She said, “Thank God it’s finally over. Except for deciding what to do.”
I said, “It’s not over, Lisa.”
“It is for me. We’ve got enough evidence to make our recommendations. I don’t want to sit here and rehash this with every member of the team.”
“I don’t intend to, either,” I said. “Only one more to go.”
I got up and went out to find Imelda. I told her what I wanted her to do, then I returned to the interview room and quietly waited till Imelda’s girls came filtering back in and took their seats.
Two minutes passed before the door opened. First, Imelda came through, then Sergeant Francois Perrite.
“Have a seat,” I told him.
He did, although more nervously this time. He broke out the cigarettes immediately and began tamping a fresh one.
I said, “Do I need to remind you of your rights again?”
“No, I know my rights.”
“You can spare me your feelings toward lawyers this time, but are you sure you don’t want counsel, Sergeant? I would seriously advise you to have a lawyer present.”
“Nope. There’s enough fucking lawyers in this room already.”
“Nobody would argue with that,” I admitted.
Then we looked into each other’s eyes a moment, and he knew that I knew.
I said, “Chief Persico just left. He took responsibility for everything. He said he was the one who made all the decisions, who led the quiet mutiny against Captain Sanchez, who decided to execute an ambush, who ignored the order to extricate.”
He was quietly nodding as I detailed this.
“Of course, Sergeant Perrite, you bear most of the responsibility. You were the one who came back and tried to incite the men against Sanchez. You knew they didn’t like him anyway, and you stoked the fuel. It was your idea to kill Pajocovic, wasn’t it? Yet Chief was in here trying to cover for you.”
He didn’t nod or acknowledge a word, only watched me and listened.
I continued. “Then he confessed that he was the one who went around after the ambush and shot the Serbs in the head. He said he sent everyone else to the rally point, then he snuck across the road and dispatched the last survivors. Then he went down to the site and administered the coup de grace.”
Perrite was now staring at the end of his lit cigarette, much as Chief Persico had sat and stared at his only thirty minutes before. It was uncanny. Perrite admired the man so much he even affected the same mannerisms.
I said, “The problem, Sergeant Perrite, is that you and I both know he didn’t do that. Don’t we? He was trying to save somebody he cares deeply about, and I only hope to God that man cares as much about him.”
I paused for a moment as he continued to regard his cigarette.
Finally I said, “He was trying to save you, wasn’t he?”
Perrite stayed frozen, still staring at that cigarette for what felt like eternity. I had no idea what he was thinking, because I had no idea how a man like him thought.
Then he nodded dumbly. He was perfectly willing to lie right down to the end, but he was not willing to let Persico take the rap for his crime.
“That’s right,” he finally mumbled. “I did it.”
“Tell us what happened.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
“Try me. Maybe I would.”
“No, you’re not really soldiers, you and that other lawyer up there,” he said, waving dismissively at Morrow. “You got no idea what it’s like out there. The way you feel about the other men in your team, how you stop thinking when the bullets are flying, how you just do whatever you feel like.”
Suddenly Imelda jumped out of her seat and walked over and stopped right in front of him. Her body was very tense, and her fists were clenched tightly.
“I’ve heard enough of your shit, Sergeant. You don’t know what you’re talking about!” she yelled. “See that damned combat patch on the major’s right arm? See that Combat Infantryman’s Badge on his chest? What you don’t see is the three Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars, and the Distinguished Service Cross he earned, too. Know why he’s a lawyer? He spent six months in a hospital recovering after the last one. They wouldn’t let him stay in the infantry after that. Don’t you go thinking you’ve got shit to tell him about what it’s like out there, Sergeant. Now, act like a damn soldier and answer that man.”
Perrite stared up at her and Imelda glared down at him. How she knew about that was beyond me. My citations and awards were inside a musty drawer somewhere, because they were given for operations that nobody knew happened, and nobody was supposed to know happened. Besides, who cared what combat awards lawyers got? But then, Imelda was a sergeant and you may remember my earlier warning that sergeants could be very devious when they wanted to find things out. Make that ditto for Imelda.
Perrite looked at me. He was not only a Special Forces soldier with all the macho baggage that carried, but he was also a Cajun. This added a whole mix of spices to the ordinary Special Forces macho culture, so Imelda had just leveled the playing field a bit.
“That true?” he asked.
“I guess so,” I admitted.
He pondered that a moment, then he made up his mind. “Okay, Major, I was off on the flank, like I said. I heard the ambush go off. I heard the shooting for seven or eight minutes. I got curious. You know what that means, right? Bein’ on security, you always wonder. You wonder if your friends are gettin’ killed, if your guys are winnin’, if things are goin’ to shit.”
He paused and looked up at me.
“I knew I shouldn’t, but I crossed the road and worked my way down, till I was behind the Serbs. I got there just as Chief gave everyone the order to beat feet. There was still some Serbs down there, maybe three or four, still shooting. So I decided to… well, you know, I decided to… kill them, I guess.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I dunno. I just felt like it.”
“No. You must’ve had a reason.”
“Okay. Maybe because I wanted a piece of the action. And maybe because Chief should’ve made sure they were all dead so there were no witnesses.”
I said, “And maybe you wanted a trophy?”
He looked at me in alarm.
I said, “When Captain Morrow and I viewed the corpses in the morgue in Belgrade, one had no head left. Was that Captain Pajocovic’s body?”
He turned his eyes away from mine. “I dunno. Mighta been his body. Maybe his head got blown off by the claymores. That happens sometimes.”
“No, Sergeant, I don’t think so. That head looked like it had been hacked off, like maybe with a bayonet. You cut his head off, didn’t you?”
He began fidgeting and suddenly looked nervous. I finally had it all figured out. Perrite was a Cajun. He lived by the old Cajun code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Cultural stereotypes often do happen to be valid. Pajocovic had decapitated Akhan, so Perrite returned the favor in kind.
“What did you do with it, Sergeant?”
He still refused to answer. But he didn’t have to. I knew the answer to this one too. Perrite would’ve wanted his hero to be proud of him, just like a hunting dog brings its trophies back to its owner.
“You brought it to Chief, didn’t you? You wanted him to see what you did, right?”
He sort of straightened up in his seat and he dropped the cigarette on the floor. Unlike Chief Persico though, he did not grind it out. He stomped it out.
“That’s right, that’s what I did.”
“And what did he do?”
“He got real pissed. He tol’ me not to say anything to the others, and he ordered me to bury the head.”
I said, “Thank you, Sergeant Perrite. You may return to your cell.”
Imelda got up and escorted him out. He still had that same jaunty walk.
Chapter 34
It was the last time I ever planned to show those guards my orders, to grin stupidly into the camera, and to wait for Miss Smith to open the door. Only it wasn’t Miss Smith who opened the door this time. It was a man, and he was much older than Miss Smith. I knew his real name, too. It was General Clapper.