No more, he thought, as his company at last received their orders to deploy to Afghanistan, where they would be assigned to hunt bin Laden and his associates in the mountains around Tora Bora. "We had him, too," Katz recalled for Karp. "But once again, the politicians and the bureaucrats kept clicking around and let him get away because they didn't want to offend our supposed allies in Pakistan." He'd soon grown jaded to the fact that partisan politics mattered more than the lives of U.S. soldiers. His father had warned him that ever since Vietnam, the politicians, not the generals, had been in charge of the battlefield, and they were more worried about what the press would say than they were about an American son coming home in a body bag.
"All this crap you hear about we don't know who we're fighting ... that it's not like a conventional war because the terrorists don't have a standing army, is just pure horse manure," Katz had said to Karp that day in his office. "We know who they are. We know where they are. We know that during the night they're trying to kill U.S. troops, and then smiling and waving at us the next day. They hide in houses with women and children, and then when we shoot back and civilians are killed, they wring their hands and cry about the Americans for the press. We don't lack the ability to fight these guys, we lack the will to do what it will take to make Americans safe again."
However, as much as he learned to despise politicians, Katz had a profound love for the men he fought with. "We were from all over the place," he told Karp. "Rich, poor, black, white, Jew, and even a couple of Muslim guys who hated these bastards more than we did because of what they were doing in the name of the Qur'an. "
One night his unit received information from Pakistani intelligence officers that a high-level Al Qaeda leader was hiding out in a nearby village. "We didn't really trust those guys," he said of the Pakistanis. "Half of them were Al Qaeda or willing to lie or run off if someone slipped them a few dollars, but this seemed like good intel so we went."
They were making their way through a narrow ravine when they were ambushed. The two men on point went down in the first fusillade, while the rest of the company was pinned down in the rocks.
Sgt. Kenny Katz jumped from the relative safety of the rocks and sprinted for the wounded men. "I don't remember making a conscious decision to do it," he said. "I still don't think of it as heroic. My guys were hurt, and I wasn't going to leave them out there to die." He made it to the first man and miraculously dragged him back to safety as the bullets rang off the rocks all around them. Then he went back for the second soldier.
"The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the ground feeling like somebody had punched me in the guts," he said. "I looked down and could see I was bleeding on one side of my ribs. I was amazed that it didn't hurt, and only then realized that bullets were singing all around me still. "
Instead of running back to cover, he went forward and retrieved the body of the second man, but he was dead. He was crawling back toward his company when a bullet struck his hip. "Shattered the joint," Katz said. "But I was lucky. I didn't lose my leg, just got me a new titanium hip joint and a small limp. Lots of guys got it worse."
Katz was silent for a minute, looking down at the newspaper photograph in his hands. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. "Anyway, I was discharged and forced Columbia to let me pick up where I left off. They didn't want to but I had a good lawyer. I got out, went to work for you, and now here we sit." Karp nodded at the photograph. "I don't know if I have the right to ask," he said. "But I take it you weren't there to pick up chicks."
Katz smiled. "Well, not entirely," he laughed. "No. To be honest, I didn't intend to be there at all. I was just finishing law school and in fact was moving out of my apartment near campus for the one I'm in now in the Lower East Side. You'll see the date, May 3, 2003. Ring a bell?"
"No, not really," Karp replied.
"That was the day after the president landed on the aircraft carrier off of Iraq and declared 'Mission Accomplished,'" Katz said. "I was angry. I'd just been e-mailing with a buddy who was still in, but now they were stationed in An bar Province. The mission was anything but over. They were up to their necks in a guerrilla war. Nothing the boys couldn't've handled if they'd been given the right equipment and support, including enough troop strength to root out those motherfuckers. These insurgents are like cockroaches—doesn't do you any good to kill most of them, you've got to kill all of them or they'll lay eggs. In this case that means some asshole talking shit to a bunch of poor, ignorant locals until dying for Allah looks like a good deal. But my buddy was telling me they weren't getting the right equipment—no body armor, unless they bought it themselves, no armor for the frickin' Humvees, which were never meant to be fighting vehicles. But here's the president declaring 'Mission Accomplished.' What a bunch of crap."
Katz suddenly stopped talking. His face had grown red with anger. He tried to laugh it off. "Look at me, giving an overlong closing argument when all you asked for was a simple answer to a simple question ..."
But Karp waved his hand. "This wasn't a simple question, and it taught me a lesson about jumping to simple conclusions before learning all the facts. Please, finish your story."
"Well, the long and short of all that was this mission wasn't going to be over for a long time, and not without a lot of guys dying before the politicians learned to quit trying to tell the military how to conduct wars," Katz said. "We're going to have to accept that people will die who you wish did not have to die. But a lot fewer of those kinds of people will die if by their deaths the war and the killing stops, or in that part of the world, slows down to a trickle. And when you wage war, do so with a plan for what you're going to do when the initial round of shooting stops. Have a Marshall Plan on how to turn your former enemies into your grateful friends. But the politicians fucked this one up from the word go."
Katz drew a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "So that's my soapbox speech and brings me to crossing campus with a duffel bag full of my stuff, pissed off about 'Mission Accomplished,' and I find myself at this anti-war demonstration."
"So that's why you threw your medals on the fire," Karp said.
Katz nodded. "Yeah. The 'anything for peace' crowd are not exactly my people; if they get their may, it will eventually mean slavery and subjugation for the non-Muslim world. But I was thinking about my buddies fighting and dying while politicians did nothing to support them. So I pretty much walked up, tossed the medals on the fire, and walked away. Just so happened that a photographer was there to catch the moment. Then I made the mistake of giving the guy my name. So, anything else you need to know about me?"
"Yeah," Karp said with a nod. "How would you like to work in the homicide bureau full-time, only you'd have to put up with me kibitzing from time to time?"
"That's an affirmative," Katz said and then shook his head. "I thought when I saw that photograph you were going to fire my ass."
"Nah," Karp lied, and they both knew it. "I was just going to ask if it got you laid by one of those hippie chicks."
"Don't I wish," Kenny replied. "But no, I'm saving myself for marriage."
"Yeah, I'll bet," Karp laughed. "But now you don't have your medals to impress your future bride with."
"Actually, I do," Katz said. "As soon as I tossed them in the fire, I regretted it. I earned those suckers the hard way. So I wrote to the army and got a duplicate set. Got 'em framed and hanging on the wall of my apartment right below a photograph of me and my unit on top of the Khyber Pass."
Months later, Karp turned when the door to the dayroom opened and Jessica Campbell, wearing red institutional "pajamas" special to the psychiatric ward, shuffled in, escorted by a guard. This mission was still not accomplished either.
10
Jessica Campbell glanced quickly around the dayroom and sat down next to her lawyer. She gave a slight trembling smile to her parents but then turned away and sat with her head bowed.
Lewis leaned over and whispered, "Charlie's here."
"I
don't care about him."
"That's okay today, honey," Lewis replied, patting her arm. "But remember to smile at him during the trial. He's going to testify that it was all his fault, and we want the jury to sympathize with the two of you in your grief."
"I don't care."
In fact, she didn't care about much of anything now that the voice of God had abandoned her. Just like the voice had warned her—the mood stabilizers and anti-depressants had silenced the Divine in her.
Unfortunately, the drugs also helped her remember things she had tried to forget. Like how baby Benjamin had struggled as she held him under water. She was surprised that an infant was so strong and had not just gone meekly to meet his Maker, as she'd expected. But at last he stopped kicking, his whole body going rigid, his little fists clenched tight, and stayed that way.
He was as stiff as a plastic doll when she dressed him in the little white suit she'd bought for him. But she did the best she could, smoothed his fine fluffy hair to the side, and tried to close his wide, staring eyes. That she could still see a glint beneath the lids bothered her, but she was on a mission from God.
"Time for Chelsea." The voice coaxed her back to her feet. She drifted back to her middle child's bedroom, picked up the sleeping child, and brought her back to the bathroom.
Rubbing her eyes as her mother undressed her, Chelsea saw her little brother lying on the towel. "Is Benny sleeping?"
"He's with God," the voice said.
"He's with God now," Jessica told her daughter. "God will take care of him. Now get in the tub."
She washed the girl with lots of soap and shampooed her hair. She wanted her children to look their best when they arrived in heaven.
Chelsea looked up at her and smiled. Such trust. "This is wrong," shouted the other voice. Jessica started to pick Chelsea up to remove her from the tub.
"It's the only way," God replied.
Jessica's heart broke. She gently shoved Chelsea down in the water. "Hineini," she whispered tearfully as the child thrashed and scratched at her arms. Again, the struggle seemed to last an eternity before her daughter's body went limp. She held the child under a minute longer just to be sure.
She was just lifting Chelsea out of the water to place her on her own special white towel, and then dress her in her special white dress, when a voice interrupted. But this one came from behind her.
"What are you doing, Mommy?" Hillary was standing in the doorway in her nightgown. The child's sleepy eyes took in the scene and clicked from puzzlement to fear.
"Your brother and sister have gone to be with God," Jessica said. "Would you like to be with Him, too?"
"Yes," said the voice of God, "send her to me."
"No," said the other voice. "There's still time. Stop this madness!"
"Don't listen to her," said God. "Obey me!"
Hillary looked at her mother, her eyes growing wide in terror. "No!" she screamed, and she ran down the hallway.
"Catch her," warned the voice of God. "If she gets away, she'll tell someone; her soul won't be saved, and you'll be caught and punished."
Jessica followed her daughter to her room, but Hillary had locked the door.
"Silly girl," Jessica chided when she tried the knob. She removed a bobby pin from her hair and inserted it into the little hold in the knob. There was a satisfying click and the knob turned.
Hillary screamed when her wet and wild-eyed mother hopped into the room. "Peek-a-boo!"
"No, Mommy! No, Mommy!" Hillary pleaded.
Jessica lunged for her but the girl dodged to the side and tried to run past. Her mother caught one of her arms and began dragging Hillary toward the bathroom. The desperate child bit her on the arm.
Surprised by the sudden pain, Jessica let go of her daughter, who raced for the front door. She almost made it, but her mother caught her by the hair and pulled her back from the handle.
"Now you're being bad," Jessica snarled. "Now you're being like your father, and he's the Devil. If you don't behave you'll go to hell and be with him instead of God."
Hillary screamed and tried to bite her again. In a rage, Jessica picked her daughter up and slammed her down into the tub, banging her head on the porcelain rim. The girl went limp, and it was easy to push her beneath the waters. The voice exulted inside her head. "Now I know you fear me, since you have not withheld even your children from me."
"God's will be done," Jessica said.
When she felt enough time had passed, Jessica leaned over to lift Hillary out of the tub to lay her next to her siblings. But suddenly the child gasped and her frightened eyes flew open. Those eyes bored into Jessica, but she made no more attempts to get away. She just floated there, sucking in air ... staring.
Jessica looked over at the bathroom vanity. There it was. The knife she had bought from the man at the sporting goods store, who told her it could cut through steel. She'd thought originally that she might have to use it as Abraham had intended with Isaac. But then she'd thought of drowning them ... less messy. So much for that plan, she thought as she picked up the knife.
Hillary watched her raise it above her, and her eyes darted from her mother's face to the shining blade and back again. Then the fear faded; she just looked sad.
That was the memory that had really stuck with her, even before the drugs made her remember the rest. Hineini. I am here, she thought as she sat in the dayroom at Bellevue. But God didn't answer. She heard only the voice that she supposed was that of her conscience, the one that reminded her that she'd murdered her children and even suggested that she'd done it to get even with her husband.
The day before, when she had met with Dr. Nickles and her attorney, Linda, she'd thought about pleading guilty and taking her punishment. But the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison terrified her. It was much easier to believe Linda and Dr. Nickles when they told her it wasn't her fault. She didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know it was wrong. She'd been crazy when she killed her kids.
It was a lie. A lie she wanted to believe. She was never going to see her kids again. If there was a heaven, that meant there had to be a hell, and that's where she was going. But she didn't want eternal damnation to start with the rest of her life in prison.
At least tell somebody where the children are, suggested the voice of her conscience. But Lewis had not asked, and that had given the impression that she didn't want to know. So no, I'm not going to tell anybody, she thought, especially not Charlie. I don't want to give him the satisfaction of ever knowing. She'd refused to tell him that night when he came home from his whoring, and he'd have to live with knowing that they died while he was screwing ... but how?... where? That he'd never know.
Per the instructions of her attorney, she turned and gave Charlie a tiny smile. Fornicator. Adulterer. Jessica relaxed at the sound of the familiar voice. So God had not forsaken her after all; he was right there in her head.
Charlie Campbell acknowledged his wife's smile with his best tragic, yet supportive, smile of his own. Representatives of the press weren't allowed in the dayroom for the hearing, so it didn't count for anything, but he thought it would be good to practice for the trial.
There had been a brief chance to get a little ink and face time earlier. The press had been waiting outside the hospital when he arrived, clamoring like seals for a fish from the trainer. He pushed through them without a word and then paused, as if being reluctantly tugged back into their midst by an invisible beam.
"I'd just like to thank the people who have written or called to express their sympathy for this great tragedy that has befallen my family," he said, solemnly reading from a prepared statement he'd pulled from his breast pocket. "Before you today is a man grieving for the loss of his children, whose bodies have still not been recovered, and for that matter, the loss of the woman he fell in love with and married. I do not blame my wife for what has happened. I blame myself for missing the warning signs of mental illness."
"What about the distri
ct attorney putting your wife on trial for murder?" a shill asked.
Charlie hesitated, his handler placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. "I'd like to be able to say that I understand that Mr. Karp is just doing his job. But I don't understand it. It just shows that even in a great, enlightened country like ours, some people are still in the Dark Ages when it comes to understanding the ravages of mental illness. If he is watching this, I hope Mr. Karp will someday drop these charges so that my wife can get the medical help she needs."
Charlie spotted the man his handler had paid to ask the next question. "Yes sir," he said, pointing.
"Mr. Campbell, are you still planning to run for Congress next year?"
Charlie bowed his head. "Believe me, that's something I've thought long and hard about. For the longest time, my heart was too shattered to even think about more than just getting through the next day. But thanks to good friends, and to be honest, the voters who had urged me to press on, I think the only way out of this nightmare is to dedicate myself to working for the people of the 8th Congressional District." He paused to let the print reporters get the quote down accurately. "No firm decision has been made. Right now, my number one priority is to support my wife and do everything in my power to get her the help she needs. I can assure you, though, that if I do run for Congress and am elected, one of the planks in my platform will be to make sure we as a nation are doing everything we can to understand and combat mental illness. Now thank you for respecting my privacy. I need to go inside."
Inside, his handler shook his hand. "Well done," he said. "They ate it up." Charlie allowed himself a brief smile. There might just be a way out of this, he thought.
The media had been all over him since "that day" when he'd come home and found his wife in bed, hiding under the covers, and the children nowhere to be seen. He figured the nanny, Rebecca, had them until she called a half hour later to check in on the family. "I talked to the missus this morning," the nanny said. "And she sounded a little ... strange. She told me not to come today because she was taking care of them alone."
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