Enemy Combatant

by Ed Gaffney

  Then he detached the headset, hooked it over a handle at the rear of the camera, and walked straight past the bald sentinel standing at the back doors of the courtroom.

  I was a little disappointed that this information wasn’t going to get to the public in real time, but that wasn’t going to make much of a difference. The information was coming, whether over live television or not.

  And then my gaze returned to Baldy as he stood at the back doors. The rest of the courtroom’s attention was on me, as I continued my story. That gave Baldy the perfect opportunity to deliver a final message to me. Very deliberately, he unbuttoned the light jacket he was wearing, and pulled it open.

  Underneath, I could see what looked like a harness of some kind. But what the harness contained was unmistakable. Up the left side of his body ran a large weapon—what I recognized as a sawed-off shotgun. And on the right side, a handgun. Then he met my gaze, and slowly looked to the door on his right, and then the one to his left, implying that the men standing at those exits were similarly armed.

  We entered the settlement without detection, established area responsibilities, and assumed Omega formation—all entrances and exits from the area manned with heavily armed personnel.

  That’s when I realized that the camera operator hadn’t left the room merely because his bosses didn’t want him to broadcast live what I had to say.

  It was because Phoenix Superior Courtroom Number 1-B was about to be wiped.

  FORTY-ONE

  IT WAS AS IF I were being given one last chance. I could stop talking, and spare everyone in the room. Or I could keep testifying, and he’d kill them all. I sensed that the line I couldn’t cross involved anything beyond the information I had learned regarding the death of Esteban Cruz.

  I had no desire to be a martyr, or to martyr anyone else. But if the three assassins in the room, and whatever number of their teammates that might have been stationed out in the hallway, managed to get away with murdering us all, and manipulating the crime scene to make it look like the act of a foreign terrorist, we would have died for no reason at all.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t just walk away. I had no doubt that I would never get another opportunity like this. These people were cunning, and completely without morals. As soon as I was taken into custody I would be killed, without hesitation. And Cliff would die, too. They would see that there was no way this information got out.

  So I was faced with two options. I could keep talking—I was up to the point in the story where Meadows gave me the earpiece—and hope that when the Kappa and Gamma gang started shooting, someone might make it out alive to tell the real story. Or I could succumb to the pressure, sacrifice myself, and hope that another opportunity would present itself to someone else in the future, but soon enough so that this madness could be stopped before more innocent lives were lost.

  Cliff asked me another question, and as I answered, I looked at my friend of the past seven years, and at his fancy suit, and at the beautiful wedding ring that I envied so much.

  And suddenly, thanks to Amy, the woman I would now never have a chance to spend my life with, and thanks also to my mother’s gay brother, my favorite amateur magician, Uncle Louis, there was a third option.

  Before Louis returned to Florida, he showed me that in almost every one of his tricks, he was able to distract or misdirect me, either with a joke or with some meaningless movement, so that I wasn’t paying attention to the hand that pulled off the trick.

  During the months immediately following Uncle Louis’s one-weekend engagement in my life, I enthusiastically took up the art of prestidigitation.

  I was atrocious.

  But that wasn’t going to stop me on that morning. I had a chance, and I had to take it. Pretending there was a gnat bothering me, I stopped talking for a minute, and waved my injured hand back and forth in front of my face. Then I continued for a few more sentences. And then I stopped again to wave futilely at the nonexistent insect.

  The first time was the setup. The second was the real misdirection. As I waved my bloodied, bandaged hand around in front of my face, I slipped my uninjured hand into my pocket, and withdrew Sarge’s phone.

  Then, I accidentally-on-purpose struck my wounded hand on the microphone that extended from the lectern toward my mouth.

  I didn’t have to fake the yelp of pain, nor my physical reaction. I hunched over, cradling my injured hand in front of me. Then I hid the cell phone behind the mass of paper towels around my left hand. As I stood back upright, I brought both of my hands up to the platform at the top of the witness stand, placed the phone there, and rested my hands on either side of it.

  Then I apologized, surreptitiously pressed the redial button on the phone, and continued my testimony.

  I couldn’t pick the phone up, of course. So I simply leaned on the witness stand with my forearms, speaking loudly in the direction of the phone. I was hoping that there was a cell signal in the courtroom, that Amy would pick up the phone, that she would be able to hear me, and that if none of us made it out of the courtroom alive, she’d somehow be able to get the information I would reveal to the people who needed to know.

  I realize that considering my situation, that was a lot of hoping. But at the moment, hope was the only commodity I had in any meaningful supply.

  I finished my tale of cloak-and-dagger threats and counterthreats during the first days of the trial, and then moved on to the point where I rescued Henley from the fire. I briefly described my Sunday morning escape from Landry, and then detailed Meadows’s phone call to me, the threats to Amy and Erica. At this point, gasps and murmurs were coming regularly from the jury box. While I hadn’t reached the point in the narrative which was directly and obviously relevant to Juan Gomez, the jurors were obviously astonished at the lengths to which these forces had been used to manipulate and intimidate me.

  After about twenty minutes of my testimony, I got to where I was jumping off the balcony into the wagon on the street. I described how Meadows got me to safety and led me to his car. Cliff asked me, “Were you and Lieutenant Meadows able to escape?”

  And then the doors behind Baldy opened, and once again everything changed.

  Because walking through the back doors of the courtroom were the two people I least wanted to see at that moment in my life.

  The first was Landry. His face was scratched and scraped up badly, and he had a thick bandage on his right hand. He walked with a bit of a limp, and every once in a while I thought I saw a grimace come across his face. But all in all, I have to say that for someone who had been propelled through a windshield toward a cliff in the middle of the high desert, he looked pretty good.

  More important, though, was the second person who walked into the room. The woman whose hands had been restrained behind her back. The woman being gripped by Landry, and pulled into the courtroom by him, clearly against her will.

  My beautiful Amy.

  FORTY-TWO

  LANDRY DIDN’T waste a second. As he came through the door, he made direct eye contact with me and mouthed the words “We’ve got your father and Erica, too.” Apparently, he knew I could read lips.

  And he knew, too, that the game was over.

  There was no way I could continue. If I did, Landry would kill Amy instantly. And then his buddies would open fire on the rest of us.

  There was a chance that by using the door behind me, I might escape. And I believed that depending on where the shooters focused their initial attack, there was a chance that a few of the jurors might make it out, too.

  But that was assuming that the Foundation hadn’t stationed someone in the hallway directly behind the door. Given the players and the stakes, I didn’t think that was a particularly good assumption.

  And I could no longer rely on the wild and desperate hope that Amy was listening by phone to everything going on in the courtroom, and somehow recording it for others so they would know what transpired here.

  An image of the Chinese man sta
nding in front of those tanks came to my mind as I watched Landry, mere seconds away from ending the life of the woman I loved. Had that man in Tiananmen Square planned to stare down a row of tanks when he woke up that morning? It sure didn’t look like it—he was carrying a briefcase, for goodness’ sakes.

  And when he saw the tanks, and made his decision to act, was he thinking about the people he was leaving behind? Did he have a young wife, maybe a child? Or parents who needed him? Was he willing to sacrifice his life in order to make theirs better?

  And would he have stood there, shoulders squared, so bravely defiant, if he had been told that to do so would result in the immediate death of his entire family?

  I hesitated, and Cliff asked again, “Tom? Were you and Lieutenant Meadows able to escape?”

  I was just inches from the line that I knew I couldn’t cross. As soon as I began to repeat what Meadows had told me, the killing would start. I didn’t know what to do. So I tried to stall.

  “I, uh, well, obviously I escaped. Well, I got shot, of course, but I mean I got away. Lieutenant Meadows, um, that’s another story.”

  I stopped again, and Cliff saw that something was wrong. “What happened to Lieutenant Meadows?”

  Again, I hesitated. Landry had moved his left hand underneath his jacket. Amy was pressed against him, a look of pure terror stretched across her face.

  “I can’t answer that,” I replied.

  So many members of the jury did a double take that I could see the movement in my peripheral vision. Cliff stood at the defense table, looking down at a stack of papers next to a book in front of him.

  And Landry was smiling again. His hand was still ominously hidden beneath the left side of his jacket, but he’d won, and he knew it.

  Cliff lifted his head and pressed on. “Why can’t you answer that question, Mr. Carpenter? Why can’t you tell us what happened to Lieutenant Meadows?”

  I felt like I was almost to the top of a very steep mountain, but I’d reached a point where it was too dangerous to continue climbing. Now I was desperately looking for a foothold I could use to turn around without plunging to my death.

  “I can’t tell you that because I’m afraid of what might happen.”

  I was praying that Cliff would back off. He was the only one who could possibly know what was at risk here, and if he didn’t help me retreat, I was going to have to simply stop talking. But that could lead Judge Lomax to press the issue by examining the contents of the blue folder that A.D.A. Varick still held. I wasn’t sure, but I believed that might provoke the attack as well.

  But Cliff didn’t back off. Instead, he walked us all right to the edge of the precipice. “Are you aware that everything you are saying is being broadcast all over the world?”

  “Objection.” Varick looked confused, but he certainly seemed to welcome the diversion. As far as he was concerned, the more time he spent engaging Judge Lomax, the less time I spent destroying the case against Juan Gomez.

  I ignored him. I looked instead at the Judicial Broadcasting System television camera standing in the center of the room. No one was operating it, and the red light was not lit. “Actually,” I answered, “I believe that the television signal went out several minutes ago.”

  Cliff went on. “I’m not talking about television. I’m talking about radio.”

  “Your Honor.” Varick sounded a little like he was whining.

  “Mr. Redhorse,” the judge asked, “what is the point of this line of questioning?”

  Cliff looked down again at the table before him, and then returned his gaze to the front of the courtroom. “Tom Carpenter has just recounted a systematic campaign of intimidation that has been mounted against him, almost from the minute he began his work on this case. From outright threats against him and his family, to listening and tracking devices planted in his house and car, to attempts on his life and on his family’s. The reason I’m asking about the broadcast of his testimony this morning is to assure him that he does not need to feel intimidated any longer.”

  Judge Lomax turned to me. “Is Attorney Redhorse correct? Do you feel intimidated right now, Mr. Carpenter?”

  One wrong step, and the whole room was going to erupt in gunfire. “Um, yes, Your Honor. I’m concerned…I’m feeling intimidated right now.”

  The judge nodded. “I see. Is there anything I can do to assure you that you need not fear testifying here this morning?”

  I almost smiled. There was something truly noble in the way that he assumed that anyone speaking the truth in a courtroom in America had nothing to fear.

  It was too bad that he was so dreadfully naive.

  “Um, I don’t think so, Your Honor” was the best I could do for a reply.

  “That’s why I was asking about the radio broadcast, Your Honor,” Cliff said. “I thought it might help Tom to know that everything he has said this morning has been broadcast live on my wife’s Web site. She says that her listeners have heard it all, and are gathering outside the courthouse as we speak to witness whatever happens here today.”

  I couldn’t tell if Cliff was bluffing. Unlike me, he was an excellent liar, and had fooled me countless times when playing cards. Henley was the only one who could keep up with him.

  Cliff saw my hesitation, and upped the ante. He reached down to that part of the defense table that had taken up so much of his attention today, and held up a cell phone. “I’ve been trading text messages from Iris—my wife—all morning.” Then he turned to face me. “The call you made to Amy was forwarded to Iris. That’s how I know, Tom.”

  Relief flooded through me. My gamble had paid off. Thirty minutes ago, I had pressed the redial button on Sarge’s cell phone, hoping that Amy would be able to tell the world what had happened. But instead, Iris had been the messenger.

  So all was not lost. Whatever had been said this morning was out there, and whatever I would say from this point forward, at least until I was cut down by the assassins that lurked at every door of this room, would be heard.

  Cliff cleared his throat. “And so I ask you again, Tom, what happened to Lieutenant Joshua Meadows last night, after you escaped the attack at Cactus Curt’s Steakhouse?”

  Now the question was whether I was willing to risk the lives of Amy, and Erica, and Henley, and Cliff, and everyone else in this room. It was one thing to be right. It was quite another to play God with everyone you cared about in the world.

  And just then, I knew that even if that anonymous Chinese man had been caring for his crippled father, or looking after his widowed sister-in-law and her daughter, he still would have stood up to those tanks.

  Because he understood that the lives of everyone he loved were already in the balance. He knew that if the tanks weren’t stopped then, it wouldn’t make any difference—sooner or later they would be rolling into his front yard, and into the front yards of everyone that he held dear.

  So I stood at that witness stand that Monday morning, and I decided to face down Landry, and his murderous thugs. Because I knew that if they weren’t stopped, it would only be a matter of time before what had happened in Denver happened in Kansas City, or San Francisco, or Atlanta. Or Phoenix.

  And there would come a time when Amy would be named the next enemy combatant. Or Cliff. Or Iris. Or, in a few years, Erica. And they would be the ones facing electric shock, or waterboarding, or whatever other nightmarish torture was being passed off as non-torture at that time.

  So I reached down with my good hand and I picked up Sarge’s cell phone and brought it close to my mouth, and I spoke loudly and clearly, because I wanted to be sure that Iris heard and broadcast every one of my words, in case they were my last.

  “What happened to Lieutenant Meadows was that he was executed by a group called the Foundation. And the reason that is relevant to this trial is because the Foundation is a secret arm of the U.S. military. They were the people who planned the Denver Tunnel Bombing. And they framed Juan Gomez. Because they wanted to make the American people
believe that we had been attacked by Muslim terrorists, so that certain elements of the government could capitalize on the fear of future attacks, and use that fear to consolidate their political power.”

  The room was dead silent. And then I saw Cliff’s face, and I realized I had made a tragic mistake.

  He had fooled me again.

  What made Cliff such a terrific liar was that at the first sign of doubt, he would produce some piece of evidence which supported his lie. It was amazing how often he managed to sucker people into believing the craziest things—his mother was the first Native American chiropractor, he had all his baby teeth surgically removed as a child because of a rare disease, his given name was really Waldo.

  And as the expression of fear came over him, I realized that’s what his little speech about the text messages was. A bit of garnish to make his falsehood more palatable.

  Landry leapt into action. “It’s all bullshit!” he shouted, striding into the center of the courtroom with Amy in tow. “Prepare to execute full wipe.”

  And at his command, Gamma, Kappa, and the third hit man locked the doors they stood before, reached under their jackets, and pulled out their weapons. One held a gun to Sarge’s head, and a second held one to Mike’s. Then they pushed both officers to the ground, and handcuffed them.

  Our bluff had been called.

  FORTY-THREE

  BEFORE THE occupants of the room could react, Baldy screamed, “Everybody stay in your seats, and shut up, right now!” He punctuated his message by firing a bullet into the ceiling. A few people screamed, but when the echoes of the gun blast died away, there was silence in the room, with the exception of some people moaning and crying.

  Judge Lomax stood and shouted, “Officer! Put that weapon away. And release those court officers immediately!”

  Gamma and Kappa stood over the prostrate court officers and looked back at the cop. The African American with the goatee was condescending. “Sorry, Judge. Just following orders.”