by Brian Haig
Something about the way Perrite told the story made it enormously affecting. Maybe it was the coarse, simple way he expressed himself. Maybe it was just the brutal believability and awful sense of what had happened to Akhan and his men. Even Imelda and her girls were all bent forward, fixated on Perrite’s agonized face.
Perrite was deeply affected himself. He’d wanted to shock us, but in doing so, he’d had to relive the scene inside his own head. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were gleaming with anger.
I said, “Do you blame Captain Sanchez for that?”
“Of course I blame that dumb son of a bitch!” he exploded. “Bastard was desperate to get something good on his record so he could get promoted. Chief Persico told him not to let Akhan go. He warned him. I even heard him screamin’ at Sanchez. He took him off in the woods the day before where he thought none of us could hear, but I heard ’em arguing. Sanchez wouldn’t listen to him, though. He kept sayin’ it would be a real coup if Akhan and his guys knocked off that police station. It would en-flame the whole countryside, he claimed. Dumb bastard.”
“When you, Machusco, and Moore rejoined the team, what happened?”
“Well, uh, we went to see Chief first. I wasn’t in no mood to talk to Sanchez, you know? Machusco and I felt like beating the crap outta him, or maybe even shooting his dumb ass. So Moore said we’d better go see Chief first. Let him handle it.”
“And what did Chief Persico do?”
“He got real pissed and upset. I mean, he never said it, but I knew he’d told Sanchez not to let this happen. Still, Chief felt real guilty. I mean, that’s the kind of guy Chief is. He done everything he could to stop it, but he still felt responsible.”
“And did he confront Captain Sanchez?”
“Not that I know of. He might’ve said something to him when none of us was listening, but the Chief can swallow a lot and keep goin’.”
“Okay,” I said, “let me phrase this differently. Did you detect a noticeable shift in leadership afterward?”
“No.”
“Who was giving you your orders?”
“Sanchez mostly, Chief some of the time. No different than normal.”
“By your own earlier testimony, you said you made all your reports to Chief Persico. Why was that?”
“’Cause I couldn’t stand talking to Sanchez. I know it’s un-professional and all that, but he got those guys killed. I didn’t wanta go near him. I mighta done something I regretted.”
He was lying again, but I couldn’t tell how or why. It was just a sense. Maybe he was trying to cover Persico’s ass.
I said,“What can you tell us about the execution of the ambush?”
“Nothing really. Like I told you before, I was half a mile away, out on the left flank, performing security. I wasn’t in on the decision to do the ambush, and I never saw what happened.”
I turned to Morrow, but she shook her head, indicating she didn’t want to ask any more questions. I told Perrite to return to his cell and nodded for Imelda to escort him.
When he left the room, you could almost feel the decompression.
Morrow went, “Phew!” and her eyebrows shot up. “It’s beginning to make sense, isn’t it?”
“Only up till the afternoon of the fourteenth.What happened after, that’s still murky.”
I let Imelda and her girls go out and take a potty break or a smoke break, or a relax break or whatever their hearts desired.
Morrow and I put our heads together to figure out what to do next. We were at the point now where it was real fluid. The story was cracking, and we had to follow the stream where it led us. With each witness, we’d know a little more about what actually happened, and we’d use that as our start point for the next team member we drew into our confessional web.
Morrow said, “I think we ought to bring Brian Moore back in next.”
I thought about that but wasn’t sure what he could add. “Give me another name,” I told her.
“Okay. Ezekial Graves, the medic.”
“Why him?”
“He’s got the least to lose. He didn’t participate in the ambush.”
“That means he also knows the least about it.”
“But he can fill in the blanks between the fourteenth and the ambush.”
She was right, of course. We went and got a cup of coffee while I idly flirted with her. She wasn’t real responsive. Maybe her mind was too preoccupied with what we were doing. Maybe she was still sore over me suspecting her to be the mole.
Ten minutes later, Imelda did her bailiff thing again, announcing Sergeant Ezekial Graves. She was getting better and better at it. I could have sworn she was enjoying her new role.
Sergeant Graves was thin, mulatto-skinned, and handsome. He had large, watery brown eyes, clean-cut features, and a long, narrow chin. The Army chooses soldiers with fairly high IQs for the medic corps. This is one of the things the Army actually does right. Nobody wants a dummy who can’t add feeding morphine into their veins, or struggling to remember exactly how to tie off a tourniquet to stem a pulsing artery.
I introduced myself and Morrow to Graves and explained our purpose again. He seemed a little nervous, although I remembered that Floyd, aka Delbert, had described him as fairly tough. Of course, Floyd was trying to sabotage us, so maybe that was a contaminated judgment. I had a strong suspicion that maybe Sergeant Butler was the tough one, and Delbert had actually been trying to steer us away from Graves.
I told Graves how much we already knew about what had happened out there, adding the new details we had just learned from Perrite. Then I added my admonishments about truthfulness, commenting that we didn’t think he had much to fear, since he didn’t participate in the ambush. By his expression, it struck me that he’d already figured that one out on his own. Like I said, medics are generally pretty smart.
I then said, “Could you please tell us what happened after Perrite, Machusco, and Moore returned from Piluca with their report about the fate of Akhan’s team?”
He bit his lip and looked around the room. He was the newest member of Sanchez’s team, and he was a medic. That cut both ways. He had the lowest loyalty quotient. But he could also be the one who was trying the hardest to fit into the powerful tug of the fraternity.
He stopped looking around, but he began fidgeting with his hands. “I’m not sure what you’re asking, sir.”
He knew damn well what I was asking, and I guessed he was still trying to sort out whether to reveal anything or not.
I said, “Look, Sergeant Graves, the story is coming out. You can’t stop it. The others are coming clean, and it would be a terrific shame if you destroyed yourself for nothing. Now, was there a blowup? Was there a perceptible change in morale, or maybe in the attitude of the team?”
I was trying to pick my words carefully, because some future defense counsel might claim that I had first told him he wasn’t likely to be prosecuted, and now I was discreetly, or indiscreetly, leading him in what to say if he wanted me to lay off him.
He said, “No, sir, there was no blowup. It took a while for the word to get around about what happened down in Piluca. Sergeant Machusco and Sergeant Perrite sort of circulated around and let us know.”
“Did they blame Captain Sanchez?”
“Yes, sir. They didn’t need to, though. We all knew. A team that small gets to be like a family. Not a lot happens we don’t all know about.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. He waited for me to ask the next question but I didn’t.
Finally he said, “It wasn’t like a mutiny or anything, sir. I swear it wasn’t.”
I found it interesting that he would choose to jump to that particular denial. “What was it like?” I asked.
“Well, you have to understand, sir, we all liked Captain Akhan and his guys. It was crazy, really. It wasn’t like we had a whole lot in common with one another, at least with Akhan’s guys. Most of them couldn’t speak any English. They were farmers, butchers, shop p
eople, a few schoolteachers. I don’t know how to explain it. It was kinda like you might feel toward an overeager puppy. But don’t get me wrong; that’s not the way we all felt toward Captain Akhan. No, sir. He was different ...real different from them.”
“Different how?” Morrow asked.
“Did you know what he did in real life?” he asked. Morrow shook her head.
“He was a doctor. A heart surgeon, in fact. Graduated from Harvard Medical School. That’s how I got to know him real well. At night, after the training, he’d take me over to the UN medical tents. They were swamped with all these wounded, sick people pouring out of Kosovo, and we’d work there about seven or eight hours every night. I don’t know how he did it. He’d get up every morning at five-thirty for the training, and since the training program was only six weeks, we were really busting their asses.When we let them go, usually about five, his men would stagger over to get something to eat, then climb right into their sacks. I mean, they were all exhausted. Akhan would skip the meal and work till one, sometimes two or three in the morning. I don’t know how he did it. You had to see him with those people in those tents, though. He wasn’t just a doctor. He was like a saint. You’d get some little kid, with maybe a broken leg and maybe some shrapnel wounds, and the kid would be wailing with pain till Akhan got there. He’d talk to the kid in this incredibly soothing voice while he was operating on him, and the kid would stop crying and just let him do it. None of the other doctors had that touch.”
Graves stopped for a moment and you could see he was in some kind of private reverie.
He finally said, “I mean, Captain Akhan, he didn’t even have to be here. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. a long time before. Did you know he was a U.S. citizen? He had a wife and three little kids, a house in Boston, and he worked in some big hospital there. When this thing blew up, he parked his life, paid his own fare, and got over here. The UN folks wanted him to work in a camp hospital full-time. He refused. He figured that was the coward’s way out. He didn’t know anything about soldiering, but he was smart, and everyone naturally looked up to him.”
Graves’s face had by this point become a study in human agony. It was evident that he, like Persico, had developed a very deep affection for Captain Akhan.
Then Graves said,“I’m sorry. It’s hard to describe sitting here in a room with you all, but he was ...well, he was different than anyone I ever met. It’s just hard to put into words. It was like he emitted some kind of strength.You had to like him. Everybody liked him.”
I opened my lips to ask another question, but he cut me off.
“No,” he said. “People didn’t just like him. People sort of loved him. I did. The other guys in the team, even Machusco and Perrite, who’re pretty tough, we all loved him. Even Chief, I think. I mean, the Chief doesn’t show a lot of emotion. That’s not his way, but whenever he and Akhan were together, there was some kind of a special bond there. It really made no sense. I mean, Chief’s a soldier right down to the bone, and Akhan was really a doctor at heart.You wouldn’t think they’d be that close.”
“So what happened?” I asked.“If it wasn’t a mutiny, what did happen?”
“Uh...I guess we all just decided we weren’t going to follow Captain Sanchez anymore. Nobody said anything. It was just a feeling. We didn’t mutiny, though, sir, I swear.”
“But the effect was the same?”
“Yes, sir, I guess it was. It’s odd, though. Even Captain Sanchez seemed to be part of it. Does that make sense?”
“No. Please explain it.”
He looked down and studied the floor, and his face became perplexed as he tried to find the right words. “He just sort of faded out. He was there, but he stopped giving orders. Maybe it was guilt, I don’t know. Chief just sort of filled in the gap and started giving orders.”
I said, “Then you spent a day and a half in your base camp, right?”
“That’s right, sir.”
“What was the team doing during all that time?”
“Waiting.”
“What were you waiting for?”
“I don’t know exactly. I mean, I’m a medic, and I’m the new guy, you know? If they were sick or hurting, they’d talk to me, but nobody wanted my opinion on operations. Perrite and Machusco and the Moores kept going out on their patrols, while I guess they were all trying to think about what to do next. I mean, after what happened to Captain Akhan and his company, none of us wanted to slink back home with our tails between our legs.”
“Was your camp detected by the Serbs?”
“Not that I know of. We pulled up stakes about two days later. I remember, because that was the morning Sergeant Caldwell cut his foot with an axe. He was chopping firewood and opened up a deep gash. I had to stitch him up.”
“How did the ambush come about?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just remember that on that night, we pulled into a hasty perimeter. It was late and we’d been moving all day. Then the word went around to start checking ammo and cleaning weapons for a fight. Since I’m a medic, I didn’t have to clean my weapon or check my ammo, so I dozed off. Sergeant Caldwell woke me when it was time to move. He wanted me to give him some more aspirin, because his foot still hurt and we had to start walking again.”
I looked at my watch. It was seven o’clock and none of us had eaten since breakfast. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but the golden rule of the Army is that you have to feed your troops. I thanked Sergeant Graves for his insights and asked Imelda to please escort him back to his cell.
Morrow and I then walked out together.We didn’t say much until the van delivered us back to the entrance of the hotel. I guess we were both sort of entombed in our own thoughts. Until this point, we’d been handling a legal case with evidence and elements of proof and all the other cold, rational pieces that lawyers are trained to delve into. Now the fragments of an immensely human tragedy were coming together before our eyes, and that has a tendency to leave one disturbed.
“Dinner?” I asked.
“Who’s buying?” she parried.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“If we treat this like a date, I’ll buy. If it’s more in the line of a business meeting between associates, my hands are tied, and we go Dutch. Some guy left a tablet on a mount somewhere and it’s carved in stone someplace near the bottom: Thou shalt only pay for dates that show some promise of conquest.”
“Dutch it is,” she said, leaving me thoroughly dispirited as she headed up the stairs.
I got changed faster than her and rushed downstairs and got us a table. A good one, too, right in the corner, right beside the big picture window that looked out over the plains below. There were twinkling lights as far as the eye could see.
I didn’t spend any time studying the landscape. I guiltily and swiftly knocked down two long and tall glasses of scotch and decided not to mention that I’d started before her. My ribs hurt, though, and I owed them a nice surprise. I even had the waiter carry off the evidence before she joined me.
He was just escaping with the glasses when she glided through the entrance. If this wasn’t a date, she was a little over-dressed, or underdressed, or both. She had on this short, clingy blue skirt that stopped about five inches above her knees and a perfectly lovely blouse with what is politely termed a plunging neckline. Suddenly, you could see just about everything she’d been hiding under those BDUs these past few weeks. I almost gasped, but I’m too cool for that, too. I limited myself to some heavy panting and a long, filthy, ogling stare.
I wondered what she was up to. Maybe she was trying to show me what I was missing out on. Like, hey, this could’ve been yours, all yours, if only you hadn’t suspected me of being Tretorne’s stooge. Or maybe it was some subliminal impulse inside her, like she was out to prove that Miss Smith back in Tuzla wasn’t the only one with what my grandfather would call a great set of gams. Now, I did know the precise meaning of the word gams, and Morrow had a perfectly
sterling set, I assure you. Ever so long, ever so slim, tapering down to this wonderful pair of slender little ankles. A nice set of uptoppers, too. That was another of my grandfather’s favorite words. I knew what uptoppers were, too.
Her walk across the dining room attracted a flock of attention in the form of lots more ogling stares. Two Italian gentlemen even rushed over to pull back her chair. She sat down, said thank you very pertly, then both the men sort of stood there gaping, like nobody knew what to do next. I caught one of them peeking over her shoulder at her uptoppers, and I gave him an evil stare. He smiled at me, then retreated. The other man stood there until the waiter came to take our orders. Then it got a little crowded and he finally ambled back to his table. Some lady, I guess his wife, was there, and she started yammering at him in Italian.
I said,“Nothing like making a low-key, unobtrusive entrance.” She smiled politely and blushed a little. “I had nothing else to wear. If I don’t get to a laundry soon, I’ll be out of clean underwear, too.”
I thought of ten cleverly lascivious retorts to that, but this was a business meeting between associates, no matter what my libido was screaming at that moment.
“No sweat,” I assured her, patting her arm like any good senior officer who’s concerned for the welfare of his troops. “It gets to be a problem, I’ll just loan you some of mine.”
She giggled kindly at that.“So, should we get a bottle of Chi-anti?”
“Go ahead,” I said.“I’ve got two broken ribs and a body that’s screaming for some genuine medication.”I looked up and winked at the waiter. “I’d like to start with two scotches, straight up.”
