“Down below!” Harley answered, as he lurched toward the gangway. “To check the damage!” And something else.
As Lucas clung to the wheel, Harley scrambled down the steps. But he could tell already, just from the tilt of the deck and the terrible racket in the hold, that the ship was lost. He’d be lucky to escape this night alive. They all would.
Maybe Old Man Richter had been right about that damned box, after all.
Chapter 3
FORT LESLEY MCNAIR
Washington, D.C.
For a court-martial so hastily convened, Major Frank Slater thought things were moving along pretty smoothly.
Seated beside his Army-appointed lawyer—a kid with a blond crew cut and the look of someone who had seen more action in a Hooters than he had on any battlefield—Slater had nothing much to do besides sit there in his nice clean uniform and listen to the damning testimony that he neither denied nor apologized for.
Colonel Keener, whose duties in Afghanistan had been deemed too important to send him back to D.C. for the court-martial, testified against Slater by Skype. The computer monitor had been set up on a trolley in front of the panel of five military judges, and Slater and his attorney, Lieutenant Bonham, listened closely as the colonel related the various crimes and infractions that the major—“an epidemiologist,” Keener explained, as if he were labeling him a child molester, “who has no more business being in the Army than my dog does”—had committed in Khan Neshin.
Assaulting a superior officer—which fell under Article 128 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Slater learned—was a slam-dunk for the prosecution. After Colonel Keener had made his initial statement, he was asked to stand by while corroborating evidence was supplied. That, too, was easy. A nurse had happened to be down the hall in the med center, and although she had been too far away to hear what the colonel had said to Slater just before the altercation, she had been flown back to the States to testify that she had indeed seen the major throw the punch that had decked the colonel.
“Just one punch?” the head judge, a retired general, asked.
“That’s all it took,” the nurse said.
Slater thought he saw a tiny smile crease the general’s lips.
“And then I called the MPs,” the nurse went on.
“And you have no knowledge of what transpired just before?” the judge asked.
“I found out later on,” she replied. “The little girl had died in the O.R., and the doctor—I mean, Major Slater—just lost it.” Hazarding a sympathetic glance at the defendant, she added, “It seemed like a really momentary thing … like he’d tried so hard to save her, and then, finding out that it was all for nothing, it just sort of tipped him over the edge.”
The general made a note, and the four other judges, all officers, followed his lead and did the same. Because it was a general court-martial—more serious in nature than either a summary or special trial—all told there were five officers deliberating, including three other old men and a woman who looked as if she’d swapped her spine for a ramrod. The prosecutor offered into evidence an X-ray, taken at the med center, of a fracture to Colonel Keener’s jawline. When it was shown to Slater for confirmation, he said, “It’s a good likeness.”
“What was that?” the general asked, cupping his ear.
“My client,” Lieutenant Bonham cut in, before handing the X-ray back to the bailiff, “says that he does not contest this exhibit.” Then he shot Slater a murderous look.
But once the assault and battery charge had been duly noted and the evidence entered into the records, the court moved on to what was considered—from the Army’s point of view—the even more serious charges. While punches got thrown all the time, especially in war zones, it wasn’t often that a commissioned officer issued an order that he knew to be a lie, and in so doing jeopardized a helicopter and its crew. When Slater had called in the mission from the rice paddies, he had not only made a False Official Statement (Article 107 of the code)—punishable with a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and confinement for a period of five years—but he had put military property and personnel at risk. (Article 108, among others.)
For Slater, the worst part of the proceeding wasn’t hearing all the charges leveled at him. That much he expected. No, the worst part was having to watch as his friend and right-hand man, Sergeant Jerome Groves, was forced to take the stand. Slater had already ordered Groves to tell the truth and let the blame fall entirely on his commanding officer, where it belonged, but he knew it would be tough. He and Groves had a long history together.
When the prosecutor leaned in and said, “Sergeant Groves, it was you who called in your exact coordinates to the air rescue—is that correct?” Groves hesitated, and Slater nodded at him to go on. No point in denying facts that were indisputable.