The Night Crew, page 2
part #7 of Sean Drummond Series
“Like what?”
“A boyfriend? Husband? Children?” I then asked, “Am I being too conventional for you?”
“Is this your clumsy but indirect way of asking if I’m married, or currently involved?”
“Why would I care?”
“Good point. Why would you?”
I should mention here that, perhaps cynically, I had always assumed that Katherine’s attraction to her peculiar cause opened interesting questions about her AC/DC connections. A modern, sensitive male would never ask such questions of a lady, of course. Nobody has ever accused me of being modern or sensitive, but even I don’t have those size balls.
Yet, when a lady that attractive and smart and successful is never once observed in the company of a male date, well, one does wonder. I’m not judgmental about this; nobody who has prosecuted twenty rape cases and other variations of sexual hijinks and kinkery walks away all that convinced that heterosexuals deserve a revered place on the pedestal of sexual intolerance.
But as I learned to my surprise in Korea, Katherine’s calling was philosophical, not biological.
But, if you’re interested, our relationship had always been platonic, owing mainly to her testy nature, our different lifestyles, different temperaments, different outlooks, and, of course, the aforementioned biological compatibility issues. That, however, was the old, misunderstood Katherine. You might say she and I were now reinterpreting our relationship on all new grounds.
I wouldn’t say we were getting off on the best foot.
Apropos of that last thought, she mused, “Why do men assume that all women dream of a white picket fence, two-point-three kids, and a dumb mutt named Rover to fetch the morning paper?”
“I don’t think that. Besides, Rover’s a stupid name for a dog.”
“Dog?” Katherine informed me, “He’s the husband.”
Katherine does not tell many jokes so, to be polite, I laughed.
I returned to watching the soccer match on TV, and Katherine went back to nursing her beer. As long as we’ve known each other, I’ve never been good at reading her thoughts. Partly because, like most men, I don’t understand women; they have only one brain. Also, I tend to be fairly blunt and transparent, which works well in the army where the badge on your collar defines everything you need to know about human interaction. Katherine is rarely emotional, and while she is professionally manipulative, on a personal level, she is not a schemer. She does play things close to her vest, however, and with her, it can be hard to distinguish the personal from the professional.
And here we had a case in point: despite our social setting, she was here with an agenda and was taking her sweet time, and mine, to get to it.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
“I want you to cool down,” she replied. “I’d rather not have this discussion while you’re angry.”
“What makes you think I’m angry?”
“Your face is red, your knuckles are white, and you snort when you talk.” She further notified me, “Actually, I did you a big favor. You’ll thank me later.”
“There won’t be a later.”
“Look, Sean, it was bound to end unhappily.”
“I think I’m capable of chasing off my own dates. Really, Katherine.”
She laughed and said, “True enough,” then added, “She wasn’t your type.”
“And what’s my type?”
“Well . . . whatever your ideal beau is, I’m sure it has lots of body hair, cloven hooves, and eats with its hands.”
Apparently this also was funny, because again, she laughed.
Also, the two captains seated at the next table apparently were into eavesdropping because they too chuckled. I think one of the things I don’t miss about officers’ club bars are the bottom-feeders looking for scraps.
But Katherine apparently changed her mind about waiting for my mood to improve, because she set her briefcase on the table and announced, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. I need a military cocounsel.”
“Then call the civilian reps at JAG Branch and ask them to hook you up. You know the process, Katherine. I shouldn’t have to explain it.”
“I want you.”
I knew she was going to say that. “No.”
“Don’t you at least want to hear about the case?”
“No. And in case you’re not getting the message, no.”
“It’s not another gay case, Sean,” she continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s a criminal case, a very complex one. An important one.”
I sipped my Scotch and ignored her.
“Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
“I thought you were a tough guy, not a pussy.”
She smiled. I ignored her.
“Come on, listen to the case.”
“How did you know where to find me?”
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rather than respond to my query, she adhered to her own agenda and continued, “Any JAG officer won’t do. I need someone who knows combat, who understands the pressures of living on the edge of reason. What makes people fall over that edge, what makes them snap.”
“So you thought of me. How nice.”
“Look, you’re a fine lawyer. Your legal advice would be helpful . . .”
“And . . . ?”
“And . . . an Airborne Ranger with a Combat Infantry Badge and a chestful of combat decorations at the defense table would be invaluable for my team.”
It did not escape my notice that, for whatever reason, Katherine had disclosed neither the name of her client, nor the nature of the charges. She was tipping her hand, though, and it wasn’t all that hard to figure out. So I paused to make a few lazy deductions and casual inferences.
Deduction One: the alleged crime occurred in a combat zone; perhaps Afghanistan, more likely Iraq, where most of the action was.
Deduction Two: physical violence was involved; and Deduction Three: the charges were serious, usually a redundant thought.
And then, Inference One: the Court Martial Board was going to be composed mostly of combat veterans, men and women who had experienced enemy fire.
As in civil law, the accused in the military is entitled to a jury of his or her peers, and ordinarily, a soldier is a soldier, a part of the green machine, interchangeable with any other. There are, however, occasions when such is not the case. When the case involves fratricide or violations of the Geneva Convention, charges that are unique to the battlefield, a peer then becomes someone who has been there, done that, with a combat unit patch stitched to his or her right shoulder to prove it. A soldier who hasn’t seen combat might look at it too abstractly, too ephemerally, compared to one who shares with the accused a firsthand familiarity with the smell of roasting flesh, the peculiar fear, and unique judgment—or more often, lack of rational judgment—made when friends are dying around you and somebody is trying to kill you. Any defense lawyers worth their salt would use the voir dire process to winnow the board down to as many combat vets as possible.
But Katherine Carlson, as I mentioned, is a fine lawyer. She understood this and, no doubt, she was factoring it into her preparations. In no other court in the land is a jury so monochromatic—so bound by common beliefs, common attitudes, common lifestyles.
Civilian attorneys trigger engrained prejudices and subliminal distrusts under the best of circumstances—they may belong in a courtroom, but they are clearly dressed in the wrong attire, often with the wrong mindset.
And if I was right about the war crime or fratricide angle, then no, I would not want to be Katherine Carlson—female, civilian, iconic antimilitary poster girl—trying to sell an uphill case to seven steely eyed, battle-tested soldiers.
And, too, she was right about another thing—just any vanilla JAG officer wouldn’t rebalance the scales of justice.
And then there was what she didn’t say but clearly implied: she wanted a mannequin, a decorated dummy to look impressive, to sway the ecumenical balance, and keep his mouth shut.
She should’ve known better—about me, that is.
And last though not least, Inference Two: she wouldn’t be in the Fort Myer Officers’ Club at this late hour on a Friday night, lamely backdooring her way into an explanation, were the evidence against her client not overwhelming.
I looked her in the eye. “Find someone else. Hundreds of army lawyers have been crawling around Afghanistan and Iraq.” I glanced around the bar. “I’ll bet I can find you one here.”
She grabbed my arm. “I need one who’s killed, who’s tasted blood, who took prisoners, who’s lost friends, who understands battlefield rage.”
I made no reply.
This tack wasn’t working. She knew it, and after a long pause, she suggested, “I thought we worked well together in Korea.”
I laughed. Back to that case. The accused in the military has the option of free military representation or, in those instances in which they are willing to foot the fare, they may engage a civilian attorney of their own choosing. In those cases, a JAG officer is normally assigned as cocounsel because the military is a unique culture, and military law has some parochial twists and provisions outsiders might not comprehend. Civilian law, for instance, is based on the overriding proposition that individual rights are sacrosanct and elevated above all other considerations, such as justice; military law answers a different calling, the mission always comes first, and when necessary, the needs of the institution and the demands of the mission trump the rights of the individual. Or, in the words of my first drill sergeant: “You have whatever fucking rights I say you have.” Which means, very few.
Bottom line here: the army does not want convicted felons appealing on the grounds that their hired civilian guns didn’t know the difference between a latrine pit and a dining facility—though perhaps that’s not such a good example.
So for reasons I still don’t comprehend, Katherine requested me, by name, to serve as her cocounsel, on an all-gay defense team, which proved, well . . . interesting.
Katherine observed, “Our client was well satisfied with our work.”
“You never trusted me, you ignored my legal advice, and you kept secrets.”
“And I hated doing that to you.”
“Really? You made it look so fun.”
“We won.”
“And I got shot.”
“But you survived.” She added, sounding not all that happy. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
“I lost three inches of my intestine, spent two months on a Jell-O diet, the nurses were mean and ugly, and the enemas were cold.”
“You mean you’re no longer full of sh—”
“Enough, Katherine.”
“Sorry. Bad joke.” She crossed her heart and said, “You won’t get shot this time. Promise.”
“You’re right. I won’t. No.”
So that was it. Case closed. End of discussion, end of Katherine.
I should’ve stood up and left, but Katherine was the interloper here, and a man has to stand his ground so, in fact, I did not.
That was my first big mistake.
Chapter Two
She pointed at my nearly empty glass and observed, “You need another Scotch,” then promised, “It’s on me.”
As usual with Katherine, business preceded pleasure, and now it was time to catch up, exchange pleasantries and whatever. She leaned back into her faux-leather chair and folded her hands in front of her lips. “So how are you doing?”
“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”
Maybe this was too subtle, because she looked at her watch. “Later, yes, I do. But I’ve got twenty minutes to kill.”
This was an obvious invitation for me to inquire about what was on her schedule, so to piss her off, I did not.
“I’m fine,” I informed her.
She stuck up a finger in the direction of the bartender, who was keeping a close watch on our table, probably worrying about a homicide in his club. Katherine observed, “I see you made lieutenant colonel. Congratulations.”
“The gold card rank,” I replied. “I’m good to go for retirement, unless I do something stupid.”
“Well, let’s bet against the odds and hope you make it. We should toast that.”
She raised her beer bottle, and I hoisted my glass. In fact, I had only pinned on the silver leaf of a lieutenant colonel a few months before, and I found it interesting that Katherine would know that since I was dressed in mufti—undercover, so to speak.
“Where are you living these days?” I asked her.
“Nearby. Same old apartment from law school, a few blocks off Dupont Circle. Mostly, though, out of suitcases. Gypsy law—I go where the cases carry me.”
“Are you still working for—”
“No, I’m . . . I . . .” Whatever she intended to say, she apparently changed her mind. “I hate to lose. I think you know this. It became depressing and I needed . . . something different.” She toyed with the clasp on her briefcase and asked, “What about you?”
I didn’t really want to tell her about my current job in the CIA, so I instead answered her question with a question. “Who’s paying your bills these days?”
“Another public interest group.”
“Different kind of work?”
“Same work. Different kinds of cases, different challenges, different types of clients.”
The bartender arrived with fresh drinks, Scotch for me, beer for her. Katherine, I recalled, is pretty much a teetotaler and usually limits herself to two Coors Lights—aka, fizzled Kool-Aid—and does not really enjoy idle chitchat. In fact, it seemed she had exhausted her limit, or her repertoire, because she asked, in a superficially offhanded way, “Have you been following the Al Basari prison scandal?”
“Is that your case?”
“So you’re familiar with it,” she noted. In fact, for the past month, the Al Basari scandal, or Basarigate, as the imagination-deprived media were vapidly calling it, had saturated the news almost every day.
“I know what everybody knows.”
“Good. Tell me what everybody knows.”
“Five American National Guard soldiers, two males and three females, got carried away at a military prison in Iraq, had a little late-night fun, got frisky and slapped around some prisoners, then got a little kinky, took a few disgusting pictures, a prisoner died, and now they’re all facing general court martial. Am I missing anything?”
“A few intriguing details. A lot of open questions. But you have the general gist of it. What do you think about that?”
“I believe it was criminal behavior. They brought enormous shame on the army, humiliation on the country, and did grievous harm to our war effort. Any other stupid questions?”
“The logical one. Do you believe they’re guilty?”
“They’re definitely guilty of something.”
“Because of the pictures?”
This reference was to the aforementioned photographs, taken, apparently, by the soldiers themselves, perhaps as trophies or as souvenirs, or perhaps out of some perverse fascination with their own behavior. Somehow, a number of these pictures found their way to a member of the press, then, predictably, got sensationalized across nearly every newspaper, magazine cover, and television screen in the world.
The few I had seen in the news were fairly upsetting: a bloated corpse wrapped in a blood-stained sleeping bag, nude prisoners stacked on top of one another, prisoners being forced to perform sexually humiliating gestures and actions, and so forth.
Also, the instant the story broke, the Islamic world went predictably nuts, roasted two American embassies, and assassinated three US diplomats in Pakistan.
This was not the first prisoner abuse scandal of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nor, barring some mysterious change in human nature, would it be anywhere near the last. War is an ugly business, and battling insurgencies is uglier still; for the participants it is emotionally unsettling and, for some, it is emotionally unhinging, so occasionally soldiers slip over the line, and occasionally, they get caught.
This, though, by any mark or measure, was the most stupefying and inflammatory scandal. Also, where the other scandals were based on oral accounts, here there was visual imagery, a pictorial montage of carnal behavior the Marquis de Sade might have pinned on his bathroom walls.
As if that weren’t enough, the graphic sexual degradation of helpless Arab males amplified every Moslem superstition and indictment about the moral inferiority and depravity of the West.
As I said, the typical GI does stupid crimes and leaves behind enough clues, leads, and evidence to end up in a suite at Leavenworth or earn a reservation on the hotseat, whichever applies. This, however, went way beyond leaving a few fingerprints or errant hair samples—and way beyond stupidity. In an act of surreal self-incrimination, they included themselves in the pictures, and downloaded those photos onto computers, and ultimately, burned their own faces into the consciousness of the entire planet.
Katherine was watching my face. “Let me rephrase that. Do you believe they can get a fair trial?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Really? You already said you’re convinced they’re guilty.”
“I said they’re guilty of something. But with five different soldiers, that means five different levels of guilt, of most likely different crimes, and five different sets of extenuating and mitigating circumstances.” I added, “Guilt is a relative term, as are fairness, justice, and punishment. You know this, Katherine.”
She opened her briefcase and reached inside, fishing around for something. I remained silent as she withdrew a blown-up, nine-by-twelve color photograph that she slid across the table; I picked it up and studied it.
