The Night Crew (2 page)

A little more about me. Army brat, son of a career army officer, ROTC at Georgetown undergrad, seventeen years in uniform, and as you might expect, I’m very much a product of my environment and my upbringing—politically, culturally, socially, and otherwise.

Katherine, on the other hand, was born in the mountains of Colorado, bred on a commune, had unrepentant hippies for parents, wears Indian jewelry and large bangles, probably has Joni Mitchell’s face tattooed above her left breast, and . . . why belabor the point?

It wasn’t surprising that she ended up a public interest attorney, nor was it surprising that she chose a carbonized institution such as the army as her target: like most of her legal ilk, her every waking hour is spent thinking up ways to stick it to The Man.

In more ways than I care to think about, I am The Man.

I took a long sip from my Scotch. It was a little after nine; Katherine, by my calculation, must have arrived on post at least thirty minutes earlier. I inquired of her, “Don’t you have better things to do with your Friday night than bother me?”

“Like what?”

“A boyfriend? Husband? Children?” I then asked, “Am I being too conventional for you?”

“Is this your clumsy but indirect way of asking if I’m married, or currently involved?”

“Why would I care?”

“Good point. Why would you?”

I should mention here that, perhaps cynically, I had always assumed that Katherine’s attraction to her peculiar cause opened interesting questions about her AC/DC connections. A modern, sensitive male would never ask such questions of a lady, of course. Nobody has ever accused me of being modern or sensitive, but even I don’t have those size balls.

Yet, when a lady
that
attractive and smart and successful is never once observed in the company of a male date, well, one does wonder. I’m not judgmental about this; nobody who has prosecuted twenty rape cases and other variations of sexual hijinks and kinkery walks away all that convinced that heterosexuals deserve a revered place on the pedestal of sexual intolerance.

But as I learned to my surprise in Korea, Katherine’s calling was philosophical, not biological.

But, if you’re interested, our relationship had always been platonic, owing mainly to her testy nature, our different lifestyles, different temperaments, different outlooks, and, of course, the aforementioned biological compatibility issues. That, however, was the old, misunderstood Katherine. You might say she and I were now reinterpreting our relationship on all new grounds.

I wouldn’t say we were getting off on the best foot.

Apropos of that last thought, she mused, “Why do men assume that all women dream of a white picket fence, two-point-three kids, and a dumb mutt named Rover to fetch the morning paper?”

“I don’t think that. Besides, Rover’s a stupid name for a dog.”

“Dog?” Katherine informed me, “He’s the husband.”

Katherine does not tell many jokes so, to be polite, I laughed.

I returned to watching the soccer match on TV, and Katherine went back to nursing her beer. As long as we’ve known each other, I’ve never been good at reading her thoughts. Partly because, like most men, I don’t understand women; they have only one brain. Also, I tend to be fairly blunt and transparent, which works well in the army where the badge on your collar defines everything you need to know about human interaction. Katherine is rarely emotional, and while she is professionally manipulative, on a personal level, she is not a schemer. She does play things close to her vest, however, and with her, it can be hard to distinguish the personal from the professional.

And here we had a case in point: despite our social setting, she was here with an agenda and was taking her sweet time, and mine, to get to it.

“What do you want?” I asked her.

“I want you to cool down,” she replied. “I’d rather not have this discussion while you’re angry.”

“What makes you think I’m angry?”

“Your face is red, your knuckles are white, and you snort when you talk.” She further notified me, “Actually, I did you a big favor. You’ll thank me later.”

“There won’t be a later.”

“Look, Sean, it was bound to end unhappily.”

“I think I’m capable of chasing off my own dates. Really, Katherine.”

She laughed and said, “True enough,” then added, “She wasn’t your type.”

“And what’s my type?”

“Well . . . whatever your ideal beau is, I’m sure it has lots of body hair, cloven hooves, and eats with its hands.”

Apparently this also was funny, because again, she laughed.

Also, the two captains seated at the next table apparently were into eavesdropping because they too chuckled. I think one of the things I don’t miss about officers’ club bars are the bottom-feeders looking for scraps.

But Katherine apparently changed her mind about waiting for my mood to improve, because she set her briefcase on the table and announced, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. I need a military cocounsel.”

“Then call the civilian reps at JAG Branch and ask them to hook you up. You know the process, Katherine. I shouldn’t have to explain it.”

“I want you.”

I knew she was going to say that. “No.”

“Don’t you at least want to hear about the case?”

“No. And in case you’re not getting the message, no.”

“It’s not another gay case, Sean,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s a criminal case, a very complex one. An important one.”

I sipped my Scotch and ignored her.

“Aren’t you the least bit curious?”

“Curiosity killed the cat.”

“I thought you were a tough guy, not a pussy.”

She smiled. I ignored her.

“Come on, listen to the case.”

“How did you know where to find me?”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rather than respond to my query, she adhered to her own agenda and continued, “Any JAG officer won’t do. I need someone who knows combat, who understands the pressures of living on the edge of reason. What makes people fall over that edge, what makes them snap.”

“So you thought of me. How nice.”

“Look, you’re a fine lawyer. Your legal advice would be helpful . . .”

“And . . . ?”

“And . . . an Airborne Ranger with a Combat Infantry Badge and a chestful of combat decorations at the defense table would be invaluable for my team.”

It did not escape my notice that, for whatever reason, Katherine had disclosed neither the name of her client, nor the nature of the charges. She was tipping her hand, though, and it wasn’t all that hard to figure out. So I paused to make a few lazy deductions and casual inferences.

Deduction One: the alleged crime occurred in a combat zone; perhaps Afghanistan, more likely Iraq, where most of the action was.

Deduction Two: physical violence was involved; and Deduction Three: the charges were serious, usually a redundant thought.

And then, Inference One: the Court Martial Board was going to be composed mostly of combat veterans, men and women who had experienced enemy fire.

As in civil law, the accused in the military is entitled to a jury of his or her peers, and ordinarily, a soldier is a soldier, a part of the green machine, interchangeable with any other. There are, however, occasions when such is not the case. When the case involves fratricide or violations of the Geneva Convention, charges that are unique to the battlefield, a peer then becomes someone who has been there, done that, with a combat unit patch stitched to his or her right shoulder to prove it. A soldier who hasn’t seen combat might look at it too abstractly, too ephemerally, compared to one who shares with the accused a firsthand familiarity with the smell of roasting flesh, the peculiar fear, and unique judgment—or more often, lack of rational judgment—made when friends are dying around you and somebody is trying to kill you. Any defense lawyers worth their salt would use the voir dire process to winnow the board down to as many combat vets as possible.

But Katherine Carlson, as I mentioned, is a fine lawyer. She understood this and, no doubt, she was factoring it into her preparations. In no other court in the land is a jury so monochromatic—so bound by common beliefs, common attitudes, common lifestyles.

Civilian attorneys trigger engrained prejudices and subliminal distrusts under the best of circumstances—they may belong in a courtroom, but they are clearly dressed in the wrong attire, often with the wrong mindset.

And if I was right about the war crime or fratricide angle, then no, I would not want to be Katherine Carlson—female, civilian, iconic antimilitary poster girl—trying to sell an uphill case to seven steely eyed, battle-tested soldiers.

And, too, she was right about another thing—just any vanilla JAG officer wouldn’t rebalance the scales of justice.

And then there was what she didn’t say but clearly implied: she wanted a mannequin, a decorated dummy to look impressive, to sway the ecumenical balance, and keep his mouth shut.

She should’ve known better—about me, that is.

And last though not least, Inference Two: she wouldn’t be in the Fort Myer Officers’ Club at this late hour on a Friday night, lamely backdooring her way into an explanation, were the evidence against her client not overwhelming.

I looked her in the eye. “Find someone else. Hundreds of army lawyers have been crawling around Afghanistan and Iraq.” I glanced around the bar. “I’ll bet I can find you one here.”

She grabbed my arm. “I need one who’s killed, who’s tasted blood, who took prisoners, who’s lost friends, who understands battlefield rage.”

I made no reply.

This tack wasn’t working. She knew it, and after a long pause, she suggested, “I thought we worked well together in Korea.”

I laughed. Back to that case. The accused in the military has the option of free military representation or, in those instances in which they are willing to foot the fare, they may engage a civilian attorney of their own choosing. In those cases, a JAG officer is normally assigned as cocounsel because the military is a unique culture, and military law has some parochial twists and provisions outsiders might not comprehend. Civilian law, for instance, is based on the overriding proposition that individual rights are sacrosanct and elevated above all other considerations, such as justice; military law answers a different calling, the mission always comes first, and when necessary, the needs of the institution and the demands of the mission trump the rights of the individual. Or, in the words of my first drill sergeant: “You have whatever fucking rights I say you have.” Which means, very few.

Bottom line here: the army does not want convicted felons appealing on the grounds that their hired civilian guns didn’t know the difference between a latrine pit and a dining facility—though perhaps that’s not such a good example.

So for reasons I still don’t comprehend, Katherine requested me, by name, to serve as her cocounsel, on an all-gay defense team, which proved, well . . . interesting.

Katherine observed, “Our client was well satisfied with our work.”

“You never trusted me, you ignored my legal advice, and you kept secrets.”

“And I hated doing that to you.”

“Really? You made it look so fun.”

“We won.”

“And I got shot.”

“But you survived.” She added, sounding not all that happy. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“I lost three inches of my intestine, spent two months on a Jell-O diet, the nurses were mean and ugly, and the enemas were cold.”

“You mean you’re no longer full of sh—”

“Enough, Katherine.”

“Sorry. Bad joke.” She crossed her heart and said, “You won’t get shot this time. Promise.”

“You’re right. I won’t. No.”

So that was it. Case closed. End of discussion, end of Katherine.

I should’ve stood up and left, but Katherine was the interloper here, and a man has to stand his ground so, in fact, I did not.

That was my first big mistake.

Chapter Two

She pointed at my nearly empty glass and observed, “You need another Scotch,” then promised, “It’s on me.”

As usual with Katherine, business preceded pleasure, and now it was time to catch up, exchange pleasantries and whatever. She leaned back into her faux-leather chair and folded her hands in front of her lips. “So how are you doing?”

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

Maybe this was too subtle, because she looked at her watch. “Later, yes, I do. But I’ve got twenty minutes to kill.”

This was an obvious invitation for me to inquire about what was on her schedule, so to piss her off, I did not.

“I’m fine,” I informed her.

She stuck up a finger in the direction of the bartender, who was keeping a close watch on our table, probably worrying about a homicide in his club. Katherine observed, “I see you made lieutenant colonel. Congratulations.”

“The gold card rank,” I replied. “I’m good to go for retirement, unless I do something stupid.”

“Well, let’s bet against the odds and hope you make it. We should toast that.”

She raised her beer bottle, and I hoisted my glass. In fact, I had only pinned on the silver leaf of a lieutenant colonel a few months before, and I found it interesting that Katherine would know that since I was dressed in mufti—undercover, so to speak.

“Where are you living these days?” I asked her.

“Nearby. Same old apartment from law school, a few blocks off Dupont Circle. Mostly, though, out of suitcases. Gypsy law—I go where the cases carry me.”

“Are you still working for—”

“No, I’m . . . I . . .” Whatever she intended to say, she apparently changed her mind. “I hate to lose. I think you know this. It became depressing and I needed . . . something different.” She toyed with the clasp on her briefcase and asked, “What about you?”

I didn’t really want to tell her about my current job in the CIA, so I instead answered her question with a question. “Who’s paying your bills these days?”

“Another public interest group.”

“Different kind of work?”

“Same work. Different kinds of cases, different challenges, different types of clients.”

The bartender arrived with fresh drinks, Scotch for me, beer for her. Katherine, I recalled, is pretty much a teetotaler and usually limits herself to two Coors Lights—aka, fizzled Kool-Aid—and does not really enjoy idle chitchat. In fact, it seemed she had exhausted her limit, or her repertoire, because she asked, in a superficially offhanded way, “Have you been following the Al Basari prison scandal?”

“Is that your case?”

“So you’re familiar with it,” she noted. In fact, for the past month, the Al Basari scandal, or Basarigate, as the imagination-deprived media were vapidly calling it, had saturated the news almost every day.

“I know what everybody knows.”

“Good. Tell me what everybody knows.”

“Five American National Guard soldiers, two males and three females, got carried away at a military prison in Iraq, had a little late-night fun, got frisky and slapped around some prisoners, then got a little kinky, took a few disgusting pictures, a prisoner died, and now they’re all facing general court martial. Am I missing anything?”

“A few intriguing details. A lot of open questions. But you have the general gist of it. What do you think about that?”

“I believe it was criminal behavior. They brought enormous shame on the army, humiliation on the country, and did grievous harm to our war effort. Any other stupid questions?”

“The logical one. Do you believe they’re guilty?”

“They’re definitely guilty of something.”

“Because of the pictures?”

This reference was to the aforementioned photographs, taken, apparently, by the soldiers themselves, perhaps as trophies or as souvenirs, or perhaps out of some perverse fascination with their own behavior. Somehow, a number of these pictures found their way to a member of the press, then, predictably, got sensationalized across nearly every newspaper, magazine cover, and television screen in the world.

The few I had seen in the news were fairly upsetting: a bloated corpse wrapped in a blood-stained sleeping bag, nude prisoners stacked on top of one another, prisoners being forced to perform sexually humiliating gestures and actions, and so forth.

Also, the instant the story broke, the Islamic world went predictably nuts, roasted two American embassies, and assassinated three US diplomats in Pakistan.

This was not the first prisoner abuse scandal of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor, barring some mysterious change in human nature, would it be anywhere near the last. War is an ugly business, and battling insurgencies is uglier still; for the participants it is emotionally unsettling and, for some, it is emotionally unhinging, so occasionally soldiers slip over the line, and occasionally, they get caught.

This, though, by any mark or measure, was the most stupefying and inflammatory scandal. Also, where the other scandals were based on oral accounts, here there was visual imagery, a pictorial montage of carnal behavior the Marquis de Sade might have pinned on his bathroom walls.

As if that weren’t enough, the graphic sexual degradation of helpless Arab males amplified every Moslem superstition and indictment about the moral inferiority and depravity of the West.

As I said, the typical GI does stupid crimes and leaves behind enough clues, leads, and evidence to end up in a suite at Leavenworth or earn a reservation on the hotseat, whichever applies. This, however, went way
beyond leaving a few fingerprints or errant hair samples—and way beyond stupidity. In an act of surreal self-incrimination, they included themselves in the pictures, and downloaded those photos onto computers, and ultimately, burned their own faces into the consciousness of the entire planet.

Katherine was watching my face. “Let me rephrase that. Do you believe they can get a fair trial?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Really? You already said
you’re
convinced they’re guilty.”

“I said they’re guilty of something. But with five different soldiers, that means five different levels of guilt, of most likely different crimes, and five different sets of extenuating and mitigating circumstances.” I added, “Guilt is a relative term, as are fairness, justice, and punishment. You know this, Katherine.”

She opened her briefcase and reached inside, fishing around for something. I remained silent as she withdrew a blown-up, nine-by-twelve color photograph that she slid across the table; I picked it up and studied it.

I did not need to be told that this was another of the Al Basari photos. But I was sure this was the first time I had seen it, and I was sure, as well, that the American public had never laid eyes on it.

A female soldier, whose face I vaguely recognized, was squatting, naked, and peeing on the head of a prostrate Arab gentleman. It was a frontal shot, looking down from a higher angle; though not blurry, it was slightly off-centered and definitely off-angled, suggesting that the photographer was an amateur, with questionable artistic skills at that.

As I mentioned, the poor guy being used as a toilet looked
Arabic, probably Iraqi, and was skinny and bony to the point of emaciation. People in that region tend to age prematurely and, though he looked seventy, he could easily have been closer to fifty. And, though his eyes and mouth were squeezed tightly shut, his reactive expression could not have been more emphatically evocative—a combination of terror, helplessness, disgust, and shame.

I could see why this particular photo had not been shown by the press, who normally will exploit anything that shocks or appalls. I’m old enough to be called worldly, and young enough to be part of the generation that has been bombarded with pornographic imagery by Hollywood, by Madison Avenue, and by every magazine rack in every roadside convenience store. And while I’m not squeamish or prudish, I was instinctively offended, reviled, and yes, shocked—and I don’t mean merely by the monumental vulgarity of her act, but because the squatting soldier, otherwise completely nude, wore her black army beret perched awkwardly on her head.

This was definitely not a soldier being all she could be; or, in fact, should be.

Despite her evident effort to be erotic, the effect was not titillating or alluring; it was, in fact, repulsive. I found myself looking around to be sure nobody was observing me observing this.

Katherine sensed my discomfort and asked, “Intriguing picture, don’t you think?”

“That’s not the adjective I’d choose.”

“Okay. How would you describe it?”

“I’m at a loss for words,” I answered, truthfully. I turned the picture face down. “Are there more like this?”

She recognized what I was asking and casually flipped the picture back over. “Many hundreds, in fact, and some are worse. Think about this picture and let your imagination do the rest.” She allowed me to process that, then asked, “How do you think a Court Martial Board will react?”

“I wouldn’t give them the opportunity. I’d move heaven and earth to get these photos suppressed.”

“That’s an interesting suggestion. On what grounds?”

“Irrelevancy, of course. And they’re poisonously prejudicial to a fair trial.”

“Do you think that will work?”

“The first point might be a stretch, but a generous judge might buy the second.”

She seemed to think about this, then asked, “Do you recognize her?”

I nodded. Her name escaped me though I knew it had been all over the news—but definitely I recalled her face from a few of the more radioactive photos. For reasons of both modesty and good taste, certain strategic sections of those photos had been doctored or blurred for public consumption, but what she was doing was far from ambiguous—I recalled one shot where she was on her knees, smiling and pointing at the groins of some disgruntled nude prisoners; in another, she was dragging one unhappy soul around by a string tied to his puddly.

I glanced again at the picture that lay face up on the table between Katherine and me. Cops always focus on the perp first, lawyers on the victim. I turned my attention to the lady in question.

The soldier was short, I estimated 5'2" or so, and young, nineteen or possibly twenty. Though not fat, nor even chubby, she had a low, squat build, and was thick-limbed, with a round face and plump cheeks. Her hairstyle, probably intended to appear seductively tomboyish or, I suppose, bawdily pixyish, actually looked monkish and ridiculous. She was not ugly, but neither was she attractive or in any way alluring or particularly sexy.

In fact, she looked stupid—not ditzy or spacey—but simple-minded; or, considering the very graphic evidence, the better adjective might be empty-minded. A half-smoked cigarette dangled lazily from her lips at the moment the photo was taken, and she was smiling, not into the camera, per se, though she seemed not to be unaware of its presence.

Her smile had this weird, bothersome, lazy afterglow I couldn’t quite put my finger on—not forced, not hesitant, nor embarrassed or even sadistic—any or all of which seemed to be the predictable adjectives, given her activity at that moment.

To the contrary, I thought her smile looked unbridled, uninhibited, maybe frivolous. The proper adjective seemed, for some reason, important, and it struck me that the right word was narcissistic, but in the same way a small child performing her first clumsy ballet recital smiles at an audience.

I was suddenly overjoyed that I hadn’t taken Katherine’s offer. I’d been away from the army long enough that I was no longer in touch with current politics or barracks scuttlebutt. But from the news reports about what happened inside Al Basari prison, clearly this was about more than a few misbehaving jailors molesting and humiliating their prisoners: it was a shocking breakdown in military discipline; it was a failure of leadership that possibly included more than a few general officers and quite possibly some senior officials at the Pentagon and White House; it was a crime that was possibly allowed, abetted, or even encouraged by political dictates and pressure to make the prisoners talk.

When you add all that together, typically the institutional response is some form of cover-up, or ass cover, or monumental spin project. Then again, this was total conjecture on my part: I had no idea any such thing was afoot. I also had no idea it wasn’t.

And last, though not least selfish, it was an opportunity for some overeager military lawyer to throw his career down the toilet. No, I did not need this.

Turning the photo facedown again, I asked Katherine, “This is your client?”

She nodded as she slid a few pieces of stapled papers across the bar table, at me. “I also think you might want to take a look at these.”

The papers looked amazingly like a set of military orders.

Upon closer examination they
were
orders, signed by Major General Harold Fister, Chief of the US Army JAG Corps, effective 10 February, assigning some poor schmuck whose name sounded remarkably like mine as Military Cocounsel for the defense of Private First Class Lydia Eddelston.

“Forget it.” I slid the orders back in her direction. “I am
not
currently assigned to the JAG branch. General Fister has neither the authority nor the jurisdiction to give me orders.”

She slid the orders back at me. “General Fister called your current employer . . .” She hesitated then asked, I think insincerely, “Ms. Phyllis Carney, right?”

The orders sat right where they were.

Katherine continued, a bit smugly, “She was enormously helpful. She generously agreed to release you, TDY, back to the JAG branch for up to sixty days, or until the trial ends, whichever applies.”

“Then I’ll call her.”

“Feel free.”

“I don’t need your permission, Katherine.”

“No . . . but you should know that she didn’t sound unhappy to lose you.” In case I wasn’t getting the message, Katherine confided, “She sounded delighted, I thought.”

The lady under discussion, Phyllis Carney, was my presumptive boss at the CIA, an older lady, between eighty and ninety, very ladylike, and pleasant and charming in a quaint, old-fashioned manner; all of which is an illusion, of course, except her age. Maybe.