The Last Hour (52 page)

“How the fuck could it be any worse?” I shouted.

“Take his god damn rifle,” he shouted to the two survivors of his fire team. I stood there, disbelieving, as Gruber stepped forward and took my rifle out of my hands.
 

Colton’s breathing had slowed down, and he stared down at the body, muttering under his breath. His eyes darted to Martin, who was bent over in a near fetal position. “Martin?” he said.

Martin didn’t answer. Hicks walked over to him and checked the arm, then said, “It’s not bad. Let’s get that bandaged. Gruber, Reynolds. Put the kid in the woods. I want him out of fucking sight.”

The two men moved to do just that, but Reynolds paused for just a second. What the hell was he doing? Quickly, he snapped several pictures with his camera.

Colton lost it again, hyperventilating, his face a bright red. “What the fuck are you doing, Reynolds? Do what Hicks ordered!”

“Yes, sergeant,” Reynolds said. The two men lifted the boy by his arms and legs, Reynolds cringing back from the ruin of his head.
 

I was completely numb as the men returned. By that time Hicks had bandaged Martin’s arm and covered the blood on the ground with more dirt.

Hicks looked around and said, “Let’s move out.”

We marched in silence. Gruber had my rifle slung over his shoulder, and I felt naked out here without it. My own fire team marched behind me, in shock, as we made our way to the woods. We had just reached the tree line when the rain started, a cold, wintry rain that chilled to the bone.
 

Half an hour went by, my mind repeating over and over the chaos of that scene. Sergeant Colton had been my friend, my mentor. I couldn’t get my mind around what had just happened. I couldn’t think about it, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t ... anything. Nothing but march, numb, as we finally came to a stop in the woods.

Colton slumped against a tree, muttering, “I don’t fucking believe that.” His voice was hoarse as he said it. “I just fucked us all.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Martin said.

“We’re fucking war criminals now,” I muttered, and Colton approached me, rage in his eyes, and screamed, “If you fucking say anything to
anyone
, Sherman, I’ll kill you.”

His eyes were bugged out as he said the words, and I just stared at him.
 

“No,” Hicks said. “Colton fucked up. We all did. We’re a platoon, and no one is going to say anything, to anyone. That kid would have ended up dead or in the Taliban anyway.”

I turned away from them, wanting to vomit, wanting to cry, wanting to cry out.

Behind me, Hicks kept talking. “Nobody even saw that kid. Martin was shot by an accidental discharge. You understand me? We’re going to walk out of here, and not a fucking thing happened.”

I leaned against the tree, hiding my eyes. But I heard it. Hicks went to Martin. “Do you hear me, Martin? It was an accidental discharge. We’ve done three tours together. Are you gonna see Colton go to prison because he screwed up?”

“No,” Martin said.
 

“You fucking swear it?”

“We didn’t see the kid,” Martin muttered. “Accidental discharge wounded me.”

“You got that fucking right,” Hicks said.
 

One by one, Hicks went to the other members of the squad. And one by one they swore.

“What about you, college boy?” Hicks said behind me.

I let my shoulders slump and turned around.
 

“What about me?” I said.

“What happened out here?”

“Colton murdered that kid. And that’s exactly how I’m gonna report it.”

Hicks’ face screwed up in rage. “You’re gonna die out here, Sherman.”

I swallowed and stared at him. “Maybe that’s what we fucking deserve,” I said.

He stared at me. “Maybe you. I got kids at home. So does Martin. So does Colton. You gonna fucking explain it to them? You gonna be the one who goes to Colton’s kids and tells them why he can’t come home when the war’s over?”

I shook my head. “We’re supposed to be here to protect those people.”

“Too fucking late for that.”

I closed my eyes. And then I felt a cold dread, when I felt the rigid, forceful push of Hick’s rifle against my head. “Your last chance, Sherman. You’re not walking out of here if you don’t fucking swear.”

Jesus Christ, I thought. How the hell were any of us going to live with ourselves after this? Why didn’t I move faster? Why didn’t I stop him? Everything I’d ever believed in, everything I wanted to believe in, it was all gone, dead and dumped in the woods with the body of that little boy.

“All right,” I finally said, and when the words left my mouth I wanted to start sobbing.
 

“All right
what?”
Hicks said.
 

“I didn’t see the boy,” I said.

“Fine,” Hicks replied. “You’re doing the right thing, Sherman.”

He put his rifle down and walked away from me. But I knew he was wrong.

As Hicks testified, Ray slumped lower and lower in his seat. His knuckles were white as his fists clenched. My attention was riveted on Ray, so I nearly jumped in my seat when I felt a hand gently touch my shoulder. I jerked, and looked up. Stephanie Hicks was standing beside me, and tears were running down her face. She whispered, “I’m sorry. But he’s not telling the truth,” and she handed me an envelope.

That was when Hicks stood up, shock on his face.

“The witness will have a seat!” Colonel Martinez ordered.
 

Military discipline took its toll. Hicks sat down, a shocked, horrified expression on his face. I looked at Stephanie Hicks, but it was too late. She ran out of the room, her heels echoing off the tile.

Colonel Martinez watched her running out and then looked at me, then at Hicks. Then he said, “Mrs. Sherman, you aren’t sworn in to this court. But Mrs. Hicks just gave you something. Can you tell me what it is?”

My hands were shaking. I looked at it. It was a letter. The envelope was postmarked April 12, 2012, and it was addressed to Stephanie Hicks in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

“It’s ... a letter,” I said.

“May I see the letter, please?”

Hicks slumped into his seat, as Ray and Elmore looked at me, mystified.

The prosecutor, Cox, said, “Your honor, this is highly irregular.”

“It is, Captain, but it may be relevant to this case. Please bring me the letter, Mrs. Sherman.”

I carried the letter up to the lectern. Colonel Martinez took it from me, looked at the postmark and the address and raised his eyebrows. Then he opened up the envelope. Three handwritten pages. Martinez perused them, slowly, and said to me, “May I keep this? You’ll get it back when the court-martial is over.”

I nodded and stepped back, returning to my seat.

Martinez turned to Hicks and said, “Do you recognize this letter, Sergeant Hicks?”

Hicks slumped in his seat. He nodded, slowly, then said, “Yes, sir.”

Martinez nodded, giving Hicks a stern look, then said, “Please register this letter as defense exhibit number one. Sergeant Hicks, do you have something you need to tell the court?”

Hicks mumbled something, and Martinez said, “Speak clearly, please.”

Shaking his head, Hicks said, “Sherman didn’t the kill the boy. Sergeant Colton did.”

The courtroom erupted in noise and shouts. Martinez stood and roared, “This court will come to order or spectators will be ejected!”

Ray sagged into his seat. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he gripped it and met my eyes. This was it. The prosecution’s whole case had just fallen apart right in front of them.

Elmore stood, and said, “Your honor, may I request a 20 minute recess to review this new evidence?”

Martinez checked his watch and said, “We’ll recess for lunch now.”

After that, it was an anticlimax. At lunch, we found out what was in the letter. Hicks had written home and told his wife at least part of what had happened, and how he was struggling whether or not to report it himself. Ray and I sat leaning on each other, both of us emotionally and physical exhausted, as we picked at our food. Finally I called home to verify the twins would be making their flight, and then we headed back into the makeshift courtroom.
 

Hicks was called back to the stand at one o’clock, and told his story without embellishment.
 

“Colton and I were closer than brothers ... we served in Iraq together, and this was our second time through Afghanistan. What he did was wrong, but ... so was turning him in,” he said, as he stared at Sherman.

At four in the afternoon on Friday, Colonel Martinez said, “We’ll recess until Monday, and trial counsel can call their final witnesses at that time.”

Captain Cox, shaken, stood and said, “Colonel, the trial counsel will not be calling any further witnesses. We rest our case.”

Martinez raised his eyebrows. They
had
no case. “All right then. And the accused?”

Elmore looked at Ray, then leaned close to him and said something. Ray nodded, and Elmore turned back and said, “The defense rests our case. The trial-counsel has already done an admirable job defending my client.”

One of members of the court-martial board stifled a laugh.
 

Colonel Martinez turned toward them and said, “As the trial judge, I must remind you this is a capitol case. In order to find the accused guilty of murder, you must come to a unanimous verdict. Specifically, you must find that Sergeant Raymond Sherman did willfully violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice by committing the offense of murder in Afghanistan on March 24
th
, 2012. Over the weekend, the court-martial board may deliberate for a half day only, starting at ten a.m. tomorrow. Does any member have any questions regarding these instructions?”

The board members stayed silent.

“Does counsel have any objections to these instructions not previously raised?”

“No, your honor,” Elmore and Cox both replied.

“Then the court-martial is closed.”

I stood, and met Ray, our arms around each other. And then I was sobbing. Because it was almost over.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get some dinner, and then go pick up the twins?”

I nodded, but we couldn’t stop touching each other. Maybe we’d just skip dinner.

S
ometimes, when I thought about Speedy,
I tried to see it with a clear head. Those pitifully few seconds between the moment when Staff Sergeant Martin grabbed at Colton’s rifle and it fired, and Colton turning and firing at the kid. Rationally, I knew there was no time. No time for me to stop him. No time for me to turn superhero, grab the weapon and twist it up into a pretzel, and tie Colton up with his web gear. No time for me to turn the clock back and whisk Speedy out of there and save his life. No time to make it so the war never happened in the first place.

But then, that’s what war is. I was only fourteen when September 11 happened, but I remember it so vividly it was like it was yesterday. Mostly I remember waiting, for hours and hours, because my parents worked in the financial district, and they didn’t come home. I was fixated that afternoon on CNN, watching the buildings fall over and over. Going out on the back deck and seeing the smoke rising from Manhattan, my world turned into a war zone, my parents missing, and nothing but questions in my mind. Every time I dialed the phone I got “all circuits are busy.”

It was one in the morning before they came through the front door of our house, covered in ash and dust, and it was only after I stopped crying that I learned they’d walked out of Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge. They’d walked for hours, trying to call until the batteries on their cell phones died. I was no different than anyone else then, supporting to move to take down the Taliban and occupy Afghanistan, to go to war against the terrorists who had killed so many Americans. My parents lost friends on September 11, and it was months before the haunted look left their eyes.
 

But where does it start and where does it stop? One side hits, and the other side hits back, and pretty soon you don’t know what happened to start all the fighting in the first place. What I did know was the day my parents walked home covered in ash from the World Trade Center, led inexorably to the day I found myself in a tiny village in Afghanistan, too late to save the life of a twelve-year-old boy, whose family will always, justifiably, hate Americans with the same kind of hate that drove Colton to pull the trigger.

So here I am sitting on the sidewalk outside the hospital, next to an injured eight-year-old, and what it comes down to is this: these things don’t just
happen.
My parents’ friends in the World Trade Center didn’t die because of an accident ... they died because someone made choices. Speedy didn’t die because of some random shit ... he died because of a series of choices by a whole bunch of people, including my choice not to report Colton for drinking, and Colton’s choice not to seek help when he started losing it. Any step along that chain of choices might have changed it. If the guy with the grenade hadn’t tried to kill the little girl in Dega Payan. If Kowalski hadn’t chosen to take the grenade himself. If Paris hadn’t shot up his laptop and got us sent out into the field. If the insurgents hadn’t blown up our convoy and killed Roberts. If Weber had stopped somewhere else to take a piss, and the sniper never got off that shot.