Secret Justice

by James W. Huston

  As the night wore on, they cleared the entire deck except for their three containers. They quickly opened the large hatches that gave them access to the holds below to the main deck. The containers were stacked inside the hold and could be moved to the port or starboard side of the ship by tracks. Several of the men jumped down in the hold to activate the tracks and move containers closer to the hatch so the crane could pull them up. One after another, the containers came up, had holes blasted into their sides, and were dropped into the night sea.

  After all the containers had been removed the men lowered their three special containers down into the hold, out of sight, and opened one of them. They handed up electronics, more explosives, and satchels full of other equipment. The man in charge of the electronics hurried to the bridge and climbed on top of it in the blackness behind the lights. He quickly detached the surface search radar antenna, cut the wires long enough to reuse them, and hurled the small antenna over the side. He put a new antenna in its place and wired it quickly to the protruding wires. He hurried down from his perch and searched the bridge for the radar transmitter box. He unplugged it, removed the wires from its back, and attached the new radar transmitter that worked on a frequency very different from the one he had just thrown into the ocean.

  The other men on the deck closed the large hatches. The ship now had a clean, unmolested look, devoid of stacked containers. The two loading cranes still stood high against the night sky, illuminated by the floodlights. The crane operator quickly abandoned his post, as the C4 was carefully wrapped around the base of the thick white steel crane. Hotary inspected it and gave his approval. He walked to a safe position and nodded.

  The expert detonated the C4. A thunderous explosion severed the crane from its base. It leapt sideways still standing upright momentarily, then teetered. It settled back onto the deck in what appeared to be slow motion then fell toward the side of the ship. It gathered speed as it fell and the sharp-edged bottom gouged the deck as it skidded toward the side. The head of the crane surrendered to gravity and it pitched heavily over the side into the ocean. The splash threw dark ocean water back onto the deck, but the crane was gone.

  The same men hurried to the back part of the ship and blew the second crane over the same side of the ship.

  Hotary’s men gathered wooden two-by-fours that had been brought from their container and constructed a frame around the bases of the two cranes. Only a stub of white steel protruding from the deck showed there had ever been a crane. When the wood was built up to the level of the shattered steel, a gray dingy tarp was pulled over the frame to resemble some covered piece of nautical machinery on the ship’s deck.

  Hotary looked for one man. “Are you ready? You have the paint?”

  “Yes. The seas are calm. It should be no problem.”

  Hotary said, “Rename it. Sea Dragon, Hong Kong. English and Cantonese.”

  Chapter

  22

  The CH-53 settled into a hover just above the flight deck of the Belleau Wood as the sun broke over the horizon. The South Indian Ocean was tranquil and the gray helicopter blended in well with the overcast morning. Rat had to fight to stay awake. He had been up all night. He did not sleep well aboard airplanes, especially when he was flying to testify in another trial in the middle of his own. He was wearing his khaki uniform with all his ribbons, not just the top row as he usually did. Not only did the SEAL insignia grab people’s eyes, but those who knew ribbons could see he had been awarded a Silver Star, an extremely high decoration, rarely given. The write-up for the medal was classified. No one could read it without a clearance and he couldn’t talk about it. It was from one of the raids he had conducted while he was with Dev Group. He didn’t think about it much, but he knew that people noticed, at least those who knew what the ribbon for a Silver Star looked like, those whose opinion he cared about most.

  He rubbed his eyes trying to get the sleep out of his system as the wheels of the CH-53 touched down on the deck and the weight of the heavy helicopter transferred from its rotor blades to its landing gear. Rat wanted nothing other than to head directly to the wardroom and pour the biggest, strongest cup of coffee he could find. Only then would he try to find the prosecutor, a Commander Elizabeth Watson.

  As he was ushered into the island by the flight deck crew he removed his flotation vest and cranial helmet and handed them to a sailor standing nearby. He hurried down the ladders without escort to the wardroom and grabbed a large porcelain cup that he took to the coffee urn. He drew a cup of steaming fresh black coffee, blew on it, and drank quickly. He sat at a long wardroom table, the only officer in the wardroom. Two sailors were buffing the tile deck on the other side of the wardroom.

  Rat was growing angry. He stared at the cheap painting on the wall and wondered why he should continue to be loyal to a government that wanted to put him in jail. How could he work—even temporarily—for the CIA, brief the President, fly to the Indian Ocean to testify in a trial, and then just go back to Washington, D.C., for his trial like a calf to a veal party? In the rare moments when he was honest with himself about the trial, when he was objective instead of optimistic, he knew they had the evidence to convict him. Satterly’s testimony alone was enough. He had to admit the accusations were true. He disagreed strongly that what he had done should be illegal, but he couldn’t hide what he had done. He wished he had come back without Duar. Bring Mazmin back, let the CIA “interrogate” him, and let them find Duar. Another raid, another day, they would have found Duar. Possibly.

  His hands and face felt grimy from the long trip. He gulped the last bit of coffee and picked up a phone hanging on the bulkhead. He punched in Commander Watson’s number. She answered.

  “Commander Watson. Lieutenant Rathman. I’m aboard, ma’am. I’m in the wardroom.”

  “I’ll be right there,” she said quickly and hung up.

  He placed the receiver back on the cradle, picked up his cup, and refilled it. Moments later she burst into the wardroom. She crossed over to Rat and extended her hand. “Thank you for coming back all this way. I’m sorry I had to drop that subpoena on you at home. It was really the only way I had.”

  He nodded his understanding.

  “You want to come with me?” she asked. She led him out of the wardroom. He watched her from behind. She was tall and bony. Her hands had protruding blue veins. She looked unhealthily thin. He hooked his thumb over the lip of his coffee cup and carried it with him as he quickly followed Commander Watson down the passageway to her office. She opened the door and directed him to a chair in the small, cramped space. The office was full of books stacked on the desk, papers strewn about, and notebooks lined up on the bookshelf behind her.

  “How long do you think this will take?”

  “Not very long, really. I don’t expect to ask you very many questions and I don’t think they’ll have much by way of cross. But we’ll see. As soon as we’re ready I’ll call the judge and he will reconvene the court an hour later.”

  “There’s a helicopter to Cape Town at 1130. I’d like to be on it if possible.”

  “Are we that far south already? Well, we’ll just have to see.”

  She went over the testimony that she expected of him and gave him the general nature of the information she was looking for. She didn’t want to give him the actual questions because she didn’t want him to appear to be working from a script. After a half hour she was ready. She picked up the phone and called the judge’s stateroom. He agreed that he was ready and told her to contact all the other participants to tell them. She called out to her chief, who immediately began calling everyone to the court.

  “Do you want to change your uniform or get cleaned up?”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “One hour.”

  “I brought my whites. I could change into them if you would like.”

  “Why not? Go ahead and get cleaned up, change into your whites, and meet me in the admiral’s wardroom at 1000. Can you do that?�
��

  “No problem.”

  “Here’s my stateroom key. Make yourself at home.”

  Rat found her stateroom, shaved and showered, transferred his ribbons and warfare pin to his tropical white uniform, and was ready to go. He walked to the wardroom and stood outside in the passageway. He could hear voices inside, but the sign on the outside said all witnesses to remain in the passageway.

  Time passed, 1000 came and went, and fifteen more minutes, then thirty. He could hear voices being raised and arguments being made. He had no idea what was at issue in the court, but he saw his time slipping by.

  Finally the door swung open and the first-class petty officer said loudly, “Lieutenant Rathman.”

  Rat walked toward him. The sailor looked at him carefully, confirmed in his mind that this was Lieutenant Rathman, and stepped aside for him to enter the courtroom. Rat walked in and was impressed by the solemn order achieved by the liberal use of green felt on the tables and other visual cues—the scales of justice, the gavel and block, the placement of the counsel tables, and the elevated platform for the tables with the judge and members of the court.

  He was ushered to the front of the courtroom to the witness stand and was sworn in. He looked out over the rest of the people in the packed room, officers and enlisted people from the ship, journalists, an artist in the front row, the attorneys, the panel of senior officers who made up the court, and of course, Duar himself. Rat stared at him. Duar avoided his gaze.

  After summarizing his background and education, and his work with Dev Group—which he never mentioned by name—he told them he was currently TAD to the CIA. Commander Watson asked him about the Sudan operation. “Were you in charge of the operation?”

  “I was in charge of my team. There were several teams flying that evening, only one of which was likely to be close enough to the rendezvous. We didn’t know where it was going to be, only about when.”

  “Did you capture anyone?”

  “Two men. A man named Mazmin, and Wahamed Duar, there,” he said, pointing.

  “Do you recognize the man sitting at the defense table?”

  “Yes. That is Wahamed Duar.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We were given a photograph of him before the operation. He matches the photograph.”

  Elizabeth walked forward and handed him an eight by ten print. “Is this the photograph that you had on the night of the operation?”

  He looked and added quickly, “Yes.”

  “Did you personally bring him back to the ship?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “One last thing,” Watson said. “Have you seen this document before?” she asked, handing him a copy of the confession.

  “Yes. I saw it in Egypt.”

  “Did you take this man, Wahamed Duar, to Egypt?”

  “Yes. The Egyptian military wanted to ask him some questions about the American Embassy bombing. We complied with their request and I took him to Egypt.”

  “Did you personally see him sign this document?”

  Rat looked at Duar. “No.”

  “How do you know he signed it?”

  “I asked him.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me that he had signed it when I showed it to him.”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “You know, I’m not really sure.”

  “How did you talk to him?”

  “In Arabic.”

  “You speak Arabic?”

  “I do.”

  Watson looked satisfied. “No further questions.”

  Stern rose to his feet. The journalists were expectant. “Lieutenant Rathman, you had to come here over the weekend in something of a hurry. Correct?”

  “I received this subpoena yesterday, and left yesterday afternoon. I flew all night, and arrived here this morning.”

  “And what were you doing yesterday during the day?”

  Watson jumped up immediately. “Objection, irrelevant. Also goes to character evidence that is irrelevant as to this witness. Your Honor, this is what we were talking about. I thought your instruction to Mr. Stern was very clear.”

  “So did I. What is the relevance of this, Mr. Stern?”

  “Goes to bias, Your Honor. Shows how he feels about the defendant and those who allegedly worked with him.”

  “Why didn’t you make this argument when we were in camera?”

  “Frankly, Your Honor, I didn’t think about it.”

  “Objection is overruled. You may answer the question, Lieutenant Rathman.”

  Rat had known he would be asked, but he didn’t expect it to be the first question. Everybody who was conscious knew about his trial. It was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. CNN was devoting hours of special broadcasting to it—“Is It Ever Okay to Torture a Terrorist?”—and impaneling law professors to discuss it endlessly. “I was in court in Washington, D.C. I am on trial for manslaughter.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Who is it you are being charged with the death of?”

  “Mazmin. The other terrorist that we captured with Duar.”

  “You did in fact torture Mazmin to death, didn’t you?”

  Watson jumped to her feet. “As the witness testified, Your Honor, he is on trial. It is inappropriate for counsel to ask a question which calls for the witness to plead the Fifth Amendment. His question should be stricken.”

  The judge nodded. “Sustained. Mr. Stern, you know better.”

  “The allegation against you, the charge for which you’re being tried, is that you tortured Mr. Mazmin to death. Right?”

  “Basically.”

  Stern changed course. “You took this man,” he said, pointing, “to Egypt. Right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And you were there the whole time he was in the hands of the Egyptians. Right?”

  “Sort of. I delivered him to the Egyptians, then went to eat with the rest of my men. Then I brought him back to the ship.”

  “You observed them torturing him. True?”

  Watson tried to stop him. “Your Honor, this exceeds the scope of direct examination.”

  “Overruled. Answer the question.”

  Rat was beginning to feel uncomfortable. “No, I didn’t.”

  Josephine studied his face as he answered. She scratched quickly in her notebook.

  Stern was surprised. “Why you?”

  “Why me?”

  “Right. Why you? Of all the people that could have taken this man to Egypt, why did they choose you?”

  “Maybe because he knows me,” he said, looking at Duar. “And I was familiar with him.”

  “Or maybe because the government knew he was going to be tortured in Egypt, and they knew you didn’t have any problem with torture. Think maybe that was it?”

  “Objection, Your Honor!” Watson erupted.

  “Sustained.”

  Stern asked as if he couldn’t remember, “What is it you’re being tried for in Washington?”

  Watson interjected, “Asked and answered, Your Honor.”

  “Sustained.”

  “What did the Egyptians do to this man?”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “You saw that they had used electrical current on him, right?”

  “When I got back to the room they still had him hooked up. I made them take him off the machine.”

  “You saw him with electrodes attached to his earlobes and scrotum. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What else did they do?”

  “I’m not sure. They told me—”

  “Hearsay, Your Honor,” Watson said.

  Stern shook his head. “She wanted hearsay earlier, she can’t now object.”

  “Overruled,” Graham said.

  “What did they tell you?”

  “They had wrapped a towel around his head and poured water onto it so he couldn’t breathe. He responded well to that, but then
they upped the ante.”

  “They went to electricity.”

  “Yes.”

  “And this confession, it was elicited by them electrocuting him.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re aware, aren’t you, how unreliable information is when it is elicited by torture?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t really have any experience—”

  “You’ve heard, haven’t you?”

  “Some.”

  “Men will say anything to make the pain stop. Won’t they?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably.”

  He picked up the confession and held it up. “He signed this confession after being tortured, right?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. When I looked at it, it was already written and signed. I don’t know when he did it.”

  “You never saw him sign it, did you?”

  “No.”

  “And it is your belief that this is Wahamed Duar. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please pick up the photograph that Commander Watson showed you.”

  Rat picked up the picture and looked at it again. He looked up, waiting for the next question.

  “It’s your belief that the man sitting at this table is Wahamed Duar based entirely on this photograph. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  Stern nodded. “Even though the photograph is black and white, tell me what you notice about the eyes of Wahamed Duar.”

  Rat looked at it carefully. “They are fairly light, especially for someone from Sudan.”

  Stern looked at the judge. “Your Honor, I would like for Mr. Rathman to come down from the witness stand and look into the eyes of the defendant.”

  “And what is the point of that, Mr. Stern?” the judge asked.

  “The government is apparently trying to use Lieutenant Rathman to confirm the identity of the defendant. I want to show him he’s wrong, and have him so testify.”

  “Proceed,” the judge said.

  Stern continued, “Lieutenant Rathman, please come over here with the photograph and look into the eyes of the defendant.”