Secret sanction

Chapter 5

We arrived back at Tulza shortly after three. Our stomachs had gone from queasy to growling, so I asked Imelda to scramble us up a meal. Sounds easy, but you have to remember that this was the Army, and the Army has mess halls, and the Army tells you when you can eat and not eat. Three o’clock is one of those “not eat” periods. But you also have to remember that this was Imelda Pepperfield, who can make rocks cry.

She came huffing back into my office, followed by two of her female legal clerks, both of whom were strikingly deficient on the looks side but undoubtedly had stellar clerical skills. Imelda snorted a few times as her assistants plunked down several trays loaded with meatloaf sandwiches and mashed potatoes larded with a thick, pasty, gravy.

“Any trouble?” I asked.

“Nope. That mess sergeant tried to say no, so I kicked his butt a little, and he snapped to.”

The thing about Imelda is that she was raised in the rural backcountry of Alabama and has all the inflections and manners of a poor, uneducated southern Black girl. And if you are too stupid for words, you buy into that act. I could have looked up her IQ in her military records, but I never bothered. The truth was I never wanted positive confirmation that she is much smarter than me. I did know one of her secrets, that she’d earned two master’s degrees, one in criminal justice and the other in English literature. She never went anywhere without a few thick books hidden in her duffel, usually written by some of those Russian writers with long, impossibly tongue-twisting names.

Delbert and Morrow were eyeing the meatloaf sandwiches with pure disgust, while I launched in with gusto.

Imelda gave them a speculative glance, then flapped her arms once or twice. “You got some kinda problem with that meal?”

Delbert very foolishly said, “Actually, I do. I like to eat healthier.”

Imelda bent toward him. “You’re not one of those health food pussies, are you?”

“I try to take care of my body,” Delbert replied stiffly.

“This is Army-issued food. If Uncle Sam says it’s good for you, it’s good for you.”

“It’s greasy. And it clogs the arteries.”

Morrow was watching this exchange, and I saw her quickly grab a sandwich and start chomping. Smart girl, that one.

Imelda straightened back up, and her eyes turned into blazing hot lasers that bored searing holes into poor Delbert’s forehead.

“Okay, fancy pants, I’ll remember that. I’ve got your number.”

Delbert’s eyes shifted in my direction. Unsure of her connection to me, he was imploring me to either intervene or give him a signal to fire at will. Like I’d be stupid enough to step into the middle of this.

“Who are you looking at?” Imelda barked. “Don’t you look away when I’m talking to you. You either eat that food or you’re gonna get bone-ass skinny these next few weeks.”

“I like salad,” he said with almost pitiful politeness. “Could you get me a salad?”

“Salad?” she roared, as though he’d asked for a plate of pickled horse manure.

“Yes, please.”

“I don’t fetch rabbit food.”

“Then I’ll get it myself,” he announced, then stood up and left.

Imelda flapped her arms a few more times, grumbled something that ended with one of my favorite anatomical organs, then stomped from the room herself.

Visibly relieved, Morrow placed her half-eaten meatloaf sandwich back on the plate. “Who won that round?” she asked.

“Who’s fetching the rabbit food?” I answered.

“She’s the real McCoy, isn’t she?”

“Last of the breed,” I replied, reaching over for my third sandwich.

“Did Delbert just start a war?”

“Hardly. She was only checking his mettle.”

“How’d he do?”

“Not bad. She saw you pick up that sandwich, though.”

“Was that a mistake?”

I scratched my nose. “Hard to say. Time will tell.”

These two thoughtful creases appeared between Morrow’s eyebrows. The truth is what I just said made absolutely no sense. Took her a moment, but she figured that out.

“You run a loose ship, don’t you?” she complained. “She was very disrespectful. I would have thought a former infantry officer would instill a little more discipline in the ranks.”

Did I mention before that Morrow is an astonishingly beautiful woman? Well, if I didn’t, she is. And there’s nothing like having a great-looking woman challenging your manhood, which was exactly what she was doing. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows were arched up, and her lips were kind of pointing downward, and the average guy would choose just that moment to flex his muscles and mutter something tough and virile to confirm he had something inside those jockey shorts.

I said, “That’s why stereotypes don’t come with guarantees.”

See, Captain Lisa Morrow was obviously scared to death of Specialist Seven Imelda Pepperfield. She just wanted to shame me into protecting her. Like I said, she’s a smart girl.

I finished my third sandwich and glanced at my watch. Unless I missed my guess, there should’ve been a witness waiting outside our door. It actually wasn’t a real hard guess to make, though, since that morning, before we’d left for the morgue, I’d asked Imelda to contact Lieutenant Colonel Will Smothers to request his presence at 1530 hours, which, to the uninitiated, is pretty much the same thing as 3:30P.M.

I walked over and opened the door. In fact, Smothers was standing there. And surprise, surprise, a bespectacled, slightly overweight, bookish-looking captain wearing JAG insignia stood slightly behind him.

“Please come in,” I told Smothers.

He walked by, and I quickly stretched my arm across the doorway, blocking his lawyer, whose nametag read Smith. “You won’t be needed,” I told him.

Smothers spun back around and faced me. “I want him here.”

“No,” I said. “This is just an interrogatory. I won’t be reading you your rights, and therefore nothing you say in this session can be used against you. This is merely a background session.”

Captain Smith screeched in a high-pitched whinny, “If he wants me along, I’m coming in.”

“Wrong. I’m the chief investigating officer. And if I say no lawyers, there’ll be no lawyers.”

There was a moment of wordstruck confusion as Smith and Smothers exchanged bewildered looks, both obviously wondering if I could do this. Frankly, I had no idea, but what the hell.

“No lawyers,” I said, grabbing the door and closing it in Smith’s stricken face. “Please have a seat,” I said as I turned around and faced Smothers.

The thing about interrogatories with potential suspects is that you lose if you don’t have the upper hand. Smothers outranked me, so I had to make up some lost ground. Besides, lawyers only get in the way. I know. I am one, and I’m always getting in the way.

I sat behind the desk, and Morrow and I stayed perfectly still. Smothers was trying to compose himself, which wasn’t easy because I had just torn the guts out of his game plan. Finally I withdrew a tape recorder from the desk drawer and turned it on. That’s always great for the nerves, too.

“Colonel, could you please state your full name and describe your relationship to the accused men?”

He squared his shoulders. “My name is Will Smothers. I’m their commanding officer.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“I’m the commander of the First Battalion of the Tenth Special Forces Group. The A-team commanded by Captain Terry Sanchez was assigned to my battalion.”

“Command? Elaborate on that word for me, please. What is your understanding of it?”

His brow became furrowed for a moment or two. “I guess… well, it means they work for me. That I’m responsible for them.”

“That’s a good definition. How long have you been in command?”

“Nearly two years.”

“How long was Captain Sanchez one of your team leaders?”

“Maybe half a year.”

“So you’ve only known him half a year?”

“No. He was on my staff before that. He worked in the operations office.”

“Was he in the unit when you arrived?”

“Yes. I think he got here about six months before me.”

“So you’ve known him two years?”

“Yes, two years. That’s about right.”

All of this was just a warm-up. Always start an interrogation by asking for simple, noncontroversial facts, to get the subject into the mode of answering quickly, almost automatically. Now it was time to dig for a few opinions.

“Would you say you know him well?”

“I suppose.”

“Who made the decision to place him in the team leader position?”

“Me. It had to be approved by the group commander, but I recommended him.”

“The group commander would be…?”

“Brigadier General Murphy.”

“Is Sanchez a good officer?”

“Uh… yes. A, uh, well, a very good officer,” he said, suddenly appearing eminently thoughtful. “In fact, outstanding in every way.”

“What ways?”

“Well… uh… he’s very competent. He leads by example.”

I gave him a ridiculing smirk. “He leads by example? That’s pretty thin gruel.”

“What do you want to hear?”

“You tell me. Was he a strong leader? Did he compel his men to follow him or try to convince them? Was he smart? Did he have backbone?”

“All the above.”

This was getting a bit much, so I switched back to facts. “How old is he?” I asked.

“I don’t know exactly. About thirty. Maybe a few years past thirty.”

“How many years does he have in?”

“Ten, I think. Maybe eleven, maybe twelve. He’s a senior captain. He should be up for major this year.”

“He needed the team leader job to get promoted, right?”

“He’s an outstanding officer. I’ve never looked at his record, but I’m sure it reflects that.”

“But the Special Forces branch ordinarily requires an officer to be a team leader before he makes major, right? Promotion boards want to see if he can hack it in a demanding field job, right?”

“Usually, yes. It’s not a requirement.”

“Were you ever a team leader?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any Special Forces battalion commanders who weren’t?”

“No.”

By this time Smothers had caught on to where I was going and was therefore picking and parsing his words very carefully. As he had admitted himself, he was responsible for Sanchez’s A-team and everything they did. Of course, a battalion commander with a lot of teams under his command can’t be everywhere at once. What he can do is pick competent, reliable subordinate officers. In fact, the Army fully expects him to. If the team led by Terry Sanchez slaughtered thirty-five men in cold blood, then, de facto, Terry Sanchez was not up to the job he’d been given. That meant Will Smothers had made a mistake. That’s why he was suddenly so frugal with the truth.

He’d worked closely with Sanchez for two years, yet could not tell me his precise age, could not describe his command style, could not describe his strengths and weaknesses. He knew the answers; he just wasn’t going to tell me.

“So, tell me,” I said, changing tack, “exactly what were Sanchez’s orders when he was sent into Kosovo?”

“Well, he and his team had spent two months training a ninety-five-man Kosovar guerrilla unit. Since the Kosovars were still very green, Sanchez’s team was ordered to accompany them back in and continue their training.”

“Isn’t that an odd mission?”

“No, it’s a very common mission for Special Forces. Training indigent forces is exactly what we’re organized and trained to do.”

“I’m not talking about the training part, Colonel. I’m talking about the part where Sanchez’s team followed them back into Kosovo.”

“I wouldn’t call it unusual, no.”

“Really? What exactly were his instructions?”

“To continue training the Kosovars.”

“Was he supposed to become involved in the fighting?”

“Absolutely not. Everybody here knows the rules, Major.”

Morrow said, “Tell me about that.”

“There’s no ground war.”

Then she said, “But we’re bombing the Serbs in Kosovo. Hell, we’re bombing the Serbs in Serbia. How do you keep it straight?”

“Special Forces aren’t idiots, Captain. We may not be law school grads, but we understand what’s happening here.”

“Do you like it?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“The mission. What you’re here doing.”

“What’s to like or dislike? It’s a job.”

I asked, “Were Sanchez and his people allowed to assist the Kosovars in planning their operations?”

“Yes and no.”

“That answer doesn’t count, Colonel. Yes or no.”

“We’re not combatants. So no, Sanchez and his people were not supposed to help them plan their operations. But if, for example, the Kosovar commander asked for advice, they could offer it.”

“Pretty sketchy line, that one.”

“I don’t make the rules.”

Morrow leaned back and hammered at her point again. “Were Sanchez’s people supposed to accompany them into combat operations?”

“No. Absolutely no. A secure base camp was established, and Sanchez’s team was required to remain at that camp.”

“Say Sanchez and his people were attacked by a Serb unit. Were they authorized to shoot back?”

“Yes. Self-defense is authorized. If they were detected, they were supposed to extricate. If that required them to fight their way out, that was acceptable.”

“Who wrote these rules?” I asked.

“I don’t know who wrote them. Some staff officer somewhere, I guess. But I believe they were approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff themselves.”

“Why do you believe that?”

“Because they usually are.”

“Usually?”

“The rules of engagement used in Mogadishu and Haiti and Bosnia were all approved by the Chiefs. I think it’s a logical assumption these were, too.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” I said.

He looked surprised. “Thank you?”

“Right. You can go now.”

He regarded me for a moment with a kind of slack-jawed look, like what the hell happened to the hard part. I just stared back. The hard part would come. Just not yet.

As Smothers walked out, Delbert walked back in.

“Enjoy your lunch?” I asked.

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He rubbernecked around and watched Smothers’s retreating back. “What was that about?”

“Colonel Smothers was kind enough to stop by for a little interrogatory. It was a very interesting session.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me?”

“Because you decided to run off and eat.”

“But I had no idea this was scheduled.”

“Imelda knew. That’s why she was kind enough to fetch us some food.”

“Why didn’t she say anything?”

“I don’t think I heard you ask her.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t think I heard you ask me, either.”

I could see this was getting very frustrating for poor Delbert, and I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit I was enjoying his discomfort. He might be the best prosecutor in the Army, but he was still a prig.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said reassuringly. “It’s all on tape. Listen to it tonight after we close shop.”

I then turned to Morrow. “Any thoughts?”

“He’s an impressive officer.”

“Special Forces battalion commanders usually are.”

“He’s worried.”

“Was he telling the truth, though?”

“Was he being truthful? Maybe. Was he being open? No.”

“About what?”

“About what he thinks of Sanchez. About what he thinks about the orders he’s operating under. About what he thinks about anything.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Because you told him yesterday that he might be a suspect. It might’ve been better if you’d held off on that. You antagonized him.”

Even Delbert, who’d missed the interrogatory, was vigorously nodding that he agreed with her on this issue.

I grinned and didn’t say anything. If they didn’t comprehend the way my brilliant legal mind worked, then I wasn’t about to enlighten them. Besides, as I said earlier, these two were hungry thoroughbreds, and if they thought, even for a fraction of a second, that they could get a nose ahead of you, you’d spend the rest of the race staring at their fannies. That was a halfway pretty good proposition, but I didn’t relish the thought of ogling Mr. Delbert’s little tightass one bit.

The door suddenly crashed open and Imelda bustled back in with three legal clerks in tow, all carrying heavy boxes overflowing with documents.

“What’s all that crap?” I asked.

“All the operations orders and the duty communications log, and the personnel files of the accused.”

“I don’t remember asking for that.”

“And what are you gonna do without it? You’re not going to get any further on this case unless you go over all this.”

“And who signed the requisitions?”

“Don’t be gettin’ stupid on me, Major. I know your signature by now.”

This caused more dropped jaws from Delbert and Morrow, because forging an officer’s signature is a fairly serious military offense. It gets glacially serious when classified papers such as operations orders and operational duty logs are being requisitioned.

I turned to Delbert and Morrow. “By the way, make sure Imelda has good, legible copies of both your signatures before the end of business. By tomorrow, mark my words, she’ll be able to fool your own mothers.”

Imelda smacked her lips a few times and mumbled some unintelligible curse, which is kind of her way of expressing gratitude. Then she marched back out, shooing her three assistants ahead of her.

We each took a box, then spent the next eight hours trading files back and forth, reading furiously, saying little, and making our first real acquaintance with the nine American soldiers who were accused of mass murder and exactly what they’d been ordered to do across the border in a land called Kosovo.