He said, “You really wanta know, huh?”
I nodded.
“Okay, then I’ll tell ya,” he said, although he said it angrily, like I’d asked for it, and I was going to get it. He leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on his knees. He looked around the room and studied each of us in turn, his head nodding in a sort of derogatory motion, as if we were all unworthy, but what the hell.
Then he stared back at me. “For starters, it wasn’t just me and Machusco. Brian Moore came with us, too, ’cause he speaks the local patois. We went in around ten. The place was real quiet, but there was this heavy odor in the air.”
“What kind of odor?”
“Two smells, actually. Blood and cordite. And the reason it was real quiet was because everybody left. There was lots of smoke and some of the buildings was still burnin’ or smolderin’. There was lots of pockmarked buildings, like you’d see after a real nasty fight. There was cannon holes in some of the walls, made by tank rounds, we figured. I tol’ Machusco and Moore we oughta get outta there real quick. I mean, it sure as shit didn’t look like Akhan won. But Machusco figured that Chief would just make us turn our asses back around and find out what happened. Knowing Chief, I guessed he was right. So we kept on.”
He paused to take out another Camel, which he tapped on his palm, just as Persico had done. Amazing.
“Then what happened,” he continued, “was we snuck down some side streets. Moore kept cover for me and Machusco, and we worked our way close to the town square, like they got in all them little Kosovar burgs. That’s where the police station was located. Machusco and I got as near as we thought was smart, then dodged into this three-story building. We worked our way to the top. We climbed out a window and got up on the roof.”
His hands and arms did a panoramic sweep through the air.
“We could see the whole square and the police station. Saw it real good, too. It was crawling with Serb militia. We could see about ten tanks, old T-34s, all lined up, and the crews were climbing all over ’em, doing post- op chores. We could also see this huge stack of bodies. We had binos with us, so we pulled ’em out, and we studied those bodies. We were near enough that with our binos we could see their faces, you know. There was a few faces that had been tossed on the pile that we didn’t recognize. Probably villagers that got in the line of fire. But we recognized most of the faces we saw. Then Machusco elbowed me and pointed at something by the police station. So I looked there. There was this tall pole that’d been stuck in the ground, right by the front door. On top of that pole was this black, dripping thing. It was Captain Akhan’s head. They’d chopped it off and stuck it there like a trophy.”
He paused to look at us. He wanted us to know it was a terrible, gruesome scene.
“After that,” he said, “we climbed back down and got the hell out. We found some tracks just outside of town and followed them. After about three miles we found some villagers who was hiding in the woods. They’d left the town that mornin’ after all the shooting was done. They said the Serbs was on a blood rage, and nobody felt safe. There was two old ladies, an old man, and I guess, about three, maybe four little kids. They was all scared to death. We gave ’em some food, and Moore questioned ’em for about twenty minutes. They said the Serbs had brought in a real big unit late the day before, just before dusk, maybe six hundred men, and hid it in various places around town. They parked tanks inside barns, and hid most of the men inside buildings. They spent all night stacking ammunition, running commo wire, building positions, getting ready for somethin’. Then around six in the morning, they told us, the town just kinda exploded. There was shit flying everywhere. The fight lasted about two hours. There was a lot of shooting inside the town, but the villagers said they heard a lot of shit up to the north, too. That was where Akhan’s security team was supposed to be positioned, and we figured that was what they was hearing.”
I asked, “And what did you judge had happened?”
His face was red, and his anger was beginning to boil over.
“What happened? Pretty fuckin’ obvious, ain’t it? The Serbs knew Akhan was coming. They was waiting for him. Six or seven hundred men in town. Probably another big force waiting outside, maybe a reinforcement that they used to take down Akhan’s security team. Poor bastards never had a chance. They was all butchered. One of the old ladies told us that the last thirty minutes of the fight was just Serb troops roaming around, hunting down the last survivors. They found about ten or fifteen and brought ’em into the town square. They butchered ’em to death with bayonets. She said she’d never forget the sounds of them men screaming.”
Something about the way Perrite told the story made it enormously affecting. Maybe it was the coarse, simple way he expressed himself. Maybe it was just the brutal believability and awful sense of what had happened to Akhan and his men. Even Imelda and her girls were all bent forward, fixated on Perrite’s agonized face.
Perrite was deeply affected himself. He’d wanted to shock us, but in doing so, he’d had to relive the scene inside his own head. His jaw was tight, and his eyes were gleaming with anger.
I said, “Do you blame Captain Sanchez for that?”
“Of course I blame that dumb son of a bitch!” he exploded. “Bastard was desperate to get something good on his record so he could get promoted. Chief Persico told him not to let Akhan go. He warned him. I even heard him screamin’ at Sanchez. He took him off in the woods the day before where he thought none of us could hear, but I heard ’em arguing. Sanchez wouldn’t listen to him, though. He kept sayin’ it would be a real coup if Akhan and his guys knocked off that police station. It would enflame the whole countryside, he claimed. Dumb bastard.”
“When you, Machusco, and Moore rejoined the team, what happened?”
“Well, uh, we went to see Chief first. I wasn’t in no mood to talk to Sanchez, you know? Machusco and I felt like beating the crap outta him, or maybe even shooting his dumb ass. So Moore said we’d better go see Chief first. Let him handle it.”
“And what did Chief Persico do?”
“He got real pissed and upset. I mean, he never said it, but I knew he’d told Sanchez not to let this happen. Still, Chief felt real guilty. I mean, that’s the kind of guy Chief is. He done everything he could to stop it, but he still felt responsible.”
“And did he confront Captain Sanchez?”
“Not that I know of. He might’ve said something to him when none of us was listening, but the Chief can swallow a lot and keep goin’.”
“Okay,” I said, “let me phrase this differently. Did you detect a noticeable shift in leadership afterward?”
“No.”
“Who was giving you your orders?”
“Sanchez mostly, Chief some of the time. No different than normal.”
“By your own earlier testimony, you said you made all your reports to Chief Persico. Why was that?”
“’Cause I couldn’t stand talking to Sanchez. I know it’s unprofessional and all that, but he got those guys killed. I didn’t wanta go near him. I mighta done something I regretted.”
He was lying again, but I couldn’t tell how or why. It was just a sense. Maybe he was trying to cover Persico’s ass.
I said, “What can you tell us about the execution of the ambush?”
“Nothing really. Like I told you before, I was half a mile away, out on the left flank, performing security. I wasn’t in on the decision to do the ambush, and I never saw what happened.”
I turned to Morrow, but she shook her head, indicating she didn’t want to ask any more questions. I told Perrite to return to his cell and nodded for Imelda to escort him.
When he left the room, you could almost feel the decompression.
Morrow went, “Phew!” and her eyebrows shot up. “It’s beginning to make sense, isn’t it?”
“Only up till the afternoon of the fourteenth. What happened after, that’s still murky.”
I let Imelda and her girls go out and take a potty break or a smoke break, or a relax break or whatever their hearts desired.
Morrow and I put our heads together to figure out what to do next. We were at the point now where it was real fluid. The story was cracking, and we had to follow the stream where it led us. With each witness, we’d know a little more about what actually happened, and we’d use that as our start point for the next team member we drew into our confessional web.
Morrow said, “I think we ought to bring Brian Moore back in next.”
I thought about that but wasn’t sure what he could add. “Give me another name,” I told her.
“Okay. Ezekial Graves, the medic.”
