Court Martial

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  The driver set the case of Del Monte fruit cocktail down on the picnic table.

  “I don’t understand.” The psychiatrist looked puzzled.

  “I promised…” The general began to explain, then decided that it would be better if it remained between him and Spencer. “It’s a private joke.”

  “So how have you been, Colonel?” Spencer patted the gen eral on his shoulder. The aide smiled. He had been briefed by the general about Spencer.

  “Fine, just fine, Spencer... but you don’t look so good right now… and who’s your friend?”

  Woods stepped forward shyly, wearing only his wet underwear in front of the senior officer. He held out his hand and tried smiling. “I’m Sergeant Woods, sir. I was with the team that…”

  “Damn Sam! I’m sorry! I didn’t recognize you without… all of your make-up on!”

  “That’s camouflage paint… Colonel!” Spencer corrected the Air Force general. “Anyone who flies Piper Cubs should know the difference.”

  “Well, excuse me… Spencer!” The general sat down on the edge of the picnic table. “If you have something cold to drink, we’ll wait out here until you two shower and get some clothes on and then we have to talk some business.”

  “We can handle that, Colonel.” Spencer waved for the aide to follow them inside the barracks and showed him where the food refrigerator was against the back wall.

  The psychiatrist waited until the aide and driver had departed before asking the general the question that was burning on his tongue: “Well? How do you feel?”

  “Not as good as I had hoped for and not as bad as I had feared.” The general kept his eyes glued on the open doorway where Spencer had disappeared. He could hear the showers running in the building.

  “What do you think of Corporal Barnett?”

  “He looks good! I can’t believe he’s filled out so much!” The general was amazed at how fast Spencer had gained back his body weight. “Of course, he’s only a kid… seventeen years old.”

  “Do you think he’ll crack in the courtroom?”

  “No… he’s a tough young man.”

  “Are you sure, General?”

  Major General Garibaldi turned slightly on the picnic table and stared hard at the psychiatrist. “You know, you might have some book-smarts, but you sure don’t know people. That boy in there kept me alive when I was ready to quit! He went through some torture that I know I couldn’t have withstood.... Yes, Dr. Martin, I’m quite sure he can handle a courtroom drama.”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude, General.”

  “You never do, Doctor, but you always are.” Garibaldi saw his aide returning carrying two Mountain Dew sodas. “We’d better change the topic, but rest assured that Spencer won’t let us down. I think after the initial shock of seeing James wears off, he’ll be fantastic. We have to be ready for that first encounter, though.”

  “Do you think we should give Corporal Barnett some Valium before he appears before the court-martial?”

  “You really don’t know your patients, do you?” Garibaldi shook his head. “Don’t be here when Spencer returns.”

  “It’s my job, General!” Martin’s professional competence was being challenged.

  “Not anymore. Spencer doesn’t even take aspirin, let alone a depressant and mind-controlling drug!” Garibaldi waved the psychiatrist away. “I tolerated your bullshit because you were supposed to be the best psychiatrist in the Army… but obviously that decision was based on your grade point average and not your common sense!”

  The psychiatrist left, boiling mad and blaming Spencer for his failure.

  Major General Garibaldi sat under the loblolly pines and thought about his session in the courtroom. He had feared a personal attack from James’s lawyers, and when it had come he was surprised that it was based on James’s charges that he had also collaborated with the enemy and therefore was not qualified to testify against him. That had been easy to defend against; the hardest part had been looking at James sitting so near to him with that arrogant grin plastered on his face.

  “Where did our friend go?” Spencer stepped through the doorway. “I saw him leaving.”

  “He’s got some business elsewhere.” Garibaldi smiled. It was good seeing the young warrior again. “I didn’t have a chance to make it to your awards ceremony.... You know that I would have given anything to be there.”

  “Sure… I understand, Colonel.”

  “I’ve been given command of an important F-16 fighter unit and we were conducting something very secret at the time.”

  “You don’t need to explain yourself to me, Colonel.” Spencer curled his mouth in a wide grin.

  “True, I knew you’d understand. Now, about our buddy in there.” Garibaldi nodded toward the building that had been modified for the court-martial. “They’re going to bring you in the first thing tomorrow morning. The defense lawyers wanted to bring you in later this afternoon but the law officer ruled that it would be in the best interest of the court that you appear in the morning.” Garibaldi saw the puzzled look on Spencer’s face. “They figure that you’ll be tired and easy to break after having to wait around all day wondering what’s going on inside.”

  “It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

  “I know.” Garibaldi finished his Mountain Dew and set the can down on the wooden tabletop. “I’ll be sitting in the back of the courtroom if you need a friendly face to look at.”

  “Thanks, Colonel.”

  “No problem.” Garibaldi felt his throat begin to tighten up and quickly added before he lost the ability to talk, “Spencer… thanks.”

  Spencer smiled his wide, heart-winning grin. “You’re welcome… anytime, Colonel.”

  The gray-haired general just nodded. A lot of emotion and understanding had been passed between the two warriors in just a few words.

  The Army trial counsel had made sure that Corporal Barnett and the other witnesses he planned on using for the morning session were in the courtroom a couple of hours before the trial was due to start. The tactic was an excellent one on the part of Brigadier General Heller. He knew that one of the best ways to break a witness was to catch him disoriented in unfamiliar surroundings. The extra time in the courtroom setting would give his witnesses time to relax and prepare themselves mentally for the arrival of Specialist James and his defense counsel, Brigadier General Talton, and his dozen assistant lawyers from the civilian sector.

  General Heller sat across the table from Spencer and played with a triangular piece of toast in the yoke of a partially eaten egg. “Let’s review it one more time.”

  Spencer nodded in agreement and kept eating.

  “The tactics that General Tallon will use aren’t going to be very nice. Their only hope is to get you to lose your temper or even break you on the witness stand so that they can rule you mentally incompetent as a witness. They tried that yesterday on General Garibaldi and it backfired on them; that’s why they’ve recalled him as a witness this morning, along with the trick they tried pulling yesterday.”

  Spencer swallowed a mouthful of chipped beef on toast. “What trick, sir?”

  “They want you to testify late in the day so that you’ll be tired and nervous after having to watch and wait all day.” Heller sipped his orange juice. “I think that’s why they called for General Garibaldi to return to the witness stand this morning.”

  “Fine. It isn’t aoina to bother me at all.”

  “Are you sure?” Heller was secretly worried. Lieutenant Colonel Martin had briefed him on Barnett’s mental condition and refusal to cooperate.

  “Tell me what to do, General, and I’ll do it.” Spencer smiled over his fork.

  “Great!” Heller leaned back in his chair and looked at his watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes to have these breakfast trays taken back to the mess hall.”

  Sergeants Arnason and Woods stacked the trays and handed them to the guards. Arnason looked at Spencer and saw that the star witness was relaxed
. General Heller was a very smart military lawyer, having them eat breakfast in the courtroom. It made them all feel like they were now in their own homes, instead of a mysterious courtroom.

  Woods lit a cigarette in the hallway outside the courtroom and blew the first lungful of blue smoke against the row of windows. “Do you think they’ve got enough guards around this place?”

  Arnason answered, “You’re just seeing the MP detachment.... There are two battalions of infantry circling Camp McCall from the Eighty-second Airborne Division and nine Special Forces A-teams deployed in the swamps and along the streams and rivers within five miles of here.”

  “I feel like I’m the prisoner instead of James.” Spencer put his head against one of the windows and looked up at the light blue sky. It was still very humid and hot outside, but the Army had installed a huge air-conditioning system in the courtroom building almost overnight. “Here come the press.”

  Woods blew another lungful of smoke against the windows. “Fucking commies… The KGB couldn’t have better friends during this fucking war.”

  “Be nice now, Woods!” Arnasao’s voice was mocking. “Remember the First Amendment rights of the press.”

  “I’ve never read that they have the right to push wounded men off helicopters so that they could fly along and get pictures for their damn magazines!” Everyone standing in the group knew what Woods was referring to. During the battle of the la Drang Valley, a reporter-photographer had shoved two walking wounded out of a helicopter so that he could fly back to the hospital and photograph the arrival of wounded American soldiers from the soldiers’ perspective. One of the men he had shoved off the Medevac had died shortly thereafter from shock; and the photographer had won an award for the realistic series of photographs, complete with blood covering the bed of the chopper.

  “We’d better get back inside the courtroom and take our seats.” Arnasao nodded in the direction of the stained double doors.

  “I’ve got to take a shit first.” Spencer patted his stomach. “I ate too much.”

  “I’ll go with you.” After what had happened at the cabin, Woods and Arnasao had decided on their own that they wouldn’t leave Spencer alone until the court-martial was over.

  The door to the latrine swung open and then slammed shut. Spencer and Woods could hear the water get turned on in one of the sinks and someone using one of the urinals.

  “I can’t believe that damn Heller! The nerve of that bastard!”

  “Take it easy, General.... He’s a smart son of a bitch—we knew that all along.” The second voice was a deep bass.

  “I can’t believe he brought that little bastard here already and they had breakfast in the courtroom!”

  “Smart… if you ask me,” the bass voice echoed in the large latrine.

  “You know that screws up our game plan.” The urinal was flushed by the unseen man and a second faucet was turned on.

  “A little, but we shouldn’t have a problem breaking him. The psychiatrist’s report stated that he was very unstable and prone to violent temper tantrums.” The bass voice sounded very confident.

  “You’ve got a point there. That’s all we’ll have to do is bait him a little.”

  “Bingo, General.”

  Spencer had heard enough. He flushed the commode and stepped out of the booth. Woods hurried to fasten his pants. Spencer walked over to a sink near the brigadier general and a black man dressed in a very expensive suit. The black man had his suit coat off and was washing his face and hands. The general glanced at Spencer, not quite sure what to make of him and not recognizing who he was.

  “David… do you think we’ll be here long this morning?”

  Woods didn’t know what to make of Spencer’s comment and answered, “I don’t think we’ll be here past noon. Why, Spence?”

  The looks on both the general’s and the black lawyer’s faces were identical—pure shock.

  “I guess I can last that long without having a temper tantrum.” Spencer hid his smile by splashing water over his face.

  Woods understood what Spencer was doing. “I hope so, Spence. You haven’t had one in a couple of weeks… at least.”

  “Yeah. We’d better check in with General Heller before the trial starts.” Spencer dried his face with a paper towel and looked over at the general, whose face was a bright red. “Morning, sir!”

  Woods left the latrine a step behind Spencer. He waited until they were down the hall a couple of meters before starting to laugh. “Damn! We just ruined their day!”

  “Whose day?” General Heller stepped out of the courtroom, holding the door open with one hand. “Where have you two been?”

  Woods told the general what had happened and the horse laugh from the brigadier general carried down the hallway and through the latrine door to his peer.

  As soon as Spencer entered the courtroom, flashbulbs started popping. He was escorted to the front-row seats behind the trial counsel’s table and given a seat next to Sergeants Arnasao and Woods. The chair on Spencer’s other side was marked with a piece of white tape labeled: MAJOR GENERAL GARIBALDI.

  The doors behind Spencer opened and the reporters turned and began jockeying for position and taking photographs. Spencer didn’t need to be told that James had arrived.

  Specialist Fourth Class Mohammed James had been very well rehearsed by his lawyers. As he walked down the aisle he smiled and nodded at friendly faces in the crowd of reporters, especially those he recognized from his interviews with reporters from the black periodicals. He knew that he was fighting for his life and that the evidence against him was very strong. James approached the back of Spencer’s seat and paused. The courtroom became quiet as everyone watched what was going to happen between James and the star witness for the prosecution.

  “It’s good seeing you again, Barnett.” James’s voice was even and carried a familiar tone. “I’m glad that you’ve recovered from the POW camp.”

  Spencer smiled before he rose and turned around. General Heller held his breath.

  “It’s good to be back in the States, isn’t it.” James made the question a statement.

  “Very good.” Spencer kept the smile on his face as the flashbulbs reflected off his sparkling, fiery blue eyes.

  “No hard feelings?” James held out his hand.

  “I can’t shake hands with you, James… but I will say that I won’t lie… the truth will be enough.” Spencer sat back down before the MPs could move James over to the defense table.

  Brigadier General Tallon leaned over and whispered in James’s ear, “That was a very dumb move! Don’t you ever pull that shit on me again and take me by surprise!”

  James glanced over at his black lawyer, who had been hired by the mosque out of Detroit. The lawyer shook his head in agreement with the general.

  A side door to the courtroom opened and the seven members of the general court-martial board walked in and took their seats behind the long table that faced the rows of chairs.

  Major General Koch took his time looking around the courtroom before making a very short opening statement: “Gentlemen, the general court-martial proceedings of Specialist Mohammed James are now in session. Defense counsel, I believe the floor is yours and you may recall your witness.”

  Brigadier General Tallon stood and adjusted his black leather general’s belt on his short-sleeved khaki uniform before calling Major General Garibaldi to the witness stand.

  The double doors opened and the Air Force general strode into the room and went directly to the witness chair that had been placed at the left front corner of the long conference table the board sat behind.

  “General, the oath that you took yesterday still applies in this courtroom today.” General Koch spoke to his peer in a controlled, professional tone of voice. He did not like the idea of a general being grilled in front of the press, but Garibaldi was a prime witness.

  “General Garibaldi… you testified yesterday that you found a picture of the defendant beating anoth
er prisoner while both of them were prisoners of war.”

  “That’s true. I was being interrogated by Lieutenant Van Pao, the camp commander and NVA intelligence officer. The Polaroid snapshot was lying under the edge of her desk.”

  “And you just reached down and picked it up?” Tallon was attacking. “And did you slip it into your pocket?”

  “No.”

  “What did you do, General?”

  “I tipped over a box of sundry candy, and while I was picking up the individual packages of Chuckles—”

  “Chuckles?” Tallon interrupted.

  “Yes… Chuckles. They’re a jellied candy.”

  “North Vietnamese?”

  “No, American.”

  “What were the North Vietnamese… in Laos… doing with boxes of American candy?”

  “Ask Specialist James where they got them.... He helped them.”

  “Please… I would like that statement struck from the record.” Tallon addressed the president of the board.

  “Please strike General Garibaldi’s last statement from the record.” Koch glanced over at Colonel Chan, the law officer for the general court-martial, and received a confirming nod.

  “Do you know where the North Vietnamese got American candy from, General Garibaldi?” Tallon asked with a smile.

  “No, but I assume they got the sundry packages through the black market in South Vietnam.”

  “You assume.”

  “Yes.”

  “And why was the North Vietnamese commander giving you candy… candy by the box?”

  “She felt like it.”

  “For no reason?”

  “I don’t know her reason.”

  “Did she do it as a reward for service rendered?”

  Major General Garibaldi smiled at the one-star general before answering him. “General, when you are a prisoner of war for over a year… in many cases even less time… and someone—anyone—offers you food and especially fruit or sugar, you’ll take it without asking why.”

  “You are assuming that I would?”

  “Yes… before they tortured you… in your case.”