by Brian Haig
“But surely you’ve noticed that he’s very depressed?”
“No, I, uh, I hadn’t noticed that, either.”
“Then listen closely. If he manages to kill himself or loses even one more ounce, I’ll see that you’re charged with gross negligence. Do I make myself clear?”
“Uh, yes, sir ...or, er, yes, Major.”
“Get out of here,” I said.
He scurried quickly away and his overweight butt shook like Jell-O.
I’d just done the best I could for Terry Sanchez. I wasn’t sure it was going to help, though. When a man walks all over his own image of himself the way he had, something dies inside. Sanchez was rotting away from the center, because he had compromised nearly every principle he believed in.
Most of the fault for that lay on his own increasingly skinny shoulders. But some of that fault fell on Smothers and Murphy. Smothers, because he allowed his sense of personal loyalty to overrule his judgment and gave Sanchez a team. He never should’ve done that. It was one of those all-too-common instances of doing something for all the right reasons with all the wrong consequences. It was a disservice to the men, because Sanchez wasn’t up to leading them.It was a disservice to Sanchez for the very same reason. He was bound to fail.
Murphy’s blame came from another source altogether. He had allowed his group to continue its policy of treating the First Battalion like it was some kind of privileged private men’s club. An exclusive old-timers’ club. Since Persico and his sergeants all felt handpicked and had all been together for so many years, and those bonds had been calcified by so many shared experiences, any newcomer, even a newly appointed team leader, was likely to be treated like an unproven outsider. The sergeants and warrants in the First Battalion were all convinced they were something special. They had isolated and blocked out Terry Sanchez. When that sense of isolation was compounded by the pressures of a combat situation, it became too much for the human spirit to bear. Particularly when that spirit was a little frail and pappy in the first place. The result was the pitiful picture of Terry Sanchez we had just seen.
I would bet that if we went back and interviewed the men who had led that team before Sanchez, we’d hear echoes of the same tale. In fact, I’d bet we’d find the same thing in a lot of the teams in First Battalion. The old-timers’ club. There were probably a lot of accidents waiting to happen out there.
I looked over at Imelda and asked her to get Chief Persico.
Chapter 33
Persico had disregarded my advice. He did not return with a lawyer. He walked into the room alone, and I had to wonder about that. Surely he knew we were closing in on the truth. Surely he knew there was a fairly strong possibility we were going to take the whole damned proverbial book and stuff it down his throat.
I said, “Chief, please have a seat.”
He took the same chair and casually hiked his right leg over his left. You couldn’t help but notice the yawning contrast between this gray-haired, leathery, self-assured man and the simmering, leg-rubbing wreck that was left of Terry Sanchez. If I were a sergeant in that team, there’d be no question which one I’d want to follow, either.
I said, “Chief, I want to be frank with you. You are facing possible charges of multiple counts of murder, failure to obey orders, inciting mutiny, obstruction of justice, lying in an official investigation, and a long host of lesser charges. I advise you from the bottom of my heart to have counsel present for these proceedings. I am willing to suspend this hearing, if you wish to take the time.”
He sat perfectly still. “I don’t want counsel.”
“That’s your right. If at any point you change your mind, though, we will halt the proceeding so you can obtain one.”
He said, “Can we get on with it?”
“Of course.”
Before I could say anything else, he said,“Mind if I start with a few points?”
“If you’d like.”
He studied me carefully.“Major, I see you’re wearing a Combat Infantryman’s Badge and a combat patch on your right sleeve. You were in combat, right?”
“Right.”
“Where?”
“I was with the 82nd in Panama and the Gulf,” I answered, which was technically true, since the 82nd Airborne Division was in both places while I was there with the outfit.
“Were you in leadership positions? Were you in the field?” “Yes,” I answered, which was also true because like Sanchez I was a team leader.
“You get shot at any?”
“A fair amount,” I admitted.
“Good wars, weren’t they?” he asked, breaking into a grim grin.
I said,“I suppose the politically correct answer would be to say that there’s no such thing as a good war, but as wars go, I guess they were pretty good. Short, lopsided, and we won.”
“Goddamn right,” he said, nodding and watching my face very intensely.“I was in the Gulf, too. Didn’t do Panama, though. Did Haiti, Mogadishu, Rwanda. Also spent a shitload of years in Bosnia, doing this and that. You missed all those, didn’t you?”
“By that time, I was in law school or the JAG Corps.” “Yeah,” he said, nodding thoughtfully.“Me, Perrite, Machusco, Caldwell, Butler, the Moore brothers, we done nearly all those together. The Moore brothers, poor bastards, they joined too late for the Gulf. Never gotta taste of what it feels like to get a sweet war under their belts. Only thing they’ve ever done is float through all these endless shitholes we’ve been doin’ ever since. They don’t even know what it’s like to win, you know?”
He paused for a moment and his gray eyes roved around the room, taking in each of our faces. He paused for a moment at Imelda’s face. She quietly nodded. He smiled at her, then nodded back in some kind of private acknowledgment.
Then the smile evaporated and he faced me again.“Can’t tell you how many refugee camps we’ve been through since the Gulf. You kinda lose count. I swear I’ve seen a hundred million miserable faces with those empty-looking eyes all those refugees got. Maimed kids, raped women, orphans, mothers who just lost their babies, men too ashamed to look at their families ’cause they let this happen. Christ, you get tired of it. They send you into these things, and you’re supposed to just ...well, you know? I mean, they call these things humanitarian operations, but a real humanitarian would go in and knock the crap out of the bad guys, wouldn’t he? A real humanitarian wouldn’t stand around putting Band-Aids on ’em after they got hurt. A real humanitarian would keep ’em from getting hurt in the first place. Don’t ya think?”
“Chief,” I said as kindly as I could,“we’re not here to debate the righteousness of our national policies. We’re here to consider what happened in Kosovo between the fourteenth and eighteenth of June.”
His voice was cool, almost matter-of-fact. “You wanta know, then listen. ’Cause this is what happened. I mean, it’s a head game, isn’t it? You wanta know what happened, you gotta climb in and share some headspace with us. Anyway, you do enough of these things, you eventually reach a point. Maybe it was ’cause of Akhan. Any of the others tell you about Akhan?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Yeah, well, I doubt what they said did him justice. Christ, I can’t do him justice. I seen some fine men in my time, but I never saw one who could touch him. God, I would’ve followed that bastard myself. Didn’t know crap about fighting, you know. Really had no business at all being out there. The guy was a brilliant doctor. I mean, he was really gifted, you know. I heard some of the UN docs talking about him. They talked about him like he was just Jesus Christ, a guy who could do miracles. Only thing was, Akhan refused to stay back in some hospital tent tending the wounded when others were out fighting. He wanted to be one of those real humanitarians, you see?”
He looked me dead in the eye. ”Christ, I wish I knew the words to describe him. I mean, I’m not real educated or nothing, and I can’t make you picture him. But you gotta picture him if you wanta know what happened.”
He was getting more animated, ma
ybe out of frustration that he couldn’t find the words, or maybe just from the excitement of thinking about this extraordinary man. I’d met a few men like that. Not many, but a few.
“He was young,” he continued. “Early thirties, I’d guess. A handsome guy, tall, thin, with sunken cheeks, but this special calmness in his eyes. Can you see that in your head?
“Thing is,” he continued,“Akhan never should’ve gone down to Piluca. Sanchez egged him into it, though. I mean, I saw it building when we was puttin’ ’em through training. Everyone just admired Akhan, you know. Christ, you just couldn’t help yourself. And Sanchez? Well, he just couldn’t get anyone to respect him. A bunch of the men in Akhan’s company talked a lot about this Serb, Pajocovic. They had all kinds of stories, so we all knew they really hated him. So Sanchez started goading Akhan about how he probably shouldn’t go after him, even though all his men wanted to, ’cause it might involve a little bloodshed. I mean, he started on Captain Akhan even before we took ’em into Kosovo. He was trying to shame him, you know, ’cause the way this Avenging Angel’s supposed to work is the KLA aren’t supposed to do the tough crap. Being with ’em was like our cover so we could do the hard ones. But I knew Sanchez was jealous of Akhan. I mean, Akhan just had this easy way with men, you know? He was a natural. Sanchez had to work hard at it, and he still didn’t measure up. I think he wanted Akhan to try some hard things, so he would fail. That make sense? I mean, Akhan had the talent, but he wasn’t trained to do it. Sanchez didn’t have the right stuff, but he had the training.You see what was going on there?”
“It makes sense,” I said.
He looked over at Imelda again, and she nodded at him again, her face taut but also proud.
“Anyway, when Perrite and Machusco and Moore came back from Piluca, everything kinda came apart. I don’t think Sanchez wanted that to happen, you know? All of ’em getting killed that way, that was more than he bargained for. It’s what he set in motion, though, wasn’t it? I took him off in the woods and told him about what Perrite and the guys saw, and he started crying. I mean, he bawled like a little kid. The rest of the team didn’t handle it real well, either. If this wasn’t the Army, the men probably would’ve taken Sanchez into the woods and lynched him. It really was a sorry thing he done.”
“Did you tell Sanchez he couldn’t lead the team? Was there an organized effort to keep him from doing his job?”
“No,” he said, appearing very disquieted. “But I didn’t fix it, either. I knew what was happening. I just didn’t want to. Don’t blame the men. They didn’t have nothing to do with it. It was my fault. I just didn’t make ’em follow his orders anymore. And I didn’t make Sanchez keep doin’ his job, neither. I mean, he nearly always needed a kick in the ass anyway, but this time I saw that he lost his guts, and I just let him be. You understand? I didn’t do it. I didn’t want to do it. You wanta charge someone with mutiny, you charge me. I guess I mutinied.”
I said, “When did you decide to ambush Pajocovic’s unit?”
“That morning. Right away, really.”
“Why? Why didn’t you extricate when Colonel Smothers ordered you to?”
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the Camels. He looked up at me. “This still all right?”
“Sure.”
He withdrew one and tamped it down, staring at his palm. He lit it and inhaled heavily, allowing the smoke to sit inside his lungs before it filtered slowly out his nose. He spent a long moment chewing on his lower lip. Then he answered.
“That’s why you gotta understand what it feels like to do all these humanitarian missions. It does get personal. They can bring in all these shrinks to tell you not to hold on to it and all that psychobabble, but it gets personal. I mean, we’re soldiers, not doctors, you know? Captain Akhan’s head was on a stake, like some kinda trophy. This guy Pajocovic was a real murderous bastard. He’d killed and tortured hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. However this Kosovo thing ends, he’d of just walked away from it. Look what happened after Bosnia and Rwanda and Haiti. The dead got buried and forgotten, and the murderers went on with their lives.”
“So you decided to execute him?”
He stared at the smoking tip of the cigarette. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I decided to do. I don’t regret it, either. The men just did what they were told to do, so don’t charge them. I was giving the orders. They were only following ’em, just like the book says they’re supposed to. They didn’t do nothing wrong.”
I said,“Somebody did, though, Chief. Somebody went through and shot the Serbs in the head. Can you tell us who did that?”
He still stared at the tip of the cigarette. He did not even blink. “Yeah,” he said. “I did it.”
I felt something stick in the back of my throat, and I had to take a moment to swallow and catch my breath. These were the last words I expected or wanted to hear.
I finally asked, “How, Chief? How did you do it?”
“Easy, really. Most of the Serbs were dead or wounded from the ambush. I gotta tell you, Major, as ambushes go, it was a pretty good one. Real lethal, real quick. I waited till there was only three or four still firing before I shot off the star cluster for everyone to cease fire. Then I ordered everyone to head for the rally point. They all got up and started running, only I gave ’em all a little head start, then I went in a different direction. I worked my way over to where the road curved and crossed there. Then I ran up the hill on the other side of the road. The last of the Serbs were huddled behind their vehicles, still shooting at the hillside where our team had been. They had their backs turned to me. It was kid’s play, really. I shot ’em. Then I went down and put bullets through all their heads.”
“Why, Chief? Why did you do it?”
“Ain’t it obvious? Maybe one of those guys down there still firing back might’ve been Pajocovic. Besides, after what they done, I wanted ’em all dead. And I guess I didn’t want any witnesses left.”
The room suddenly became very quiet. He calmly finished smoking his cigarette. He dropped it on the floor and ground it out, turning his heel four or five times to make sure it was completely extinguished. The physical metaphor was very powerful and very persuasive.
I said, “Okay, Chief, that will be all.”
He stood up and actually saluted me. I saluted him back, then he dropped his hand and turned and looked at Imelda for a very long time. She stared right back. Real soldiers, the professionals, can almost smell each other. Then he marched out and closed the door on a room full of stunned and saddened people.
I turned to Morrow, and her eyes were real moist. I looked at Imelda and she was staring back at me like I was the biggest maggot that ever slimed the earth. I guess Chief Persico was the last man anyone wanted to have done such a despicable crime, and it helped everyone to blame me for having made him confess.
There were some very pent-up feelings inside this room, so I ordered everybody to take a twenty-minute break. Even Morrow got up and left the room. I was left in isolation at the small table we had set up. Something was stuck somewhere back in my dark recesses, some missing piece, and I was trying like hell to dredge it up. I stared at the floor for a very long time.
Fifteen minutes passed before Morrow reentered. She was carrying two cups of coffee.
“Thanks,” I mumbled as she put one in front of me.
She fell into her chair and groaned. “God, this is awful.” Hard to argue with that, I thought, only nodding. I wasn’t feeling real talkative.
She said, “Thank God it’s finally over. Except for deciding what to do.”
I said, “It’s not over, Lisa.”
“It is for me. We’ve got enough evidence to make our recommendations. I don’t want to sit here and rehash this with every member of the team.”
“I don’t intend to, either,” I said. “Only one more to go.”
I got up and went out to find Imelda. I told her what I wanted her to do, then I returned to the interview room a
nd quietly waited till Imelda’s girls came filtering back in and took their seats.
Two minutes passed before the door opened. First, Imelda came through, then Sergeant François Perrite.
“Have a seat,” I told him.
He did, although more nervously this time. He broke out the cigarettes immediately and began tamping a fresh one.
I said, “Do I need to remind you of your rights again?”
“No, I know my rights.”
“You can spare me your feelings toward lawyers this time, but are you sure you don’t want counsel, Sergeant? I would seriously advise you to have a lawyer present.”
“Nope. There’s enough fucking lawyers in this room already.” “Nobody would argue with that,” I admitted.
Then we looked into each other’s eyes a moment, and he knew that I knew.
I said,“Chief Persico just left. He took responsibility for everything. He said he was the one who made all the decisions, who led the quiet mutiny against Captain Sanchez, who decided to execute an ambush, who ignored the order to extricate.”
He was quietly nodding as I detailed this.
“Of course, Sergeant Perrite, you bear most of the responsibility. You were the one who came back and tried to incite the men against Sanchez.You knew they didn’t like him anyway, and you stoked the fuel. It was your idea to kill Pajocovic, wasn’t it? Yet Chief was in here trying to cover for you.”
He didn’t nod or acknowledge a word, only watched me and listened.
I continued. “Then he confessed that he was the one who went around after the ambush and shot the Serbs in the head. He said he sent everyone else to the rally point, then he snuck across the road and dispatched the last survivors. Then he went down to the site and administered the coup de grâce.”
Perrite was now staring at the end of his lit cigarette, much as Chief Persico had sat and stared at his only thirty minutes before. It was uncanny. Perrite admired the man so much he even affected the same mannerisms.
I said,“The problem, Sergeant Perrite, is that you and I both know he didn’t do that. Don’t we? He was trying to save somebody he cares deeply about, and I only hope to God that man cares as much about him.”
