became doorways, windows, and staircases.
I was about to pose a question when Welsted explained.
“Half the village is built into the hillside. The rock is sturdy enough to provide a solid foundation, but porous enough to tunnel into.”
“Maybe that’s how Osama went to ground.”
“These towns are like icebergs.” As usual, Welsted ignored Blanton’s comment. “Only a small percentage visible.”
We drove through a gap in the wall and stopped in what probably served as the village green. At an opening between two low buildings, a goat raised its head, bleated, and clop-clopped slowly toward the Humvee.
Shotgun’s fingers tightened on his rifle. Bringing the barrel into view in the window, he shouted in what I assumed was Pashto. A kid, maybe ten or eleven, ran forward and dragged the goat back toward the alley from which it had emerged.
“Bastards shove explosives up the asses of their barnyard pals.” Blanton’s voice sounded taut.
Shotgun shouldered open his door and got out. Welsted followed.
A trio of men approached wearing clothes the color of the desert itself. Striped kaffiyeh wrapped their heads. Sandals covered their dusty feet.
One man was taller than the others. One had a mole above his beard shaped like a daisy. All three were lean, their faces pitted and scarred. I couldn’t guess their ages. Each had the look of living stone.
“I’ll do the talking.” Welsted circled the Humvee and advanced a short distance.
The men paused six feet from her. Solemn greetings were exchanged. No smiles.
Watching, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was I looking into the face of the loathsome Taliban? Were these men who would beat women, cut off their ears and noses as they begged for mercy? Shoot them in their school buses for expressing their thoughts? Maim and shun them for being victims of rape? Men who would destroy schools lest little girls learn to read? Kill volunteer workers lest they supply vaccinations against polio?
Or were they simple farmers just trying to get on with life? With the struggle of herding goats, growing crops, and raising kids?
As Welsted conferred with our welcoming committee, I looked around.
Windows stared back at me, silent and empty. Or were they? Were hidden eyes tracking our every move?
An AK-47 pro
pped open a door. Old, but undoubtedly functional. A lethal doorstop.
Here and there men in twos and threes watched with suspicion. Boys stood frozen, play forgotten. There wasn’t a female in sight.
After a brief exchange, the trio withdrew, talked briefly, then returned to Welsted. The tallest of the three spoke. Welsted replied. The tall man hesitated, then nodded assent.
Welsted returned to the Humvee.
“They say there’s been tension between U.S. troops and some of the locals. In light of the incident. He says the exhumation must be performed with caution and—”
“Dignity,” I said.
“Exactly.”
“Please tell them I’ll treat the bodies with reverence.”
Welsted translated. Again the men conversed. Again the tall one nodded.
“Let’s get this freakin’ show on the road.” Blanton’s eyes were bouncing from building to building, alley to alley, curious face to curious face. Veins were pumping in both his temples.
Two kids were summoned. Teenagers with long ropy limbs and wispy beards. Each carried a shovel on one bony shoulder.
The boys looked wary but excited. Digging in a graveyard. Forbidden, blasphemous, on this day condoned.
Eyes on the tall man, Blanton spoke to Welsted.
“Be sure this muj understands I’ll be filming everything. I don’t want any flak about pissing off ancestors or hijacking souls.”
Welsted explained about the photography. The man responded.
“Don’t film any women,” Welsted relayed.
“There goes my fashion spread in Cosmo.” Blanton spat in the dust. “Tell them to get their asses in gear.”
“Lose the attitude, Mr. Blanton.” Welsted’s tone was toxic.
Blanton and I gathered our cameras, shovels, and other equipment. Welsted got the screen. The tall man gestured toward goat alley. Our driver moved to the front of the line, Shotgun to the rear. Both looked anxious, like deer in an open field.
As we moved in single file toward the western edge of the village, I felt unseen eyes on my back. Heard only our own boot falls and a wind chime somewhere out of sight.