Wrongful Death: A Novel

by Dugoni, Robert

  Sloane lowered the weapon, stepped off the porch, and helped Kessler up the steps.

  Inside, Sloane pulled back the blind to look out the den window to his neighbor’s yard. The light remained out. As with the screen door banging against the house, Sloane had recognized the sudden explosion to be the transformer atop the pole in the easement. It had exploded twice before, including that winter when the Point actually got snow for the first time in many neighbors’ memories.

  He grabbed two towels from the bathroom and tossed one to Kessler, then went to his study and returned with his boom box, which ran on both electricity and batteries. The shadow on the blinds wasn’t someone creeping past the windows. It had been Kessler struggling to wheel the chair on the saturated lawn.

  Sloane turned on the boom box and Kessler nodded his understanding, keeping his voice low. “Did you actually talk to Butch?”

  “Right before he was shot. He said Griffin’s story was bullshit, but I already knew that.”

  Kessler gave him a look.

  “I knew James Ford would never have done it,” Sloane said. He had been suspicious of Griffin the moment he met the colonel in the Tin Room and Griffin recounted Sloane’s history as a marine, including removing his flak jacket in Grenada. Sloane had deliberately fed the information to Pendergrass on the observation deck of the Federal Building, knowing someone was listening to their conversation through the bug in his jacket. He had hoped it might help him figure out who that person was. Griffin also had no good reason to research Sloane’s background. His statement that he liked to know who he was meeting didn’t fly. Neither did his story about Kessler selling contraband on the Iraqi black market. It had been intended to convince Beverly Ford to settle the case and save her husband’s reputation. Sloane had dealt with the tactic before. But Griffin had been lazy. Had he truly done his homework, he would have known how far out of character it would have been for James Ford to do what Griffin was proposing.

  Sloane’s problem was how to feed the information to Kessler without Griffin learning that Sloane knew the story was a ruse. Sloane needed Kessler and Pendergrass to take a closer look at the witness statements. He had suspected Kessler did not write his own statement when he had refused to consider it. He confirmed it when Cassidy told them Kessler had been knocked unconscious and later told Cassidy that he had little recollection of the events. The only logical conclusion was that Griffin had coordinated all four statements. Sloane also wanted Pendergrass and Kessler to know that Ferguson, Thomas, and Cassidy were all dead.

  Getting Kessler on the witness stand was act one of his plan. His tirade in Kessler’s office, which he suspected was also bugged, was act two.

  “You were very convincing,” Kessler said.

  “What happened after I left?”

  “I told everyone you were crazy and tried to maintain a normal routine. It wasn’t easy. At four I told Anne I was leaving to watch my son’s Little League game. She asked again if I was all right. I assured her you were a nut job. After the performance you gave, I had little trouble getting her to believe me.”

  “You weren’t followed?” Sloane asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Kessler said. “Argus knows where I live. They’d have little trouble finding me and no reason to follow me thanks to your performance. I stopped at a restaurant and used a pay phone to call the JAG officer who handled Ford’s claim. You made an impression on him in court as well.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he became suspicious when Ford’s claim was reopened and that his suspicion increased when the U.S. attorney instructed him to settle. He checked after court and said the administrative staff has no record of a settlement offer. I don’t know what that means exactly, except I assume they should have had such a record.”

  “The settlement offer made no sense,” Sloane said.

  In the legal case Pendergrass had provided, the secretary of defense had used his discretion to settle the claims, but it had required congressional approval. Argus would not have wanted such publicity.

  “There was no settlement offer, not from the government,” Sloane said.

  “Then where’s the money coming from?”

  “I suspect Houghton Park.”

  “How?” Kessler asked.

  “I’m not sure yet, but Keane also has some interest in this, given her appearance in court. She would need to make it look like the money was coming through the Treasury Department, and I suspect Argus could call in enough chips to make it appear that was the case.”

  “They didn’t anticipate Beverly Ford turning it down. She sounds a lot like James.”

  “How much do you actually remember about that night?”

  Kessler’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Bits and pieces. I remember trying to get my men to safety. I remember the ambush.” He looked up. “I don’t remember much before or after that.”

  “You didn’t get lost in a sandstorm, Captain.”

  “But I remember the sandstorm.”

  “There was a sandstorm,” Sloane said, “but it isn’t what caused you to go off course. Michael Cassidy remembered it very well. You received a call for help, another unit in trouble, an ambush. You and your men responded to that call and found yourselves in one hell of a firefight.”

  SHIMRAN AL MUSLO, IRAQ

  ALL HIS LIFE James Ford had looked to the Cross to save him. Now he prayed it didn’t get him killed. He needed to secure the gold crucifix beneath his uniform; any shimmer of light could be a target for the insurgents. But to do so would require that he take a hand off the M249. And he wasn’t about to do that, not with the staccato chatter of AK-47s all around him. The Lord would forever be his savior, but prayers wouldn’t keep him alive this night. The machine gun just might.

  He fired three-round bursts into the doorways, windows, and holes in the buildings. With each block the resistance became heavier, as if they were running into the teeth of the ambush, rather than from it. His chest heaved for air. He felt weighted carrying the big gun and the extra drums of ammunition. Each step his boots sank in the ankle-deep mud and sewage flowing down the street, making a sucking sound when he pulled free.

  Ten meters in front of him, Captain Robert Kessler drop-kicked a battered metal door, springing it inward, then crouched in the doorway and sprayed the surrounding buildings until Dwayne Thomas and Michael Cassidy ducked inside. Ford set up opposite Kessler and fired the big gun down the alley. When Fergie slipped in, Ford followed, and the captain slammed the door shut.

  Ford pressed his back against a cinder-block wall, gulping for air. Adrenaline caused his heart to jackhammer in his chest. He kissed the crucifix, tucked it safely beneath his perspiration-soaked T-shirt, and looked about. The absurdity of their situation nearly made him laugh. They had ducked into the building for cover, but only two to three feet of crumbling mud and brick remained of the back wall.

  “Can’t stay here, Captain.” Ford gestured to the gaping hole.

  “Don’t intend to,” Kessler replied. “Man that sector.” He turned to Thomas. “DT, give me the radio.”

  Thomas sat with knees pulled to his chest, sobbing. Cassidy sat beside him, wide-eyed. Vomit stained the front of his vest.

  “Thomas!” Kessler yelled.

  Ford pulled the radio from the pouch on the back of Thomas’s rucksack and handed it to Kessler.

  “Wolverine six, this is Alfa one-two. Over.” Kessler called their tactical operations center using the convoy’s designated name. “Wolverine six, this is Alfa one-two. Request alternate LZ.” The captain sought an alternate landing zone at which to rendezvous with air transport. “Wolverine six. We are encountering heavy resistance. Say again. Requesting alternate LZ. Over.”

  The radio burst static. Then it went silent.

  Ford looked over his shoulder as Kessler began another transmission. “Wolv—”

  “Captain!”

  Kessler looked at him.

  Ford pointed to the mouthpiece. �
�It’s broken, Captain. They can’t hear you.”

  For a moment it looked like Kessler might throw the radio to the ground, but he calmly handed it to Ford, who slid it into the slot on his own pack.

  “What do we do, Captain?”

  “We push on.”

  “We’ve got heavy resistance coming from the end of the block, Captain. We’ll be running into it,” Ford said.

  “You want to let me finish, Private?” Kessler snapped. “We push on to the LZ. We don’t have a choice with the radio out. They probably have an evac en route. Once we reach the traffic circle we’ll send up a couple of clusters.” He turned to Ferguson. “How many white stars do you have?”

  “At least three.”

  Kessler took a deep breath, gathering himself. Then he shouted, “Everybody up!” He pulled Thomas and Cassidy from the ground. “Get up! Move your ass! Remember your training.” He pointed out a hole in the wall, yelling at Thomas. “When we go out that door, you fire at the rooftops. You got that?”

  Thomas nodded.

  “I want to hear you say it, Private. ‘I fire at the rooftops.’”

  “I fire at the rooftops,” Thomas repeated, voice cracking.

  He wrapped Cassidy’s hands around the stock of his M16. “You suppress those windows and doorways.”

  “I suppress the windows and doorways,” Cassidy said.

  “Fergie, you got an HEDP in the tube?”

  Fergie held up the M203 grenade launcher. “Locked and loaded, Captain.”

  “On my call, put one in the storefront window across the alley. Put a second in the storefront beside it.”

  “Roger that.”

  “I’m going to drop smoke. We move out on my call. Ford, you got our backs.”

  Ford nodded. “Rules of engagement, Captain?”

  They had been trained to consider everyone in Iraq a potential hostile, but the military rules of engagement prevented them from firing unless fired upon.

  “No friendlies here,” Kessler said

  He pulled open the door just wide enough for the M203 barrel. The first sound, a rush of air, launched the 40-mm high-explosive dual-purpose grenade.

  Poomp!

  An explosion followed.

  Ferguson ejected the casing, loaded the second round, slammed the tube shut, and fired again. On the second explosion Kessler tossed two grenades into the alley. Thick green and red smoke quickly obscured everything.

  “Move!”

  Kessler darted out the door behind the deep retort of his M16. Cassidy and Thomas followed, each firing three-round bursts. Ford sprayed bullets back down the alley through the thick cover of smoke, brass shell casings dropping at his feet. After Fergie exited, Ford turned and followed, darting between the buildings and alleys. But the resistance continued to intensify, forcing Kessler to again seek cover inside a building.

  “What the fuck?” Kessler yelled in frustration. “Where are they coming from?”

  Ford pointed to the tallest building at the end of the block. “That’s got to be the granary.”

  “We have to get up on that roof. That’s our LZ,” Kessler said. The taller buildings afforded the insurgents the high ground, and Mogadishu had taught that Black Hawk helicopters were susceptible to rocket-propelled grenades.

  “Thomas, give me your grenades.” Thomas handed Kessler two grenades. Kessler looked to Ford. “I’ll empty the building, then suppress for Thomas and Cassidy. You and Fergie follow.”

  “Too far to go, Captain.”

  “You got your handheld?”

  Ford pulled his walkie-talkie from his vest. They confirmed a frequency. Then Kessler crouched close to the door.

  “Captain,” Ford said again.

  “On my order.”

  Unable to deter him, Ford took up his designated position near the hole in the wall that afforded a view of the circle. Kessler took a deep breath, nodded, and burst out the door.

  Ford pulled back the trigger on the M249 and sprayed the building, dust and debris obliterating much of the second floor, while Kessler zigged and zagged across the courtyard. When he had reached the building he lobbed a grenade through the open doors and was about to launch a second when it looked like he stumbled, and dropped to the ground.

  The reverberating blast of the grenade and gunfire momentarily drowned out all sound. As it passed, Ford heard something else.

  “Cease fire,” Ford shouted. “Cease fire.”

  Kessler’s voice poured from the handheld. “I’m hit! I’m hit, God damn it!”

  “AND NEXT THING we know we’re in the middle of a fucking ambush,” Cassidy had told Sloane and Jenkins.

  Not fully understanding Cassidy’s explanation, Sloane said, “Back up and tell me again.”

  Cassidy leaned against the counter, speaking as if with great effort. “We get a call over the radio. Bravo three-sixteen is screaming about needing to be evacuated. They were low on ammo and fuel and had casualties. While we’re listening, Ford turns to the captain and points to the plugger. There’s this blue square with an X through it.”

  “What’s a plugger?”

  “A screen that provides satellite images.”

  “And what does a blue square with an X through it signify?”

  “What does it what?”

  “What’s it mean?” Sloane asked.

  “That means friendlies, our guys. Bravo three-sixteen. If it had been a red X that would have meant Hajji.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “Captain called it in to ask what we’re supposed to do. But like I said, we couldn’t even communicate with the other guys in the convoy ’cause of the storm.”

  “So how did your TOC hear the transmission from Bravo three-sixteen?”

  Cassidy shrugged. “I don’t know. Captain had to make the decision on his own.”

  Sloane found that even more interesting. “You didn’t get orders from your forward operating base?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then who sent the image on the plugger?”

  Cassidy’s brow furrowed. “Had to be TOC.”

  “Does that make sense to you?” Sloane asked.

  Cassidy thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  Sloane paced the trailer, changing thoughts. “You liked Captain Kessler.”

  “Like is a little strong for the military. I’m not sure I liked anybody.”

  “Respected?”

  “Hell, yeah. Captain was better than most. He wasn’t the rah-rah type, you know, but he knew his shit. Yeah, we all respected him.”

  “Enough to lie for him?”

  “I don’t have to lie for him.”

  Sloane pulled out a copy of Cassidy’s witness statement and handed it to him. “You told Colonel Bo Griffin that you got off course in the sandstorm and drove into that ambush. There’s nothing in your statement about getting a radio transmission.”

  Cassidy flipped through the statement, shuffling his feet. He made a face like he’d just caught scent of something foul. “This ain’t my statement.”

  “That’s your signature.”

  “Yeah, but this ain’t what I put in my statement.”

  “You didn’t get stuck in a sandstorm?”

  “The sandstorm part is right, but after that…what it says in there, that’s not what happened. I just told you what happened.”

  “To protect the captain?”

  Cassidy scowled. “Protect him from what?”

  “A court-martial for selling supplies out the back of the Humvee, dealing drugs and other contraband on the black market.”

  “Who told you that?” Cassidy laughed. “Stealing from the convoy? Why would we? They gave you anything you wanted, and smokes were cheap. We had no reason to steal.” He shook his head. “I don’t know who’s feeding you your information, but that’s bullshit. Once we got off base, the only thing we wanted to do was get back on base and the faster the better.”

  He explained that their missions were we
ll coordinated and that while a convoy could get off course, that was usually if a road suddenly became inaccessible, or a bridge was bombed overnight, requiring they take a different route.

  “But to do it on purpose? Hell no,” Cassidy said. “Captain gave the order because he was trying to save lives. Whoever told you otherwise is lying.” He chuckled. “Did they say Ford was dealing drugs? Because that would be funny. Ford was religious, always kissing his cross and praying.”

  That’s when Sloane realized Griffin had wanted to present him with a quandary: a factual scenario that would prove Ford had not been acting incident to his service, but would also ruin his family’s memory of him as a man of faith and principle. Griffin wanted to force Sloane to have to make a moral decision: take the money and drop the case to protect the family’s memory, or pursue the complaint and ruin that memory.

  “How many of the vehicles proceeded to assist Bravo three-sixteen?” Jenkins asked.

  Cassidy held up a single finger. “Just us.”

  “How many ultimately responded?”

  “Until they blew up the building, no one.”

  “Do you ever find out why not?” Sloane asked.

  “I talked to some of the guys when we got back to the base. You know, I asked, ‘Where the hell were you?’”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Just said they never got the transmission.”

  “How could only you have heard it?” Sloane asked, beginning to suspect he knew the answer.

  Cassidy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they’d all left by then, or maybe the storm had something to do with it. Or they were on a different frequency. I don’t know. All I know is next thing we’re knee-deep in the shit and running for our lives. Then, ka-boom! Shit started falling all around us, chunks of cement and barrels flying everywhere, exploding.”

  “Barrels? I thought you said it was a granary.”

  “That’s what they told us.” Cassidy shrugged. “Apparently they were wrong. When all the smoke cleared it was just rubble and all these barrels burning, and Ford and Fergie and the captain all laying there.”