I let out a breath I’d been unconscious of holding.
“Yes, ma’am.” There was no point in denying it, she’d already seen the only evidence that mattered and drawn her own conclusions.
“In fact,” she went on, “if anyone is really culpable for this, it’s Lt. Kodjoe.”
“Freddy?” I blurted. “Why him? Ma’am.”
“Because he did know what was going on,” she said. “He did see the juveniles among the civilians and knew he was following what were either intentionally or unintentionally illegal orders, yet he did it anyway. And when you pointed it out to him, he still ordered his troops to fire on the civilians.”
“I didn’t want to get Freddy in trouble,” I said, squeezing my eyes shut and running a hand over the back of my neck. My head hurt, probably from the explosion. I wondered if I’d gotten a concussion. They hadn’t taken me to the medics after the battle, but there’d been so much else going on, I hadn’t thought about it.
“Neither do we, particularly,” she agreed. “You’re both officers because of OCS, and OCS exists because we need good officers with combat experience. Now more than ever. You may or may not have heard, but we lost two full companies of drop-troopers on this mission before anyone touched the ground.”
“Shit,” I hissed. I had not heard that.
“And we have the Security Command siphoning even more recruits away from the Marines….” She sighed. “It’s all a fucking mess, Lieutenant. So, what we’d really like to do is get everyone to drop this. Just pretend it never happened.” She chuckled. “I know that sort of goes against my job description, but we have a war to win.”
“I never wanted to file a report in the first place,” I told her. “I only did it because of what Captain Cronje is trying to do to me.”
“If I can convince Captain Cronje to drop this whole thing,” she said, waving a hand demonstratively as if to show me what ’this whole thing’ was, “would you be willing to do the same?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Being honest with myself if not her, I wasn’t happy about it. Maybe Cronje had panicked, made a bad call without having all the information, but the fact was, he was responsible for securing those civilians and if he’d done his job, a whole fire team worth of Marines would still be alive.
But like I’d told Vicky not that long ago, this was war, and shit happened in war, and I didn’t have to like it, I just had to do my job.
“All right then,” Hofstetter said, pressing her palms against the table and coming to her feet. “In that case, I don’t think there’s any reason you should have to stick around here any longer. Come with me, and I’ll have the MP’s give you a ride back to your unit.”
I rose to follow her, something between relief and disappointment warring inside my chest for supremacy. At least it was over.
Except of course, it wasn’t. Not even close.
6
The MP’s didn’t get the chance to drive me back: Captain Covington stalked into the waiting area the second I emerged from the interrogation room, the expression on his face deadlier than the business end of the pulse carbine slung over his shoulder. The two Military Police NCO’s who’d been escorting me stopped where they were, sensing now would be a good time to be somewhere else.
“How’d you know they were letting me out, sir?” I asked, trying to make sure he did know that and wasn’t just here to start busting heads. As much as I didn’t want to get thrown in the brig, I really didn’t want the Skipper thrown into the brig on my account.
“Commander Hofstetter sent word,” he said, the corner of his mouth curling into something between a smile and a snarl. “I happened to be in the area. Come on, let’s get you out of here before Brigade changes its mind again.”
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think that was likely, but shut it again immediately. How the hell would I know what was likely after everything that had happened in what Hofstetter had referred to as my short career. It didn’t feel short. In fact, it felt as if it had lasted the better part of my life.
The MP’s in the Provost Marshal’s office stared at us as we left, as if the story had already filtered down through the ranks and become legend…or maybe it was just the Skipper who was a legend. I tried to see him as they did and found it was difficult to do it anymore. When I’d first come to the unit, he’d been unapproachable, a boogeyman both to the enemy and any Marine luckless enough to fuck up in his presence. I’d rarely spoken to him, and the few times he spoke to me, it seemed as if his words were the pronouncements of the prophets.
Now, of course, I worked with him every day, and while he still retained something of the larger-than-life nature, I’d grown accustomed to it and he felt more like the head of a family than a cartel crime boss. Sometimes, granted, the very testy and exacting head of a dysfunctional family of former criminals and misfits, but still a family.
Top was outside, leaning against the side of a lightly-armored utility rover, the pulse carbine propped on her hip daring any of the passing military cops to say anything about her parking. If Captain Covington was the
