Secret sanction

Chapter 29

We pulled up to the marble entrance of the same Italian hotel on the hill, and my mouth watered. Morrow and I got side-by-side rooms and stowed our gear. My room had one of those cushy German featherbeds, which made me think God just might love me after all. It also had a minibar. A well-stocked minibar. My body hurt like hell and I stared at the row of tiny Dewar’s bottles. Dr. Drummond screamed at me to give that pain what it needed. I fought the temptation and went back downstairs to the lobby.

Imelda and two of her girls took rooms a floor below us and rented a full suite to use for our office. When Morrow and I got outside to take the van to the air base, Imelda and her assistants were still lugging computers and boxes of paper up the entry stairs to the elevator. Imelda was bellowing at them to move their asses, and the girls were giggling at her. They’d obviously figured out her secret. She really was a softie, like one of those dogs that barks a lot but don’t bite too hard.

It took fifteen minutes to get to the Air Force holding facility. The same pudgy Air Force major was there to meet and greet us. He was being real deferential and courteous, virtually fawning, I guess because he didn’t want to get any dishonorable mention in our report. I treated him coldly, and Morrow followed my lead. Let him sweat.

Morrow and I had spent a lot of time considering our next move. Our first inclination was to start the re-interrogation of the team with Sanchez. We needed one of the nine to break, and he was the one carrying the most baggage. All we needed was one. Like with all conspiracies, once that first man broke, there’d be a chain reaction. We’d pit them against one another, and threaten and make deals until we had the whole story, as well as a slew of witnesses to testify against one another.

But the more we talked about it, the more we persuaded ourselves that Sanchez probably wasn’t the right man. He’d obviously made some kind of pact with his troops. And for whatever went wrong out there, he was ultimately responsible, and therefore had the most to lose. It is a prosecutor’s maxim: Most to lose very often equals last to confess.

It was Morrow’s notion to bring in Persico first. I thought it was a real dumb idea. Well, at first, anyway, but the more I considered it, the better sense it made. In every organization, there’re two kinds of leaders. There’s the leader appointed by the system. That was Sanchez, the guy with a commission provided by the United States Senate and two silver bars on his collar. Then there’s the leader appointed by the men themselves. That was Persico, the guy with Silver and Bronze Stars on his chest. Get him to talk, and the rest would follow.

But there was another reason, too. At some point while in Kosovo, the formal chain of command in Sanchez’s team simply disintegrated. That’s what Imelda had detected in their statements. Quite possibly, there’d been a mutiny. We were sailing on instinct there, but based on our earlier interrogatories, there’d been no indication that Sanchez was in charge. There had to be a trigger for that. The team probably had doubts about Sanchez all along, but soldiers, especially experienced noncommissioned officers, generally adhere to the arrangements the Army makes. Unless, that is, some dramatic event comes along and persuades them otherwise.

Something had happened out there. Something powerful. I was guessing it occurred around the fourteenth, because that’s when the team began acting in odd and mysterious ways. That’s when Akhan’s company got wiped out. That’s when Sanchez got on the radio and claimed they couldn’t extricate. That’s when the chain of events began that led eventually to a narrow road between two hills where thirty-five men were slaughtered. It was just a guess, but I was pretty sure that was the day Persico took over command of that team.

Morrow and I positioned ourselves in the interview room and began arranging tables and chairs into a rough-and-tumble resemblance of a courtroom. Imelda showed up a few minutes later with both her girls. They began setting up a desktop computer and a court transcription device. Morrow and I had decided to formalize the atmosphere, to make it look as much like an actual courtroom as we could. It would get the witnesses thinking about what lay ahead.

We were finally ready and I sent Imelda to bring in the first witness. It took a few minutes, during which we all sat around nervously and waited.

Finally the door opened and Imelda came through, followed by Chief Persico. She formally announced him, as though she were a court bailiff. He casually, but not at all casually, looked around and studied the new setup. Again, I had the impression of a man checking the field of battle, trying to calculate his odds.

“Please sit down, Chief,” I said, indicating a chair we had positioned in the middle of the floor. The chair sat isolated, without the protective comfort of a desk or table.

He sat down, folded his legs, and spent a brief moment studying Morrow, who was holding a tape recorder. Then his gray eyes shifted to me. “Mind if I smoke?”

He hadn’t smoked the first time we talked. The cool demeanor aside, I guessed that something about this session made him more nervous.

“If you’d like,” I told him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels, unfiltered, knocked a fag out of the packet, tapped the end a few times on the palm of his hand, then stuffed it between his lips and lit it. All this was accomplished in a smooth, flowing, almost instinctive motion.

I said, “Please state your full name and rank for the record.”

He blew smoke as he talked. “Michael John Persico. Chief Warrant Officer Four.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Our last meeting was merely an interrogatory, an informal exploratory session, to discuss the events that transpired between 14 June and 18 June 1999. The purpose of this session is to take your full formal statement concerning the same time period. Are you sure you want to waive your right to have an attorney present?”

“I’m sure,” he said.

“At your interrogatory, you stated that you and your team were in Kosovo participating in Operation Guardian Angel. You were lying, weren’t you? You were participating in Avenging Angel, which involved the performance of combat missions against Serbian forces in Kosovo. Isn’t this correct?”

Morrow and I had decided the best way to handle Persico was to come barging out of our corner and shock him with our best punch. We knew now why he, and the rest of his team, had been such confident, able liars. They had the U.S. government behind them. Who couldn’t tell a great whopper when NSA was building evidence to support you, when the CIA was fronting for you, when the United States Army was tying the hands of your listeners? I could tell a perfectly good lie even without all that help.

Persico took a long draw from his cigarette. Aside from that, he showed no visible signs of anxiety or distress. Finally, he said, “I ain’t got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

I said, “Jack Tretorne and General Murphy cleared Captain Morrow and me on the details of Avenging Angel. Now, please answer my question, or I will add obstruction of justice and lying under oath to whatever other possible charges we come up with today.”

He considered this only a moment. “Okay,” he said, “we were part of Avenging Angel.”

“Let’s deal with another lie,” I said. “When Captain Akhan’s unit raided the police station in Piluca, was this an approved and authorized operation?”

He said, “No.”

“Why did you lie to Colonel Smothers about what happened that day?”

“We didn’t lie,” he calmly said.

I withdrew the notes of the team’s debrief that Smothers had kindly provided. I looked down and pretended to study the sheet.

I looked up. “On the nineteenth, you informed Major Grenfeld, your battalion operations officer, that throughout the day of the thirteenth, you and Captain Sanchez attempted to stop Captain Akhan from raiding the police station at Piluca. Do you still stand by that statement?”

He took another heavy drag, looked around for an ashtray, then flicked his ashes on the floor. Then he turned back to me. “I do,” he said. “I tried damned hard to keep Captain Akhan from going after that station.”

“You tried damned hard? What about Captain Sanchez?”

“Well… he, uh, he tried, too.”

“He tried what, too?”

“Look,” Persico said, “it was a risky operation.”

A nice attempt at evasion, I thought. “Why was it risky, Chief?”

“Kinda obvious when you consider what happened, don’t ya think?”

“Right. But you said you tried hard to stop them. You must have had some strong reasons. What were they?”

“The target wasn’t approved by Group. Ain’t that reason enough?”

“There was more, though, wasn’t there, Chief?”

“Maybe.”

“What more was there, Chief? Why were you so opposed to that raid?”

“For starters, never go into an operation that ain’t well planned. That one wasn’t just poorly planned, it was hardly planned at all.”

“Not well planned?”

“That’s right. Captain Akhan and his guys just wanted to do it. Hardly any recon. No rehearsal. Since it wasn’t an approved target, there was no intell prep like we normally got from NSA or the CIA. They just wanted to march down there and kick some ass.”

“When Akhan insisted on doing it anyway, why didn’t you call Group and report that?”

He said, “That was Sanchez’s call. Ask him.”

I made an instinctive guess. “Was it because Sanchez wanted them to do the raid? Was that the reason you didn’t call Group?”

He hesitated, and that was his first mistake. “You’re asking the wrong man,” he said. “I ain’t no mind reader.”

“You and Captain Sanchez discussed it, though, didn’t you?”

“All right,” he said. “We discussed it. What’s your point?”

This was a very smart move on his part. He was unsure how much I knew. Maybe I was fishing, or maybe I was building a house from a blueprint. He was calling my bluff.

There was nothing to do but make another guess. “My point is that Sanchez wanted Akhan to do the raid, whereas you didn’t. When they were all killed, you blamed Sanchez.”

I was right. I could see it in his eyes. I was right.

But what he said was, “That ain’t the way it went down, Counselor. You’re sitting on your ass, here in this nice warm room tryin’ to figure things that happened in the heat of combat. You ain’t got a clue.”

He was angry, and in my mind there could only be one reason why. I said, “Then, afterward, you took control of the team away from Sanchez. Was it a mutiny?”

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the pack of Camels again. He had just ground out his other butt on the floor, but he dug out a fresh one and pounded it on his palm. He hit it so hard he broke it, and had to ditch it on the floor and take out another.

He lit it, then said, “Look, I didn’t have no problem with Sanchez. Like I told you earlier, he’s a good guy.”

I ignored him. “Then Colonel Smothers gave your team the order to extricate. That was around noon on the fourteenth. Sanchez spoke to the ops center at 1800 hours that evening. He said the area was thick with Serbs, and he did not consider movement advisable at that time.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I remember that call.”

“Then the next morning, at the 0600 sitrep, he repeated the same message. Then again, at the 1800 hours sitrep on the evening of the fifteenth.”

“That’s right.”

“Who was detecting all this Serb activity?”

“Perrite and Machusco were on security. Occasionally we rotated them out with the Moore brothers, to give Perrite and Machusco some rest.”

“So Perrite and Machusco were reporting heavy Serb activity in your sector?”

“Yeah. We figured that after Akhan’s raid the Serbs must’ve guessed there was a base camp that Akhan’s company was operating from, so they were out looking for it.”

“Hadn’t you already moved base camps, though?”

“Yeah, but not far. We was still in the same sector.”

“What kind of activity did Perrite and Machusco report?”

“They saw some patrols, and they heard heavy vehicle activity on some roads nearby.”

“Then, on the morning of the seventeenth, they spotted the Serb recon unit that was supposedly surveilling your base camp?”

“That’s right. Only it wasn’t supposedly.”

“How do you know that, Chief? You didn’t observe the activity yourself, did you?”

“No, but Perrite and Machusco don’t fuck up. If Perrite tol’ me we was being observed, we was being observed.”

“Why did Perrite report that to you, Chief? Why didn’t he tell Captain Sanchez?”

“I ain’t got a clue.”

“Then you gave the order for the team to move out?”

“That’s right,” he replied, in the process making another telling mistake. If Sanchez had been in charge, he would’ve given the order.

“Then you moved throughout the day, until around midnight, when you formed a perimeter and decided to ambush a Serb column.”

“We’ve already been through all this shit, haven’t we? My testimony ain’t gonna change.”

I ignored him again. “One last series of questions and we’re done with this session.”

“Okay,” he said, digging out yet another cigarette. He was smoking them hard and fast. A small cloud of pale blue smoke actually hung on the ceiling over his head.

“The other members all testified that you were in charge at the scene of the ambush itself. You were the one who positioned them, who checked their aiming stakes, who directed the lay and wiring of the claymores. You gave the order to fire. You gave the order to cease fire. I find that very intriguing. You told me yourself that Sanchez was the operational leader.”

He appeared confused as he tried to think up a response. His eyes roved quickly across the floor.

Then he said, “Sanchez wasn’t feeling all that well. He hadn’t got any sleep for two days, so I offered to help him out.”

I almost smiled. “That was very good of you,” I said. Even better was that he just gave us the hook we needed. I turned to Morrow, and she nodded. She had picked up on it, too.

“Thank you, Chief,” I said. “We’ll call you to testify again, maybe later this evening, maybe tomorrow morning. I strongly advise you to have an attorney present at our next session.”

He planted his elbows on his knees and worked up a very convincing petulant expression. “When we gonna get done with this crap? I spent over two weeks in this shithole and I wanta get out. You’ve questioned me twice already.”

I said, “When you stop lying to us. By tomorrow morning we’ll have the whole truth. One way or another.”

The petulance receded into a bland look. He stood up and started to walk out.

“By the way,” I said, and he turned around to face me. “The deal you had with Tretorne and Murphy is off. I have full authority to recommend whatever I want, and I intend to use it.”

He turned back around and kept walking. It was in his eyes, though. He’d just heard the sounds of the walls crumbling down around him.