“Yeah, fantastic.”
“Could you please describe what you did for him?”
“I was his deputy. I was responsible for the training and professional competence of the team. He led, and I made sure the men who followed knew their jobs.”
“Did you share operational responsibilities?”
He gave me a withering look, as though that were a particularly dumb question. Which I suppose it was. “The Army don’t believe in sharing responsibilities. He was in charge, and I followed.”
“Was there any friction between you?”
“None. We got along real well.”
“How did he perform his duties while your team was in Kosovo?”
“Great. What are you angling at?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to figure out how an A-team works, how you two functioned together.”
“Look, Major, I’ve known Sanchez two and a half years. We ain’t drinking buddies, but we get along. As I said, I liked the way he ran the team.”
“Could you please describe the events on the day of the seventeenth when you believed your team had been discovered by the Serbs?”
“Okay, sure. We were in our base camp, and Sergeants Perrite and Machusco were pulling perimeter security. Perrite came running back from his outpost and reported that he and Machusco had seen some Serbs up on a hilltop observing us. Then-”
“Did anybody else verify that?”
“Nope. Nobody needed to. Perrite and Machusco ain’t rookies.”
“How many Serbs did they spot?”
“A few. He said they didn’t get a real good look at ’em, but there was a few.”
“So what did you do?”
“Sanchez gave the order for everyone to get their gear together and book.”
“Did you have a planned E amp;E plan?”
“Of course. We’d built one the day before that called for us to move almost straight south.”
“Is that what you did?”
“For a while. Perrite was in trail and was laying trip flares every mile or so, and a few of ’em went off, so Sanchez decided to deviate.”
“How many went off?”
“I dunno. Maybe two, maybe three.”
“How far away were the Serbs when they went off?”
“I’d guess about two miles.”
“The same distance each time?”
“About.”
“Where were you in the column?”
“The middle. We’ve got a movement SOP. Perrite and Machusco handle rear security, Sanchez handles the map and compass stuff, while I make sure the team’s following good procedures.”
“If you were in the middle, then I assume you and Captain Sanchez weren’t discussing his decisions?”
“Not all the time, but we talked once or twice.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We talked when we knew the Serbs was following us. I recommended we change course to a zigzag and start moving eastward, since I figured the Serbs would deduce that we’d move south, straight for the Macedonian border.”
“And when was the next time?”
“That night. We took a halt, about midnight, and formed a perimeter. We could hear convoys and see dust columns all day, so we figured the Serbs were trying to box us in. We knew we had to do something. We decided the best idea was to hit the Serbs with an ambush to make ’em slow down.”
“Whose idea was that?”
He paused for a moment and I could see he wasn’t prepared for that question. Then he said, “Might’ve been mine. Or maybe Machusco or Perrite. We all thought it was a pretty good idea, though.”
“So it wasn’t Captain Sanchez’s idea.”
“No, but he bought into it right away. Why not? Wasn’t like we had another option.”
“Where were you positioned at the ambush site?”
“The middle.”
“Did the Serbs return fire?”
“At first, no. The lead vehicle blew and they were in shock. They were unloading out the back of the trucks and running around like a buncha ants, scrambling for cover behind their vehicles. Then we blew the chain of claymores, and that set ’em back a bit, too. Took ’em two to three minutes before someone on the ground got ’em organized and they began returning fire.”
“Describe the fire. Was it heavy or light?”
He sort of smiled at that question. “From my experience, anytime more than one person’s shooting at you feels like heavy fire.”
I did not smile back. “How many people would you estimate were returning fire?”
“At first maybe ten or so. By the end, maybe four or five.”
I stared at him hard. “So how many Serbs do you think were still alive when you and the team departed?”
“I don’t know. At least the four or five who were shooting at us. Probably a fair number of wounded, too.”
“How do you think they all died?”
“My guess would be that the Serbs killed their own people.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Maybe to punish ’em for being caught like that. Maybe just to make it look a lot worse than it was. Seems to have worked, too.”
“Why is that?”
“Because the Army and the press all believe we massacred those guys,” he said. Then his gray eyes bored into mine. “You believe we did it, too. Don’t you?”
I wasn’t about to answer that. “Did you?” I asked.
“No. We was just trying to escape.”
I reached over and turned off the tape recorder, placed my note page back in my briefcase, and stood up as though I were ready to leave. Persico coolly watched all this, and his attorney sat perfectly still.
I walked toward the door, then turned around. “One other question, Chief. After the ambush, when you all were making time back to the Macedonian border, do you remember how many trip flares went off?”
He stroked his chin a few times. “Yeah. Two, I think.”
Chapter 11
We broke for lunch at noon, right after I’d finished with Sergeant First Class Andy Caldwell, who turned out to be a well-meaning, jocular soul, and who struck me as intellectually modest and not a very meticulous observer of his environment. He was definitely not one of the leaders of the team. He was the team’s heavy weapons expert, and from the best I could tell, this was the limit of his passions and talents. Everything he said closely mimicked everything Persico had said. I regarded it as a fairly useless session.
We ate in an Air Force dining facility that had a well-stocked salad bar, and Delbert and Morrow made three trips each, apparently having experienced withdrawal from the leafy stuff as a result of Imelda. Delbert had spent his morning with Staff Sergeant George Butler and Sergeant Ezekial Graves, the team medic, who was coincidentally the youngest team member. Morrow had interrogated Sergeants Brian and James Moore, twin
