“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.