Secret sanction sd-1

by Brian Haig

  Imelda glanced up and smacked her lips a few times in anticipation. “Well, well,” she loudly declared, “if it isn’t the yuppie lawyers. Hmmph! You’ve been here two days-three lawyers-and all you’ve got is ten hours of tape. What the hell have you been doin’? Drinkin’ and screwin’ off?”

  Morrow shot me a fast, sheepish look, since Imelda obviously had half her story. Too bad about that other half, I thought to myself. Delbert drew himself upright, and a pained expression popped onto his face.

  “Look,” he said, bleeding wounded dignity all over the floor, “we’ve been working around the clock. You don’t just walk into interrogatories without preparation. Since you aren’t an attorney, I wouldn’t expect you to know this, but every hour of questions takes at least three hours of preparation.”

  Imelda slid her gold-rimmed glasses down to the tip of her short nose, and had I been more merciful, I would’ve found a way to warn Delbert that this apparently innocuous gesture was akin to a gunslinger unclipping his holster. She lowered her head and peered long and hard at Delbert. I edged away from him, because I sure as hell didn’t want to get hit by any stray shots.

  “Okay, smarty pants, are you gonna try to tell me you spent twenty hours preparing to ask a few questions? What kind of fool do you take me for?”

  “I did,” Delbert staunchly insisted. “And although I certainly don’t have to prove anything to you, I can show you the notes I made to prove it.”

  She gave him this careful examining look. “Notes?”

  “Yes. That’s right. I always make notes.”

  “What’s it say in those notes?”

  “I list questions I intend to ask. I draw pert charts… uh, flow diagrams, if you will, of the directions the interrogatory might take, and how I should respond.”

  “I know what a damned pert chart is, fancy pants. You actually read those notes when you’re interrogating?”

  “Sure. That’s the whole point. That’s how I stay ahead of the man I’m interrogating.”

  A huge guffaw exploded from Imelda’s throat, and she wiggled around in her seat and nodded at her two assistants, both of whom chuckled a few times as well.

  “What’s so funny?” Delbert demanded.

  Imelda shook her head. “Damn, I should have guessed.”

  “Guessed what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me,” Delbert beseeched.

  “That’s why your tapes sounded that way.”

  “Sounded what way? What’s wrong with my tapes?”

  Imelda just kept shaking her head in disbelief. Poor Delbert was nervously wringing his hands. Finally he looked over at me.

  I shrugged. “Sorry, Delbert, I haven’t listened to your tapes. I haven’t got a clue what you screwed up.”

  He spun back to Imelda. “Did I do something wrong in my interrogatories?”

  She kept shaking her head. “Notes. I should have guessed. No damn wonder,” was all she said.

  Delbert stormed over to the table where his tapes were neatly stacked, grabbed them, and stomped from the room. As soon as he was gone, Imelda cackled a few times, then got up and rejoined her girls, both of whom were quaking with repressed giggles. Morrow and I walked out right after Delbert.

  Morrow looked at me in complete confusion. “What the hell was that about?” she asked.

  “What? That?” I asked, trying to pretend innocence.

  “Tell me. Did Delbert do something wrong?”

  “Why? Don’t tell me you prepare notes, too?”

  “Of course I do. Is something wrong with that?”

  I smirked, but said as sincerely as I could, “No. Nothing. Really. It’s a very admirable trait.”

  “Then what was that about?”

  “It’s Imelda’s law. She opens every reunion by gnawing your ass for not working hard enough. It only lasts a few seconds, and it’s harmless. The approved response is to wince slightly, nod humbly, and swear to do better. The cardinal sin is to argue, or try to justify.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “What do you think Delbert’s going to do with those tapes?”

  “Figure out what he did wrong.”

  “Yep. He’s going to stay up all night, listening over and over to those tapes. By morning, he will have dissected his own performance to pieces. He’s going to be a nervous wreck. He’ll be wondering about every question he asked. His confidence will be shot.”

  She didn’t believe me. “Imelda’s not that devious, and he’s not that stupid.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I lied. Imelda was beyond devious. The woman could give Machiavelli lessons. What I was interested to see was whether Morrow was going to inform Delbert that Imelda had only been screwing with him.

  The three of us got back together at seven and spent three hours reviewing what we’d heard, as well as what we’d learned, which, from my viewpoint anyway, wasn’t anywhere near the same thing as what we’d heard.

  Delbert and Morrow’s session with Sergeant Machusco apparently went a lot like my session with Perrite, which is to say that Machusco also proved to be about as charming as a rattlesnake in heat. Morrow described him as a sinister-looking Italian boy from south Brooklyn who, if he wasn’t in the Army, would probably have been back on the streets of New York knocking off hits for the mob. And doing really well at it, too.

  A-teams, like most Army units, start with a raw mixture of men who eventually organize themselves into an operating entity. Those men with average talents tend to be made into common riflemen whose sole responsibility is to shuffle along with the flow and act when told. Most freeze with fear the moment the bullets start flying. They contribute nothing to the battle. That’s why, in the old days of Napoleon and Frederick the Great, they used to post all these big, gnarly sergeants in the rear ranks, where their job was to put a musket ball into the back of any man who failed to methodically load and fire his weapon in the face of withering enemy fire. Today’s average soldier knows there’s no bloodthirsty, implacable sergeant in the rear ranks. He also knows somewhere deep inside that he is average, and he isn’t about to risk everything to prove that he is anything more than that.

  The most deadly men, the ones who are able to kill with reflexive skill, who are natural woodsmen, who can think on their feet in the most taxing circumstances, usually are the ones made responsible for those special functions upon which the survival of the unit depends. That was Machusco and Perrite.

  “They’re scary,” Delbert said.

  I nodded. “Every army, from the beginning of time, has attracted men like them. It’s a good thing, too. If there wasn’t an army for them to join, they’d be out on the streets looking for blood. This way, at least, they kill for the good of the country and for their comrades in arms.”

  “How reassuring,” Delbert said with a really irritating, priggish twang.

  “Actually, it is,” I told him. “That Desert Storm image of all those nice little knights in shining armor always was pure horsecrap. Nearly all the best soldiers out there, if you scratched the surface, they all had a little bit of psychopath hidden somewhere in there. With some of them, you didn’t have to scratch the surface real deep. A completely sane and balanced man is a fish out of water on a battlefield.”

  Morrow coughed a few times, which was her subtle way of intimating that it was late, and all this philosophical talk was great, but did it really have anything to do with completing this investigation? Women hate it when men talk about cars and broads and war.

  “Did any of us hear anything today that contradicted their main defense?” she asked, trying to steer us back on course.

  “I didn’t,” Delbert said.

  “That depends,” I replied. “They’re all vomiting out the same general concept, but they’re walking all over each other on the details.”

  Delbert gave me a speculative look. “Maybe, but I sure wouldn’t want to try to prosecute them.”

  “No?” I asked.
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br />   He began ticking down fingers. “One, they have a splendid justification for what they did. Two, they were the only witnesses. Three, as you admitted, they’re all telling the same story. Four, and most ominously, it’s an incredibly believable story.”

  I said, “Then you think they’ve got a good defense?”

  Delbert nodded, while Morrow said, “No, Major, not a good defense. They’ve got a great defense.”

  “Aha, haven’t you overlooked one inconvenient little fact? What about those little holes in the heads of the Serbs?”

  Morrow said, “Maybe Persico was right. Maybe the Serbs did it themselves to fabricate an atrocity.”

  “Then why haven’t the Serbs blown the whistle on it?” I asked.

  Delbert quickly said, “I don’t know. Maybe they’re just waiting to see what we do. Maybe they’re keeping that revelation in reserve, just in case we conclude that Sanchez’s ambush was justified.”

  “Like blackmail?” I asked.

  “Sure. It’s brilliant, if you think about it. We recommend against charging Sanchez’s team, then the Serbs convene another big press conference. They hand out the close-ups of the holes in the head and announce what our troops did to their people. We’d be stuck looking like we tried to cover it up. Better yet, the Serbs now know that we know. That’s probably why Milosevic was so willing to let us visit the morgue.”

  “So you think that’s it? A setup?” I asked.

  Delbert stood up and began pacing, a very distracting habit that seems to be common among lawyers. For some reason, many can barely utter a word unless they’re on their feet. It’s like the blood has to rush out of their brain before their lips can move.

  “Who knows?” he said, gesturing with his arms as though this were a courtroom. “Maybe they were polished off by a roving band of Albanians who heard the shots and made it to the ambush site before the Serbs. The corpses were shot with M16s. The Kosovars are armed with U.S. weapons.”

  “I suppose that’s another possibility,” I admitted.

  “The problem is that all the possibilities are just conjecture. The most critical fact is that Sanchez and his team are the only surviving witnesses.”

  “And the inconsistencies don’t bother you?” I asked.

  “You mean that flare thing you keep bringing up?”

  “Yeah. How about that flare thing?”

  “To be perfectly honest, I don’t understand why you keep focusing on it. I don’t wish to be offensive, but I think it’s asinine. First of all, it’s completely irrelevant. Second, under similar circumstances, I doubt I could recall how many flares were set, and how many went off. I think those men were scared witless, running for their lives, physically and mentally exhausted, and in the midst of everything else, nobody was keeping a running diary of how many flares went off.”

  “He’s right,” Morrow said. “Any experienced defense attorney would turn you into hamburger if you tried to bring that up in a courtroom.”

  “You don’t think it impugns their integrity?”

  “No, I think Delbert’s right. I think we can keep probing at little details, and we’ll find all kinds of tiny incongruencies, but it has to be something that’s tangible, something germane. On every important thing that happened out there, they’re in total agreement. And they are the only living witnesses. You can’t prosecute without witnesses.”

  “So you believe they’re innocent?” I asked them.

  Delbert said, “I believe we have to strongly consider that possibility. I’ve seen nothing that indicates otherwise.”

  I looked at Morrow.

  “Let’s just say I’m a lot less convinced they murdered those men than I was two days ago, before I heard their side. Don’t tell me you aren’t, too.”

  I looked from her to Delbert. They expected me to say I thought the men were guilty as hell. So far I had not agreed with either of them on anything and, judging by their peevish expressions, they weren’t anticipating a precedent.

  “What I believe is that every man I’ve talked to so far has lied to me. Some in small ways, others in large ways. Men lie for a reason. They had a week together to cook up a common defense. Hell, maybe they cooked it up while they were still out there and just improved on it in detention. Something doesn’t smell right.”

  “You can’t convict a man on smell,” Delbert said.

  “Well, yeah, actually you can,” I said, vaguely recalling the case of a notorious rapist who wore a mask, and although none of his victims was able to visually identify him, the fact that he had earned the nom de guerre of “Stinky” proved enough to undo him.

  I stared at Delbert. “Have you ever had a near-death experience? Maybe when you were driving and someone ran a red light and nearly plowed into you?”

  “Sure, everybody has.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It happened a few years ago. I was driving down 95 to Florida when a semi crossed lanes and came at me head-on.”

  “Day or night?”

  “Daytime.”

  “Did you honk your horn?”

  “It happened too fast. There wasn’t time.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I swerved hard to the right and went off the road.”

  “Did you hit another car?”

  “No. There was no other traffic.”

  “Did you hit any trees?”

  “I almost did, but I steered hard to the left and avoided them.”

  “What kind of trees?”

  “Scrub pine.”

  “What color was the semi?”

  “Red.”

  “You remember all that clearly? There’s still a clear picture in your mind?”

  “Yes, but I don’t agree with the point you’re trying to make.”

  “That’s because you haven’t been in combat. Your senses become razor-sharp. Why do you think all those old World War Two veterans can still sit around telling fifty-year-old war stories and recall every detail vividly, like it happened only yesterday, when most of them couldn’t remember a single word their wife said at breakfast that morning?”

  Delbert said, “Nobody listens to their wives at breakfast. Besides, I’d love to get nine of those veterans on a witness stand and see how well their creaking, antiquated memories really correspond.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I told him. “I can recall almost every waking hour that I was in combat. The exhaustion, strain, and fear don’t dull your senses. Your brain has to work in overdrive just to function. You don’t forget things like how many flares went off or who told you the Serbs were following you, or how many Serbs were on the hillside looking down on your position. It’s like Sam Peckinpah has taken hold of your mental faculties.”

  Delbert said, “I’ll take your word for it. But I also know that nine sets of eyes, collecting images from nine different perspectives, then shoving them across nine different sets of synapses and neurons, are apt to process things a bit differently. Any experienced attorney or investigator knows that.”

  “What about the fact that Sanchez never reported the situation they were in, nor did he report the ambush, even after they’d extricated?”

  “I don’t know,” Delbert said. “It’s an intriguing question. Maybe he was worried about the repercussions. He’s been passed over for major once. This year is his last chance. He’s got a wife, two kids, and a file that’s borderline. He’d be dead in the water if someone decided they didn’t like how he got his team out of there.”

  Morrow, who had been idly watching us argue, tapped her pencil on the table a few times to get our attention. She was going to make a fine judge someday.

  She stared at me. “I watched you with Sanchez. I thought you were bullying him.”

  “So you thought my interrogation technique was flawed?”

  “It was flawed. You browbeat him into making inaccurate statements. I haven’t listened to the tapes, but maybe you did that with the others as well.”

  “Come on, Morrow
, these are battle-hardened veterans.”

  “And this is the Army, and you’ve got those big, shiny, gold major’s leaves pinned to your collar. Most of them are noncoms, and now you’re wondering why they lied about how many flares went off.”

  “You think I badgered them?”

  She gave me an exasperated look. “I think you’re predisposed. That’s the way you come off. You made them nervous. I’m not saying they’re innocent; I’m saying your approach was flawed.”

  “She’s right,” Delbert said.

  I could’ve defended myself, but the truth is, they were right. I was predisposed. I believed in my bones that Sanchez and his men were lying. And if you could call dubious looks, eye-rolling, verbal baiting, and finger-pointing a bullying technique, then I was guilty. I’d used the authority of my rank and the odor of my official position to coerce them into answering my questions. I could see where Delbert and Morrow thought that I’d instigated the very inconsistencies, mistruths, and fabrications I was now complaining about.

  These were seriously frightened men. On a battlefield, you have about a millisecond to decide whether you want to be a hero or a coward. More often than not, you don’t even decide, you just leap toward your fate.

  Most of these men were as courageous as lions on a battlefield, but this was not a battlefield. Here they had time to weigh the repercussions and decide a course. And, in an odd sort of way, what could come out of this investigation was far worse than losing a leg or an arm, or even their lives. These men accepted the prospect of becoming maimed or even dead; they did not accept the loss of their honor. They had families and careers and reputations. They were facing humiliation and imprisonment. They were facing everlasting shame upon themselves, their Army, and their country.

  I understood all that. I understood it before I ever asked my first question.

  I smiled warmly at Delbert and Morrow, just to show them that I could take their criticism without any hard feelings. In my most penitent tone I told them, “You’re right-both of you-and I’ll try to do better next time.”

  It was a lie, of course. Something was seriously wrong with the story Sanchez and his men were telling. I’d break all their legs and arms if that was what it took to get to the bottom of it.