Cassidy, Rutherford, West and Ryder turned their weapons on the MPs and a horrible feeling of déjà vu came over me. Everyone was shouting at each other to lower their weapons, but I couldn’t hear them. I was listening to Anna.
‘Vin, no. You’ll die here,’ she said. ‘He’s not worth your life.’
But when I looked up, the voice wasn’t Anna’s. It was Leila’s, my other principal.
The security team fanned out on our flank.
A standoff, just like the one at the Oak Ridge Reservation facility in Tennessee that left Anna on the carpet with a hole the size of my fist blown out of her left breast, her heart rolling in the cavity as it struggled to pump.
One wrong move here and I wasn’t the only one who would die.
‘Put the gun down, Vin,’ said Leila. ‘Let the law have him.’ Her voice wrapped around me like Congo mist.
Lockhart was a sweaty dead weight in my arms, the odor of his cologne clawing at the back of my throat. Maybe Leila was onto something. I threw him to the ground. Seconds later, I sensed Cassidy and Rutherford beside me, felt their hands under my arms, lifting me to my feet.
‘You’re under arrest,’ advised a sergeant MP, a stocky guy with a nose that looked like it had been punched off his face a couple of times. He ripped my arms behind my back and lassoed my wrists together with a pair of flexcuffs. Then he kicked my feet apart and patted down my rags.
‘What’s the charge?’ Ryder demanded to know.
‘Assault and battery, Sherlock. Whaddaya think?’ the sergeant replied. His buddy, a clone but for the fact he had blond hair, kneed me in the guts. That put me down in the mud.
‘Hey!’ said Ryder.
Lockhart rolled his head to the side and looked up at me. Grinning with bloody gums, he mumbled, ‘Yo’ fuckin’ dead meat now, man.’
Contents
‘A
ll rise,’ commanded an Air Force sergeant.
The military judge, Colonel Harry Fink, was squat like a bath plug. He entered the largely empty courtroom from a side door, stepped up to the raised bench and took his seat in front of the seal of the Department of the Air Force displayed on the wall.
My defense team and I resumed ours behind a desk opposite him, as did the trial lawyers.
Colonel Fink got proceedings underway, reading the standard
pro forma
information that ensured there’d be no grounds for appeal down the track. Unlike the many times I’d heard it in the past, where it had brought on a yawning fit, this time the judge’s standard intro gave me an unnerving sense of inevitability, like I was caught on a conveyor belt heading for somewhere unpleasant.
When he was done, Fink raised an eyebrow at the trial lawyers and said, ‘Proceed . . .’
Major Vaughan Latham buttoned his blouse as he stood. Mid-thirties, lean and sinewy, Latham was the outdoors type. And if he wasn’t throwing one into the assistant counsel, a young captain, sitting beside him I’d be questioning his preferences because she was pert, athletic, wore tight pencil skirts and flashed a seductive smile that was as good as a bribe.
Latham took up his part in the script and informed the court that the charges against me were Article 128 Assault with a Deadly Weapon Causing Grievous Bodily Harm, and Article 133 Conduct Unbecoming an Officer and Gentleman.
‘And what plea are we entering today?’ Colonel Fink asked Major Les Cheung, the Area Defense Council lawyer appointed to my defense. All I knew about Cheung was that he looked Chinese. Like the trial lawyer, Cheung had an assistant. His name was Nelson Macri. And all I knew about him was that he wouldn’t look nearly as good as Latham’s assistant did in a pencil skirt.
Cheung stood. ‘Not guilty, sir,’ he said.
‘Enter a plea of not guilty for the accused,’ Fink informed the court reporter.
‘If it please the court,’ said Latham, moving through the formalities of pre-trial, ‘Major Cooper doesn’t own his home. He’s divorced, has no children, and no living relatives. The accused has no binding ties, but he does have a valid passport. And –’
‘You think he’s a flight risk on a 128, Counselor?’ Fink asked, cocking an eyebrow at Latham before turning back to Cheung. ‘No doubt you disagree with this, Counselor?’
‘Vehemently, sir. Pre-trial confinement in the stockade is not necessary here. Major Cooper has been restricted to base by his commander since returning from Africa. He could have absconded at any time should he have chosen to do so. Cooper wishes to clear his name and resume his duties with the Office of Special Investigations, and recognizes that it is not in his best interest to flee. You have before you a recommendation to this effect from his commanding officer.’
Fink read over the letter from my commander, holding it up and inspecting it through a lens of his glasses, like it was a magnifying glass, then sized me up while I kept my eyes fixed forward and did my best impersonation of military bearing.
‘Major,’ Fink said to me after a moment’s consideration, ‘we’ll go with your commanding officer’s recommendation. Consider yourself confined to the base for the duration. Naturally, your suspension from duty will continue pending a verdict.’ He shifted position and let his eyes swivel between Cheung and Latham. ‘Any further business, gentlemen?’
‘No, your Honor,’ said Cheung.
‘No, your Honor,’ Latham echoed.
‘Very well. We’ll reconvene two weeks from today, at 0900,’ Fink said without looking up from his desk. ‘This hearing is adjourned.’
The judge got up, slipped behind his door and was gone within a couple of seconds
‘What now?’ I asked Cheung.
‘Go home. We’ll see you around seven.’
‘Who’s bringing the cards?’
‘We’ll be working, Cooper, to keep you out of Leavenworth.’
‘There were twenty witnesses to the 128.’
‘Which means we’re gonna have to work
extra
hard.’
I CLIMBED INTO MY old Pontiac parked out in the lot and headed to my temporary residence on the base. It had been provided by Billeting, a ranch-style duplex usually reserved for VIPs with kids. Base accommodations were tight at Andrews AFB, nothing small and uncomfortable currently being available, so at least the needle on this one had swung in my favor. The place had four bedrooms, a yard, and a common porch. The previous occupant had hung two Stars and Stripes, one on either side of the front door, for stereo patriotism.
I drove on autopilot, until my cell began ringing and vibrating.
‘Arlen,’ I said, checking the screen.
‘You were supposed to call me after the arraignment,’ said Lieutenant Colonel Arlen Wayne, the only person at Andrews AFB Office of Special Investigations – my unit – who gave a damn about my current circumstances.
‘Yeah, well, I got a few things on my mind.’
‘Vin, snap out of it, buddy. This is
me
. How’d it go? You still have your cell, which means they didn’t lock you up. You headed home?’
‘No, Cancun.’
‘Seriously, can I do anything for you?’
‘You could have me moved to Venezuela,’ I said. ‘We don’t have an extradition treaty with them.’
Arlen reset the conversation with a pause.
‘Vin . . . I checked on Cheung and Macri. They’re good. You’re lucky to get ’em.’
‘They remind me of a joke I once heard, the one about the Chinaman, the Italian, and the American. Know it?’
‘I’ve heard ’em all, especially all of yours. Look, this is not funny, Vin. You get a guilty verdict on the 128, and you’re in a concrete box with razor-wire trim for a very long time.’
‘I know; I read the same books, remember?’
The books in question were the
Uniform Code of Military Justice
and the
Manual for Courts-Martial, United States
. One outlined the laws those of us in the armed forces must follow; the other documented the punishments meted out for not doing so. Our system wasn’t draconian but it often didn’t take into account mitigating circumstances, unless specifically outlined in the Code. If the court-martial found you did the crime, then you did the time stipulated in the manual. In the instance of Article 128, assault – and particularly, in my case, assault with a deadly weapon occasioning grievous bodily harm – the manual said a guilty verdict required confinement in a federal facility, showering without soap while keeping your back to the wall, for a period of eight years, along with a dishonorable discharge and the forfeiture of all pay and allowances. Like Arlen said, this wasn’t funny.
‘Anything else you need?’ he asked.
‘Another opportunity to kill Lockhart would be good.’
‘C’mon, trust the system, Vin.’
‘The system’s only as good as the people working it,’ I said vaguely, distracted, and the dead air informed Arlen that I wasn’t talking about what was really on my mind.
‘Let it go, Vin,’ he said. ‘You’re not responsible for Anna’s death. We’ve talked about this. The inquiry exonerated you.’
Yes, it did, but it also found that perhaps the situation at Oak Ridge, where Anna and I had confronted the suspects in the case that ended with her death, might have had a different outcome if I hadn’t made an aggressive, badly timed move to end the Mexican standoff that confronted us. I could conjure up the scene at will, as if I were hovering above it, because that’s how I dreamed it like it was on a loop. Helping me out with the details was the forensics team that had gone in afterwards and placed line-of-fire rods through the bullet holes in the walls, floor, and ceiling, so that the trajectories of each round could be visualized and the gunfight recreated.
This is how it went down: Anna was being held from behind by a man who also had a gun to her back. A second weapon was leveled at her by another man, sitting in an armchair in front of her, who had relieved me of my Colt .45. I was down on the carpet, an evil dyke bitch pointing a Glock at my head. The guy in the armchair took his eyes off me for a split second just as a fifth person, a bystander, blundered through the door, which, by a stroke of good fortune, took out the evil dyke bitch and her Glock. That’s when I went for the fucker in the armchair. But it was a bad move. In all, nine shots were fired in that room, most of them at Anna, or in her general direction. The last of these was the one I fired at the creep holding Anna and then the one he fired at me. Anna was between us. The bullet that took her life came from behind, but the weapon that fired it was never determined beyond any doubt, because she was wrestling with her assailant at the time – spinning, twisting, and grappling with him. I fired a Colt .45. The creep shot a nine-millimeter Glock. Ordinarily, that would have settled the question; however, the ammo we both used was ball. Both types left neat entry and raggedy exit holes, and the actual slug that killed her exited her body and was not recovered from the scene, all of which meant that she could have been shot with either a nine or a .45. Tissue damage didn’t resolve the issue either way, but that’s the point. It could have been the shot
I
fired.
I
could have been her killer.
Anna died in my arms. She took her last breath lying in a pool of her own blood, the black sucking hole in her chest leaving a bottomless pit in mine.
‘Vin . . . you still there? Hello?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘Hey . . . I miss her, too,’ said Arlen.
Arlen and Anna had been pals from the start, when I introduced them after the conclusion of a case she and I had worked in Germany. Both of us were in the hospital at the time. And ever since, whenever things got a little rocky between us, Arlen had been our go-between. I had first met her twenty-four hours after my divorce had gone through. The last thing I wanted was another relationship, but Anna walked into my life and the fireworks were there from the start. Occasionally, they burned us – so much so that along the way we’d had time apart to cool off. Anna even became engaged to a piece-of-shit JAG attorney with questionable morals, to get, as she put it, a little control back into her life. She came to her senses about the engagement just days before walking into the Oak Ridge office and collecting a round from a nine-millimeter. Or a .45. Now she was gone forever. And the guy responsible – me – was still here. That, not my lack of trust in the system or the shower block at Leavenworth, was my problem.
‘Are you listening?’ Arlen asked.
‘What?’