by Brian Haig
I said, “Please state your full name and rank for the record.” He blew smoke as he talked. “Michael John Persico. Chief Warrant Officer Four.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Our last meeting was merely an interrogatory, an informal exploratory session, to discuss the events that transpired between 14 June and 18 June 1999. The purpose of this session is to take your full formal statement concerning the same time period. Are you sure you want to waive your right to have an attorney present?”
“I’m sure,” he said.
“At your interrogatory, you stated that you and your team were in Kosovo participating in Operation Guardian Angel. You were lying, weren’t you? You were participating in Avenging Angel, which involved the performance of combat missions against Serbian forces in Kosovo. Isn’t this correct?”
Morrow and I had decided the best way to handle Persico was to come barging out of our corner and shock him with our best punch. We knew now why he, and the rest of his team, had been such confident, able liars. They had the U.S. government behind them. Who couldn’t tell a great whopper when NSA was building evidence to support you, when the CIA was fronting for you, when the United States Army was tying the hands of your listeners? I could tell a perfectly good lie even without all that help.
Persico took a long draw from his cigarette. Aside from that, he showed no visible signs of anxiety or distress. Finally, he said, “I ain’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”
I said, “Jack Tretorne and General Murphy cleared Captain Morrow and me on the details of Avenging Angel. Now, please answer my question, or I will add obstruction of justice and lying under oath to whatever other possible charges we come up with today.”
He considered this only a moment.“Okay,” he said,“we were part of Avenging Angel.”
“Let’s deal with another lie,” I said. “When Captain Akhan’s unit raided the police station in Piluca, was this an approved and authorized operation?”
He said, “No.”
“Why did you lie to Colonel Smothers about what happened that day?”
“We didn’t lie,” he calmly said.
I withdrew the notes of the team’s debrief that Smothers had kindly provided. I looked down and pretended to study the sheet.
I looked up. “On the nineteenth, you informed Major Grenfeld, your battalion operations officer, that throughout the day of the thirteenth, you and Captain Sanchez attempted to stop Captain Akhan from raiding the police station at Piluca. Do you still stand by that statement?”
He took another heavy drag, looked around for an ashtray, then flicked his ashes on the floor. Then he turned back to me. “I do,” he said.“I tried damned hard to keep Captain Akhan from going after that station.”
“You tried damned hard? What about Captain Sanchez?” “Well . . . he, uh, he tried, too.”
“He tried what, too?”
“Look,” Persico said, “it was a risky operation.”
A nice attempt at evasion,I thought.“Why was it risky, Chief?” “Kinda obvious when you consider what happened, don’t ya think?”
“Right. But you said you tried hard to stop them. You must have had some strong reasons. What were they?”
“The target wasn’t approved by Group. Ain’t that reason enough?”
“There was more, though, wasn’t there, Chief?”
“Maybe.”
“What more was there, Chief? Why were you so opposed to that raid?”
“For starters, never go into an operation that ain’t well planned. That one wasn’t just poorly planned, it was hardly planned at all.”
“Not well planned?”
“That’s right. Captain Akhan and his guys just wanted to do it. Hardly any recon. No rehearsal. Since it wasn’t an approved target, there was no intell prep like we normally got from NSA or the CIA. They just wanted to march down there and kick some ass.”
“When Akhan insisted on doing it anyway, why didn’t you call Group and report that?”
He said, “That was Sanchez’s call. Ask him.”
I made an instinctive guess.“Was it because Sanchez wanted them to do the raid? Was that the reason you didn’t call Group?”
He hesitated, and that was his first mistake. “You’re asking the wrong man,” he said. “I ain’t no mind reader.”
“You and Captain Sanchez discussed it, though, didn’t you?” “All right,” he said. “We discussed it. What’s your point?” This was a very smart move on his part. He was unsure how much I knew. Maybe I was fishing, or maybe I was building a house from a blueprint. He was calling my bluff.
There was nothing to do but make another guess.“My point is that Sanchez wanted Akhan to do the raid, whereas you didn’t. When they were all killed, you blamed Sanchez.”
I was right. I could see it in his eyes. I was right.
But what he said was, “That ain’t the way it went down, Counselor. You’re sitting on your ass, here in this nice warm room tryin’ to figure things that happened in the heat of combat. You ain’t got a clue.”
He was angry, and in my mind there could only be one reason why. I said, “Then, afterward, you took control of the team away from Sanchez. Was it a mutiny?”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew the pack of Camels again. He had just ground out his other butt on the floor, but he dug out a fresh one and pounded it on his palm. He hit it so hard he broke it, and had to ditch it on the floor and take out another.
He lit it, then said, “Look, I didn’t have no problem with Sanchez. Like I told you earlier, he’s a good guy.”
I ignored him. “Then Colonel Smothers gave your team the order to extricate. That was around noon on the fourteenth. Sanchez spoke to the ops center at 1800 hours that evening. He said the area was thick with Serbs, and he did not consider movement advisable at that time.”
“That’s right,” he said. “I remember that call.”
“Then the next morning, at the 0600 sitrep, he repeated the same message. Then again, at the 1800 hours sitrep on the evening of the fifteenth.”
“That’s right.”
“Who was detecting all this Serb activity?”
“Perrite and Machusco were on security. Occasionally we rotated them out with the Moore brothers, to give Perrite and Machusco some rest.”
“So Perrite and Machusco were reporting heavy Serb activity in your sector?”
“Yeah. We figured that after Akhan’s raid the Serbs must’ve guessed there was a base camp that Akhan’s company was operating from, so they were out looking for it.”
“Hadn’t you already moved base camps, though?”
“Yeah, but not far. We was still in the same sector.”
“What kind of activity did Perrite and Machusco report?” “They saw some patrols, and they heard heavy vehicle activity on some roads nearby.”
“Then, on the morning of the seventeenth, they spotted the Serb recon unit that was supposedly surveilling your base camp?”
“That’s right. Only it wasn’t supposedly.”
“How do you know that, Chief? You didn’t observe the activity yourself, did you?”
“No, but Perrite and Machusco don’t fuck up. If Perrite tol’ me we was being observed, we was being observed.”
“Why did Perrite report that to you, Chief? Why didn’t he tell Captain Sanchez?”
“I ain’t got a clue.”
“Then you gave the order for the team to move out?” “That’s right,” he replied, in the process making another telling mistake. If Sanchez had been in charge, he would’ve given the order.
“Then you moved throughout the day, until around midnight, when you formed a perimeter and decided to ambush a Serb column.”
“We’ve already been through all this shit, haven’t we? My testimony ain’t gonna change.”
I ignored him again. “One last series of questions and we’re done with this session.”
“Okay,” he said, digging out yet another cigarette. He wa
s smoking them hard and fast. A small cloud of pale blue smoke actually hung on the ceiling over his head.
“The other members all testified that you were in charge at the scene of the ambush itself. You were the one who positioned them, who checked their aiming stakes, who directed the lay and wiring of the claymores. You gave the order to fire. You gave the order to cease fire. I find that very intriguing. You told me yourself that Sanchez was the operational leader.”
He appeared confused as he tried to think up a response. His eyes roved quickly across the floor.
Then he said,“Sanchez wasn’t feeling all that well. He hadn’t got any sleep for two days, so I offered to help him out.”
I almost smiled. “That was very good of you,” I said. Even better was that he just gave us the hook we needed. I turned to Morrow, and she nodded. She had picked up on it, too.
“Thank you, Chief,” I said. “We’ll call you to testify again, maybe later this evening, maybe tomorrow morning. I strongly advise you to have an attorney present at our next session.”
He planted his elbows on his knees and worked up a very convincing petulant expression.“When we gonna get done with this crap? I spent over two weeks in this shithole and I wanta get out. You’ve questioned me twice already.”
I said, “When you stop lying to us. By tomorrow morning we’ll have the whole truth. One way or another.”
The petulance receded into a bland look. He stood up and started to walk out.
“By the way,” I said, and he turned around to face me. “The deal you had with Tretorne and Murphy is off. I have full authority to recommend whatever I want, and I intend to use it.”
He turned back around and kept walking. It was in his eyes, though. He’d just heard the sounds of the walls crumbling down around him.
Chapter 30
Sergeant First Class François Perrite,” Imelda announced with great formality and astoundingly clear enunciation. Morrow’s head reeled back in surprise. Imelda could speak like the Queen of England herself when she had a mind to.
Perrite had the same cocky, self-assured walk I remembered from before. And again I also noticed how soundlessly he moved, how catlike, as though there were a blanket of air under his feet.
It was my idea to do Perrite next. He was the hothead of the team. He had also been at the center of nearly everything that happened. More important, though, he was very clearly Chief Persico’s boy. There was a powerful bond between them, and I judged that to be as much of a strength as it was a possible vulnerability.
I indicated for him to take the same seat Persico had vacated only thirty minutes before. I repeated the explanation of our purpose and invited him to smoke if he so desired. He did so desire and quickly pulled from his pocket a pack of Camels, unfiltered. Among other loyalties, he and Persico preferred the same brand. Smoking buddies.
I stared down at some papers in front of me till he had a cigarette lit and was seated in a relaxed posture. He wore an amused smirk, as though we were all gathered here for his entertainment.
I looked up.“Sergeant Perrite, we’ve already determined that you and other members of this team have perjured yourselves. We know Captain Sanchez supported Captain Akhan’s desire to raid the Piluca station.We know that, afterward, there was a general loss of confidence in his abilities, and Chief Persico virtually took charge of your team.We know your location was never detected by the Serbs. We also know the ambush was not an act of self-defense. It was a deliberate act of retribution.”
We didn’t actually know those last two points, and we only suspected some of the former, but I thought I’d just toss it all into the cauldron and see what came out. He didn’t contradict me, either. Instead he stared up at me, scratched his face, then smiled. “Then what the hell do you need me for?”
“We need to question you about your role in these events.” “Oh yeah.”
“Start with when you and Machusco went into Piluca on the morning of the fourteenth. What did you encounter?”
He bent over and used his right hand to stub out his cigarette on the floor next to the three butts Persico had left behind. Perrite had barely smoked it a quarter of the way, so I guessed his real purpose was to bend over and inspect the brand of the crushed butts lying around his chair. Real recon men are curious that way.
When he came back up he said, “Fuck you. I got no reason to answer your questions.”
“But you do,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Have you spoken with a defense counsel yet?”
“Sure. Some fatassed bitch stopped by. I tol’ her to get lost. Like I tol’ you before, I don’t like lawyers. They give me hives.”
“I hope, before she left, she had enough time to explain that once you’ve been charged with a single court-martial offense, I can add as many charges as I deem fit. The judge at your court-martial will instruct the board to consider each individual charge separately. You understand what that means?”
“No.”
Very matter-of-factly, I said, “It means that every charge receives its own punishment. Sentences accrue. Even if you’re found entirely innocent of everything that happened in Kosovo, the additional charges I might bring against you—for refusing an order, for disrespect, for obstructing justice, for perjury—will all be weighed and sentenced separately. Is all this clear to you now?”
He nodded. It was a flinty, reluctant nod, but it was a nod. “See, Sergeant, you’re here to bargain years of your life with me. Get your head out of your ass. Think about whether you want to spend your entire middle age watching the world through iron bars.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in a way that made “sir” sound like something that needed to be flushed down a toilet, but nonetheless indicated he now knew the stakes.
I said, “Now, again, what exactly did you encounter when you and Machusco entered Piluca?”
He said, “You really wanta know, huh?”
I nodded.
“Okay, then I’ll tell ya,” he said, although he said it angrily, like I’d asked for it, and I was going to get it. He leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on his knees. He looked around the room and studied each of us in turn, his head nodding in a sort of derogatory motion, as if we were all unworthy, but what the hell.
Then he stared back at me. “For starters, it wasn’t just me and Machusco. Brian Moore came with us, too, ’cause he speaks the local patois.We went in around ten. The place was real quiet, but there was this heavy odor in the air.”
“What kind of odor?”
“Two smells, actually. Blood and cordite. And the reason it was real quiet was because everybody left. There was lots of smoke and some of the buildings was still burnin’ or smolderin’. There was lots of pockmarked buildings, like you’d see after a real nasty fight. There was cannon holes in some of the walls, made by tank rounds, we figured. I tol’ Machusco and Moore we oughta get outta there real quick. I mean, it sure as shit didn’t look like Akhan won. But Machusco figured that Chief would just make us turn our asses back around and find out what happened. Knowing Chief, I guessed he was right. So we kept on.”
He paused to take out another Camel, which he tapped on his palm, just as Persico had done. Amazing.
“Then what happened,” he continued, “was we snuck down some side streets. Moore kept cover for me and Machusco, and we worked our way close to the town square, like they got in all them little Kosovar burgs. That’s where the police station was located. Machusco and I got as near as we thought was smart, then dodged into this three-story building. We worked our way to the top. We climbed out a window and got up on the roof.”
His hands and arms did a panoramic sweep through the air. “We could see the whole square and the police station. Saw it real good, too. It was crawling with Serb militia. We could see about ten tanks, old T-34s, all lined up, and the crews were climbing all over ’em, doing post-op chores. We could also see this huge stack of bodies. We had binos
with us, so we pulled ’em out, and we studied those bodies. We were near enough that with our binos we could see their faces, you know. There was a few faces that had been tossed on the pile that we didn’t recognize. Probably villagers that got in the line of fire. But we recognized most of the faces we saw. Then Machusco elbowed me and pointed at something by the police station. So I looked there. There was this tall pole that’d been stuck in the ground, right by the front door. On top of that pole was this black, dripping thing. It was Captain Akhan’s head. They’d chopped it off and stuck it there like a trophy.”
He paused to look at us. He wanted us to know it was a terrible, gruesome scene.
“After that,” he said,“we climbed back down and got the hell out. We found some tracks just outside of town and followed them. After about three miles we found some villagers who was hiding in the woods. They’d left the town that mornin’ after all the shooting was done. They said the Serbs was on a blood rage, and nobody felt safe. There was two old ladies, an old man, and I guess, about three, maybe four little kids. They was all scared to death. We gave ’em some food, and Moore questioned ’em for about twenty minutes. They said the Serbs had brought in a real big unit late the day before, just before dusk, maybe six hundred men, and hid it in various places around town. They parked tanks inside barns, and hid most of the men inside buildings. They spent all night stacking ammunition, running commo wire, building positions, getting ready for somethin’.Then around six in the morning, they told us, the town just kinda exploded. There was shit flying everywhere. The fight lasted about two hours. There was a lot of shooting inside the town, but the villagers said they heard a lot of shit up to the north, too. That was where Akhan’s security team was supposed to be positioned, and we figured that was what they was hearing.”
I asked, “And what did you judge had happened?”
His face was red, and his anger was beginning to boil over. “What happened? Pretty fuckin’ obvious, ain’t it? The Serbs knew Akhan was coming. They was waiting for him. Six or seven hundred men in town. Probably another big force waiting outside, maybe a reinforcement that they used to take down Akhan’s security team. Poor bastards never had a chance. They was all butchered. One of the old ladies told us that the last thirty minutes of the fight was just Serb troops roaming around, hunting down the last survivors. They found about ten or fifteen and brought ’em into the town square. They butchered ’em to death with bayonets. She said she’d never forget the sounds of them men screaming.”
