“And if you could only use one word?”
“Gung ho.”
I smiled, then he smiled. I said, “How about another word?”
“Okay, troubled.”
“Why troubled?”
“Because these are can-do men with strong consciences. It’s very taxing to be around all these Kosovar refugees. Back in America, you see the images on TV, but it’s very rending on the nerves to have to witness firsthand what’s happening on the other side of that border.”
“Right, of course. I imagine that has a dampening effect on morale.”
He gave me a very trenchant look. “Dampening? Major, some of these men can’t sleep at night.”
“Have you had to do a lot of counseling?”
“We’ve had one suicide and one attempted suicide since we’ve been here. My days are filled with counseling.”
“So you’d say the men are frustrated?”
“I suppose that’s as good a word as any.”
“Did you have to counsel Terry Sanchez or any of his men?”
He stared off at a lumbering C-130 that had just taken off from the airfield and was beginning its climb to altitude. Finally he said, “I’m afraid I’d be uncomfortable answering that.”
“Okay, do you think the frustration you referred to might have caused that team to crack?”
“That’s really just the same question parsed a little differently, isn’t it?”
“Father, I’m asking off the record, one soldier to another.”
“Okay, I don’t believe Terry’s boys did it. However, the pressures are certainly there.”
Like hell, he wasn’t saying they did it. That was exactly what he was saying, although I couldn’t tell if he knew that for a fact, or just suspected they had and assigned it a reason, like everybody else in the world was doing.
“What can you tell me about Smothers’s battalion?”
“It’s a great unit. It should be, though. He’s a first-rate commander, and there’s a lot more veterans in his unit.”
“Veterans?”
“Yes, you know. A lot of his men saw duty in the Gulf, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia.”
“Why so many veterans in his battalion?”
“As I said, it’s a very good unit, very reliable.”
“I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.”
“How much do you know about the Special Forces culture?” he asked.
“Just hearsay.”
“Well, it’s very inbred. The Tenth Group has a European orientation, so the men have specific language skills and regional training. You don’t take a man from the Tenth Group and move him to say, the First Group, which specializes in Asia. Many men spend their whole careers in this unit.”
“But is there something special about Smothers’s battalion?”
“The men call it the old-timers’ club. There’s sort of an unwritten tradition in the Group that after five or ten years in another battalion, a lot of the sergeants put in for transfer to Smothers’s battalion.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked. I thought I knew the answer, but it never hurts to ask.
“Camaraderie, I suppose.”
We had arrived back at the chapel tent, and I could see several soldiers gathered and anxiously waiting. Father O’Reilly obviously had priestly things to do, and I’d heard everything I wanted to hear, so I thanked him and we parted ways.
As soon as he was gone, Delbert said, “That was really helpful.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked.
“He was trying to communicate motive. He’s the confessor of four men in that team, and he was trying to offer us their motive.”
“Maybe,” I said, looking over at Morrow.
“Is there something we didn’t hear?” she asked.
I pulled on my nose a bit. “That old-timers’ club thing. That bothers me.”
Delbert said, “Sounds like a good idea to me. Sort of a grouping of the elite of the elite.”
“Maybe.”
“You think there’s more?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“This is a combat unit, Delbert. A battlefield veteran is a very different breed than a green buck sergeant who might be highly trained but has never been truly tested. It’s the green guys who can get you killed. They might break under pressure. They might make mistakes, like maybe put a blasting cap in the wrong way, or use incorrect radio procedures and give away your position.”
“I still don’t get it,” Delbert said.
“The old-timers’ club sounds like a survivors’ union. A guy spends five or ten years, and he becomes eligible. He gets to spend the rest of his career with seasoned, battle-tested pros, the kind of guys who don’t make mistakes.”
“And something’s wrong with that?” Morrow asked.
“Maybe not. Your chances of survival go way up, since I’d suspect the First Battalion is very choosy about who it takes and who it turns down.”
The two of them nodded, and I decided not to expose everything else I suspected. Like General Partridge mentioned earlier, I’d done time in the infantry, whereas Delbert and Morrow put on their JAG shields straight out of law school. Some things you just gotta be there to learn.
We arrived at General Charles “Chuck” Murphy’s wooden building about ten minutes later. I could have ordered Murphy to come to my building, but there were limits to how much I wanted to shove people around. There’s a fine line between being a legal barbarian in search of the truth and being a spoiled brat, and I’ve always been a stickler for nuances.
Actually, I wouldn’t know a nuance if it hit me in the face, but I didn’t want to push my luck with Murphy. At least, not yet I didn’t.
As it was, Murphy actually met us at the door, which made me damned glad I hadn’t ordered him to come see me, because this courteous, meeting-us-at-the-door thing sort of evened it out.
I said, “Morning, General.”
He said, “You look like crap, Drummond. What’s the matter, not sleeping well?”
I put on my bitchiest pout. “It’s the damned accommodations here. I’m used to an air-conditioned hotel room, with a well-stocked bar and a big double bed. These damned tents and cots are killing me.”
He emitted a very manly, contemptuous chuckle, then led us inside and up some stairs to the floor where his office was located. A burly sergeant major, who looked as though he lived in a weight room, growled something as we walked by. I kept a wide berth and hoped he didn’t bite.
The general’s office was fairly spartan for a man of his rank, containing a long field table that was being used as a desk, two smaller field tables, two metal file cabinets, and two flags, one of the American variety and the other red in color, with a big white star in the middle. A visitor was supposed to be impressed by the austere, abstemious furnishings and believe that they somehow reflected on the humble nature of the man who worked in this office. I might’ve bought it except for the two silver-framed photographs carefully arrayed on the smaller field tables: One showed the President of the United States himself pinning a general’s star on Murphy’s shoulder, and the other a much younger Chuck Murphy in a football uniform, holding a ball, kneeling beside the Heisman Trophy and grinning like a kid who was cocksure the world was his oyster.
Five chairs had been neatly arranged in the middle of the floor, and he directed us all to have seats. With some difficulty, he lowered his large six-foot-five-inch frame into one of the chairs, crossed his legs, and folded his arms across his chest. It was a big chest, but he had long arms.
The empty chair was kind of mysterious, and I guessed that at one point he must’ve intended to have counsel there to represent him, then thought that might imply he had something to hide and therefore decided against it.
“I apologize,” he said. “I can only give you ten minutes this morning. We have an important operation going on, and my presence is required in the operations center.”
“No problem, General. You’re a busy man. We’ll make this quick.”
“Thank you.”
I paused briefly, then asked, “How long have you known Captain Sanchez?”
“I’ve commanded the group the past eighteen months. Terry was here when I arrived.”