Secret Sanction (10 page)

Marie then walked us back outside the medical compound, said she had to return to her duties, and profusely thanked us for coming. My mouth almost dropped when she thanked us.

We all piled back into the humvee, and Willis asked, “Anything more you’d like to see?”

The three of us looked at one another, and we all kind of blushed, since none of us felt all that proud of ourselves at that very moment. Willis seemed to sense that and told the driver to take us back to the compound.

“You said you get used to this,” Morrow said to Willis.“How long does that take?”

“Forever,” he said with a very wooden smile.

“She’s a very impressive woman, isn’t she?” Morrow asked, watching Marie’s back retreating down the dusty street.

Willis said, “I worked with her in Mogadishu and Bosnia. She’s been doin’ this twenty years. You’d think that someday she’d just go home and put a shotgun to her head.”

“She must feel proud about all the lives she’s saving,” Morrow replied.

“Not actually. When you get flooded with refugees like this, all you can do is triage. You know, separate the ones you can save from the ones you can’t. The ones you end up thinking about are the ones you toss on a trash heap, like that old man.”

Sometimes you meet someone who just makes you feel really tiny and selfish, and Marie was one of those people. I also have to admit that after seeing that little girl and that old man, I wasn’t feeling real sympathetic to the Serbs right at that moment. The whole flight back to Tuzla the three of us hardly said a word.

Chapter 8

I
melda and her assistants waltzed in carrying trays of eggs, bacon, and shit-on-a-shingle. Again, she looked primed for battle, her little body tensed and coiled, her eyes expectantly awaiting a challenge from Delbert or Morrow or both. Neither said a word. They exchanged brittle looks, then picked up their knives and forks and immediately began eating off the trays, listless and indifferent. Imelda watched them through narrowed, distrustful eyes, just sure this was some kind of slick new tactic cooked up by the pair. She didn’t get it. After an afternoon at Camp Alpha, even the most chauvinistic health nut knew it would be cosmically wrong to complain about a little too much cholesterol.

When the English first came to Ireland, they built this real deep trench around the castle in Dublin where they established their rule. That trench was called the Pale. The Irish, back then, were a real wild and barbaric people, and the English, who always were known to be pretty snobbish and condescending, used to sit inside that castle and describe the unruly, irascible ways of the Irish as being “Beyond the Pale.” Well, we’d just gotten a long, hard glimpse of things that went way beyond the pale.

I had lain awake nearly the whole night, unable to sleep while an old man was dying from the wounds of a brutally senseless beating and a little girl with cold eyes was reliving nightmares inside her head and dying in her own silent, tortured way. From the dark circles under Delbert’s and Morrow’s bleary eyes, I guessed they’d had the same nocturnal visitors.

Imelda finally mumbled some unintelligible curse, which I knew from experience was sort of her version of a victory grunt, then stomped out of the room, headed off, I was sure, to terrorize somebody, somewhere. She just had a biological need to start every day by dancing on somebody’s forehead.

Delbert, Morrow, and I at least now had some kind of moral compass to begin this investigation. Murder, in a situation like this, wasn’t likely to be the result of an evil or reckless impulse. Back in America there were lots of folks who murdered just to see what it felt like, or as revenge for a nasty childhood, or because of some dark vision they saw on TV or read on the Internet or heard in the lyrics of a rap song. But when nine American soldiers did a heinous deed in a place such as this, their motives were likely to be grounded in far sturdier stuff. We still had no precise idea what those motives were, but now we at least knew something about the environment in which they were concocted.

“I think it’s time to take a trip to Italy to visit our prisoners. I think we’re ready to start interrogating the suspects,” I announced.

Morrow’s beautiful eyes got crinkly at the corners.“How do you want to approach it?”

“I haven’t really made up my mind,” I admitted in a rare burst of uncertainty.

Delbert perked up for the first time since I’d met him, apparently sparked by my rare lack of resolve.

“I’d start with the three senior guys first,” he boldly suggested.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because it seems likely the leaders of the team made the decisions.”

“Would they be most likely to spill their guts, though?”

“I think there’s only one way to find out,” Delbert said. “He’s right,” Morrow chimed in. “The big point in question is motive. We’ll only get that from the leaders.”

This was too much for me to resist. I said, “That would be a huge mistake.”

There was a sigh from Morrow. “I thought you didn’t have a plan.”

“I changed my mind. I do. I thought we’d jointly interrogate Sanchez, then split up.”

“Okay,” Delbert said, seemingly resigned to the fact that nearly anything he suggested was destined to be spurned.

“And do you have some line of questioning in mind?” Morrow asked, wisely trying to avoid stepping into another trap.

“Actually, I do. I don’t think it’s time to go for the jugular yet.What I’d like to accomplish in this round is just to hear their version of what happened.”

The ever-efficient Imelda had arranged our flight the day before. A fresh C-130 was at the airstrip, this one packed to the gills with boisterous soldiers and airmen waiting to go to Italy for a little R&R. When the three of us walked in, the back of the plane suddenly grew very still and quiet. We found seats together and, excepting a lot of sullen and acrimonious glances, were ignored the entire flight.

Mercifully, the flight was brief. It took only an hour and a half before we found ourselves at a modern, perfectly flat airfield located in northern Italy. Imelda had also lined up a military sedan, and the driver was waiting for us at the flight building. We weren’t hard to pick out. We were the only folks who marched off that plane wearing barely worn, hardly faded, stiffly starched battle dress. That’s the thing about lawyers. Even when we try to blend in, we stick out like sore thumbs.

We drove for about ten minutes and went straight to a small three-floor hotel located on a hilltop that gave us a stunning view of long, stretched-out plains that were dotted every now and again by tiny hills with castles or palaces mounted atop nearly every one. This being Italy, it was a wildly romantic setting. Aviano Air Base, where our suspects were being held, was three miles away.

Delbert and Morrow immediately broke out their running togs and loped off down the road. Now that we were back in civilization, they meant to make immediate amends for all the carbohydrates and cholesterol they’d sucked down as a result of Imelda. I put on a bathing suit and went to sit beside the pool. This was the kind of place where I normally did my best thinking. It helped that several Italian women were lounging around in some of those half-an-ounce-of-cloth, let-the-cheeks-hang-out bikinis, which for me had a certain restorative effect.

I had closely studied the file of Captain Terry Sanchez, the team leader, and was actually curious to meet him. What I had learned was that his mother and father were Cuban immigrants, part of the vast tidal wave who fled from Fidel Castro and settled in the lush cities of southern Florida. I was only guessing, but most sons of that wave were raised to be intensely patriotic, to have an almost surreal hatred of Fidel, and to try to lead their lives according to the macho mores of the Latin world. I hate to stereotype, but stereotypes have their use, especially those of the cultural variety.

Sanchez was thirty-two years old and a graduate of Florida State University. He had earned his way through on an ROTC scholarship. His file contained an official photo, which showed him standing rigidly at attention in dress greens with a perfectly blank expression—the expected look of all military file photos, because the Army takes a dim view of smiley faces. He was medium height, medium weight, with dark hair, and eyes that struck me as sorrowful.

His commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smothers, had described Sanchez as an outstanding officer. But like the rest of the performance reports in Sanchez’s packet, the two signed by Smothers put Sanchez squarely in the middle of the pack. So much for open disclosure.

After I’d been sitting beside the pool for an hour, I saw two bodies steaming up the road, their arms flailing wildly and their legs kicking up and down with great fury. Morrow was in the lead, and the closer they got, the more wildly Delbert’s arms fluttered and whipped, as though he could pull himself through the air to catch up with her. Like I said, these two were very competitive creatures, and both were heaving like draft horses by the time they finally made it to my lounge chair beside the pool. Morrow had on a pair of those skin-hugging nylon runner’s pants, and I have to be honest, she fit into them like they were meant to be fit into. If I were Delbert, I would’ve stayed right behind her the whole way, simply because the view was majestic. But that was me. Delbert was too pure for that kind of stuff.

“Have a nice run?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Morrow heaved out. “Jus’”—puff, puff, puff—“great.” Delbert was bent over beside her and looked about ready to spill his guts.

“How about you, Delbert?” I asked.

“Nah”—puff, puff, puff—“I . . . uh”—puff, puff.

“You what?”

“Torn hamstring”—puff, puff.

“Ah, I see. A torn hamstring, huh? Could that be why Morrow beat you?” I said, saving him the trouble of having to spell it out, which it didn’t seem he was going to be able to do for the next few minutes.

Puff, puff—“uh-huh.”

Morrow made no reply, only straightened up and made a very exerted effort to get her breathing under instant control. This took her only about six or seven seconds, and then she was standing there perfectly erect and composed. I guess she figured that if Delbert wasn’t going to accord her a legitimate victory in the race, the least she could do was win the post-run-regain-the-composure contest.

I checked my watch.“We’ve got about thirty minutes before we’re supposed to meet our first suspect.”

The two of them headed upstairs to their rooms, while I loitered beside the pool for another fifteen minutes before I went upstairs to climb back into my uniform.

The Air Force detention center at the air base put the Army to shame. It was damned close to being a luxury hotel, with cable TVs in the cells, separate showers and toilets, and a nice, modern eating hall. I’d seen Army barracks housing innocent soldiers that looked like rickety slums compared to this.

The warden, a chubby Air Force major, met with us before we were permitted to interview his prisoners. He seemed like a nice, amiable fellow and had a double chin that vibrated as he talked. He had lots of kind things to say about Sanchez’s A-team. They had been model prisoners, very polite, very soldierly, very well behaved.

I told him I was sure he had kept the team separated since their detention. He said something real evasive and instantly tried to change the subject, so I got real close to his face and asked him.“These prisoners have been quarantined from one another, haven’t they?” He said no, that the team members were allowed to exercise together, and that three hours a day they were allowed to commingle in the common room. I asked him what idiot had allowed them to commingle. He blushed deeply and said that privilege had been specifically authorized by the Tenth Group commander, General Murphy.

Sanchez’s team was being investigated for conspiracy, among other charges, and any penologist would know that standard procedure called for co-conspirators to be kept strictly separate, so they can’t connive on their alibis. The Air Force major knew a very serious taboo had been violated, and after his blush gained a few shades of darkness, he asked me if I wanted to see a copy of the authorization order from General Murphy. This was his way of covering his ass and staying out of deep doo-doo. I said that I sure as hell did, that I wanted the original, that it had better be waiting for me when I was done, and that I was hereby countermanding the order.

What I really wanted to do was kick the crap out of this chubby little Air Force major, who had just given Sanchez and his team an extra week to mature a common alibi, and thereby made my job about a hundred times harder.

We were then led to a room where we were asked to wait. About three minutes later, Captain Terry Sanchez was led in. He wore battle dress, without manacles or restraints. The Air Force sergeant who led him in then discreetly disappeared.

Sanchez stood frozen beside the doorway as though his feet had sunk into the concrete floor. He studied us like we were lions who had come to devour him. He looked thinner than he had in his photo, and his eyes were harder, less sorrowful, almost tight. Being accused of mass murder can have that effect.

“Captain Sanchez, I’m Sean Drummond, chief of the investigating team, and these are the other two members, James Delbert and Lisa Morrow. Please have a seat,” I said, indicating for him to sit across the table from us.

He walked wordlessly across the floor and fell into the chair. “This is just a preliminary interview,” I said.“We’ve been told you waived the right to have counsel present. Is that correct?”

“That’s right,” he answered, and his voice broke a little. “How’s your family doing?” I asked, trying to help him relax. “They’re fine.”

“You getting to talk to them regularly?”

“Often enough.”

“How are you being treated?”

“They’re treating me fine, Major. Why don’t you cut the crap and get to your questions.”

There was no anger on his face, but he was tightly wound up, like a man being led to the scaffold who just couldn’t bring himself to exchange pleasantries with the crowd.

I smiled back nicely. “Okay, we’ll get right down to business.” “Good.”