Okay, he wasn’t a teenager. He was actually a first lieutenant with a JAG insignia on his lapels, the crossed sword and quill pen. I hoped this kid was good with the pen, because he didn’t look old enough to know what a sword was used for. He smiled at me and placed a folder and legal pad on the table and then sat down across from me. “Captain Buckman?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m Lieutenant Dorne. I’m your attorney. I’m pleased to meet you!” He smiled like an eager young puppy.
“Uh, huh. Listen, what the hell is going on? What the hell am I supposed to have done?”
“Well, I have the list of charges here.” They had a list? Dorne fumbled through the file and then looked back at me. “Originally, the most serious was mutiny. Then there’s failure to obey a direct order, destruction or loss of military property, and failure to follow proper radio procedures. Oh, and insubordination, I almost forgot that one.”
“You said the most serious was mutiny. Does that mean that it is the most serious, or that there is something else now more serious?” I asked him.
“Well, this morning they added four counts of murder and a count of resisting arrest. Who’d you kill, anyway?”
“Nobody, Lieutenant. Nobody! What I did was piss off a general!”
Dorne started looking through his paperwork again. “That must be the insubordination and failure to obey a direct order.”
“Must be. Let me ask you a question. Who picked you as my lawyer?” I asked him.
Dorne gave me a broad smile. “The Provost Marshal himself! He requested me personally! This is really exciting. It’s my first case, and I get a capital case!”
“Oh, Christ!” I shook my head. This was just getting better and better. Almost every JAG ever commissioned comes in as a captain, an O-3, or better. The Provost Marshal, that major who arrested me, must have looked far and wide to find a JAG lawyer so green that he was still only a lieutenant, and had never tried a case before. I wondered if Dorne had actually gone to law school, or if he had done it all by correspondence course. He was so green he thought this was an honor, instead of what it really was, another nail in my coffin.
Dorne started talking about the particulars. “Mutiny is going to be very hard to prove. Case law is definitely on our side. Who were the witnesses to the murders?” I just stared at him as he rambled on.
Finally I said, “Shut up, Lieutenant. Let me ask you a question. Have you been approached about a plea deal already?”
He nodded and smiled. “The Provost Marshal wants twenty years at Leavenworth, but I know we can do better than that! I shouldn’t think more than four or five, total…”
“Shut up. Forget it. We’re going to trial if I have to. I’m not signing off on any plea deal.” This was all political nonsense in any case, with a pissy general trying to fuck me over. Screw him!
Just then the door opened and the corporal came inside. “Time’s up. Get lost,” he told Dorne.
Dorne looked shocked, but I barked out, “You will come to attention and address your superior officers correctly, prisoner or not. He’s a lieutenant and I’m a captain, and you are a corporal. You should know better. Now we are not through and nobody less than a major is to interrupt us, is that understood?” He stared at me, and I repeated, “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
Dorne looked at me curiously, seeing me in a different light. I turned to him and said, “Okay, we need to make this quick. I buffaloed the corporal, but his sergeant isn’t going to be as cooperative. I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen, got it?”
Dorne simply nodded, so I just continued. “Okay, this is total bullshit. Brigadier General Hawkins has a bug up his ass and its name is Buckman. He wants to bury me and scare me into taking a plea deal. The last thing he wants is an actual court martial. Now, who do you report to?”
“Me?” I urged him to continue and he said, “The Provost Marshal.”
Even I knew this was wrong. The Provost Marshal is the senior military police officer on a base, and is in charge of the MP detachment. The JAG Corps are military lawyers, and provide the prosecuting and defense attorneys in a court martial. They had separate chains of command, just like in civilian life. The cops aren’t in charge of the prosecutors.
I shook my head. “No, he just houses you here. You actually report to the JAG HQ in DC, right?”
He shrugged. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, you get through to somebody higher up the food chain. Hawkins can bury me down here in as deep a hole as he can find, but sooner or later my wife is going to notice I haven’t come home or called. Now she doesn’t know shit about the Army, but she knows my father and her father, and they know several congressmen.” This was a stretch, since Big Bob considered me his daughter’s biggest mistake, and I hadn’t spoken to my father in three years, but Dorne didn’t need to know those pesky details. “Sooner or later, I am going to get a phone call, and the first words out of my mouth will be ‘Get me a civilian lawyer!’ Do you understand me?”
“You don’t want me as your lawyer?”
“Lieutenant, I am a rich man. I know, I know, what’s a rich man doing in the Army? Take my word for it, I am a multimillionaire. You don’t need to know the details, but the first thing I am going to tell my new civilian lawyer will be that I will pay him a million dollars to take my case, and another million when I walk away with somebody’s scalp on my belt. Follow me? Tell that to your boss in DC! Ask him if he knows how much full page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal cost? You know, something about how the US Army invaded Nicaragua and killed two of their own men doing so. How do you think that will look when the Pentagon opens their morning papers? I bet William Kuntsler would love to defend me at a court martial! Now, you are going to find a phone and call your boss back at HQ and get this sorted out, is that understood?”
If I was really going to trial in a court martial, the last thing I wanted was a civilian lawyer. It was my right, but they rarely know what they are doing in a military court, and they are not looked upon kindly by the system. Still, whatever this was, it was political, not military, and that made it different!
The door to the room opened again, this time with a red-faced major, the Provost Marshal, and his staff sergeant sidekick who delighted in sucker punching me. The major glared at the hapless lieutenant and ordered him out. “You! Out!” he barked, and then he turned to me, and said, “And you! No more of your crap!”
Dorne scurried to leave, and I yelled after him, “No deal, Dorne, no deal!”
The major followed after Dorne, demanding to know what I had told him, but I doubted Dorne would tell him. That was privileged information, and Dorne would probably keep his mouth shut. The sergeant stayed behind, and I was released from the table and my hands were cuffed again, and I was hauled back down to the basement. The corporal joined him to assist. The water level had stabilized at about the half inch level; there must have been a few rat holes for the water to drain down through.
There was one difference this time. They had a hook tied to a rope that went to the ceiling, and after I was uncuffed from behind my back, they recuffed me from the front, and then strung me up from the hook. I don’t think the corporal was happy about this, but he didn’t stop it, and he kept me under control when I started to protest. The sergeant was smiling as he pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. “You haven’t been cooperating. The major wants you to cooperate.” He waved the corporal out.