Secret sanction

Chapter 19

By the time I got back to my little office building, I must’ve looked pretty doleful, because Imelda’s girls all started offering me coffee and asking if there was anything they could do for me. I was quite touched. Before I knew it, I had three cups of steaming java and was sitting in my office, twiddling my thumbs and wondering what in the hell to do next.

The truth was, the only thing left to be done was to finish the report. Then I’d climb on an airplane and go face Clapper’s tribunal. Imelda and her tribe had already typed up the transcripts of the interrogatories. Delbert and Morrow had already prepared and proofed all the supporting documentation and evidentiary indexes. Really, the only work that remained was to prepare the final statement that laid out our conclusions and recommendations. I thought about doing it myself; I just didn’t have my heart in it. Besides, Delbert and Morrow would figure I was infringing on their victory dance.

Then it struck me. The coroner’s report. I asked Imelda to put me through to Dr. Simon McAbee, and about a minute later she stuck her head in and told me to pick up the phone.

“Hey, Doc, Sean Drummond here.”

“Hello, Counselor.”

“Listen, I owe you a big apology. I should’ve called two days ago. Our due date got moved up. We’re going to need your results tomorrow.”

“Oh, well, that’s really no problem,” he assured me. He had one of those voices that dripped with prissy efficiency. “I finished three days ago anyway.”

“Good,” I said.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what’s the outcome? Curiosity, you know.”

“We’re recommending against court-martial.”

“Ah, that’s a great relief, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, sure,” I lied.

“So how did you account for the bullets in the head?”

“The Serbs did it themselves. There’s no doubt about that. We found definite proof that there were still survivors when the first Serbs arrived at the ambush site.”

“Well, very good,” he said. “It would sicken one to believe that American soldiers would do such a hideous, barbaric thing.”

I was already getting tired of Simon McAbee’s voice. Like lots of doctors, there was this pedantic echo to nearly everything he said. I guess I could understand that from doctors who deal with living beings. But a pathologist? Besides, I was in a really black mood. I was preparing to wrap up our conversation when some impulse made me ask, “Hey, Doc, one thing.”

“Yes?”

“Remember I asked you to see if you could estimate how many of the Serbs would’ve died from wounds other than head shots?”

“Right.”

“Were you able to do that?”

“I made an estimate. Let me see…” he said, and I could hear the sound of papers being shoveled around. “Ah yes, here. Perhaps twenty-five of them would have died as a result of the wounds received previous to the head wounds.”

“Twenty-five?” I asked.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be held to that number. I mean, I didn’t have the bodies here to examine them properly.”

“Does that mean twenty-five who would’ve died eventually?”

“Oh goodness. Maybe I misunderstood what you wanted. Twenty-five of those men would have died almost instantly. Certainly others would’ve died afterward. Too many variables in those cases to make reliable judgments, though. Quality of trauma care. Time elapsed before they arrived at a proper facility. Adequacy of medical care.”

I felt this sudden heavy pounding in my heart. “Doc, listen. I need you to be perfectly clear. Are you saying that twenty-five of those men were killed instantly?”

He paused for a moment, and I nearly bent the corner of my desk.

“Instantly, no,” he finally said, and my heart rate started to settle back down.

Then, after another moment, he clarified. “I would state it like this. Twenty-five of the Serb bodies were inflicted with such catastrophic trauma that they would have expired within three minutes of receiving their wounds. There were four others who would be borderline, but you warned me that the exact number of deaths inflicted by Sanchez’s men might be a contestable issue in court. I therefore didn’t include those four. With proper first aid, a few of them might’ve lingered longer.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time, until McAbee finally said, “Major, are you still there?”

“I’m here, Doc.”

“I apologize if I prepared the wrong estimate. Just tell me what you want, and I’ll work all night if I have to. I’ll bring in extra office-”

“No, Doc. You did just what I asked. You’re sure of your numbers?”

“Of course. I even erred toward the safe side. It’s quite possible, in fact very likely that twenty-seven or twenty-eight died almost immediately. Judging by the wounds, it was a hideously violent ambush.”

“Again, Doc, tell me you’re positive of your numbers.”

I could hear his voice getting more exasperated. “Major Drummond, I’m a graduate of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. I’ve been a fully functioning pathologist for sixteen years. I think I can recognize when tissue damage is severe enough to cause imminent mortality.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I hung up the phone and sat there, stunned. Well, okay, maybe not stunned, but in that general proximity. I was certainly mystified. Jones had said that when Alfa 36 arrived at the ambush site, it called its division headquarters and reported that there were seventeen dead and still eighteen survivors. Yet, according to McAbee, twenty-five of the thirty-five Serbs should most definitely have been dead. That would’ve left, at most, only ten survivors. Depending how it went with the three or four questionables, maybe less than ten survivors. Maybe only five or six.

Say that Alfa 36 reached the ambush site right after Sanchez’s team pulled out. Maybe that accounted for the difference. I tried to think that through. Sanchez’s team opened the ambush by detonating the two mines buried in the road. That might’ve killed the driver of the lead truck and maybe a few of the men in the back. Then Sanchez’s men began raking the column with M16 and machine-gun fire. Willy-nilly, the Serbs piled out of their vehicles and scrambled for cover behind them. Then the daisy chain of those deadly claymores went off. All of this happened in that first frightful minute.

In ambushes, that opening minute is the height of mayhem. It’s when most of the blood is spilled. And remembering the corpses I’d seen back at the morgue, a very large number appeared to have been shredded by those claymores. Then according to Sanchez and his men, another five to seven minutes were spent trading bullets back and forth. Figure a few more Serbs might’ve been killed during that exchange. By that time, though, the Serbs were mostly behind cover and were furiously returning fire. Sanchez’s men would have been hunkered down, firing back more sporadically, less accurately. Plus, with Perrite on security, and Graves, the medic, back in the rear, Sanchez only had seven shooters at the ambush site. The number of casualties would’ve dwindled to a trickle.

McAbee was sure that twenty-five, and maybe even twenty-nine of the Serbs would have been dead within three minutes after they received their wounds. He was the expert. He knew which organs had to be smashed, which arteries severed, and which limbs obliterated before human brains and hearts started putting up out-of-business signs. That made it physically impossible for Alfa 36 to have arrived at the ambush site in time to find eighteen survivors.

So what in the hell was going on here? A tough question with only two possible answers. Either McAbee was the most incompetent idiot to ever graduate from Johns Hopkins or I’d been duped. Cleverly and professionally duped. The transcripts of the Serb radio transmissions had to be fakes. And if those were faked, well, then maybe… no, probably… no, definitely, the satellite films were fakes as well. Mr. Jones with the marble eyes had somehow managed to orchestrate a bit of high-tech chicanery.

There was a very unsettling problem with that scenario, though. Mr. Jones wasn’t a freelancer. Mr. Jones was here because General Clapper had officially requested NSA to assist my investigation. And Mr. Jones had the authority to waltz in and sequester the use of a fully functioning NSA field facility. And Mr. Jones had the resources to create false satellite images. I mean, I’d seen my share of satellite images, and the ones I just saw sure as hell looked like the genuine article. On the other hand, computer graphics being what they were these days, two expert analysts with a Sun microstation and CorelDRAW probably could have fabricated that product.

I wanted to kick myself for being such a gullible dumbass. I should have seen it. The con job was too perfect by half. First came that trumped-up explanation that no photographic satellites had passed over Zone Three, only a thermal imaging collector that spit out all those vague, unidentifiable little green dots. Then only two sets of film, both of which verified everything Sanchez and his men claimed. Then, voila-Jones and his people just happened to have discovered those intercepted transcripts that just happened to solve the last great mystery about how those corpses got all those nasty little holes in their heads.

Of course, Jones could not have done this without help from someone inside my team. He knew every pressure point of our investigation, every area of doubt, every unresolved mystery. Well, all of them except one-the body count. But then, no one knew that I’d asked McAbee to prepare that particular article. Back at the morgue, McAbee and I were alone when we spoke about that. Delbert and Morrow were off in another corner together, comparing notes. Therefore Jones and his people had probably applied that old tried-and-true, well-studied maxim that for every man killed in battle, there are usually one or two wounded. Jones just split it right down the middle and made it one survivor for every corpse. Only problem is, when it comes to ambushes, particularly one with a devilishly well-prepared killzone, that ratio has a tendency to get badly skewed.

But where did knowing all this get me? The answer is it got me closer to the alligator pond than ever before. I had no proof. If I confronted Mr. Jones, he’d scratch his head and say, gee, old buddy, that’s really odd. I didn’t do the work myself, you know, so why don’t I get on the horn and check the numbers with the old home office. Then someone back in Maryland would simply say, oops, how awfully embarrassing. One of our simpleminded clerks made a stupid mistake when she transcribed those Serb transmissions. Drummond was quite right: Alfa 36 reported twenty-five corpses.

Besides which, I now knew there really was a conspiracy. I hadn’t been imagining things. How big a conspiracy I had no way of knowing, but all of a sudden, those dark, steely-eyed power brokers in Brooks Brothers suits were dashing through mazes inside my skull again. Not that I took any satisfaction in that. The problem with this being a conspiracy was that there was no one I could trust. Clapper? He was the guy who sicced Jones on me. Accidental? I don’t think so. And if I had reason to suspect him, then what I felt about Morrow and Delbert was beyond suspicion. I’d already convicted them in my mind. Well, I’d convicted one of them. Which one, though?

Was it Delbert, who came up with the bright idea to start checking around for satellite shots in the first place? I mean, how in the hell did he think of that? His specialty was criminal law, not strategic intelligence.

Or was it Morrow, who’d asked all the right questions for Jones to unfold his spiel? Her performance reminded me of those wonderfully contrived dialogues Ed McMahon used to have with Johnny Carson. Gee, Johnny, yuck, yuck, and why do you think the Serbs stopped transmitting right at that particular moment?

All of which meant it was now time to take inventory. What stake did I have in this investigation? No stake. It was another job. Simple as that.

What did I care if Sanchez and his men murdered thirty-five Serbs? Other than the families of those men, did anyone care what really happened? It was war. Men got killed. Nobody said they had to die in fair ways. There were no Marquis of Queensberry rules in battle. Besides, who knew what those thirty-five Serbs did before they died? How many rapes, how many massacres, how many towns and villages had they ethnically cleansed?

But let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that I decided I wanted to be stupid and get to the bottom of this. Where would I start?

I guessed that I’d start by buying myself a little time. Then I’d buy myself a little space to maneuver. Then I’d begin wondering who Mr. Jones and Miss Smith really were. Who sent them here? And why?

Then I’d wonder who really killed Jeremy Berkowitz. Maybe Berkowitz knew there was a conspiracy. Maybe he tried to break one scandal too many. Maybe he got too close to the truth, and Mr. Jones, that marble-eyed prick, decided it was time for him to go. That sounded like complete hogwash even to me, but as long as I was ruminating, I might as well fit a few long shots in there. I mean, I’m part of the television generation. I’d read all those Robert Ludlum books, and Oliver Stone might be nuts, but I still loved his flicks.

Then, of course, back to the basic question I was supposedly sent here to answer: What had really happened out there with Sanchez and his men? The one thing Jones’s charade accomplished was to confirm that it was something terribly rotten. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s a cover-up, there’s a sin. Usually a really big, really smelly sin.