public view? No more stars for him.
'Because he wants a court-martial,' answered the-one starred Val-for Valerius-Pettigrew, tall, slender, and cafe au lait. 'He told me, when I talked to him, that a court-martial is the only way he's ever going to be able to rake-and I quote-‘those miserable, incompetent, son-of-a-bitch, anti-Christ, pseudo-messiahs in Washington and Kabul over the coals as they so richly deserve,' unquote.'
'But doesn't he understand what this will do to the Army? To the war effort? To himself?'
'He says the war is lost anyway, that it was lost, and again, I quote-'
'Spare me,' said McPherson, holding up one halting palm. 'So what do we do, Val? What do we do when the press gets wind of this?'
'I don't think they will, sir,' Pettigrew answered. 'Everybody in the village is either dead or dispersed to various well-guarded harems, or slaving in a factory somewhere in Pakistan or, maybe, India by now. The Afghans won't talk; they made a good profit off the sales and probably got their dicks wet as an added benefit. The SEALs and Welch's A-Team aren't going to say shit. Look up the word ‘reticence' sometime. Any decent dictionary will show a picture of an SF operative, or a SEAL, or a Ranger, or even a Marine, seated on a witness stand, with his mouth thoroughly closed.'
Pettigrew's face grew soberly amused. 'Besides which, sir, do you realize we haven't had a lick of trouble anywhere within fifty miles of that village since the . . . ummm . . . incident. In an area that used to see firefights two or three times a day. The people there are scared shitless of supporting the other side now. Course, that will change as soon as word gets out that Stauer's on trial.'
'There'll be no trial,' McPherson insisted. He went quiet then, thinking hard.
'Go back to what you said before,' McPherson ordered, rolling his hand in a backwards circle over his desk.
'We haven't had a lick-'
'No, not that. Before that.'
Pettigrew thought hard for a moment. 'You mean about reticence and our people, SEALs, Rangers and Marines?'
'Yeah . . . those.' McPherson's face lit with a wicked grin. 'So he wants a court-martial, does he? I wonder if he wants all those others, people just like the ones he committed mass murder for, court-martialed, too.'
Man, you really do have shitty moral judgment, thought Pettigrew. Makes me glad I boffed your wife.
'And that's the deal, Wes,' Pettigrew told him later that afternoon. 'You retire, without prejudice, or Welch and his team, and Thornton and his team, get tried as accessories. Moreover, the red-headed bastard is going to turn your man, Mosuma, over to the Afghan authorities. They'll hang him, no drop.'
'What a piece of shit,' Stauer said with a sneer. 'Almost makes me wish I'd fucked his wife.'
'You mean you didn't?'
Stauer looked at Pettigrew with great suspicion. 'You don't mean you did?'
'Well, what was I supposed to do? I gave her a ride home from the O club, where she'd been drinking, oh, to excess. Next thing I knew, her head's over my lap, and my brain is being sucked southward. Right on Riley Road. I fucked her in the post stables.'
Stauer was about to chew out his long-time friend, viciously. But then, what's the point?
He laughed. 'How was she?'
Pettigrew sighed. 'Words can't describe, Wes. Words just can't describe.'
***
'He'll do it, sir,' Pettigrew told McPherson. 'But there's a little problem.'
'I see no problems.'
'Well . . . both Biggus Dickus Thornton, Terry Welch, and the entire teams of both of them are punching out, too. That's Wes' condition; we have to let them go if we want to get rid of him and if they want out.'
'Fair enough,' said McPherson, relieved that the problem was going to go away. 'Do they?'
'To a man, sir. Every one of them said the war is lost and it just isn't worth it. They said other things, too, but you don't want to hear those.
PART I
