The Generals of October

by John T. Cullen

  He bought his lunch and, awkwardly holding the tray and briefcase, made his way to a free table near her. She joined him, looking dashing in her olive green flight suit, pockets brimming with gear, stethoscope draped around her neck, camo fatigues bloused into jump boots. She had evidently finished lunch and brought along her cup of steaming coffee.

  “Hey you!” he said. She slid in opposite him in the booth. He added: “Been a medevac pilot long?”

  “Combat flight nurse.” She whacked his arm. “Silly.”

  “You look incredibly cool in your flight suit--say, your roommate sent me a zinger.”

  “I was kinda hoping she would.” Maxie radiated conspiracy.

  “This is a real zinger, Maxie.”

  “Is that good or bad? I mean, is a zinger like a kiss, or is it--?”

  “Either the guy she sent is ready for St. Elizabeth’s, or we’re all in big trouble.”

  “Oh that. Tory mentioned it but said she couldn't go into detail. There’s an explanation for everything,” Maxie said. “You watch and see. You ought to call Tory and thank her for sending you business.”

  “I already did. We’re having lunch tomorrow.”

  “Ooo. You work fast.”

  “You’re very helpful,” he said, grinning. “Thanks.”

  The MAES detachment cleared out in a body, carrying trays and mugs. Maxie excused herself to tag along. She kissed her index finger and placed the kiss on his cheek. As she hurried off, David looked around to see if anyone had noticed the kiss--a no-no for people in uniform. But that was Maxie. He chuckled to himself as he speared a chunk of beef dripping with gravy. If Maxie got to be a general, people would probably have to kiss each other rather than salute.

  A quarter hour later, David found himself in a completely different space. He waited in a corridor that smelled severely of Army floor polish. A nurse stepped into a patient room to announce his arrival. The nurse whispered: “She’s just been sedated, so she’ll be out again. You could talk with her for a minute.” The nurse motioned for him to step inside, then positioned the door halfway open behind him. Twilight filled a four-bed room that smelled of fruit or soap or something. Shafts of sunlight angled in through venetian blinded windows. As David’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, the curtains and the draped beds looked shroud-like. On a night table, David saw the source of the smell: a large basket of flowers, and a love letter; the husband, poor guy. “Mary?’

  “Yes.” The voice was a whisper, a moan. He followed its faint echo to a corner bed. And stopped at a grotesque sight. Blinking, he saw what looked like a Hallow E’en pumpkin wrapped in a sheet, grinning at him. As his eyes dilated further in the underwater light, he made sense of what he saw. A woman of nondescript age was sitting, propped up with pillows in a hospital bed, a poignant reminder that rape was a crime of violence, not sexuality. She was draped in sheets except for her head. Her eyes were swollen like plums. Her upper lip had been split, revealing her teeth, and was scabbing over. She raised a hand, and David took it. It felt dry, and warm, and firm. She whispered: “I look worse than I feel. It hurts to smile, hon.”

  “I’m glad you have your sense of humor, Mary.” David pulled up a chair. He introduced himself. “I wish we’d known more about this sooner.”

  “That’s my fault, Captain. I didn’t want to make waves.”

  “Nothing is your fault about this, Mary, nothing. You’re the victim of a bad guy and the Army hasn’t been so swift taking care of you either.”

  “They are taking good care of me, Sir.”

  “You’re a good soldier.” David sighed in frustration. “Mary--?”

  “Yes, hon?”

  “Maybe we can piece together your story and figure out some way to help other women a little sooner, maybe prevent things like this happening.”

  “Yes.” Her plum lids appeared to be narrowing.

  “Mary, you went to see the Chaplain. Did someone in that office meet with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you present your story?”

  She licked her lips and spoke slowly. “I was crying a lot. The sergeant was very nice.”

  “Which sergeant?”

  “Composite Force ... Chaplain’s ... Office.” It was a whisper.

  “Did he write everything down?”

  She whispered something, and David asked her to repeat. “Recording,” she said.

  “Did they promise they would talk with the man?”

  “Yes. But ... couldn’t.”

  David frowned. “Why not?”

  “Top Five.”

  “Pardon me?”

  Mary’s eyes were shut, and her breathing was becoming regular. As he watched her sleep, her hands gripped the edge of the sheet. Her head tilted back, her face assumed a look of fright. She shook her fists ineffectually and moaned at some awful dream. He tried to comfort her, squeezing her hands gently until they relaxed onto her stomach and he covered them with a sheet. He wanted badly to see the guy who’d done this put away. And he was puzzled by her last statement. What was Top Five? And why couldn’t the chaplain’s assistant talk with her assailant?

  A shuttle bus took David south on 16th Street. At Dupont Circle he changed shuttles west into the armed camp surrounding the Atlantic Hotel and Convention Center, near the Islamic Mosque and Cultural Center adjacent to Rock Creek Park. There were small demonstrations going on outside the barbed wire barriers, but police were out in force, at least equal in number to the demonstrators. Through a thin drizzle, the sky glowed with bright opal light lacking penetrating power. Thick shadows brimmed behind every shiny surface.

  David left the shuttle and walked toward the hotel. National Guard troops in fatigues and MP insignia were massed behind plywood blinds just inside the barbed wire. David was stopped at several checkpoints by National Guard soldiers in fatigues, helmets, and field gear, carrying rifles. The ring of barbed wire around the Atlantic stretched four city blocks. Engineer troops were dividing the streets around the hotel using tank traps. Flatbed trucks hauled in the man-size concrete pyramids, and cranes lifted them into place every few feet, three rows deep, to stop any bomb-carrying vehicle. David walked through a zigzag lane in the tank traps, past soldiers in sandbagged machine-gun nests. The hotel had a huge underground parking garage three floors deep. David boarded another shuttle that detoured through underground caverns filled with olive-green military vehicles. He glimpsed shaven-headed soldiers carrying heavy ammunition boxes, cleaning rifles, repairing equipment. For a moment he thought they were either Marines or Army Airborne, but the uniforms were different--their fatigue mottling was a subdued blue and yellow he’d never seen before.The shuttle let its passengers disembark in front of the main hotel entrance of Tower 1.

  The Atlantic had a vast, domed meeting hall off to one side, similar to the U.N. building in New York, but with three towers instead of one. The towers and the hall shared access through a magnificent five-story lobby and greenhouse containing a living rain forest. David enjoyed his walk through the miniature jungle and took an elevator up into Tower 3. The Atlantic was a line of three 35-story towers, joined in the first five floors by a magnificent lobby. Tower 1, in which currently the CON2 delegates stayed, also boasted the main entrance to the entire complex. Tower 2 served as barracks for several thousand lower-ranking enlisted personnel. Tower 3 served as an office building, headquarters, and military command post.

  First, David visited the Chaplain’s office. He got to speak with a staff sergeant William Duester, who had been Mary Corcoran’s contact. Duester was a small, trim man with light-brown hair and a thick maple-colored mustache. His quick gray eyes were at once sympathetic and hard. He rose and offered David a seat. “What can I do for you, Captain?”

  “I understand you recorded a conversation with a Sergeant Mary Corcoran, who was raped and beaten a few days later. She also contacted our office, and I’m just sorry that we didn’t act sooner.”

  Duester nodded. “I agree with you there,
Sir. I feel the same way.” His eyes had a troubled glitter. “Trouble is, Top Five has confiscated both our copies.”

  “Top Five?”

  “General Montclair’s headquarters, Sir. They’re strictly off-limits to us, but they can nose around here all they want. The Chaplain objected, but Colonel Bronf insisted. That’s the story I got. Anyway, I don’t have the recording to give you. It’s gone. Unless you can find a way to get up to Top Five and get it back.” He laughed. “I’m joking. Nobody goes up there.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Rick Bellamy’s office was on the 12th floor of Tower 3. Bellamy, the Provost Marshal on location, was an amiable man of 40, tall and sandy-haired. “Come on in, Captain,” he said. “Pour yourself a cup of coffee. Have you seen the view from here?”

  Bellamy’s corner office had two large windows, one overlooking the lobby and looking toward the middle tower, the other window overlooking the domed meeting hall and, beyond that, a southeasterly view toward the centers of government. “There’s the White House,” he said. David noted the Washington Monument obelisk with its winking red light, the highest point in the capital. He saw the Capitol dome, museums on the Mall, and farther monumental structures beyond, lost in haze.

  “Sir, can we get into Top Five?”

  Bellamy frowned. “That would be the top five floors of this building. General Montclair’s headquarters. Off-limits to everyone but General Montclair and his crackerjack troops. I was there a few days ago and got thrown out. My first and only time. Why?”

  David sipped his coffee. “I need the recordings of Mary Corcoran’s conversation with Chaplain’s Assistant Duester. Top Five came and took them.”

  “I know. It’s a tough situation. I’m supposed to be the top cop here, and they bypassed me completely.”

  “Too bad Corcoran didn’t contact you, Sir.”

  “Agreed. I would have forwarded the recordings to Composite HQ before these turkeys could grab them.”

  “Any idea why they’d grab them?”

  “Publicity. Can you imagine the media interest in something like this? Any news out of this building is hot news right now. General Montclair would not appreciate the attention.”

  “I understand, but I have a job to do.” He remembered Jankowsky’s admonition to handle these cases to the best of his ability. “I need the recordings to complete my file.”

  “You could close out your report by saying Top Five confiscated them.”

  “I have to go up there and try. Who is Colonel Bronf?”

  “He’s Montclair’s assistant chief of staff for security.”

  “And I’ll need whatever you have on the criminal investigation.”

  Bellamy held his coffee mug in one hand as he stood relaxed. The other hand was tucked into a trouser pocket, non-regulation. “I can give you my patrol MP’s crime report on Corcoran’s rape. It was our case, until Top Five threw us off it. My investigation is incomplete.”

  “I don’t understand the setup here, Sir.”

  “The Pentagon runs Composite Force directly, through the operational units stationed here and at Rock Creek Park. Everyone has to have their finger in the pie, in the name of bureaucracy. You’ve got the Reservists in Rock Creek Park. Then you’ve got the National Guard from Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware camped out in the streets around the hotel with their barbed wire and tank traps. Then you’ve got my Regular Army MP battalion guarding the inside of the hotel except the assembly hall, which has private civilian security guards. The delegates have immunity from arrest or prosecution, so they can do whatever they want and get away with it; the guards are just window dressing. Where it gets dicey is this. The top five floors of Tower 3 are General Montclair’s operational headquarters, a totally separate command that answers directly to the Pentagon, and Montclair seems to have brought in troops of his own--”

  “Those shaven-headed types? “

  “Yes, commandos specially trained for this duty. I asked Colonel Bronf about those guys, and he told me I didn’t have a need to know. Trust us, he said. Okay, I won’t argue. I’m the Provost Marshal here, the police chief, but they won’t allow me or my people above the 30th floor of Tower 3, nor are we terribly welcome down in the lower garage, where they have their armory. And what an arsenal. I guess they’re prepared to repel an invasion force if need be.”

  David changed tack. “I’m going to see Colonel Bronf, and I want to also see the alleged rapist.”

  “So,” Bellamy said sighing and sitting down, putting his feet up, “you want to try your luck upstairs.”

  “I’ve got to try, Colonel. Besides, I can get a warrant from my boss, or his boss, or whatever it takes. I mean, we’re all part of the same armed forces, aren’t we?”

  “You’ve got spirit.” Bellamy dictated the number, and David entered it into his lapel com. After about ten minutes of bouncing from one enlisted clerk to another, David connected with Colonel Bronf. David explained his mission. The colonel said: “Take the elevator up to the 31st floor of Tower 3. Step outside and wait. Someone will escort you to my office. Under no circumstances are you to wander around. Got that?”

  “Yessir. Thank you.” The line went dead, and David gingerly rang off.

  “I give you credit,” Bellamy said. “You got invited up. Then again, I made the trip a few days ago, on an unrelated matter. Maybe it’s beginner’s luck. Your charm will wear off.” He rose to walk David into the 12th floor lobby to the elevator.

  When David stepped off the elevator on the 31st floor, an officer and two enlisted men were waiting for him. Two were privates wearing MP bands and sidearms; the third introduced himself as Major Lee, probably a Korean-American. Lee had a handshake like a steel trap, and a smile just as chilly. “We appreciate your coming,” Lee said, “because we want to cooperate with our neighboring command to the fullest.”

  “Separate command, I heard?” David asked as they trooped down a long corridor. Everywhere, in the periphery of his vision, he spotted men busy loading, piling up supplies, moving ammo. It was dusty, dirty work, but the men seemed in good spirits. They seemed to share a silent intensity of purpose. “A healthy thing for us all,” Lee replied enigmatically to David’s question. They stopped outside a door whose plaque told David he was about to see General Montclair’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Security. “This is a completely separate command. We are the real protection for CON2. The Composite is essentially our support and backup. We’ve got our own everything--Quartermaster, Field Hospital, MP Battalion, G-1, G-2, you name it. We don’t even shop in the same exchange. It’s been well thought out at the highest levels.” Lee led David into a large office and introduced him to a bald, sweaty man who smelled of cigarette smoke and looked like he could stand a shave and a diet. Colonel Bronf excused himself from a conference with a lizard-faced major and turned his attention to David. The lizard-like man had remarkable mud-colored eyes, angular cheekbones in a forward-thrust face, and a small, dry-looking mouth. For a second, David thought the man’s tongue slithered, forked, over his lips as he stared at David; then he left the room. David thought, this place spooks me.

  “What can I help you with?” Colonel Bronf boomed.

  David explained his purpose, concluding: “Sir, I need to interview both the accused private and his unit commander. And I need the Chaplain’s Office recordings.”

  Bronf had black brows and a dramatic face. “Well now, Captain, that’s not likely, unless you get travel orders, because the private has already been transported to await trial at his parent unit in Texas. The recordings have gone there also.”

  David felt shocked. “Sir, with all due respect, I believe the accused was supposed to remain in this military jurisdiction.”

  “Well now Captain, that’s where you’re wrong. Not a lawyer, are you?” Bronf glanced at David’s lapel insignia. “Infantry. Well, that’s nice. I’ve had this conversation already with Bellamy and one or two other people in his chain of command, and I’m getting tired of repeating myself. Our p
rivate is a stupid son of a bitch who raped a woman and cast the U.S. Army in a bad light, just when national media attention is focused our way. I don’t appreciate that and I assure you that General Montclair takes a dim view. So, the private can’t get a fair trial here.” He extended his hand. “Goodbye, Captain. Tell your boss we’ll be happy to cooperate in any way we can, but we shipped the private as far away as we could, and nobody is bringing him back here. Have a nice day.”

  For a moment, David boiled. He wanted to take this smelly, fat officer, slam him against the wall, and choke him until he lost the attitude. At the same time, he remembered that he must check his temper. He must not let this guy win the day. He felt the M.P.’s and Lee rustling by his side in case he made a move, and he relaxed abruptly. “If you say so, Colonel. I’ll note your comments in my report. Thank you.”

  “Back so soon?” said Bellamy when David rejoined him downstairs. “I told you. They keep to themselves and, since they get away with everything, they must be under orders from way up.”

  David was still angry. He suddenly hated politics and couldn’t wait to get back to the real Army. Outside, gray storm clouds moved across the city. Only the needle of Washington’s Monument protruded clearly. Its red aircraft warning lights winked in slow and painful rhythm against the shrouded dome of the Capitol.

  They spoke a few minutes more, and David was glad to be back in the free, fresh air away from the hotel. As he looked back on it, its white walls gleamed, but its windows were like eyes following him with their dour gaze.

  Chapter 10

  Just before dusk, David drove toward Observatory Circle. He was in his own car, heading home to Alexandria, and the promised rendez-vous with Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Ibrahim Shoob was on his way. After six p.m., there was a faint sunshine in the air, a giant lie--as if it had been a sunny day. By the time David arrived at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and 34th Street, it was getting dark.