by Brian Haig
“So what do you think happened?”
“I really don’t know.”
She paused for a moment and took a large sip from her scotch. “You were in combat. Did you ever feel the urge?”
I thought about that a moment. “Once, I guess.”
“What caused it?”
“It was a few days after the Gulf War ended. Saddam’s Guards had escaped the net and started slaughtering the Kurds and Shiites, whom our government had encouraged to rise up against the regime after we’d promised we were going to destroy Saddam’s military. It turned out we lied.”
“I think I remember something about that.”
“Yeah, well, it didn’t make big news in America. What happened was, they rose up and suddenly the Revolutionary Guards appeared. They never knew what hit them. Thousands of Kurds and Shiites, lots of women and children, began getting slaughtered. The survivors fled the carnage and headed south, into Kuwait. We set up camps and did the best we could to mend their wounds and care for them, and that only made us feel more miserable.”
“So you wanted to avenge them?”
“Nope. We wanted to appease our guilt. Our government had done a very dishonorable thing and these people were paying for it. Only Uncle Sam wasn’t around, having to look them in the eye.”
“So you think that’s what happened here?”
“Nope. That’s not at all what happened here. See, we wanted to, and God knows we talked about it a lot. But talk was all we ever did.”
She drained the last of her scotch, and she looked a little tipsy, and her lips looked kind of moist. I felt kind of frisky, and our eyes came together and met. Then came this long awkward moment.
Chapter 10
The way that look ended was her telling me to get my big shoe off her sandaled foot. She then paid the bill and we parted ways at the elevator, since she wanted to limp the two flights upstairs to her room, while I insisted on ascending in comfort. The last I saw of her, she was careening between the rail and the wall, stumbling occasionally on the steps and trying to appear graceful. Some girls really should stick to Evian water with a twist.
The next morning, my head throbbed ever so lightly on the car ride to the Air Force holding facility, although poor Miss Morrow obviously got the full, vituperative brunt of the scotch. She spent half the ride with her fingers plugged into her ears, trying to protect her addled brain from the raucous roar of six pistons pumping up and down and from Delbert, who seemed in a remarkably chipper and garrulous mood.
This was the day when we would split up and each take different team members to interrogate. If we limited ourselves to two hours with each of the remaining eight team members, then by midafternoon we’d be done. I decided to handle Chief Warrant Officer Mike Persico, Sergeant First Class Andy Caldwell, and Sergeant First Class Francois Perrite.
Michael Persico was forty-six years old. He was a former staff sergeant who’d applied for warrant officer training and been accepted. Every A-team has a chief warrant officer. They are the technical experts of the teams, the masters of every function of the other members, from weapons to communications to medical. Persico had been with the same team the past eighteen years. He was the “old man” of the team, meaning he was like the living, breathing heritage. He had earned a Bronze Star for valor in Somalia, and a Silver Star for valor in the Gulf.
I’d read the citations and was impressed. In the Gulf War, he had helped lead the team deep into Iraq’s desert for a little Scud-hunting. They found one Scud missile, directed an airstrike that annihilated the missile and its launcher, then lost two team members fighting their way back out. In Somalia, Persico and his team had been committed to help save the Ranger company that got bushwhacked trying to nab Aideed. One of Persico’s team members got wounded and he risked his own life to dodge through a hail of Somali fire to save him. Persico was a brave man, there was no question of that.
I studied him closely when he was led into the room. He was average height and build. He looked leathery and tough, with mostly gray hair and harshly weathered skin that had left deep creases on his face, particularly around his mouth. His eyes were gray, like a wolf’s. He moved confidently, like a man who’d gotten most of what he wanted out of life.
He brought a lawyer into the play, a female captain named Jackie Caruthers, who resembled a middle linebacker, only a little bigger, and with a face that looked like it had been kissed by the bumper of a speeding Mack truck.
“Please have a seat,” I said to both of them, and they sat straight across from me.
“You’ve informed your client of the rules?” I asked Caruthers.
“I have,” she said.
“Then if you don’t mind, I’d like to get right into it.”
Persico’s pale gray eyes were taking my measure, like he would a foe on a battlefield.
“Fine with me,” Caruthers answered for him.
I ignored her and looked straight at Persico. “Chief, could you explain the series of events that led to the destruction of the KLA unit you trained?”
He glanced at his lawyer, who nodded.
“All right. The KLA company commander was named Captain Kalid Akhan. He came to us on the afternoon of the thirteenth and said he planned to do a raid on a Serb police compound at dawn the next morning-”
“Did he plan the raid?” I interrupted.
“Yes, sir, he did. He said he had heard from some locals that the police compound was poorly guarded, that the Serbs spent most of their days drinking, and torturing local citizens.”
“And did he have any help from you or your team?”
“No. He pretty much decided what he wanted to do on his own.”
“Pretty much?”
“Completely.”
“Did you like his plan?”
“Looked okay to us. Based on what he said about the Serbs, it sounded like kid’s play.”
“Could you describe that plan for me?”
“Sure. The police station was located in the middle of a village named Piluca. Captain Akhan had ninety-five men. He planned to break ’em into three elements and hit at first light. One element was to go into the village and isolate the police station from the other houses. The second was to build a security screen along the main road that led into the village from the north. The third was the assault element. It would take down the police station.”
“And what did they plan to do once they took the police station?”
“Well, you gotta understand a few things about that Piluca station.”
“Like what?”
“Like it had a real nasty reputation.”
“Why so?”
“The Serb captain who commanded it, he got put there about a year before by the authorities in Belgrade. He’d done some time in Bosnia and was regarded as something of an expert on ethnic cleansing. He even had a nickname: the Hammer.”
“Why that nickname?”
“That was like his signature. He always carried around a hammer in his belt. He liked to use it to bash fingers and toes and testicles. Apparently, he was a real sadist.”
“Did he have a large force?”
“About thirty Serbs were under him, give or take a few. They’d pretty well terrorized that little town for the whole year.”
“So Akhan’s team wanted revenge?” I asked.
“There was probably some of that, but what Captain Akhan figured was that the Piluca station was a symbol. Knocking it off would show every Albanian Kosovar in our sector that the Liberation Army had balls and could actually accomplish something.”
“What do you mean by ‘knocking it off’?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“They’d take it over for an hour or two. Maybe take the Serb captain prisoner, and certainly take all the weapons.”
“Maybe? Did they or didn’t they intend to take him prisoner?”
“Okay, they did. Him and as many other Serbs as they could get.”
“And what did they plan to do with the
Serbs they took prisoner?”
“We didn’t ask.”
The funny thing is, he was looking me straight in the eye as he said that. Funnier still, he apparently expected me to believe it. This Captain Akhan was talking about taking prisoners, only prisoners are pretty damned inconvenient when you’re operating behind enemy lines, moving base camps every few days, and trying to save your ass from marauding Serb hunter-killer teams.
It seemed much more likely that Akhan and his crew planned to slaughter whatever Serbs they could get their hands on. And if I was right about that, then Sanchez and his team, in obliging that kind of thing, had already taken the first deadly step over that thin line that separates warfare from atrocity-even before Akhan’s company were killed.
“But what did you assume they were going to do with the prisoners?” I asked.
“I assumed the captain planned to turn ’em over to UN authority so they could be tried for crimes against humanity.”
“And how did he plan to do that, given that you were behind enemy lines, at least a two-day march from Macedonia, and the capturing of the Serb police surely was going to lead to a manhunt?”
“I just trusted they would,” he said very simply. “Captain Akhan wasn’t the type to commit murder.”
“Did you report the planned KLA attack to Tenth Group headquarters?”
“No.”
“And why didn’t you?”
“We didn’t have to. We had authority to approve Captain Akhan’s operations.”
“You had authority? I thought you were there in an advisory capacity.”
He never blinked. “That’s right. I misspoke.”
“You’re sure you misspoke?”
“Yes. It was just a slip of the tongue. The truth was, Captain Akhan had the authority to decide on the attack himself. It was what he wanted to do, and we had no right to stop him.”
“So what happened?” I asked, filing away that line of inquiry for later.
“Usually a few men stayed behind with us, maybe a few sick guys. Not this time, though. Everyone went. They left about two in the morning, figuring to hit the station at first light. Like I said, the Serb police were known for getting drunked up every night, so Captain Akhan figured they’d be sleeping it off. We don’t really know what happened after that. Maybe they were expected, or maybe it was just bad luck and the Serb police garrison got reinforced the day before. Anyway, they got down to Piluca, and the crap hit the fan.”
“Could there have been a security leak?”
He appeared thoughtful and scratched his jaw for a few moments, which I considered a bit of theatrics for my benefit, because he and the rest of the team must already have spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out why Akhan’s plan turned into a disaster.
Finally, he said, “Probably a pretty good chance that’s what happened. The Serbs ain’t stupid. We’ve suspected that they’ve been sending agents south to infiltrate the Kosovar camps and try to get into the KLA. Sometimes they’re holding a guy’s family and he’s got no choice but to work for ’em. We try to be careful when we recruit, but you gotta expect a few turncoats or spies to get through.”
“Were you in radio contact with Akhan’s company?”
“No.”
“Isn’t that unusual?”
“No. The SOP was to maintain radio silence.”
“Even if things went wrong?”
“Sure. Wasn’t like there was anything we could do about it. We weren’t there to fight.”
“So what happened?”
“What happened? Well, it went to shit, and they were all wiped out.”
“Every man?” I asked.
“A few of ’em were captured, then immediately executed.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Around ten or so, when they still weren’t back, we sent a recon team to check on ’em.”
“Who was in that team?”
“Perrite and Machusco. They snuck into the village and checked it out.”
“And how did the members of your team react to that news?”
“Shit happens. It’s war. Guys get killed.”
“Weren’t you disappointed?”
“Not enough to go out and kill a bunch of Serbs.”
“Did you feel a sense of personal loss?”
“Look, Captain Akhan and his company were pretty good guys. But we weren’t real close or any of that shit. We kept to ourselves; they kept to themselves.”
“Why was that?”
“Because we were different. Most of them didn’t speak any English, and only two of our guys speak Albanian. Also, Captain Akhan’s guys were real tight.”
“Tight how?”
“Most of ’em grew up together, or at least knew each other before. Also, the captain did a pretty good job of keepin’ ’em together.”
Lots of folks give off clues they don’t mean to. Persico was making what I regarded to be a very enlightening mistake. Warrant officers are notoriously disrespectful. They’re bred that way. They occupy an awkward position in the Army, caught in a netherworld between the enlisted ranks and the officer ranks, accepted by neither. Like porcupines grow spines, they respond with a slouchy grouchiness toward any but their own kind. Persico’s constant referrals to Akhan as Captain Akhan was a sign of respect, if not outright reverence. I didn’t buy the breezy indifference.
“How was your relationship with Captain Sanchez?” I asked, changing tracks.
“Great.”
“Was he a good team leader?”
“Yeah, fantastic.”
“Could you please describe what you did for him?”
“I was his deputy. I was responsible for the training and professional competence of the team. He led, and I made sure the men who followed knew their jobs.”
“Did you share operational responsibilities?”
He gave me a withering look, as though that were a particularly dumb question. Which I suppose it was. “The Army don’t believe in sharing responsibilities. He was in charge, and I followed.”
“Was there any friction between you?”
“None. We got along real well.”
“How did he perform his duties while your team was in Kosovo?”
“Great. What are you angling at?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to figure out how an A-team works, how you two functioned together.”
“Look, Major, I’ve known Sanchez two and a half years. We ain’t drinking buddies, but we get along. As I said, I liked the way he ran the team.”
“Could you please describe the events on the day of the seventeenth when you believed your team had been discovered by the Serbs?”
“Okay, sure. We were in our base camp, and Sergeants Perrite and Machusco were pulling perimeter security. Perrite came running back from his outpost and reported that he and Machusco had seen some Serbs up on a hilltop observing us. Then-”
“Did anybody else verify that?”
“Nope. Nobody needed to. Perrite and Machusco ain’t rookies.”
“How many Serbs did they spot?”
“A few. He said they didn’t get a real good look at ’em, but there was a few.”
“So what did you do?”
“Sanchez gave the order for everyone to get their gear together and book.”
“Did you have a planned E amp;E plan?”
“Of course. We’d built one the day before that called for us to move almost straight south.”
“Is that what you did?”
“For a while. Perrite was in trail and was laying trip flares every mile or so, and a few of ’em went off, so Sanchez decided to deviate.”
“How many went off?”
“I dunno. Maybe two, maybe three.”
“How far away were the Serbs when they went off?”
“I’d guess about two miles.”
“The same distance each time?”
“About.”
“Where were you in the column?”<
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“The middle. We’ve got a movement SOP. Perrite and Machusco handle rear security, Sanchez handles the map and compass stuff, while I make sure the team’s following good procedures.”
“If you were in the middle, then I assume you and Captain Sanchez weren’t discussing his decisions?”
“Not all the time, but we talked once or twice.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We talked when we knew the Serbs was following us. I recommended we change course to a zigzag and start moving eastward, since I figured the Serbs would deduce that we’d move south, straight for the Macedonian border.”
“And when was the next time?”
“That night. We took a halt, about midnight, and formed a perimeter. We could hear convoys and see dust columns all day, so we figured the Serbs were trying to box us in. We knew we had to do something. We decided the best idea was to hit the Serbs with an ambush to make ’em slow down.”
“Whose idea was that?”
He paused for a moment and I could see he wasn’t prepared for that question. Then he said, “Might’ve been mine. Or maybe Machusco or Perrite. We all thought it was a pretty good idea, though.”
“So it wasn’t Captain Sanchez’s idea.”
“No, but he bought into it right away. Why not? Wasn’t like we had another option.”
“Where were you positioned at the ambush site?”
“The middle.”
“Did the Serbs return fire?”
“At first, no. The lead vehicle blew and they were in shock. They were unloading out the back of the trucks and running around like a buncha ants, scrambling for cover behind their vehicles. Then we blew the chain of claymores, and that set ’em back a bit, too. Took ’em two to three minutes before someone on the ground got ’em organized and they began returning fire.”
“Describe the fire. Was it heavy or light?”
He sort of smiled at that question. “From my experience, anytime more than one person’s shooting at you feels like heavy fire.”