The Accused (15 page)

“And who is this bad thing supposedly going to happen to?”

“Don't know. But Hermán was not joking about it.”

“How did it come up?”

“When we were talking about the AAJ.”

“Do you think he was talking about a target in the U.S.? Americans being hit by terrorists?”

“It did occur to me.”

That last bit of intelligence seemed, to Will, to be extraordinarily
un
intelligible. And its relevance, if any, to the defense of Caleb Marlowe was mystifying in the extreme.

Nevertheless, it was a chilling—though obscure—warning. Will felt as if he had just stumbled on an ancient, indecipherable message—a brutal prophecy carved in stone, previously hidden by the overgrowth of the jungle.

22

B
ACK AT
Q
UANTICO
, W
ILL AND
Major Hanover were preparing for the upcoming hearing and conferring with Colonel Marlowe. When Will recounted the information he had received from Tiny Heftland, his client jotted down notes studiously.

Then Will and Hanover turned their attention to the accused marine officer.

“Sir, why didn't you follow Master Sergeant Rockwell's suggestion?” Hanover asked. “Take out the guard, and then one of you approach the house and make a close-up recon?”

“Maybe we could have taken him out when he was on the front porch. But I figured it would be just a matter of seconds before the rest of his group would realize he wouldn't have come back. Not only was I trying to accomplish the mission, I was also trying to avoid any loss to our team.”

“And what was the mission?” Will asked.

“Like I said before, to locate and eliminate the cell group we had tracked—the bad guys who had participated in the attempted kidnapping of Secretary Kilmer.”

Will followed up. “Was there any thought given to capture? Wouldn't there have been some value in trying to interrogate these guys?”

“Negative. The intel reports we already had indicated that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to take any of them alive. They were known to carry both self-detonated and remotely detonated explosives. The idea was that they would defy capture and blow themselves up—taking us with them. The one guard we took down was strapped with explosives.”

Will continued probing. “I'm not sure if you answered Major Hanover's question. Why not have one of your guys get up to that window to see who was inside?”

“In addition to what I've already told you,” Marlowe said, “there was another obvious problem with that—it was lights-out inside the house. I had the heat sensor and I could see bodies in there. That's all we could tell.”

“But your thermal-imaging screen showed that four of those bodies were stationary, and in sitting positions?”

At first the colonel's face seemed expressionless. Then his eyes twitched slightly and the corners of his mouth tightened ever so slightly. He stared at his hands, which were lying on top of the conference table. When he finally spoke, his voice was constricted, choked with emotion.

“Those four thermal images were Carlos. My good friend Carlos. And his beautiful young wife. And their two young children.”

The colonel raised his head and stared Will in the eyes. “And there's something else…” He was having trouble talking.

“Something else,” he continued. “For an instant—maybe it was even a fraction of an instant—I noticed that two of the four body images on my scope looked smaller…much smaller…than the other two.”

“So you knew there might be children sitting in the middle of the room before you ordered a cross fire of weapons that would tear them apart?” Will asked bluntly.

His client paused. “I…I can't say that was my thought. Things happened very quickly. You have orders…a mission…concern about controlling a very fluid environment. One of the guards had apparently already detected our position and fired at one of our men, hurting him badly. Here we are about to be detected, and the whole mission's going to go bad. I know that we've got a cell group of four people—”

“Exactly,” Will said, pushing harder. “One guard outside, and four sitting in the middle of the room. That makes a total of five people. So did you ask yourself—who the fifth person was?”

“Oh, yes—I asked myself that…and that's when I gave the order.”

“Who did you think it was? Another terrorist? A civilian? You said earlier that you knew there might be a noncombatant in the group—but you were willing to assume the risk of ‘collateral damage,' right?”

“I can't tell you who I thought it was.”

“Because of the DOD gag order?”

“Not just that. There are things that you don't know…that you can't know…and I'm still bound by orders that go way beyond this.”

Will leaned back in his chair. Marlowe looked tired and burdened.

“Tell me something,” the attorney said. “What are the questions you are asking yourself right now?”

The colonel took only a second, perhaps two, before answering.

“Giving orders—making the command decision—that's what I've been trained for and what I'm built for. But you give the orders—and then there's the other part. You have to take responsibility for the orders you give. That doesn't just mean facing a superior officer's questions, a board of inquiry, or even a court-martial. It means living in that decision every minute, every day. It means going to bed every night…seeing the bodies of your best friend and his wife and his two little children chopped up by the assault you ordered. And when you wake up the next morning the ghosts are there. Standing at the edge of your bed in your room. They greet you in the morning and they're with you all day.”

Marlowe stopped suddenly, as if he were calculating the degree to which he would make himself vulnerable. After a few seconds he continued.

“From what I know about you, a lawyer who walks with God, you know something about forgiveness. I thought I did. If I made a mistake—if I had a lapse in judgment—or even if it wasn't my fault, still I'm the one responsible for giving the order. Whatever the truth is…I know in my head Jesus hung on the cross to forgive that. I know the Bible tells me all of that was taken care of at the cross. And I've asked for forgiveness for not having seen a way around this…for not having been ahead of the curve to figure out that we might be double-crossed, and that we might have been led into a trap.

“But—you see—the fact is, sometimes now I find it difficult to look in the mirror. There's a person out there with my name, rank, and serial number who looks a lot like me. Well, you see, in a way, I hate that guy—and want him dead. So I'm just like the walking dead. I don't know if you can possibly understand that. But you asked me, so that's my answer.”

For some reason, quite unexpectedly, it all rushed back to Will. He had always been good at achieving a level of professional detachment, and cold, objective analysis. Even in his most emotionally charged cases he always kept himself at arm's length because he told himself that, like a surgeon, he could best operate on critical patients if he could keep them from grabbing ahold of his insides.

But now the attorney was feeling something else. This decorated career marine officer had lived a life that couldn't have been further from his own…yet now there was a connection. Something had been touched…deeply disrupted…in Will. He thought he had managed to distance himself from the guilt over Audra's murder. But now he was wondering whether he had just been giving himself a cheap, ready-made solution…through distraction.

Had he missed the signals? In the back of his memory, he knew, there was something more awful than he wanted to recall. Yet it kept clawing its way to the surface…One of the witnesses in the case he had brought against the neo-Nazi group in New York had warned him that this was a group that would always pay back, an eye for an eye—that if Will was successful in breaking these domestic terrorists, he should be prepared for retribution—against him, or his family.

Will had never shared that with Audra. He had considered the warning, but then had rejected it as a kind of urban legend about the group. And there was also something else—his confidence…maybe even arrogance…that if he was on the right side of truth and justice, then he and Audra, and their lives, would be protected.

And when Will recalled his failure to ask Audra to come back after she had moved out…his ignoring that inner voice that kept telling him to patch things up and bring her back…those were the thoughts that gave him a dreadful sense of responsibility for what happened. He knew there was a likelihood that his actions, or his failure to act, had been a factor in the brutal death of the woman he loved. And that is when his cold, computerlike sense of logic would flash the message on the screen of his brain—the message he could not ignore:
You are responsible. You will have to live with this.

There was something in Will's face, in his eyes, that showed he had fixed on a dark, forbidding place…an abyss where he was struggling with ghosts of his own.

During the preceding silence, Colonel Marlowe had been looking intently at Will. Now he straightened up in his chair and gave his lawyer a smile of recognition.

“On the other hand,” the officer said quietly, “maybe you do understand.”

23

M
AJOR
H
ANOVER WAS ALREADY
in the military courtroom at Quantico when Will Chambers arrived. Colonel Marlowe was standing next to the defending officer. Both were dressed in their marine “Charlie” uniforms. Marlowe's chest was covered with a block of ribbons. Though intellectually aware of it because of his work on the case, somehow Will had never fully appreciated the extent of his client's service to his country. As he shook Marlowe's hand, he wanted to say something—a thank-you perhaps—but before he could, the other man greeted him.

“Counselor,” he said, shaking his hand firmly, “I'm privileged to have you representing me today—you too, Major Hanover.”

“No,” Will replied, “the honor is mine, Colonel.”

As the two advocates unpacked their briefcases and stacked their notebooks and manuals on the counsel table, Will surveyed the courtroom. It was blandly military. Within a few minutes Colonel Stickton, the government trial counsel, strode in. He shook hands all around. He had the Deputy Director of the Staff Judge Advocate from Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps with him. They were followed by Special Agent Fred Brooks, the chief NCIS man on the case.

Hanover, Will, and Marlowe huddled together quietly at their counsel table.

“Just remember what we indicated to you about the purpose of this proceeding today—an Article 32 hearing is just a preliminary hearing to determine whether or not there's probable cause for the matter to be referred to a general court-martial,” the major explained to Will as Marlowe nodded his head.

“The investigating officer—the IO—who acts like the judge in this proceeding, is going to hear the evidence.” Hanover continued directing his comments at Will. “And then the IO will issue a report
with his findings and a summary of the proceedings. If he finds probable cause to refer this matter, he has to state the evidence and the reasons that support that. But ultimately, the decision doesn't belong to the IO—it belongs to the convening authority. That's the commanding general here at Marine Corps base—Brigadier General Landon—who will have to sign off on any recommendation for a formal court-martial referral.”

“Who is our IO?” Will inquired.

“Lieutenant Colonel Howard Rogers—he's the civil law officer for the Marine Corps here at Quantico—he was detailed to this proceeding,” Hanover replied.

A military court reporter scurried in and began setting up. After a few moments of silence, IO Rogers stepped into the courtroom from behind the bench, and the room quickly snapped to attention.

“Be seated. This investigation is convened by the commanding general under Article 32. I am the investigating officer, Lieutenant Colonel Howard Rogers, United States Marine Corps. This matter is referenced Colonel Caleb R. Marlowe, accused. Does the accused acknowledge receipt and advisement of the charges and specifications?”

Major Hanover rose and indicated in the affirmative.

“If the investigating officer please,” he continued, “I'd also like to introduce attorney Will Chambers of Virginia, privately retained civilian defense counsel, who will be acting as co-counsel for the accused.”

“Welcome to the United States Marine Corps,” the lieutenant colonel said.

Both trial counsel and defense counsel reserved opening statements.

The prosecution's first witness was Corporal Hank Thompson. The corporal was still nursing injuries from the mission, and his left arm was in a shoulder restraint.

Initially, Will sized Thompson up as a confident, emotionless witness. But as Colonel Stickton led him through his initial questioning, Will noticed a nervous gesture—the corporal would periodically, though subtly, tuck his chin quickly toward his neck. Thompson gave his rank, serial number, and a brief explanation of his military history. He had been with the Army Rangers when he had been transferred on
special duty to the Office of Special Operations to serve under Colonel Marlowe.