Secret sanction sd-1

by Brian Haig

  His eyes marched across our faces and I guessed he was wrestling with how to approach us. Friendly or cold? Informal or stiff? One way or another, his future might well rest in our hands, so this was one of those momentous coin tosses you so often hear about. Should he scare the crap out of us, or make us love him?

  He finally broke into what I would call a charmingly disarming smile. “Well, I can’t exactly say I’m happy to meet you, but welcome anyway.”

  This struck me as a pretty ingenious compromise. “Thank you, General,” I said on behalf of the group.

  “I’ve been told to offer you whatever assistance or resources you need. We’ve arranged a private tent for each of you. I’ve also had a building cleared for your use. Five legal clerks arrived last night from Heidelberg, and they’re busy preparing your facility as we speak. Is there anything else you need at this moment?”

  “Nothing I can think of,” I answered. “Although if anything comes to mind, I’ll be sure to contact you.”

  That was a wiseass crack, but I’d made my choice on how to approach him. Friendly just wasn’t in the cards.

  His lips tensed ever so slightly. He studied my face, made an assessment, then got up and walked to the door. He opened it, and in marched a lieutenant colonel, a tall, lean, handsome sort with a nice little green beret perched on his head as well.

  The general said, “Let me introduce Lieutenant Colonel Will Smothers, commander of the First Battalion of the Tenth Special Forces Group. Will’s going to handle your needs from day to day.”

  Which was a very slick way of saying that he, General Murphy, wasn’t going to fetch any damned thing for me. It was masterfully done. It almost worked, too.

  I said, “Excuse me, General. That won’t be acceptable.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “As the battalion commander of the accused A-team, Colonel Smothers is a possible suspect in this case. Please arrange another liaison, so there’s no possibility of polluting our investigation.”

  Now here’s where it gets important to understand that Army lawyers aren’t held in particularly high esteem by real soldiers, which is to say those soldiers who serve in combat branches. Warfare is the business of soldiers, and lawyers talk a lot but don’t shoot a lot, so we’re seen as an inconvenience or an annoyance, or an evil, but certainly not as part of the brotherhood. Make that ditto with an exclamation point when it comes to Green Berets, who are a little more clannish and lofty than about anyone else in uniform. It’s a very rare day when you see a couple of lawyers and Green Berets standing at a bar knocking down a few brews and sharing a few yucks. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen that happen.

  There were a few coughs and a bit of awkward foot-shuffling because this lieutenant colonel was suddenly being told right to his face that he might be a suspect. He might have been dimly aware of that possibility before that moment, but nobody had actually confirmed it. Nor was it too hard to extrapolate that General Murphy, the walking accolade, also might become a suspect.

  This silly, oversize frown instantly erupted on Murphy’s big-jawed, handsome face. He said, “You think that’s necessary?”

  “In my legal opinion, absolutely.”

  “Then I’ll appoint a new man.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said. It didn’t sound real sincere though. In fact, by the time he said it, he had turned about and was halfway through the door. Actually, he kind of mumbled it. In fact, it might not even have been “You’re welcome.” It was two words though. And there was a “you” in there somewhere. I’ll swear to that. I did have the impression he wasn’t going to invite me over for drinks anytime soon.

  My two legal colleagues wore befuddled expressions as a result of this swift display of one-upmanship, but this was neither the time nor the place to make my explanations. We got up and left the building and, after a short humvee ride, were deposited at another wooden building. This one was somewhat smaller than General Murphy’s headquarters. Actually, it was considerably smaller, since the military places a high premium on symbolism.

  We strolled in and there were indeed five clerks frantically buzzing about, moving a desk into this or that corner, setting up computer workstations, testing phones, and hefting large boxes of legal-size paper to be positioned at strategic locations throughout the four rooms that constituted the interior of the building. Legal clerks are known for being brainy but not overly industrious, so somebody had evidently scared the crap out of them.

  A female soldier wearing the stripes of a specialist seven, which is a very high rank in the specialist field, immediately dropped two boxes of paper and rushed over to greet us.

  Her name was Imelda Pepperfield, which is a pretty odd name for a Black, female, noncommissioned officer who was short and squat, had tough, squinty eyes that peered out from a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses, and who made it clear from the opening shot exactly who was in charge of this legal compound.

  A finger popped up and began waving like a fencing foil. “Keep them duffel bags out of my entry. Store them in your offices, or carry them back out to that damned humvee. Doesn’t make a damn to me, just don’t trash up my entry.”

  “Good day to you, too,” I said. “You might find this hard to believe, but I’m actually supposed to be in charge of this investigation.”

  The finger instantly shifted to my face. “Nope! You’re in charge of doing the legal work of this investigation. I’m in charge of the investigating team, and the building, and every damn bit of work’s gotta get done. And don’t any of you forget that.”

  “Perish the thought,” I said, brushing past her. “You wouldn’t happen to have been kind enough to allocate a little space for us useless officers, would you?”

  Captains Delbert and Morrow were standing with their jaws hung a bit loosely, so I figured the time had come to do a little explaining. I swung my arm through the air in a gesture for them to follow me. Specialist Seven Pepperfield interpreted that to mean her, too, so she trailed along as we filed into one of the offices. A desk had already been set up, with five chairs arrayed around the front, and we all picked our seats. I took the chair behind the desk, of course. Rank doth have its privileges.

  “Imelda,” I said, “I’d like you to meet Captain James Delbert, and Captain Lisa Morrow.”

  She stared fiercely at both of them.

  I turned to the other two. “Imelda and I have worked together about a dozen times the past few years. She’s the best there ever was. She runs a tight ship and demands that we all be at work every morning at six o’clock sharp. She’ll make sure we’re fed and bathed and coffee’d and carried out to our cots at midnight, after we’ve all passed out from sheer exhaustion at our desks. She is remarkably resourceful. Her only requirement is that we work our asses off and do everything she tells us to do.”

  Imelda was glaring at me and nodding furiously. I’d been trying for years to ingratiate myself with her, which was a little like Napoleon trying to knock that guy Wellington off his hill.

  She smacked her lips once or twice, straightened her glasses, and announced, “You got that right.”

  She then got up and stomped out of the room.

  Captain Delbert was staring at me like I was getting things all wrong. You’re not supposed to be rude to generals and take guff off of sergeants. As for the expression on Morrow’s beautiful face, well, as a highly polished defense attorney, she was used to being around scoundrels.

  Now that we had our own office, with a little privacy, and without the roar of four big C-130 engines in our ears, I figured the time had come for us to get better acquainted.

  I leaned back in my chair, folded my hands behind my ears, and plopped my feet on my desk. “Congratulations to you both. You’ve been selected to make legal history. What we have here are nine good, clean-cut, wholesome American soldiers accused of murdering thirty-five men. Against orders, no less. They were led by an Army captain, with a chief warrant o
fficer as his assistant, and the rest were all noncommissioned officers of varying grades. This was no group of youngsters, but a team of hardened professionals. Now, most Americans want to believe that this was just a mistake, a mix-up, or that these were just some group of green, frightened soldiers who simply broke under pressure. That ain’t so. What we have here is mass murder under very questionable circumstances.”

  “You’re talking like they definitely did it,” Morrow said, instinctively jumping to the defense.

  “They did,” Delbert politely corrected her.

  “The odds are they did,” I corrected them both.

  “Why us?” Morrow logically asked.

  “Well, that’s an interesting question. I was selected because I’m very good at what I do, but I don’t exactly fit into the system real well, if you hadn’t already guessed. I think the powers that be looked at me and said, hey, this guy Drummond, he’s perfect. He’s a great lawyer, but he’s also a bit of an odd duck. Pick him. He’s expendable.”

  This was a pretty frank admission on my part, but I believe in getting everything on the table.

  “Then why us?” Delbert asked, by which he really meant why him, because he obviously believed the handsome piece of meat stuffed inside his combat boots was not the least bit expendable.

  “Well, Delbert, in your case, because your record says you’re maybe the best prosecutor in the Army. And Morrow, you just might be the best defense attorney. It’s a yin and yang kinda thing.”

  “There’s lots of good defense attorneys,” Morrow said, which was true and, no doubt, left her suspecting that her sex and looks had something to do with her being picked. She must’ve had some bad experiences before. That, or she was reading some of the seamier corners of my mind, which was a disturbing thought. I willed myself to think, of course, that her sex and looks had nothing to do with it.

  What I said was, “Yes, but I don’t believe the Army considers either of you expendable and so, frankly, I was hoping to bask in your protection.” Oops, another bald admission on my part.

  “How very noble of you,” she said, and at this point even Delbert was looking at me askance and wondering what he’d done to deserve this.

  “Okay, let me elaborate a bit more. Aside from your sterling case records, you both took the mandatory classes in Law of War and the Geneva Convention when you went through the JAG School. You’re probably unaware of it, but you got the second and third highest grades ever awarded. Colonel Winston, whom you’ll remember taught both courses, described you as the two best minds he ever saw. Next to the guy who scored first, of course.”

  “And was that you?” Morrow asked.

  I shrugged and gave them my aw-shucks grin, and they both appeared suitably awed.

  But, no, it wasn’t me. Not by a long shot. The same Colonel Winston called the Chief of Staff of the Army and bitched like a banshee the second he learned I’d been picked for this assignment. His exact words were that he remembered me as the biggest dunce he ever taught. But why discourage my troops before we even got our feet wet? Besides, another thing about lawyers is that they are eternally competitive creatures. Delbert was a grad of Yale and Yale Law, and Morrow went to UVA, then Harvard Law. It don’t get much more competitive than that. Wasn’t their fault, really-they were just that type.

  Morrow’s eyes flicked nervously in Delbert’s direction before she coughed a little, then said, “By any chance, would you happen to remember which of us was second?”

  See what I mean?

  “Perhaps I should make one other point,” I said, and they both fidgeted with frustration because they really did want to know who was second. “At the moment, we are surrounded by the enemy. All these soldiers and airmen running around here, they’re wearing our uniform, but they’re different from us. They’re gonna smile and be real nice and polite, but don’t be fooled. They don’t like what we’re here to do, and they don’t like us. Those nine men sitting in that prison are their brethren. We’re outsiders who’ve been brought here to decide whether they should be tried and lynched. Also, there may be more men walking around this compound who might be implicated in this thing.”

  “I think you’re overstating it,” Morrow said.

  “Actually, I’m not. There are men on this base who wouldn’t mind if we got lost in the woods and gave them a chance to shoot us in the back of the head. And you know what? They could come back here, brag about it to everyone on this base, and be admired for it. As such, I will require each of you to carry a loaded pistol at all times.”

  Morrow was looking at me incredulously. She was the dissenting type. I could tell.

  I said, “You do know how to use a pistol, don’t you?”

  “I fired expert with the pistol and every other weapon,” she starchly replied, and I can’t say that came as any surprise.

  “Of course you fired expert as well?” I asked Delbert.

  “Of course,” he said, nodding very energetically.

  “Good. Personally, pistols scare the hell out of me. I can’t hit anything farther than two feet away.”

  The two of them chuckled at my little joke and seemed to admire me for my self-deprecating humility. But it wasn’t a joke. I was dead serious. I think I was born with one of those hand-eye coordination problems. Anyway, I chuckled along with them. If they didn’t want to believe me, that was their problem.

  “The point is,” I continued, “we’re completely on our own. There’s not a soul we can trust except one another, so carry yourselves accordingly. You’re already unpopular, so you’ve got nothing to lose. We’ve been given twenty-one days to get to the truth of what happened here, and more likely than not, it’s a very ugly tale.”

  They didn’t believe me. They swallowed a few times and gave me a few false nods, but you could see it in their eyes.

  Big deal. They’d learn.

  Chapter 4

  I had fourteen years in the Army-the first five in the infantry, then three years at law school, six months at the JAG School, then the rest practicing military law. I’d prosecuted and I’d defended, and I’d developed the opinion that the best place to begin a murder investigation is at the morgue. There’s something about a pale body lying on a cold slab that gets your attention. It reminds you of the solemnity of your purpose. Somewhere connected to that body are a family and friends, and they miss the spirit that once inhabited that flesh. The lawyer is their last and only hope for justice. The body can’t vocalize, but it cries out for justice, plainly and dramatically.

  I’d told them back in Washington that my investigating team was going to visit the morgue on the outskirts of Belgrade where the bodies were stored, only this turned out to be not quite so simple as it sounded. The problem was that the bodies were in Serbia, and we were still dropping lots of large metal canisters filled with explosives on that country’s villages and cities. So there were a few understandable complications.

  I met with two stiff-necked foreign service officers back in Washington who lectured me like I was some kind of idiotic novice in international affairs. Well, I am a novice, but I am also a lawyer, and a stubborn one, and I was not about to back off. This was a case that crossed international boundaries, and I really didn’t care if the Secretary of State herself had to get on a phone and plead with Bad Boy Billy Milosevic himself to get us in. He’d let Jesse Jackson in. So why not us?

  Well, there were a lot of peevish faces, but I guess I knew a little bit more about this stuff than those two State Department jerks, because a UN diplomat asked Milosevic if we could come, and he did not even hesitate.

  He said yes. Of course he said yes. I knew he was going to say yes. See, he knew that our word was infinitely more credible than his, and he wanted more than anything for my team to verify that there were in fact thirty-five slaughtered bodies in that morgue. Still, his assent had its worrisome aspects. If he was willing to let us come see the bodies, then he must’ve been pretty damned sure that our boys killed them.

&n
bsp; We all got a good night’s rest, and at five in the morning on day two of our investigation, Captains Delbert and Morrow, myself, and a pathologist, who’d flown in from Frankfurt the night before, all climbed aboard a snazzy Blackhawk helicopter and began our flight. The pathologist was sort of an odd-looking duck with a misshapen head, pale, almost translucent skin, and these hyper-looking, bulgy eyes. Appearances aside, I’d been assured he was one of the best.

  The flight took about three hours, and we had to land and refuel once. The guys who refueled us were Serbian soldiers, and I won’t say they seemed too happy to see us. I didn’t take any offense, though. After all, our airmen were at that moment pounding the bejesus out of some part of their country.

  Two sedans with Serb military drivers awaited us at the Belgrade International Airport. No one said a word as we drove through the city, going straight to the morgue. It was not the fancy-type morgue like you so often see back in the United States. In fact, it was a pretty grim, ramshackle, dilapidated old building, and I have to admit that seemed fitting, because most of the inhabitants were past caring about their accommodations.

  A Serbian doctor named Something-o-vich met us at the entry and escorted us through a series of dark and dirty hallways, down some stairs, and into a gloomy cellar. American morgues are normally so clean and sterile you really could eat off the floors, if you were inclined to do such a ghoulish thing. This morgue stunk of rotting cadavers and was filthy from the rafters down.

  The basement was cold and dank and had the kind of dim hanging lamps that tall people bang their heads against. I, thankfully, am a nicely compact five foot ten, so I survived right nicely. Poor Delbert is about two inches above six feet and he walks like he’s on a parade ground, with a stiff rod jammed up his you-know-what, so he picked up some nasty lumps on his forehead.

  We took a left at the end of the hallway, and you knew by the way our footsteps echoed that we’d just entered a very large room. The doctor reached over and flipped a switch. Ten long fluorescent bulbs flickered, and crackled and popped, then finally illuminated everything.