Secret Sanction (37 page)

That’s about the point where I stopped paying attention. Suddenly there was this sharp pang in my left rib cage, and my face felt like it was on fire. Blood was running down my forehead and out of my nose and mouth. When you’re twenty-two, you can take a beating like the one he just inflicted on me and end up feeling no worse than you would if you’d just been hit by a speeding car.When you’re thirty-nine, you feel like a steam-roller just mashed you into the road. I slumped down on the floor and lapsed into a remarkably deep trench of self-pity.

Martie and Wolky walked in while the MPs were slapping metal cuffs on Sergeant Major Williams. They looked around my office and saw a fair amount of blood dripping down the walls where Williams had used me like a basketball, and puddling on the floor, where Williams and I had both given liberally of our precious liquids. They both were smiling, though.

The confession I’d extracted from Williams might or might not be admissible as evidence. I am an officer of the court, and I hadn’t read him his rights. A real slick defense attorney might be able to construct a plausible argument that I’d illegally entrapped Williams. If it were me, that’s how I’d handle the defense. Williams, however, had assaulted me with the stated intent of murdering me. That much was admissible. I’m a commissioned officer and the Uniform Code of Military Justice takes a dim view of enlisted men trying to murder officers. It also lists another twenty or so different offenses that could be thrown at him, from assault to a few odd zingers like disrespect by apportment, which translates literally as me, a senior officer, saying he had looked at me in a way I didn’t like very much. There really is such an offense. No kidding.

Plus, now that Williams had been apprehended, there was time to search for more evidence to support the charge of murdering Jeremy Berkowitz. Not to mention the flurry of charges related to the church burnings. As it was, the additional charges I’d just earned for Williams offered any able prosecutor a lot of material to trade for a full confession.

That’s why Wolky and Martie were smiling. I got my fanny whupped pretty good to break their case. All they’d had to do was sit back in the building across the street, sipping their coffee and listening to the sounds of me crashing into walls.

Chapter 27

T
he doctor spent two hours inspecting and repairing the carnage Williams had administered to my body. There were two fractured ribs, not one. And I now sported eighteen stitches, about evenly divided between three different gashes. Williams was being treated in the next room, and the doc jovially told me they had to use a sewing machine on him. I guess he was trying to cheer me up. You know, like one of those “you should see the other guy” things. I didn’t need to be perked up, though. My mood actually was fairly frisky.

While the doctor taped and sewed and X-rayed to his heart’s content, I spent the entire time thinking about how I was going to handle Tretorne, Murphy, and Clapper. These guys were what my grandfather would call Slippery Dicks. Nothing to do with Richard Nixon, I don’t think, because my father and my grandfather both thought Nixon was the second coming. I guessed a Slippery Dick was something like a Pudley, only slimier.

Anyway, I couldn’t afford to underestimate them again. They weren’t as dangerous as I had thought, since they hadn’t murdered Berkowitz. But framing and blackmail and obstructing justice weren’t likely to get them on anybody’s list for sainthood, either. Also, Tretorne had warned me I wasn’t going to get a second chance. He didn’t strike me as the type who wasted idle threats.

The first thing I did when the doc released me was make a call back to that little base in Arlington, Virginia. I talked to that special judge they had there. I explained everything we had on Williams and told him we needed a team dispatched to collect our prisoner. He said they’d have someone here within ten hours. They had this real nifty jet that had been seized by the DEA from a Florida drug lord and subsequently got turned over to the Department of Defense.Then, through a little sleight of hand, the jet disappeared off the inventory and ended up belonging to my secret justice unit.

Then I made sure Williams was locked away in his own cell. He had to walk on crutches because his testicles had swollen up nearly as large as billiard balls. He actually looked pretty funny, with his legs splayed apart, trying to walk without his big thighs rubbing against his groin. One thing was for damn sure. He wasn’t going to run away.

I made sure the guards at the facility knew they were not allowed to even enter his cellblock. I even made them all wear earplugs, on the grounds that it never hurts to be too safe.

Then I went to Imelda’s tent, instructed her on what we were going to do, and we walked together back to our office building. It took nearly three hours before we were done making our preparations.

I left her there and took a walk over to the NSA facility. I went through that same old routine of showing the guards my orders, ringing the buzzer, and staring into the camera. Miss Smith opened the door and greeted me again. I was too sore and swollen to engage in my normal, charmingly obnoxious banter.

She studied the bandages on my head, my black eye, my swollen lips, and the various other bruises and abrasions I’d managed to collect. She didn’t look sympathetic. In fact, she smiled. Not that old wooden smile, either. The real thing.

“I need to see Tretorne,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, trying to appear clueless. “I don’t know anyone named Tretorne. Are you sure you don’t want Mr. Jones?”

“Look lady, I want to see your boss, Jack Tretorne, or Jack of Serbia or Clyde Smothersmith-Blakely, or whatever stupid alias he’s going by today. By the way, I don’t like your alias, either.”

She spun around and did this huffy heel-stomping thing as she led me back through the facility, then down the stairs. I was in a fairly ornery mood myself. With a dash of petulance, she sliced her card through the slot at the conference room door, then nearly shoved me into the room. Tretorne and General Murphy were seated together, with a bunch of papers tossed around the table.

Miss Smith’s voice came out prudish and high-pitched. “Excuse me, Mr. Jones, General. I’m sorry to bother you. This officer is insisting on meeting with someone named Jack Tretorne. I told him there was no such man here.”

She must’ve thought she was putting me in my place, because a general was here and that was supposed to make me get real shy and timid. Tretorne gave her a swift sideways nod, like get lost. She smirked as she roiled past me, and I became instantly worried for any nation that had people like her in their CIAs.

Tretorne, I noticed, wasn’t wearing his duck-murdering vest. In fact, he looked quite natty in a perfectly tailored dark blue serge suit and a stiffly starched white shirt with French cuffs. A pair of big presidential cuff links were poking out of his sleeves, where they were meant to show.Well,I wasn’t impressed. Well, actually, I was, but I didn’t let on.

I said, “You’re together. Great. Saves me another trip.” Murphy said, “What do you want, Major?”

There’s a way of enunciating a man’s rank that’s supposed to remind him of his place. The trick is, you put all the emphasis on that first syllable and depress the rest. Like “What do you want,
Ma
jor?” It’s taught in Lesson 101 at West Point, and Murphy had been a good student.

Only problem was, I was past caring. I felt unfettered and seditious. I said, “A little wrinkle has developed in your plan, guys. CID just arrested Berkowitz’s real killer.”

Tretorne did not look happy to hear this. He toyed with one of those cuff links that had that presidential seal on it, then looked up.“It’s irrelevant, Drummond.You gave your word. There were no conditions.”

“You’re right,” I said, “no conditions. Just like when I took my oath to become an officer. No conditions then, either. Or when I took my oath to become an officer of the court. No conditions that time, either. That’s two unconditional oaths to one. You lose.”

Tretorne said, “Don’t do this, Drummond. Force my hand, and I’ll just come up with something else. You can’t win.”

I’d been waiting for him to say this. I’d rehearsed all kinds of great lines to throw back at him, but in the end I decided on a childhood classic.

“Up yours,” I said. “You throw your best shot, and I’ll throw mine. I only came by to tell you that I’m throwing mine now. I’ve just written a long statement that exposes everything. Both of you are mentioned prominently. So is Clapper. So is General Foster. If I don’t make a call in forty minutes, that statement will be in the hands of the
Herald,
the
Post,
the
Times,
and
Newsweek.
Even your fancy NSA technology can’t stop it now.”

Tretorne shook his head.“You have no idea what you’re doing, how serious this is, what’s at stake.”

“But I do,” I assured him. “You and your big buddy here are out on a limb that’s breaking. You’re assassinating Serbs and it don’t get much more serious than that.”

The two of them looked at each other in shock. Murphy was so choked with surprise that he did not even reprimand me for calling him Tretorne’s big buddy. West Point would frown on him for letting that one slip by.

“Sit down. Please,” Tretorne said.

It was couched more like an invitation than a demand. Well, what the hell, I thought; at least he asked nice. That was my first sign that I was finally winning. I tried my damnedest not to smile.

He waited till I was seated and comfortable, then asked, “What do you
think’s
going on here? What we’re doing?”

I said,“I
know
what you’re doing.You’re using Green Berets to murder Serbs. Sort of a modern version of Operation Phoenix. ‘Sanction’ was the euphemism then, wasn’t it?”

“You’re wrong,” Murphy said. “Dead wrong.”

I said, “Is that right?”

Murphy scratched his big head with his big hand. “To start with, Operation Phoenix was the result of an informal handshake between the Special Forces and the CIA. It was done without official knowledge or permission. We’re operating with a presidential finding.You know what that means? This operation is fully approved by the President. It’s also known within a select committee of Congress.”

I didn’t expect to hear that. I thought he might be lying, but that proverbial voice we all have in the back of our heads warned me he wouldn’t be stupid enough to lie about something like this. It was too easy for me to say, Prove it.

He added, “Also, we’re not assassinating Serbs.”

I said, “Sorry, I’m not buying it.”

Murphy studied me for a moment, then said,“Please step out of the room. Just for a moment. No funny business, I promise. Jack and I need to speak.”

I didn’t like it, but I did it. I mean, what the hell, I had nothing to lose. Imelda and all four of her assistants were positioned at various locations around Tuzla, each poised over a fax machine, each ready to push a button. Each had a sealed envelope in her hand that contained a copy of the statement I’d written earlier. In less than forty minutes, those envelopes would be torn open, the electrons would start buzzing, and the cat would leap out of the bag. There was nothing Tretorne or Murphy or NSA could do to stop it.

About five minutes passed. The conference room had specially sealed doors, which I found awfully inconvenient, because I had my ear pressed to the crack but couldn’t hear even a murmur. When the door opened, Murphy waved his hand for me to reenter. I walked back in and took the same seat.

Murphy said, “Jack and I are going to clear you for this operation.”

I said, “Don’t think I’m falling for that. I’m not taking any vows of secrecy.”

Murphy nodded at Tretorne and I had the impression they’d guessed I’d say that. I wanted to thumb my nose at them, or pull down my pants and bend over, anything that would surprise them. So far, they’d managed to predict every move I’d made.

Then Tretorne said, “What’s happening here is we’re losing a war. We’re losing because it’s a NATO operation, and the President has his hands tied. Our allies are dead set against ground forces. All we’re allowed to do is bomb.”

Like a tag team, Murphy said, “You can’t win a war with bombs. That’s why we came up with the idea of building the KLA.We hoped to use them as our ground element, only they’ve been a terrible disappointment. Six or seven KLA units have done good work, but the rest are completely outmatched.They’re ineffective. Most just stay hidden in the woods, praying this thing will end. Several KLA teams have been chewed up and almost all the rest are demoralized.”

“That’s not a justification,” I said. “Assassination’s illegal.”

“We’re not assassinating anyone,” Tretorne said, sounding tired. “Guardian Angel is a ruse for an operation we call Avenging Angel. Some of the SF teams we’re sending into Kosovo with the KLA are selectively performing the missions their KLA units are supposed to be doing.”

“What kind of missions?” I asked.

“Raids, ambushes, interdicting supply lines. Several times, we’ve learned the Serbs were planning another massacre, and we had them go in and free the Kosovar prisoners. We’re very careful, believe me. No assassinations, no vigilante stuff.”

“That right?” I said. “Then what happened with Sanchez’s team?”

They exchanged more looks, and a lot of wind seemed to go out of their sails. Murphy’s face looked like it was trapped in a warp.

He said, “We don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s right. The KLA company they were with, Akhan’s team, all of them were killed. We’re still not certain how it happened.”

“But Sanchez’s team wasn’t detected by the Serbs, was it? And they weren’t responding in self-defense, right?”

Tretorne said, “We have no way of knowing.”

“Bullshit.”

He said, “The satellite tapes and transcripts we showed you were forgeries. Somehow, you obviously figured that out. Our real images for those days showed no unusual activity for Sanchez’s team. We’ve got shots of them in their base camp, a few where they’re traveling . . . nothing, though, that shows them being detected or chased.”