Flynn was listening intently, Terry noticed, his lips pressed tight together. “In your experience, what kind of leader was Lieutenant McCarran?”
Whalen fixed his gaze on Terry again. “He was the best young officer I ever saw. He had guts, and he always kept his cool. He knew when to take advice, when to trust his instincts. And he was just stone smart.” Whalen paused, searching for a way to explain himself. “The thing was, you felt he cared about the guys in the platoon. He always took an interest in everybody’s lives. When we had a mission, he explained things clearly. He even learned a little Arabic to help him get on with the Iraqis—they’d tell him things they maybe wouldn’t have said to someone else. Even with the language barrier, he seemed to have a real good sense of who to believe and who not to believe.” Whalen paused, then finished: “You knew that he didn’t want any of us to die for no good reason. At least not if he could help it.”
“Can you recall any specific instance of that?”
“You could just see it. His driver, Corporal Shores, had a pregnant wife at home—if something risky came up, the lieutenant watched out for him. But he was looking out for all of us when Captain D’Abruzzo got shot at.”
Whalen stopped there, as though conscious that any statement involving Brian and D’Abruzzo might be dangerous to his platoon leader. “Could you describe that?” Terry prodded.
Whalen nodded slowly, willing to comply but reluctant to do so. “It was early on,” he said at length. “We’re on patrol. The captain’s voice comes over the radio, saying that he’s gotten shot at on a road leading out of town. He wants us to go out and clean up the area. ‘By the time we get there,’ I hear the lieutenant say, ‘they’ll have scattered.’
“ ‘Just do it,’ D’Abruzzo orders. All of us know it’s pointless; all that’ll happen is that someone else will be taking potshots at us. So the lieutenant tells him okay, then we just breeze through the area, reporting back that we made no contact. See, he obeyed the order, but he didn’t ask us to hang around and get ourselves killed because some guy shot at the captain. We got shot at every day.”
The delicacy of this story, Terry realized, was that Brian’s compassion could suggest a disregard for his duties, or disdain for a superior officer. He decided to counter this with a question. “During your service with Lieutenant McCarran, did he ever mention that his father was chief of staff?”
“He never talked about himself at all, only asked about the rest of us. Then someone in another unit told Willie Shores who the lieutenant’s dad was, and about all the people in his family who’d won combat decorations. So we started calling Lieutenant McCarran ‘the natural-born killer.’ When the lieutenant found out, he just laughed. It was only a joke until the thing with the Iraqi sniper.”
“We’ll get to that,” Terry said. “You mentioned worrying about al-Sadr’s people using civilians to block traffic, or as human shields. Did you ever encounter that?”
“Yes, sir.” Whalen hesitated. “Twice.”
“In as much detail as you can, could you describe the first such instance?”
Whalen seemed to concentrate. Then, summoning the images Terry had extracted from him, he tried to put the members of the court in the place of Brian McCarran’s soldiers.
THEY WERE GOING DOWN a narrow street crowded with roadside stalls selling fruit and meat. The lieutenant’s Humvee was in the lead; Whalen was in the one behind. The sun beating down on them felt like a sky full of heat lamps. Then they turned a corner and everything changed.
The street was empty except for a line of school-aged children, from which a sudden fusillade of bullets clattered off the Hummer. Then Whalen saw the militants shooting from behind them. Human shields, he thought. A bullet hit Kenny Sweder in the arm.
The standing order was for the platoon to plow through the line of kids. Instead, the lieutenant’s voice crackled over the radio, ordering the platoon to turn around. As Whalen’s driver wheeled their Hummer, he saw the lieutenant leap from his vehicle, crouching behind an open door to return the fire coming from behind the kids, to keep the gunmen from advancing. As ordered, Whalen and the convoy retreated the way they had come. Minutes later, when the lieutenant’s Hummer joined them, he saw that Brian McCarran had gotten out alive. But he had never seen their platoon leader so shaken.
“WE DIDN’T LOSE ANY of our guys,” Whalen finished. “But the lieutenant couldn’t make himself run down a line of kids.”
“Were there any consequences to Lieutenant McCarran?”
“Rumor had it that Captain D’Abruzzo chewed him out for not engaging in a firefight with the militia, no matter who else got hurt.” Whalen’s tone became clipped. “I wasn’t there. But after that it seemed like Captain D’Abruzzo assigned our platoon all the worst missions. That was how we got stuck with defending that police station.”
Terry nodded. “Could you describe that mission, Sergeant Whalen?”
FROM THE BEGINNING, IT was weird.
D’Abruzzo assigned the platoon to fortify an Iraqi police station against attacks from militants loyal to al-Sadr. The problem was that the police might kill them first.
They were trapped with two hundred or so undertrained Iraqi cops who hadn’t been paid for a month. Whoever dreamed this mission up had to know it was odds-on that al-Sadr’s people would pay these guys to kill twenty-one Americans before bailing on their duties. Which—besides getting a good vantage point to survey their surroundings—was the other reason Lieutenant McCarran placed his platoon on the roof and forbade them to go below to the station itself.
The mission was to last a month: three days on the roof, three days patrolling the streets, then back to the roof again. The cops were below; snipers were on the rooftops all around the station. The Americans were sitting ducks.
The lieutenant’s solution was simple. He told the police to stay off the roof; he told the platoon to kill any Iraqi who disobeyed. The only fraternization occurred when the Americans passed through the squat concrete building to begin another three days on the roof, during which Corporal Shores would pass out cigarettes to the police. “When they come to get us,” he explained, “I want them to remember how generous I was. I’ve got plans to meet my kid after he gets born.”
On the roof it was hot as hell, with the one latrine in an old shower stall you might get shot at for using. The guys took turns sleeping at night, or in the shade of the low concrete walls that were their only cover from snipers on the rooftops. They learned to keep their heads down.
But every day got a little worse. One of the squad sergeants, Martinez, was a zombie—he kept reading the letter from his wife that said she was leaving him because her life was better with Martinez in Iraq. Friese got wounded, then Rotner. There weren’t enough soldiers out there to clear the streets. So Lieutenant McCarran ordered the cops to erect a barricade to stop some car bomber from blowing the place up and burying them all in a pile of rubble. The biggest question, Whalen began to think, was not whether he’d die a pointless death, but how.
It was not that he and the other guys minded fighting; they were soldiers. But this was the worst kind of mission—dangerous, and stupid. That the battalion commander and Captain D’Abruzzo didn’t seem to give a shit only made that worse. The men knew better than to say that in front of Lieutenant McCarran. But they all believed that if it were up to him, none of them would be here. And they sensed that getting them out alive meant more to him than what the colonel or D’Abruzzo thought.
So they stayed there on the roof, talking laconically among themselves, the lieutenant talking with them all. The sun dried them out; instead of cooling them, the wind brought the stench of raw sewage in sickening waves. Bullets pinged off the roof, pinning them down. The smell of diesel fuel wafted from the street, bringing with it the Iraqi crud—a screwup of their respiratory system that caused headaches and postnasal drip. When this was over, the lieutenant said, he was moving to Los Angeles for the air.
All this time they coul
d feel the Iraqi cops beneath them becoming more sullen and restive. Then Saddam showed up.
They nicknamed him out of boredom, a sniper who took up residence behind a chimney on the nearest roof. But Saddam was a professional. The first day he took out Private Barker with a bullet through the eye. For the next two days, they were stuck on the roof with their friend’s decomposing body, stiffening and then bloating under a blanket, a reminder of what might happen to them all.
Saddam liked his work. He stayed up there for hours, invisible yet laying down such constant fire that he made it almost impossible for them to look out for whatever gang of militia might be heading for the station or tearing down the barrier.
You could see the lieutenant thinking.
They were sitting on the roof with their backs to the wall, the lieutenant and Whalen, McCarran drinking a warm bottle of Mountain Dew. “Haven’t heard anything from Saddam,” the lieutenant remarked.
“Yeah. Wonder what he looks like.”
Leaning back, Whalen squinted up at the searing noonday sun. Then, cautiously, he stuck his head over the wall, glancing at the street. The bullet creased his skin before he even heard the crack of Saddam’s rifle.
Crying out in surprise, Whalen ducked and felt the streak of blood on his forehead. Startled, McCarran asked him, “You okay?”
“Yeah. But the son of a bitch is still there.”
“I can see that.”
McCarran fell quiet for a moment, like he was resigning himself to something, or maybe just deciding. Then he took off his helmet and handed Whalen the bottle of Mountain Dew. “Hold this for me, will you?”
“What the fuck you doing, Lieutenant?”
“Going to visit our friend. Just keep your head down, Johnny.”
At once, Whalen grasped what the lieutenant meant to do. Before he could stop him, the officer was zigzagging near a corner of the roof, his bright blond hair a target that drew bullets zinging all around him. Then he vanished from Whalen’s sight line.
Whalen heard two more shots and then, a few seconds later, the last one.
Whalen saw his fears reflected in the eyes of Willie Shores, hunched down on the roof. Then Shores’s eyes widened, and his shoulders sagged in relief.
Running bent over a little, the lieutenant reappeared. He slid against the wall and settled back next to Whalen. “What the hell happened?” Whalen asked.
Reaching for the Mountain Dew, the lieutenant took a swallow. “Head shot,” he answered laconically. “By the way, Saddam was bald.”
His men loved Brian McCarran.
“WHEN HE TOOK OUT that sniper,” Whalen said, “he risked his life for us.”
Terry nodded. “Could you describe the events that ended your mission at the police station?”
“Our time was almost up,” Whalen answered slowly. “One more three-day stint on the roof. The night before, an Iraqi cop comes out to our encampment—Kasseem, one of the guys Shores was always giving packets of cigarettes to. He asks Shores to find Lieutenant McCarran. We take him to the lieutenant. Kasseem looks kind of twitchy, then tells us that al-Sadr’s guys—the Mahdi Army—are set to ambush our platoon on the way back to the station.”
“How did the lieutenant respond?”
“He asks how Kasseem knew this. Kasseem wouldn’t say. But he says even if we made it, the cops would be gone. They’d been given a choice: desert or die.
“Lieutenant McCarran thanks him, and Kasseem gets out of there. I ask if the lieutenant believes him. The lieutenant says he does. He can’t see how making up this story buys the Mahdi Army anything. If we don’t show up, he reasons, the Mahdi gain nothing—another platoon is already guarding the police station. If we do show up, they’d figure it’s likely to be with reinforcements. So he goes off to tell Captain D’Abruzzo.”
“What happened then?”
Whalen shrugged in resignation. “An hour or so later, the lieutenant comes back. All he says is ‘We’re going back tomorrow.’ So we did.”
THERE WERE EIGHTEEN OF them now—they’d lost three guys on the roof. Four Hummers transported them shortly before dawn; Lieutenant McCarran put squad sergeants in the other three and asked Whalen to stay with him. Shores was driving, with Lieutenant McCarran next to him, Whalen behind them, and Corporal Sava in the gun turret. Entering Sadr City, the lieutenant was looking around in the morning light, even though he was chatting with Shores like they were going on a Sunday drive. Then Shores got kind of shy. “Did I tell you, sir, that our baby is going to be a boy?”
The lieutenant kept watching the road. “Figure out a name yet?”
“Yes, sir.” Shores hesitated a minute. “If you don’t mind, Emmy and I are naming him Brian McCarran Shores.”
The lieutenant laughed. “How did you talk her into that?” he asked. “Don’t you want this kid to have a future?”
Shores got real quiet. The lieutenant saw how serious he was, maybe even hurt. He put a hand on Willie’s shoulder, his voice almost gentle. “I’m honored, Willie. When we get back home, I’m coming down to Alabama to visit young Brian.” Right then they turned the corner onto a street that dumped into the one to the police station.
Everyone was thinking the same thing. If the Mahdi militiamen were waiting, this would be the place: a narrow street lined with concrete houses and beat-up cars, with alleys on either side, a tangle of phone wires running in all directions from rooftops that were perfect for snipers. And you could tell right away something was off. It was Monday morning, and no people were in the streets. Then a grenade exploded in front of them, rocking the Hummer so hard it shot pain up Whalen’s spine into his skull.
“Keep on going,” the lieutenant ordered Shores, and gunfire started pinging off the armor like hailstones. The Hummers sped up, sniper fire coming from the rooftops. An Iraqi kid about ten years old sprinted from an alley with a Coke can in his hand, running beside the Hummer. From the turret Sava blasted him in the legs with the machine gun and the kid crumpled on top of a bomb that blew him three feet in the air as his skinny frame came all apart. Shores stomped on the accelerator.
By now the platoon was taking fire from all directions. Thirty yards ahead more Iraqi kids scrambled from an alley, like a gaggle of skittering birds, their eyes wide and their mouths gaping in fear. Then men with AK-47s were running to kneel behind them, yelling “Muqtada” as they opened fire.
“Hit the brakes,” the lieutenant shouted. In sickening slow motion a rocket-propelled grenade arced toward their stationary Hummer. Whalen ducked before it exploded, shock waves rocking the vehicle so hard it nearly toppled on its side. When he stuck his head up, there was a gash of blood across Lieutenant McCarran’s throat and Shores’s head was gone, his blood and brains all over the windshield. Throwing open the door, the lieutenant pushed the headless body into the street and slid behind the wheel.
The Hummer jumped forward. The kids and gunmen were fifteen yards away, then ten. Bullets pinged off the bonded glass; another RPG rocked the truck.
Five yards.
A bearded gunman pushed a boy in front of the Hummer. The lieutenant kept on going. In the last split second the kid’s stricken brown eyes were like cat’s-eye marbles. With a sickening crunch, the Hummer lifted him into the air, his limbs flapping in rag-doll motions before he hit the pavement and the wheels ran him over with two dull thuds.
Ahead were garbage bags that had no business being there. “Swerve,” the lieutenant shouted, and Whalen screamed that over the radio as the lieutenant ran over a bag without the wheels blowing up the IED inside. Behind them Whalen heard an explosion that could mean only one thing.
The other three Hummers had made it to the police station.
Except for the Americans, it was empty. The last of the Iraqis had stolen away shortly before dawn. Lieutenant McCarran radioed the company, then led the platoon back to retrieve the dead and wounded, the lieutenant wearing a bloody rag around his neck. No one talked about Willie Shores, or the Iraqi children, or the
son who would be named after Brian McCarran. No one mentioned the fact that they had stopped.
Lieutenant McCarran spent nine more months in Iraq. He still watched out for his men. But he seldom talked except when he had to, and never smiled that Whalen could remember. The thing that stayed with Whalen most was that every night the lieutenant would clean his M-16, whether or not he had used it, as if his life depended on keeping a spotless weapon.
IN THE JURY BOX, Colonel MacDonald and Major Wertheimer were staring at their laps. Terry saw Rose Gallagher’s pallor; General McCarran’s fixed expression; grief at war with loathing in Flora D’Abruzzo’s eyes. Though Meg had moved closer to Brian, he stared ahead in silent dissociation. Terry could imagine him oiling his spotless gun.
“After the mission at the police station, how did your platoon fare?” Terry asked Whalen.
“The same. We always got the worst assignments.”
“Who gave you those assignments?”
Whalen stared at him. “Captain D’Abruzzo,” he said with quiet bitterness. “It was like he set out to kill us all. By the end, he’d pretty much succeeded.”
Terry saw Flynn consider rising to object. “No further questions,” he said and walked back to his client, still blank-eyed in a courtroom as quiet as death.
His expression wary, Flynn stood at once. “Do you mean to imply that Captain D’Abruzzo’s literal aim was to wipe out your platoon?”
“No, sir,” Whalen answered coolly. “I’m talking about cause and effect. Sometimes a mission means that men are gonna die for the country. We got that honor more than the other platoons. I think Captain D’Abruzzo had it out for Lieutenant McCarran, and the rest of us were in the crosshairs.”
Flynn stared at him. “Other than speculation, do you have any basis for believing that personal animus played a part in Captain D’Abruzzo’s decisions?”
“The fact that the two officers were so different.”
In the Name of Honor Page 33
