'What had happened?'
'He was hit by shrapnel, or something. In the head. There was blood everywhere. I thought he was dead. I thought we were all dead.'
'All right, thank you, Mr. Onofrio. I'm glad you made it home alive.' He half turned back to Mills. 'Your witness.'
Mills saw this as a no-win cross-examination and almost passed the witness, but decided she had nothing really to lose if she just took the judge's advice and heard what the man would say. No jury was listening now, and maybe she'd strike some promising vein that she could mine when she had him again during the trial. If Washburn was going to call up what she considered these largely irrelevant witnesses, she might as well take the opportunity to go fishing with them.
'Mr. Onofrio,' she began. 'First let me say that I, too, and all of us in the courtroom, are grateful that you made it home alive. Thank you for your service to our country.'
Shrugging, embarrassed, Onofrio mumbled, 'You're welcome.'
'One of the things I was struck with in your testimony was the fact that you were not sent over to do convoy work. Did I get that right?'
Onofrio nodded. 'That's right. We were supposed to be doing maintenance on heavy equipment transport vehicles, but when we got to Kuwait, they weren't there yet, so they farmed a bunch of us out as convoy units.'
The questioning was getting far afield, but Washburn took his own advice and let it go. Better to hear the answer now than find out for the first time in front of a jury about some land mine in the witness's testimony.
'How did you feel about that?' Mills asked.
He smiled, either at her naivete or at the question. 'They didn't ask us. It wasn't like it was negotiable.'
'No, I understand that. But the convoy work at the front, wasn't it more dangerous than the work you'd originally been scheduled to do?'
'Only by about a factor of ten. Maybe twenty.'
'So? Much more dangerous, then?'
'Yes. Way more.'
Mills paused, and kept casting. 'Didn't you and the other men object to that?'
'Sure. But what were we going to do?'
'I don't know, Mr. Onofrio. What did you do?'
'Well, we complained about it to Lieutenant Scholler. We asked him to talk to the base commander and see if we could get transferred back to our regular unit.'
'And did he do that?'
'He tried, but he couldn't get in to see him. Not in time, anyway.' Then, trying to be helpful, Onofrio added, 'He was going to see if Nolan could pull some strings with the brass, but again, that didn't happen in time.'
'Mr. Scholler thought that Mr. Nolan might be able to pull some strings for him. Why was that? Were they friends?'
'I'd say so, yeah.'
'Close friends?'
'Well, I don't know.' He shrugged again, then unwittingly dropped his bomb. 'Drinking buddies, anyway.'
The words had barely registered as significant when Mills heard Washburn all but erupt behind her. 'Objection! Irrelevant!'
But this was the purest bluff. No one in the courtroom thought the answer was even remotely irrelevant, and Tollson sealed that opinion in an instant. 'Overruled.'
Mills kept her mouth tight to avoid telegraphing her pleasure. 'Thank you, Your Honor,' she said. Then, back at the witness. 'Mr. Onofrio, when you characterize the friendship between Mr. Nolan and Mr. Scholler as that of drinking buddies, do you mean that they literally drank together?'
Onofrio, picking up the panic in Washburn's tone, flashed a quick look over to the defense table. 'Occasionally, I think, yes.'
'Do you think they drank together, or did you see them drinking together?'
'Yes, they drank together.'
'Mr. Onofrio, is there a rule in the military against drinking on duty, or in a war zone?'
'Yes.'
'But Mr. Scholler broke this rule?
'I suppose so.'
'You witnessed this yourself, personally?'
'Yes.'
'How many times?'
'I don't know exactly. A few.'
'More than five times?'
'Your Honor,' Washburn said. 'Badgering the witness.'
'Overruled.'
Mills nodded. 'More than five times, Mr. Onofrio?'
'Maybe.'
'More than ten?'
'I didn't count the times,' Onofrio said. 'I really couldn't say for sure.'
'Once a day? Once a week? Once a month?'
'A few times a week.'
'All right, then. Did Mr. Scholler drink to excess?'
'Objection,' Washburn sang out. 'Calls for a conclusion.'
'Overruled,' Tollson said. 'A lay witness can give an opinion as to sobriety.'
Mills slowed herself down. She was close to something very good here and didn't want to blow it. 'Did Mr. Scholler ever appear drunk to you when he was on duty?'
'Objection. Conclusion.'
'Sustained.'
Mills tried again. 'Did you, personally, ever see Mr. Scholler intoxicated after he'd been drinking with Mr. Nolan?'
Onofrio threw another worried glance over to Washburn and Evan. 'Yes, ma'am.'
'And by intoxicated, do you mean that you heard him speak with slurred speech or have trouble walking?'
'Yes, ma'am.'
'Mr. Onofrio. When was the last time you remember noticing these things-defendant's slurred speech or the uncertain walk?'
Onofrio looked down at his lap. 'His last night over there.'
'The night before this incident at Masbah, is that what you're saying?'
He blew out and slowly nodded. 'That's what I'm saying.'
'Mr. Onofrio, on the day the shooting started, when Mr. Scholler was leading the convoy that got ambushed, did he appear to be intoxicated?'
'No, ma'am,' Onofrio answered strongly.
Mills paused, then came out with it. 'But he certainly was hung over, wasn't he?'
Stephan Ray, the language and recreational therapist from Walter Reed, nodded enthusiastically at Washburn from the witness stand. 'He is definitely one of the success stories. He worked very hard and was also very lucky. But his success doesn't take away from the seriousness of his injuries. There was a real question for at least a couple of months as to whether he'd live, and then a further question about how completely, if at all, he'd recover.'
