Honour Among Men (41 page)

He gestured to Langlois to check one side of the fourth trailer while he inched over to peer around the other. He nearly gasped aloud, for barely fifteen feet in front of him, huddled against the side of the trailer, were Weiss and Twiggy. Their backs were to him, and their attention was riveted on the fifth trailer, which loomed fuzzily in the fog ahead. Weiss held his Glock in one hand and to Green's surprise, Twiggy's hand in the other. They were tiptoeing backwards towards Green as slowly and silently as they could.

Suddenly the door to the fifth trailer slammed open and a figure stepped out, dressed from head to toe in black from his cap to his steel-toed boots. He held a massive semi-automatic pistol
in his hand and he stood on the top step, his feet apart, unafraid.

“Well, well, the birdies are flushed,” he said and raised his pistol to sight along the barrel.

Jesus H. Christ! Green thought with no time to react. I'm dead, Twiggy's dead, we're all dead in seconds with that weapon. He thrust himself into the open with his own gun outstretched, screaming a distraction.

“Police! Freeze!”

Weiss whirled around, but the gunman didn't flinch. Green saw his finger squeeze on the trigger, and barely registered Twiggy's move as gunshots exploded the silence. One, two, three. Then from behind Green a different sound. Five shots in rapid, disciplined succession. Green hit the ground, Weiss screamed. The gunman on the porch hurtled back against the trailer door and toppled sideways off the steps to fall face down in the tall grass.

Green scrambled to his feet and spun around to see the
SQ
constable still in a shooting stance with both hands on his gun and shock on his face. Weiss uttered a guttural wail and when Green turned back to check the damage, he saw Twiggy sprawled on the ground, blood pumping from a wound at her neck. Weiss flung himself at her side and pressed his bare hands over the wound in a futile attempt to stem the flow.

Green raced to the killer's side, snatched his gun from the grass where it had fallen and pulled out the clip. Weak, choking sounds caught in the man's throat. Green was about to check his pulse when Langlois laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. The young
SQ
officer swayed on his feet, his eyes huge and his face grey with shock, but he nodded towards Twiggy bravely.

“You take care of the woman. I'll deal with him, okay?”

Green's French deserted him. “Thank you. And thank you for . . .” he nodded to the downed gunman.

“Is okay,” replied Langlois in fractured English, pointing to his
SQ
badge. “Better I do.”

Green peeled off his suit jacket and hurried over to Twiggy. Weiss was still bent over her, cursing.

“She took the bullet for me,” he said over and over. “She said she was slowing me down.” He struggled to hold her together but Green saw at one glance that it was futile. The bullets had blown off half her neck and chest. Blood from her carotid artery shot high into the air, drenching the trailer wall.

“Twiggy,” he murmured, pressing his jacket over the spray. “What the hell? Why the hell?”

In the distance, he heard running footsteps and Sullivan's frantic call, but his throat constricted and he couldn't answer. He looked down at Twiggy and saw the light fading from her eyes. Between tremors, she managed a final quirky smile.

“Debt repaid, Mr. G.”

September 19, 1993. Medak, Sector South, Croatia
.

I have become them. Not an animal, because an animal doesn't kill for revenge. A savage
.

I could blame the Croats. Three days of guts and maggots and bodies so burned they fall apart when you try to get them in body bags, but not a single villager to save. They are gone. Hundreds. Where? Buried in mass graves? Carted away to hide the evidence of their slaughter?

Yesterday all day long Reggie and I bagged bodies and lugged them down the mountain to
HQ
for autopsy. This morning at parade the captain told us we aren't going home for another month because our replacement unit—called Operation Harmony, for fuck's sake—isn't ready yet. Four
more weeks of hard rations, maggots and mud. I'll never get the stink of bodies out of my combats. The captain can see we're down, so he gives us a pep talk. He says even if there aren't any villagers to rescue, we're going to find all the bodies and make sure we document every single crime the Croats committed. Let's make sure the bastards pay, he says
.

So this morning I'm covering the grid behind a burned out barn, looking for bodies, and I find this pair of draught horses. One's dead and just beginning to bloat, and its mate—a big bay mare—bends over to nudge it. I get goosebumps all over. Finally a live animal. I'm going to get her to bring her back to camp when suddenly I hear laughter and these two Croat soldiers step out from the barn. One of them sees the horse and stops. Raises his brand new American-made assault rifle and shoots her five times in the head. When she falls, the other one leans over to check if she's dead, presses the muzzle to her head and fires again
.

I tackle them. Smash the first guy in the face with my rifle butt, then rip the other one's rifle from his hands and throw him to the ground. It's like I have the strength of ten men, like the spirit of that mare poured into me. I shove the rifle in his face. The bastard's so freaked I can see the whites of his eyes. I pump six rounds into each of them. Turn their heads into a bloody pulp
.

Green looked up through a mist of tears as Sullivan and his
SQ
sidekick burst onto the scene, guns ready. He struggled up from Twiggy's side and raised his hand in a restraining gesture.

“It's over.” He jerked his head at Weiss, who was sitting back on his heels in stunned disbelief. “Search him and cuff him.”

Sullivan waved his gun and pulled out his handcuffs. “Palms against the wall. You know the drill.”

“I need to explain,” Weiss began.

Anger billowed up in Green's throat like bile, burning him. “You bet you do, but not right now.”

Weiss stumbled to his feet, cast one last look at Twiggy and bowed his head in resignation. Once he was safely cuffed, Green turned his attention to Langlois, who was still bent over the gunman. To Green's astonishment, the gunman was gasping for breath and struggling to sit up.

As Green drew closer, he saw some blood spreading from a wound on the man's shoulder, but across his chest there were only a few telltale nicks in his flak jacket. The
SQ
constable had pulled the black cap from his head, revealing a bristly grey crew cut. As Green looked into the man's blue eyes, defiant even in pain, he felt not the disgust or rage he'd expected, but sadness.

“So, Colonel,” he said. “I'd say the battle is over.”

Hamm fought back pain and snarled at him. “You don't know what you've done!”

Green looked at the carnage. At Twiggy sprawled on the ground and Weiss slumped against the trailer. He shook his head in wonder. “Do you?”

“John Blakeley could have saved thousands, soldiers and civilians alike! He could have changed the face of peacekeeping across the globe!”

“You may be right. But he also killed a man.”

“An accident,” Hamm replied. “And in the scheme of things . . .”

Green had squatted down by Hamm's side to check his injuries. Belatedly disgust and rage bubbled up inside him. Even now, the man didn't grasp the significance of what he'd done! Green turned away to look at Langlois. Colour was beginning to return to the young officer's face. It's always nice to know you haven't killed a man, Green thought, even one as inhuman as the one before us.

“Put the handcuffs on him and read him the Charter warning,” he said. “We have him dead to rights on Twiggy's death at least.”

Fortin arrived when it was all over, strenuously rowing against the spring-swollen current of the river. So much for my carefully coordinated tactical response, Green thought in a moment of absurdity. He was grateful to hand over the operation to Fortin, who radioed his superiors to get the wheels of justice in motion. Since Weiss's crimes, whatever they might prove to be, had occurred on the Ontario side of the river, Green and Sullivan were eventually able to bundle him into the back of the Malibu and head back to town, leaving Fortin to deal with the removal of Twiggy's body, Hamm's evacuation to hospital, and the mountain of paperwork facing them all regarding what had transpired.

Sitting in the back of the Malibu on the ride back, Weiss
seemed to retreat into shock, and Green hadn't the strength to browbeat him. All he wanted to do was crawl home to bed. Once they'd delivered Weiss into the duty sergeant's custody, with a promise to return later to lay formal charges, he dragged his exhausted body toward the parking lot.

Where he ran smack into Kate McGrath, leaning against the side of his Subaru with a triumphant smile on her face and two steaming cups of Tim Hortons coffee in her hands.

“I heard a rumour you were in the building,” she said.

“A woman after my own heart.” He plucked the coffee from her hand and unlocked the car. “I thought you'd gone home.”

“I postponed my flight. After I heard the excitement you had this morning, I wanted another go at Blakeley.” She circled the car and slid gracefully into the passenger seat. Her triumphant smile broadened.

He put the keys in the ignition but didn't turn it on. “And?”

“He didn't know about Hamm. He suspected someone was committing murder in order to conceal his old crime, but he was afraid it was his wife.”

“Well, she was certainly high on our list, too. What made him think it was her?”

“Because she knew something was wrong that night when he came back from the meeting with Patricia, and he said he may have let something slip. The poor man's been beside himself.”

“Poor man!” Green snorted as he ventured a cautious sip of the hot liquid. “The asshole started this whole damn mess.”

“Anyway, he finally sang like a bird when he realized it wasn't her. Hamm always scared him a bit. Too dedicated a soldier, too determined to succeed. Not ambitious in the usual sense like most up-and-coming commissioned officers, but for the good of the corps. Blakeley always figured that Hamm backed him up that night in the Lighthouse Tavern not so much because of their
history together, but for the sake of the army's reputation. Another Somalia-style scandal might have destroyed the entire force.”

Green thought of Hamm sitting in the grass that morning, ranting about the lives Blakeley could have saved. For Hamm, the army came before all else. “I wonder how much Hamm will be willing to talk once we finally get him into our custody.” He glanced across at her. In the confines of his little car, she seemed uncomfortably close. A mere finger touch away. “Are you going to stick around to talk to him?”

A faint pink tinged her cheeks before she shook her head. “No. The case is over. Blakeley's given a formal confession, and I expect he'll plead. I'm going to make arrangements to have him transferred to Halifax court. Less of a media circus for him to contend with.”

“Don't count on it.” He paused. An unspoken feeling hung between them “I'm sorry I had to handle it the way I—”

“You were an asshole.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked at him. “But you were probably right, and in the end I did get the confession.” She glanced at her watch. “But now I've got to hightail it. My flight is in an hour.”

“Oh!” He was surprised at his disappointment. And his relief. He started the car. “Then let me drive you to the airport.”

“That was the general idea. And if you're ever down east again . . .” She stole him a mischievous side glance. Despite his fatigue, his senses tingled. “I'll take you to the Rock and treat you to the best cod tongues in the world, bar none.”

Then she laughed, a marvellous musical laugh that lingered in the silence as he accelerated out of the lot.