very busy. Mobilization orders went out to various units in what we call Zone Three. The Serb militia obviously don’t call it that. They refer to it as the Fifteenth Divisional Command region. It took them a while to get all these units in place. The Serb militia in Kosovo operates in a very decentralized fashion, with small units located across large areas.”
“Why is that?” Delbert asked.
“Several reasons. One, they don’t face any large ground threats that would force them to keep their units concentrated. Two, they wouldn’t want them concentrated anyway. By spreading out, a single division can exert control over a much larger geographic region. Third, we believe our bombing campaign has forced them to spread out, so there are no large, inviting formations for our planes to hit.”
“Go on,” I said, trying to sound interested rather than miserable, which was exactly how I felt.
“Right. This tape we’re watching was actually taken around 10 P.M. I guess that’s about eight hours before the ambush. As you can see, Sanchez’s team was pretty well hemmed in. It’s actually a miracle they made it out. By the way, our analysts overlaid maps of the area on this film, and these right here”-he paused to sweep his red dot and make a line on the wall-“are two intersecting roads where Serb vehicles appear to be moving to establish a block.”
I said, “Can you show us where the ambush took place?”
“Be happy to, pal.” His little red dot moved to a position along one of the lines where he had indicated there were roads. Then he said, “No satellites were overhead at the time of the ambush, but we did get another pass the next day, when Sanchez’s team was nearly to the Macedonian border. Wanta see it?”
“No, not really,” I sourly replied.
The light flipped back on, and Morrow and Delbert were both beaming like children under a Christmas tree.
Jones looked at me with a real wiseass grin. “Guess it all came out the way you wanted, huh, buddy?”
I wasn’t his buddy, and I had an almost irresistible impulse to make that clear, but all I said was, “And I’m still not allowed to take any tapes out of this facility?”
“Nope. They’ll be stored in the archives back in Maryland. If anyone wants to view them, they can see them there.”
I looked at Delbert and Morrow. “Any questions for Mr. Jones?”
Delbert said, “No, I think it’s pretty clear-cut.”
Morrow turned to Jones. “Did you get any audio transcriptions of the Serb response to the ambush?”
“Actually, we did. It was kind of nutty. We’ve got a transcript of a unit reporting the discovery of the bodies. Then there’s another transcript of the Fifteenth Division headquarters ordering all units to halt in place and await further instructions. That’s all we got, though.”
“And how do you interpret that?”
“What we guess is that once the Serbs found out Sanchez’s team could bite, they got a lot more cautious, real quick.”
Morrow was nodding like, yes, of course, that’s exactly what happened. I wanted to strangle her, too.
She then said, “No more audio interceptions? Isn’t that a little odd?”
Jones nodded at her like this was a really brilliant question and, oh, by the way, he still wanted to sleep with her. “Not really,” he said. “The Serbs know we listen in. When they want to hide things from us, they stop transmitting and start using messengers.”
She said, “But you have a copy of the transcription when the ambush site was discovered?”
“Want to hear it?”
“Please.”
He riffled through a stack of computer printouts, then culled one out. “Okay, here we are. The sender’s call sign was Alfa 36, and the receiving station was Foxtrot 90. We haven’t been able to identify Alfa 36, probably a militia company, but Foxtrot 90 is the headquarters for the Fifteenth Division. The message went like-”
“Hold it,” I said. “Read it verbatim.”
He shook his head at me-a clear sign he didn’t want to sleep me with me-then looked down at the page. “Okay. It was a series of four transmissions. First transmission went, ‘Foxtrot 90, this is Alfa 36. Report that there has been an ambush at grid 23445590.’ Now second transmission:‘Alfa 36, this is Foxtrot 90. Describe condition.’ Now the third transmission:‘Foxtrot 90, this is Alfa 36. Seventeen dead, thirteen wounded, five living.’ Now the fourth transmission:‘Alfa 36, this is Foxtrot 90. Hold in place and await further instructions.’”
He looked up and said, “That’s it. No more audio interceptions between those two stations after that.”
You could almost hear Delbert and Morrow gasp. There were still eighteen living Serbs when the ambush site was discovered. Ergo, Sanchez and his men must not have killed the survivors. K-chunk! The two of them just won the daily double.
Morrow shot me a triumphant look, then asked, “You said it’s common for the Serbs to go to radio silence when they have sensitive orders to pass?”
“Right. The Serbs have a great deal of experience trying to elude our intelligence capabilities. In the early years of Bosnia, we used to listen in all the time when they planned their massacres and mass rapes. We made tapes of it, and a lot of our stuff got used as evidence in the Hague tribunals. It was unfortunate, really. We protested, because we didn’t want to expose our capabilities, but the President overruled us. Pretty soon, every time they planned an atrocity, they made damned sure not to talk about it on the radios.” Then he paused and looked at us curiously. “Why? Is there something here I should know about?”
Morrow looked at me and I gave her a nod of permission.
She said, “There sure as hell is. Somebody went around that ambush site and put bullets into the heads of the survivors.”
Jones took a heavy breath, then looked down at the table. “No shit? Their own men? Why would they kill their own men?”
Delbert said, “To create an atrocity to pin on American troops.”
Jones nodded as though everything just fell into perfect place. “Those bastards! Yes, that would fit. No wonder they stopped transmitting.”
After that, there really wasn’t anything left for me to say. The daily double had become the trifecta. Morrow and Delbert could not resist giving me the occasional triumphant leer, and good form required that I smile back and respectfully acknowledge that they’d been brilliantly right where I’d been miserably wrong. Unfortunately, good form never was my forte. I just glowered and sulked.
Jones began quietly murmuring with Morrow, and Miss Smith decided I was no longer good company, so she got up and walked around the table and initiated a similarly low-key conversation with Delbert. It was as if they were having a winner’s convention, while I stewed in loser’s melancholy.
Finally, I got up and showed myself out of the NSA facility. I could’ve skulked back to my office, but instead I wandered around the Tuzla compound for an hour or so. I did a lot of thinking during that hour. I thought about how stupid I’d been. I thought about what I was going to do after Clapper banned me from ever practicing military law again. I thought about what life was going to be like selling cars on one of my father’s car lots. I guess I deserved it.
One of the first lessons you learn in law school is to trust facts, and only facts. Avoid deductions, spurn instincts, and run like hell every time a hunch comes within ten feet of you. Every law school professor tells you that, in one way or another, on the very first day of class. I’d done just the opposite. I’d done a swan dive off a circumstantial highboard and it turned out there was not a single drop of evidentiary water in the pool.
Chapter 19
By the time I got back to my little office building, I must’ve looked pretty doleful, because Imelda’s girls all started offering me coffee and asking if there was anything they could do for me. I was quite touched. Before I knew it, I had three cups of steaming java and was sitting in my office, twiddling my thumbs and wondering what in the hell to do next.
The truth was, the only thing left to be done was to finish the report. Then I’d climb on an airplane and go
