Court Martial

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  “I’ll get a mug and meet you on the back porch.” Spencer went into the kitchen, blinking his eyes when he stepped into the bright light. He poured a mug of black coffee from the pot, then joined McDonald on the back porch.arnason and Woods both nodded but didn’t say anything. They had been talking with their heels resting on the railing. Woods had a light blanket covering him and his pistol in his lap. Spencer didn’t realize it, but the three recon men had been pulling their own guard duty.

  Spencer led the way down to the jeep trail. A loud scream that sounded like a woman echoed over the water from the lake. “Shit! What was that?”

  “Loon… probably off its migration course.” McDonald lowered the barrel of his shotgun. He had automatically pointed it.

  The trail glowed in the bright moonlight. McDonald inhaled a deep breath and held it for a long time before slowly releasing it. “I could live up here.”

  Spencer nodded in agreement.

  “How do you feel about next week?” McDonald asked, slowing his pace.

  “I don’t care anymore about killing JamesThe military will punish him.”

  “I meant going to Washington for your medal.”

  Spencer shrugged. “It’s all right. I don’t think I deserve it, though.”

  “Really?”

  “Fuck, I was taken prisoner by the NVA. Real warriors die before they let that happen.”

  “Do you think you’re less of a man because they captured you?”

  “Yes”

  The old soldier and the young warrior walked down the path in silence for almost half a mile before McDonald spoke again. “You’re wrong there, son.”

  The last word echoed in Spencer’s ears.

  “I’m damn proud of you, and the report Major General Garibaldi wrote up on you for the medal was nothing less than spectacular.”

  “He wasn’t there when they captured me.”

  “Oh?”

  “They cut off Sergeant Kirkpatrick’s cock.”

  “And?”

  “And they wiped it all over my face.... They wouldn’t Iet me wash the blood off for a couple of days.”

  “I can’t see why you feel you did something wrong.”

  “I should have made them kill me.”

  “That would have broken my heart.”

  Spencer stopped walking and turned to look at the old sergeant. “What?”

  “I’m glad that you made it through that hell, boy.... You’re real special and I think the military was lucky getting you.”

  Spencer lifted the mug of coffee to his mouth to hide his trembling upper lip.

  “You can’t hold yourself responsible for what the NVA did, and you surely can’t feel that you did anything wrong when they did that to Kirkpatrick.... You were the victim, and God knows, boy, I feel sorry for you. Look at the other side of it: Kirk was dead when they cut off his equipment… it could have been worse.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  “You did things as a POW that most men wouldn’t dream of doing, and I can tell you that because you withstood torture as long as you did, a lot of NVA replacements died on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the NVA never did have a chance to study those seismic-intrusion devices your team had planted.”

  Spencer slowed down and looked out over the moonlit meadow. “I know what you’re trying to say, Sarge… but it’s hard—real hard.” He felt tears roll down his cheeks.

  McDonald squeezed Spencer’s shoulder. “I know, but don’t you ever forget that there are a lot of people who care about you . a lot.”

  Spencer nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “I think Mary is going to be a pretty darn good wife for you.”

  “Who said that we were going to get married? Hell, Sarge! I’m only seventeen years old!”

  “Seventeen going on thirty!” McDonald grinned and cuffed the back of Spencer’s head.

  Spencer. dropped down and twisted away from McDonald in a judo move and was starting to come back up when the rifle cracked. He saw the muzzle flash next to the edge of the road a hundred meters away.

  McDonald dropped his shotgun and crumpled silently down in the wild flowers bordering the trail. Spencer’s reaction was instant, based on months of training.

  “Fuck! I missed him!” The camouflaged man lay spread-eagled next to the jeep trail.

  “Dammit!” His partner also wore all black with a black ski mask pulled down over his face.

  “How the fuck did I know he was going to duck like that!” The rifleman opened the bolt on his sniper rifle and ejected the spent shell. “I think I hit the guy with him, though.”

  “We’ve got to run him down before he gets back to that cabin and gets help.”

  Spencer low-crawled through the high grass to where McDonald lay. He felt the shotgun and checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber before looking to see if McDonald was still alive. The old NCO’s eyes blinked and a bubble of red saliva formed on his lips and burst. The bullet had knocked all the air out of his lungs and he was trying to breathe.

  Spencer heard the two men running toward them and raised the shotgun to his shoulder and waited. The first man had taken a couple of steps past where he was hiding before he realized it and stopped. Spencer nearly cut him in two with the first round of double-aught buckshot. The second man was ready and opened fire with his compact Uzi submachine gun. One of the rounds nicked Spencer’s shin bone, sending a message of pain to his brain that he ignored. Two of the rounds smacked into Sergeant McDonald. The shock of the small-caliber rounds impacting his lower body forced the sergeant to gasp and start breathing again.

  Spencer blew away the second assassin with three rapidfire rounds. The last blast forced the butt of the shotgun to press harder against his shoulder than the others had. Spencer realized that the last round had been a slug. He looked around for more of the black-suited killers and saw the trail was empty in both directions.

  “Sarge?” Spencer crawled over to the Green Beret and lifted his head off the matted wild flowers.

  McDonald couldn’t talk and blinked his eyes to let Spencer know that he was alive.

  “Sarge… hang in there.... I’ll run up to the cabin and get some help.” Spencer started placing McDonald’s head back down on the grass when he heardarnason and Woods running down the edge of the path through the dark trees. “Over here!” Spencer didn’t know why, but he didn’t yell but called out only loud enough for them to hear him.

  Arnason’s voice came from the opposite side of the trail. “What’s going down?”

  “A couple of hit men ambushed us.” Spencer looked down at McDonald in his arms as he spoke.

  “Where are they?”

  “I killed both of them.”

  Arnason took a step out onto the moonlit trail. A pair of Uzis opened up from the trees on the other side of the meadow.arnason dropped to the ground and crawled back to the nearby trees. A sharp crack of an M-16 on full automatic answered the Uzis from the head of the trail by the cabin. The FBI men were coming and their M- I 6s had a better range than the Uzis, which were firing wild.

  Spencer rubbed McDonald’s cheek and tried comforting him. McDonald gasped.

  “Dad… don’t die… please don’t die.” Spencer’s subconscious mind had taken over. “Dad, I love you… please don’t die!”

  McDonald smiled. He heard Spencer but couldn’t answer him. Slowly, McDonald raised his bloody hand and patted Spencer’s cheek. He forced a smile and then died.

  A man dressed in black stepped onto the front porch of the cabin. He had heard the rifle fire down by the meadow and figured one of his teams had run into some guards. It was an excellent distraction for his two teams.

  Mary had been awakened by the shots. She felt for Spencer. He was gone, and where he had lain on the bed was cold. She realized that he had been gone for a good while. She slipped out of her white nightgown and wrapped one of her father’s navy-blue bathrobes around her. She knew that her father kept a pistol in th
e nightstand by the bed that he used mostly to scare off raccoons that tried raiding the cabin at night. She had fired the long-barreled .44 magnum a couple of times but didn’t like the kick of the large handgun. The top drawer of the nightstand stuck and she had to yank hard to get it open. The walnut handle of the blued gun came into sight just as the moonlight in the open window was blocked by a huge figure slipping into the bed?room. Mary didn’t have to be told that the person was too big to be Spencer or any of his recon buddies. She removed the magnum and even took a second to pull back the hammer before she fired. The roar and flash from the gun filled the bedroom. Her father had hand loaded the rounds himself and had added extra powder because he wanted more noise than blast to scare away the animals, and he had used wadcutters for lead bullets. The force of the mushrooming lead smashed Brother Karriem back through the window. His huge shoulder caught a corner of the window frame and split the wood on his journey back down to the ground.

  Mary recocked the hammer and slipped out of the bedroom into the hallway. She saw the light from the kitchen at the foot of the stairs and thought better of exposing herself. She squatted next to one of the guest-bedroom doors and tipped a ceramic vase over on its side and rolled it over the carpet so that it would bounce down the steps. The vase thudded down the stairs and shattered when it hit the oak floor.

  The bright flashes coming from an Uzi lit up the dark wall of the den opposite the open balcony where Mary now squatted. She stuck the barrel of the .44 magnum between two of the rails and fired a little above the flashes. The lights jerked and went out. Mary heard the body hit the floor and then it was quiet in the cabin.

  Arnason reached the back porch a couple of steps ahead of Woods. They each carried a silenced pistol.arnason used the barrel of his gun to point with, and Woods nodded and slipped around to circle the cabin. A dark shadow rose from behind a lounge chair and both of the recon men fired. The drama was played like a mime, without any noise being made. The shadow slumped down over the padded lounge chair. The roar of the magnum inside the cabin madearnason jump. He saw a flash coming from an Uzi in the den and then another loud roar.

  Woods held his pistol in both hands and used the whole barrel to line up on the running figure before he fired in the moonlight. The figure stumbled and dropped down to one knee before getting back up on its feet to hobble into the dark trees.

  Arnason pushed open the French doors and eased down next to the foot-thick log wall. “Mary?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so…”

  “I’m coming in through the French doors.”

  “Okay.”

  Arnason ’slipped into the den and did a forward roll on the rug before coming to a stop in front of the leather couch.

  “I don’t think there are any more inside the cabin.” Mary’s voice came from the landing above the den.

  “Stay where you are and let me check it out.” arnason started going through all the rooms, avoiding the bright light coming from the kitchen.

  “The house is clear.” arnason stood at the foot of the stairs and waited for Mary to come down. His eyes widened when he saw the huge magnum in the tiny nurse’s hand.

  “Where’s Spencer Barnett?” Worry filled her voice.

  “He’s fine… he’s down on the trail with two of the FBI agents.”

  “Has he been hurt? I heard shots—that’s why I got Daddy’s gun out.”

  “He’s fine… but Sergeant McDonald’s been hit.”

  “Let me get my first-aid kit and we can go down there.” Mary didn’t wait forarnason to answer. He knew it would be impossible to prevent her from going to Spencer, and besides, he wasn’t going to screw with her as long as she held that hand cannon.

  Spencer was still holding McDonald in his arms and rocking gently back and forth when Mary andarnason appeared on the jeep trail. The FBI agents had left to call for help as soon as they realized thatarnason and Woods were armed and Barnett wasn’t about to leave the dead sergeant.

  Mary dropped down next to Spencer and took McDonald’s wrist. She felt for a pulse and found none. Spencer’s face was streaked from tears that had washed channels in the blood McDonald had wiped there. She hugged him and started crying too. “My dear… dear Spencer Barnett.”

  Master Elijah watched his tarantulas in his hundred-gallon terrarium. He held the telephone loosely to his ear as if the instrument were getting too hot to hold. The expression on his face became gloomier the longer he listened. He rubbed his chin with his free hand and then hung up the telephone without saying a word.

  The man standing in the shadows of the room stepped forward and waited until the Supreme Minister spoke. “We’ve lost four Death Angels tonight and the mission failed.”

  The female tarantula touched the clean glass with her pedipalps. The minister tapped the outside of the glass with the eight-carat canary-yellow diamond ring he wore on his right pinkie. “Kill him.”

  The man left the minister without saying a word. He smiled as he walked down the hallway to the rear parking lot of the Detroit mosque. He was going to enjoy the drive to North Carolina in his new canary-yellow Seville.

  The shrill sound of a mountain blue jay echoed through the air. No one at the cabin paid any attention to the bird. The special team that had flown to the cabin from Washington, D.C., had deployed throughout the whole wooded area and two A-teams of Green Berets were due to arrive from Fort Bragg before noon.

  The agent in charge looked down at the four bodies lying in the shade of the rear deck of the cabin. All of the men were black and dressed in identical black uniforms. There wasn’t any more doubt left that a secret black sect was involved with Specialist James and that they wanted to kill the witnesses who could testify against him. Like all bureaucracies, somebody had to die before the sect took the necessary precautions.

  Spencer Barnett sat on the ground next to a body that was wrapped in a Hudson Bay blanket. He had his back to the cabin and looked out over the lake. Mary and his teammates watched from the railing surrounding the deck. They could feel his pain but were absolutely incapable of removing it. Spencer reached over and touched the white portion of the blanket where Sergeant McDonald’s hand was, then stood up with his back still to the cabin. His lips moved as he silently pledged revenge.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Rose Garden

  The funeral for Master Sergeant Jeremiah McDonald drew over five hundred active-duty and retired Special Forces men and another two hundred officers and senior enlisted men from the Pentagon and Fort Meyers to his grave site in Arlington National Cemetery.

  Corporal Barnett stood on the right-hand side of the grave and received the triangular folded flag that had been removed from the top of the casket by the sergeant major who led the Special Forces honor guard. McDonald’s wife and teenage son had been killed in an automobile accident right before he went to Vietnam; some people said that was the reason he had volunteered for duty over there and then had volunteered again to serve on Project Cherry, a suicide unit that had been designed for POW snatches. Spencer had been listed by the sergeant as his next of kin and benefactor for all his insurance policies.

  Mary’s hand started quivering as she held tightly to Spencer’s arm when a hidden bugler started playing taps. The extremely sad notes from the bugle slipped between the mounds of freshly dug soil that dotted the bright green lawns. Vietnam was giving the caretakers at the huge cemetery a lot of overtime pay. Handkerchiefs came out of the rear pocketsof many AG-44 dress uniforms during the slow rendition of the hand salute to the fallen warrior by the members of the honor guard.

  Woods glanced over at Spencer out of the corner of his eye without moving his head and saw that his war buddy was standing ramrod straight with his eyes looking down at the dull bronze military-issue casket. Woods noticed that the expression on Spencer’s face was one of deep concentration and a little wonder mixed in around the corners of his eyes. Spencer’s natural curls a
t the corners of his mouth would have been misinterpreted as the beginning of a smile by anyone who didn’t know him.

  The bugler finished the rendition of taps and the cemetery became absolutely quiet. Then horns and the hum of traffic on the nearby highway slowly filled the silence. Spencer handed the folded flag to Mary and leaned over to pull back a corner of the imitation grass carpet that was used to hide the pile of grave dirt from the mourners.

  Spencer turned around so thatarnason and Woods could hear him. “Warriors bury their own dead.” The statement was made in a very soft voice but it carried to the first couple of rows circling the grave. He reached down and dug up a handful of rich black soil and dropped it onto the casket. The hollow sound of the dirt clods hitting the metal box filled the hole in the earth.arnason and Woods were next. Mary handed the flag back to Spencer and dug up a double handful of the pleasant-smelling soil and dropped it onto the growing mound.

  The word spread through the crowd and a line formed to walk past the grave, with each soldier, woman, and child stopping to drop a handful of dirt on the warrior’s remains. A tradition that was ancient in the old country had been reborn in America, but with a powerful new twist. The handful of dirt wasn’t symbolic anymore but was an actual burial. When the mourners had finished filing past the grave, there wasn’t enought dirt left for the grave diggers even to have to clean up. Master Sergeant Jeremiah McDonald had been buried by other warriors and by people who loved and admired him.

  Lieutenant Colonel Martin left his place by the row of gravestones from which he had been observing Spencer and started walking toward the small clods of dirt that remained, but stopped when he caught the look in Spencer’s eyes. He shrugged, rationalizing that the grave was already filled and didn’t need any more earth. The Walter Reed Army Hospital psychiatrist noticed that none of the Special Forces soldiers had wiped or brushed the streaks of dirt off their hands, but then again, it was his job to notice unique or unusual things about human behavior. The lieutenant colonel had come to the funeral to observe how Spencer would handle the additional burden of losing a close friend, not because he had cared about the senior NCO. Spencer had sensed that and tolerated the psychiatrist’s presence only to keep the peace.