I almost smiled. “That was very good of you,” I said. Even better was that he just gave us the hook we needed. I turned to Morrow, and she nodded. She had picked up on it, too.
“Thank you, Chief,” I said. “We’ll call you to testify again, maybe later this evening, maybe tomorrow morning. I strongly advise you to have an attorney present at our next session.”
He planted his elbows on his knees and worked up a very convincing petulant expression. “When we gonna get done with this crap? I spent over two weeks in this shithole and I wanta get out. You’ve questioned me twice already.”
I said, “When you stop lying to us. By tomorrow morning we’ll have the whole truth. One way or another.”
The petulance receded into a bland look. He stood up and started to walk out.
“By the way,” I said, and he turned around to face me. “The deal you had with Tretorne and Murphy is off. I have full authority to recommend whatever I want, and I intend to use it.”
He turned back around and kept walking. It was in his eyes, though. He’d just heard the sounds of the walls crumbling down around him.
Chapter 30
Sergeant First Class Francois Perrite,” Imelda announced with great formality and astoundingly clear enunciation. Morrow’s head reeled back in surprise. Imelda could speak like the Queen of England herself when she had a mind to.
Perrite had the same cocky, self-assured walk I remembered from before. And again I also noticed how soundlessly he moved, how catlike, as though there were a blanket of air under his feet.
It was my idea to do Perrite next. He was the hothead of the team. He had also been at the center of nearly everything that happened. More important, though, he was very clearly Chief Persico’s boy. There was a powerful bond between them, and I judged that to be as much of a strength as it was a possible vulnerability.
I indicated for him to take the same seat Persico had vacated only thirty minutes before. I repeated the explanation of our purpose and invited him to smoke if he so desired. He did so desire and quickly pulled from his pocket a pack of Camels, unfiltered. Among other loyalties, he and Persico preferred the same brand. Smoking buddies.
I stared down at some papers in front of me till he had a cigarette lit and was seated in a relaxed posture. He wore an amused smirk, as though we were all gathered here for his entertainment.
I looked up. “Sergeant Perrite, we’ve already determined that you and other members of this team have perjured yourselves. We know Captain Sanchez supported Captain Akhan’s desire to raid the Piluca station. We know that, afterward, there was a general loss of confidence in his abilities, and Chief Persico virtually took charge of your team. We know your location was never detected by the Serbs. We also know the ambush was not an act of self-defense. It was a deliberate act of retribution.”
We didn’t actually know those last two points, and we only suspected some of the former, but I thought I’d just toss it all into the cauldron and see what came out. He didn’t contradict me, either. Instead he stared up at me, scratched his face, then smiled. “Then what the hell do you need me for?”
“We need to question you about your role in these events.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Start with when you and Machusco went into Piluca on the morning of the fourteenth. What did you encounter?”
He bent over and used his right hand to stub out his cigarette on the floor next to the three butts Persico had left behind. Perrite had barely smoked it a quarter of the way, so I guessed his real purpose was to bend over and inspect the brand of the crushed butts lying around his chair. Real recon men are curious that way.
When he came back up he said, “Fuck you. I got no reason to answer your questions.”
“But you do,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Have you spoken with a defense counsel yet?”
“Sure. Some fatassed bitch stopped by. I tol’ her to get lost. Like I tol’ you before, I don’t like lawyers. They give me hives.”
“I hope, before she left, she had enough time to explain that once you’ve been charged with a single court-martial offense, I can add as many charges as I deem fit. The judge at your court-martial will instruct the board to consider each individual charge separately. You understand what that means?”
“No.”
Very matter-of-factly, I said, “It means that every charge receives its own punishment. Sentences accrue. Even if you’re found entirely innocent of everything that happened in Kosovo, the additional charges I might bring against you-for refusing an order, for disrespect, for obstructing justice, for perjury-will all be weighed and sentenced separately. Is all this clear to you now?”
He nodded. It was a flinty, reluctant nod, but it was a nod.
“See, Sergeant, you’re here to bargain years of your life with me. Get your head out of your ass. Think about whether you want to spend your entire middle age watching the world through iron bars.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied in a way that made “sir” sound like something that needed to be flushed down a toilet, but nonetheless indicated he now knew the stakes.
I said, “Now, again, what exactly did you encounter when you and Machusco entered Piluca?”
He said, “You really wanta know, huh?”
I nodded.
“Okay, then I’ll tell ya,” he said, although he said it angrily, like I’d asked for it, and I was going to get it. He leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on his knees. He looked around the room and studied each of us in turn, his head nodding in a sort of derogatory motion, as if we were all unworthy, but what the hell.
Then he stared back at me. “For starters, it wasn’t just me and Machusco. Brian Moore came with us, too, ’cause he speaks the local patois. We went in around ten. The place was real quiet, but there was this heavy odor in the air.”
“What kind of odor?”
“Two smells, actually. Blood and cordite. And the reason it was real quiet was because everybody left. There was lots of smoke and some of the buildings was still burnin’ or smolderin’. There was lots of pockmarked buildings, like you’d see after a real nasty fight. There was cannon holes in some of the walls, made by tank rounds, we figured. I tol’ Machusco and Moore we oughta get outta there real quick. I mean, it sure as shit didn’t look like Akhan won. But Machusco figured that Chief would just make us turn our asses back around and find out what happened. Knowing Chief, I guessed he was right. So we kept on.”
He paused to take out another Camel, which he tapped on his palm, just as Persico had done. Amazing.
“Then what happened,” he continued, “was we snuck down some side streets. Moore kept cover for me and Machusco, and we worked our way close to the town square, like they got in all them little Kosovar burgs. That’s where the police station was located. Machusco and I got as near as we thought was smart, then dodged into this three-story building. We worked our way to the top. We climbed out a window and got up on the roof.”
His hands and arms did a panoramic sweep through the air.
“We could see the whole square and the police station. Saw it real good, too. It was crawling with Serb militia. We could see about ten tanks, old T-34s, all lined up, and the crews were climbing all over ’em, doing post-op chores. We could also see this huge stack of bodies. We had binos with us, so we pulled ’em out, and we studied those bodies. We were near enough that with our binos we could see their faces, you know. There was a few faces that had been tossed on the pile that we didn’t recognize. Probably villagers that got in the line of fire. But we recognized most of the faces we saw. Then Machusco elbowed me and pointed at something by the police station. So I looked there. There was this tall pole that’d been stuck in the ground, right by the front door. On top of that pole was this black, dripping thing. It was Captain Akhan’s head. They’d chopped it off and stuck it there like a trophy.”