Secret sanction

Chapter 8

Imelda and her assistants waltzed in carrying trays of eggs, bacon, and shit-on-a-shingle. Again, she looked primed for battle, her little body tensed and coiled, her eyes expectantly awaiting a challenge from Delbert or Morrow or both. Neither said a word. They exchanged brittle looks, then picked up their knives and forks and immediately began eating off the trays, listless and indifferent. Imelda watched them through narrowed, distrustful eyes, just sure this was some kind of slick new tactic cooked up by the pair. She didn’t get it. After an afternoon at Camp Alpha, even the most chauvinistic health nut knew it would be cosmically wrong to complain about a little too much cholesterol.

When the English first came to Ireland, they built this real deep trench around the castle in Dublin where they established their rule. That trench was called the Pale. The Irish, back then, were a real wild and barbaric people, and the English, who always were known to be pretty snobbish and condescending, used to sit inside that castle and describe the unruly, irascible ways of the Irish as being “Beyond the Pale.” Well, we’d just gotten a long, hard glimpse of things that went way beyond the pale.

I had lain awake nearly the whole night, unable to sleep while an old man was dying from the wounds of a brutally senseless beating and a little girl with cold eyes was reliving nightmares inside her head and dying in her own silent, tortured way. From the dark circles under Delbert’s and Morrow’s bleary eyes, I guessed they’d had the same nocturnal visitors.

Imelda finally mumbled some unintelligible curse, which I knew from experience was sort of her version of a victory grunt, then stomped out of the room, headed off, I was sure, to terrorize somebody, somewhere. She just had a biological need to start every day by dancing on somebody’s forehead.

Delbert, Morrow, and I at least now had some kind of moral compass to begin this investigation. Murder, in a situation like this, wasn’t likely to be the result of an evil or reckless impulse. Back in America there were lots of folks who murdered just to see what it felt like, or as revenge for a nasty childhood, or because of some dark vision they saw on TV or read on the Internet or heard in the lyrics of a rap song. But when nine American soldiers did a heinous deed in a place such as this, their motives were likely to be grounded in far sturdier stuff. We still had no precise idea what those motives were, but now we at least knew something about the environment in which they were concocted.

“I think it’s time to take a trip to Italy to visit our prisoners. I think we’re ready to start interrogating the suspects,” I announced.

Morrow’s beautiful eyes got crinkly at the corners. “How do you want to approach it?”

“I haven’t really made up my mind,” I admitted in a rare burst of uncertainty.

Delbert perked up for the first time since I’d met him, apparently sparked by my rare lack of resolve.

“I’d start with the three senior guys first,” he boldly suggested.

“Why would you do that?” I asked.

“Because it seems likely the leaders of the team made the decisions.”

“Would they be most likely to spill their guts, though?”

“I think there’s only one way to find out,” Delbert said.

“He’s right,” Morrow chimed in. “The big point in question is motive. We’ll only get that from the leaders.”

This was too much for me to resist. I said, “That would be a huge mistake.”

There was a sigh from Morrow. “I thought you didn’t have a plan.”

“I changed my mind. I do. I thought we’d jointly interrogate Sanchez, then split up.”

“Okay,” Delbert said, seemingly resigned to the fact that nearly anything he suggested was destined to be spurned.

“And do you have some line of questioning in mind?” Morrow asked, wisely trying to avoid stepping into another trap.

“Actually, I do. I don’t think it’s time to go for the jugular yet. What I’d like to accomplish in this round is just to hear their version of what happened.”

The ever-efficient Imelda had arranged our flight the day before. A fresh C-130 was at the airstrip, this one packed to the gills with boisterous soldiers and airmen waiting to go to Italy for a little R amp;R. When the three of us walked in, the back of the plane suddenly grew very still and quiet. We found seats together and, excepting a lot of sullen and acrimonious glances, were ignored the entire flight.

Mercifully, the flight was brief. It took only an hour and a half before we found ourselves at a modern, perfectly flat airfield located in northern Italy. Imelda had also lined up a military sedan, and the driver was waiting for us at the flight building. We weren’t hard to pick out. We were the only folks who marched off that plane wearing barely worn, hardly faded, stiffly starched battle dress. That’s the thing about lawyers. Even when we try to blend in, we stick out like sore thumbs.

We drove for about ten minutes and went straight to a small three-floor hotel located on a hilltop that gave us a stunning view of long, stretched-out plains that were dotted every now and again by tiny hills with castles or palaces mounted atop nearly every one. This being Italy, it was a wildly romantic setting. Aviano Air Base, where our suspects were being held, was three miles away.

Delbert and Morrow immediately broke out their running togs and loped off down the road. Now that we were back in civilization, they meant to make immediate amends for all the carbohydrates and cholesterol they’d sucked down as a result of Imelda. I put on a bathing suit and went to sit beside the pool. This was the kind of place where I normally did my best thinking. It helped that several Italian women were lounging around in some of those half-an-ounce-of-cloth, let-the-cheeks-hang-out bikinis, which for me had a certain restorative effect.

I had closely studied the file of Captain Terry Sanchez, the team leader, and was actually curious to meet him. What I had learned was that his mother and father were Cuban immigrants, part of the vast tidal wave who fled from Fidel Castro and settled in the lush cities of southern Florida. I was only guessing, but most sons of that wave were raised to be intensely patriotic, to have an almost surreal hatred of Fidel, and to try to lead their lives according to the macho mores of the Latin world. I hate to stereotype, but stereotypes have their use, especially those of the cultural variety.

Sanchez was thirty-two years old and a graduate of Florida State University. He had earned his way through on an ROTC scholarship. His file contained an official photo, which showed him standing rigidly at attention in dress greens with a perfectly blank expression-the expected look of all military file photos, because the Army takes a dim view of smiley faces. He was medium height, medium weight, with dark hair, and eyes that struck me as sorrowful.

His commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smothers, had described Sanchez as an outstanding officer. But like the rest of the performance reports in Sanchez’s packet, the two signed by Smothers put Sanchez squarely in the middle of the pack. So much for open disclosure.

After I’d been sitting beside the pool for an hour, I saw two bodies steaming up the road, their arms flailing wildly and their legs kicking up and down with great fury. Morrow was in the lead, and the closer they got, the more wildly Delbert’s arms fluttered and whipped, as though he could pull himself through the air to catch up with her. Like I said, these two were very competitive creatures, and both were heaving like draft horses by the time they finally made it to my lounge chair beside the pool. Morrow had on a pair of those skin-hugging nylon runner’s pants, and I have to be honest, she fit into them like they were meant to be fit into. If I were Delbert, I would’ve stayed right behind her the whole way, simply because the view was majestic. But that was me. Delbert was too pure for that kind of stuff.

“Have a nice run?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Morrow heaved out. “Jus’”-puff, puff, puff-“great.”

Delbert was bent over beside her and looked about ready to spill his guts.

“How about you, Delbert?” I asked.

“Nah”-puff, puff, puff-“I… uh”-puff, puff.

“You what?”

“Torn hamstring”-puff, puff.

“Ah, I see. A torn hamstring, huh? Could that be why Morrow beat you?” I said, saving him the trouble of having to spell it out, which it didn’t seem he was going to be able to do for the next few minutes.

Puff, puff-“uh-huh.”

Morrow made no reply, only straightened up and made a very exerted effort to get her breathing under instant control. This took her only about six or seven seconds, and then she was standing there perfectly erect and composed. I guess she figured that if Delbert wasn’t going to accord her a legitimate victory in the race, the least she could do was win the post-run-regain-the-composure contest.

I checked my watch. “We’ve got about thirty minutes before we’re supposed to meet our first suspect.”

The two of them headed upstairs to their rooms, while I loitered beside the pool for another fifteen minutes before I went upstairs to climb back into my uniform.

The Air Force detention center at the air base put the Army to shame. It was damned close to being a luxury hotel, with cable TVs in the cells, separate showers and toilets, and a nice, modern eating hall. I’d seen Army barracks housing innocent soldiers that looked like rickety slums compared to this.

The warden, a chubby Air Force major, met with us before we were permitted to interview his prisoners. He seemed like a nice, amiable fellow and had a double chin that vibrated as he talked. He had lots of kind things to say about Sanchez’s A-team. They had been model prisoners, very polite, very soldierly, very well behaved.

I told him I was sure he had kept the team separated since their detention. He said something real evasive and instantly tried to change the subject, so I got real close to his face and asked him. “These prisoners have been quarantined from one another, haven’t they?” He said no, that the team members were allowed to exercise together, and that three hours a day they were allowed to commingle in the common room. I asked him what idiot had allowed them to commingle. He blushed deeply and said that privilege had been specifically authorized by the Tenth Group commander, General Murphy.

Sanchez’s team was being investigated for conspiracy, among other charges, and any penologist would know that standard procedure called for co-conspirators to be kept strictly separate, so they can’t connive on their alibis. The Air Force major knew a very serious taboo had been violated, and after his blush gained a few shades of darkness, he asked me if I wanted to see a copy of the authorization order from General Murphy. This was his way of covering his ass and staying out of deep doo-doo. I said that I sure as hell did, that I wanted the original, that it had better be waiting for me when I was done, and that I was hereby countermanding the order.

What I really wanted to do was kick the crap out of this chubby little Air Force major, who had just given Sanchez and his team an extra week to mature a common alibi, and thereby made my job about a hundred times harder.

We were then led to a room where we were asked to wait. About three minutes later, Captain Terry Sanchez was led in. He wore battle dress, without manacles or restraints. The Air Force sergeant who led him in then discreetly disappeared.

Sanchez stood frozen beside the doorway as though his feet had sunk into the concrete floor. He studied us like we were lions who had come to devour him. He looked thinner than he had in his photo, and his eyes were harder, less sorrowful, almost tight. Being accused of mass murder can have that effect.

“Captain Sanchez, I’m Sean Drummond, chief of the investigating team, and these are the other two members, James Delbert and Lisa Morrow. Please have a seat,” I said, indicating for him to sit across the table from us.

He walked wordlessly across the floor and fell into the chair.

“This is just a preliminary interview,” I said. “We’ve been told you waived the right to have counsel present. Is that correct?”

“That’s right,” he answered, and his voice broke a little.

“How’s your family doing?” I asked, trying to help him relax.

“They’re fine.”

“You getting to talk to them regularly?”

“Often enough.”

“How are you being treated?”

“They’re treating me fine, Major. Why don’t you cut the crap and get to your questions.”

There was no anger on his face, but he was tightly wound up, like a man being led to the scaffold who just couldn’t bring himself to exchange pleasantries with the crowd.

I smiled back nicely. “Okay, we’ll get right down to business.”

“Good.”

“We have just a few opening questions,” I said, placing the tape recorder on the table between us. “If, at any point, you don’t want to answer a question, that’s your right. I must warn you, however, that this is an official investigation, and if anything you say turns out later to be false, that can result in additional charges.”

Delbert and Morrow shot me a pair of “that was a fairly stupid thing to say” kind of looks. The man was already facing thirty-five charges of murder, among sundry other serious offenses, and here I was threatening him with chump change.

Had Sanchez been anything but an officer in the United States Army, then Delbert and Morrow might have had a point. But he was. And he therefore was likely to feel a certain stiffening in his backbone from my warning. An officer’s integrity was still a cherished relic.

“I understand,” he said.

“Good,” I said. “Please start with the mission of your team when you went into Kosovo.”

He leaned forward and cupped his hands tightly in front of his lips, which any professional interrogator will tell you is exactly the kind of gesture a man might make when he’s preparing to tell a few whoppers. So much for my warning.

“We were part of an operation called Guardian Angel. The KLA company we’d trained was being put into operation. Our job was to accompany them and provide assistance.”

“Assistance? What kind of assistance?”

“Continued training, help with planning operations, that kind of thing.”

“Weren’t they well trained enough to handle themselves?”

“No.”

I withdrew a piece of paper from my bulging legal case. “I have here a copy of the evaluation you gave that team when their training ended. That’s your signature, isn’t it?” I asked, pointing at the tight, almost childlike scrawl at the bottom of the page.

He barely glanced at it. “Yes.”

“You said here they were ready.”

He stared coldly at the paper. “What I said was that they met the minimal standards each KLA company had to attain before they were certified.”

“Was something wrong with those standards?”

“Yes. Those standards are slightly below what a basic trainee gets in our army. We taught them just enough to get them killed,” he said with obvious bitterness in his voice.

Anyway, I moved on. “How was your relationship with your KLA company?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was it friendly? Professional? Personal? Impersonal?”

“Professional.”

“Could you elaborate?”

“We were told to train them, so we did. It was a job and they were part of it.”

“Did you feel responsible for them?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s not our war, it’s theirs.”

“Good point,” I said. “Still, I’d think it would be awfully hard not to develop some feelings for them. Living and working together, exchanging stories about families, and-”

“Major, we both know where you’re trying to go with this.”

“Where am I trying to go?”

“That when the KLA company got slaughtered, we went on some kind of bloody rampage and took revenge. That’s not what happened.”

“No?” I said, interested that he chose the word “slaughtered,” which carried interesting implications. I mean, there’re words like “were shot,” “died,” “got killed,” “were wiped out,” any of which connoted a milder fate than the words “got slaughtered,” in the food chain of death.

“Look, that’s what the press is reporting, but that’s not the way it happened.”

“No? Then tell me what happened.”

“After our KLA company got, uh, wiped out, we reported that back to Tenth Group headquarters. We were told to relocate our base camp and await instructions. So we did. We’d been there about two days when we suspected our new base camp was compromised, so we-”

“Why did you suspect that?” I interrupted.

“Because Sergeant Perrite and Sergeant Machusco detected a Serbian patrol that appeared to be surveilling us.”

“When was that?” I asked.

“The afternoon of the seventeenth. Maybe three o’clock, maybe a little earlier.”

“I don’t remember seeing that in the communications log at the Tenth Group ops center.”

Sanchez seemed to chew on his tongue a moment. “I didn’t report it.”

“Why? I’d think you’d report that immediately.”

“Maybe that’s because you’re a lawyer and you’ve never been in that kind of situation before.”

I had most definitely been in that kind of situation before but wasn’t about to tell him that. Sanchez was giving me the cover he and the rest of his team had concocted, and for the time being, the best path was to hear the entire tale before I looked for ways to tear holes in it.

“What did you do, then?” I asked.

“We grabbed our equipment and ran. We could have been attacked at any moment, so we reverted to an escape and evasion plan we’d planned two days before.”

I thought I saw where this was going. “And were you followed?” I helpfully asked.

“Yes.”

“How did you know?”

“Because we laid trip flares on our trail.”

“How many went off?” I asked.

“I don’t remember exactly. Maybe one, maybe two.”

“Was it one, or was it two?”

“Maybe two. My memory could be wrong, though.”

“What kind of trip flares were they?”

“Star clusters with a string on the pin.”

“How many did you set?”

“I don’t know exactly. I was preoccupied with leading the team out. The trailman was laying the flare traps.”

“What kind of string did he use?”

“I don’t know. Commo wire probably.”

One of the tricks when you’re investigating a conspiracy is to ask detailed questions and just keeping asking for more and more details, because usually the conspirators have only agreed on a broad cover, and it’s the details that get them in trouble. The topic of trip flares was just the kind of detail that was liable to get Sanchez and his team stuck in quicksand.

“So you didn’t feel you had time to make a radio call to the ops center, but you had time to set warning flares on your escape route?”

“It was a matter of priorities. A radio call wasn’t going to do us any good, but warning flares would at least tell us if we were being followed.”

“Then what happened?”

“Our E amp;E plan called for us to move straight south and cross the border into Macedonia. I became worried that the Serb team tracking us would just call their headquarters and have an ambush set up ahead. I decided to shift our direction to the east.”

“Did you discuss that with anyone in the team?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Is that a definite no?”

“I can’t remember every detail I said to everyone. We were being stalked by a large Serbian unit. Things were happening fast.”

“A large Serbian unit? I’m sure you said it was a small surveillance team. How did it suddenly become large?”

“I made a reasonable assumption. We knew we’d been detected, and it just seemed logical that the Serbs would’ve thrown more men into hunting us down.”

“Why?”

“Because the Serbs would’ve loved to kill or capture an American A-team. The whole focus of America’s strategy in this thing is to avoid losing any men. Everybody knows that. The Serbs sure as hell know it. The American people have a very low interest in what’s happening here. Casualties would wreck everything. Look what happened in Somalia.”

I couldn’t argue against that. “How far behind you was the Serbian unit?” I asked.

“How would I know? They were behind us, that’s all I knew.”

“But you said several trip flares went off. If the flares went up into the sky, you must’ve been able to judge the distance they were behind you.”

He looked at me a moment before he answered. Like most folks, he wasn’t used to being interrogated and obviously wasn’t enjoying the experience.

“I didn’t see them go off.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I was busy leading the unit. I was reading the map and compass and watching ahead.”

“Then how did you learn the warning flares went off?”

“Someone told me.”

“Who told you?”

“I don’t remember.”

Now it was my turn to stare at him. I worked my face into as much disbelief as I could summon and stayed silent. He stared back until he grew uncomfortable.

He finally said, “Look, the word was passed up the file, I guess. I don’t remember exactly who told me.”

I stayed quiet another moment, but he decided not to embellish any further. “Okay,” I said, “what did you do then?”

“We walked the rest of the day, zigzagging so our route wasn’t predictable. We could see dust columns over the treetops, and occasionally we heard the sounds of vehicles off in the distance.”

“And what did you interpret that to mean?” I asked.

“The Serbs were moving mobile forces around to try to trap us.”

“Did you discuss that with any team members?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“I remember discussing it with Chief Persico, my team deputy.”

“But you still didn’t make any radio reports back to Tenth Group headquarters?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We were moving fast. Things were happening quickly. Besides, what could they do about it?”

“Provided an aerial recon to let you know your situation. Offered you air cover. Maybe even mounted an aerial extraction to get you out of there.”

He had not expected me to answer that question so spontaneously and appeared nettled for a moment. Then he shrugged. “Look, I’ll admit I wasn’t thinking that clearly at the moment. I was just trying to get my team out alive.”

“Maybe,” I said back, just to let him know I wasn’t buying it.

“Besides, I was worried about the Serbs intercepting a radio transmission. They would’ve vectored in and known exactly where we were.”

“I thought they already knew exactly where you were. You were being followed, right?”

“No, I said I assumed they knew where we were. I was told trip flares had gone off, but that didn’t mean they knew exactly where we were.”

The expression on Sanchez’s face was becoming flustered. All of these questions about flares were obviously beginning to unhinge him. Which was exactly what I wanted. If I could divert him away from the canard he and his team had obviously prepared, and force him to start ad-libbing, we’d have our opening.

“Okay, go on,” I told him.

He took a moment to compose himself, then said, “We kept running all day. I hoped that after it grew dark we could turn south again and try and head for the border. Around midnight we drew into a perimeter. We could still hear vehicles moving on the roads around us, so we knew the Serbs were intensifying their search. Then, at around two, another trip flare went off, about a mile away. That’s when I decided.”

“Decided what?” I asked him.

“We had to ambush a Serb column.”

“And why did you decide that?”

“Because we had to get the Serbs’ attention. We couldn’t outrun them. They were building a noose around us. We had to force them to be as cautious as they were forcing us to be. Do you understand that?”

“No,” I said. “Please explain it more clearly.”

“Look, this was their territory. They felt safe. They were moving around at full speed, chasing us on foot, trying to block us with men in vehicles. If I didn’t find some way to make them slow down, they were going to get us.”

“And you figured what? An ambush would make that happen?”

“Sure. They had to know we were dangerous. If they kept acting sloppy, we’d make them pay for it.”

“Didn’t your orders say you were only allowed to kill in self-defense?”

“This was self-defense,” he insisted, like it was indisputable.

“So you set an ambush?”

“Right. I decided to hit them at first light. I used the map to pick a spot on the road where there was a double curve with hills on both sides. We moved for about another hour and were in position by around four in the morning. Then we set up the ambush and waited. Every now and again a vehicle passed by, but we let them go through. Then, around six-thirty, a column with about six vehicles came into the killzone and we unleashed.”

“Why did you pick that particular column?”

“Because it was larger. I wanted the Serbs to think we were bigger than an A-team. I wanted them to think there were maybe thirty or forty of us. If we only hit a single vehicle, they might have realized they were only dealing with a small team.”

“But if they’d already spotted you, and they were following you, don’t you think they already had some idea of the size of your unit?”

“That’s exactly the point. I believed they did, and I wanted to make them question that. They had no way of knowing if there was one team or three dozen teams operating in our sector. I figured that if we took on a large column, they might think there were more of us than they’d originally thought.”

“And how long did the ambush take?”

“I don’t know for sure… maybe five minutes, maybe a little longer.”

“Describe it.”

“It was just a standard L-shaped ambush. We planted two command-detonated anti-armor mines in the road to blow the lead vehicle and stop the column. We set up a daisy chain of claymore mines along the opposite side of the road that we blew after the troops emptied out of the trucks and were taking cover behind their vehicles. Then we raked the column with M16s and machine guns for a few minutes. Then we left.”

That answered why so many of the corpses back in Belgrade had their backs shredded with claymore pellets. It was a relief to hear, because the alternative was that Sanchez and his people cruelly blew off a bunch of claymores at the backs of a retreating enemy. If he was telling the truth about this, then he’d at least negated one element that took this beyond a simple fight and onto the precarious grounds of a shocking atrocity.

“Were there any survivors?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they were still shooting when we left.”

“Was the return fire heavy or light?”

“Not heavy, but there was enough of it.”

“How many survivors would you say there were?”

“There were probably four or five who were still firing. And there had to be a fair number of wounded.”

“You know the Serbs are claiming there were no survivors?”

“That’s a lie!” he shouted with evident outrage. “There were men still alive on that road when we left.”

“I’ve examined the corpses,” I said. “Thirty-five of them.”

At that point our eyes met and we just sat and stared at each other for a moment. Sometimes, when you’re being bombarded with lies, a tiny morsel that sounds like the bald truth works its way into the conversation. Your ears almost tingle from the fresh sensation. And this was one of those moments.

I finally asked, “What did you do next?”

“We continued our E amp;E. I figured that once the Serbs found their column, that would slow them up for a while. So I began leading the team southward again. We were about fifty clicks from the border. I figured we could make it that night if we moved fast.”

“Were you still being followed?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t set any more flares, so there was no way to tell.”

“Why didn’t you set any more flares?”

“I think we were out of them.”

“You think?”

“I didn’t ask for a count, but I remember thinking we’d used our last one in the ambush.”

“Did you report to headquarters?” I asked, knowing damn well he had, because his report was noted in the communications log.

“Yes.”

“Did you report the ambush?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t want anyone second-guessing me.”

“I’m sorry, could you explain that?”

“I guess I knew they weren’t gonna be too happy about what we’d done. I just didn’t have time to get into all of that with them.”

“So what did you report?”

“That we were extricating.”

“Did you explain that you were being followed, that Serb columns were on the roads around you, that you felt your team was at risk?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I thought I had things under control. I figured the ambush bought us enough time to get out of there.”

“And you still didn’t report the ambush after you returned. Why was that?”

“Look, I made a mistake there,” he said, looking suddenly repentant. “I admit that. I figured that no harm had been done, and I really didn’t see any reason to have to report it.”

I turned to Delbert and Morrow, both of whom were sitting with their chins resting on their hands, listening raptly to Sanchez’s tale. The underlying concept of the cover story was damned good. You could split hairs over what constituted self-defense, but the notion of a desperate team trapped behind enemy lines, surrounded by bloodthirsty Serbs-the same fellas who’d ambushed and shot down Scott O’Grady, who’d snatched three American peacekeepers in Macedonia-that was likely to elicit a sympathetic response from anyone.

“Do either of you have any questions?” I asked Delbert and Morrow.

They both shook their heads. Like me, they could spend hours interrogating Sanchez, but that would come later. First we needed to interview some other team members, look for incongruities, and then we’d come back.

Sanchez was still sitting with his hands folded in front of his mouth. His fingers were squeezed tightly together, desperately tight, like if he didn’t press them together they might fly off and start doing funny things on their own. I guessed he was feeling some tremendous anxiety over how his performance had gone over with us. I stared back expressionlessly.

“Thank you for your time, Captain Sanchez,” I said, turning off the tape recorder and putting some papers back in my oversize legal case.

He stood up and pushed his chair back into the table. He waited there, looking awkward, almost helpless. “Hey, Major,” he finally said.

“What?” I answered, standing and preparing to leave.

“We didn’t murder those Serbs. I swear we didn’t. When we left, there were still some of them alive.”

I nodded. It wasn’t a nod of agreement, just acknowledgment.