High Crimes

“And the Reagan White House went apeshit. We had an agreement that the leftist guerrillas in Salvador wouldn’t target Americans, and now this. There was a ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base, where the bodies of the four marines were flown back. Reagan was furious. He vowed that we’d move any mountain and ford any river — you remember how he talked, that phony poetry — to find these jackals and bring them to justice.”

Claire nodded, eyes closed.

“Only what he didn’t say was that the orders had been passed down already. Get the fuckers. Get the guys who did this. ‘Total closure,’ they said — which everyone knew meant kill everyone remotely involved. So Burning Tree went out to find the murderers. We had an intelligence lead that the commandos, a splinter group of the leftist organization called FMLN, were based in this village outside San Salvador. A tiny village, I mean grass huts and stuff like that, Claire. The lead was wrong. There weren’t any commandos there. There were civilians, there were old men and women and children and babies, and it was obvious right away that this was no hideout for urban commandos, but, you see, we were out for blood.”

Now Claire stared at him, looked piercingly, fiercely into his eyes.

“This was the middle of the night. June 22. The entire village was sleeping, but we were ordered to awaken the entire village and drag them out of their beds, out of their huts, and search for weapons. I was checking for hidden caches of ammo on the far side of the village when I heard gunfire.”

And now tears streamed down Tom’s cheeks, and his head was bowed, his fists clenched.

“Tom,” Claire said, her stare unwavering.

“And by the time I got there, they were all dead.”

“‘They’?”

“Women and children and old men...”

“How were they killed?”

“Machine guns...” Head still bowed. His face was contorted, ugly, and his eyes were closed, but tears continued to drip down from them onto the rough blanket. “Bodies sprawled, bloodied...”

“Who did it?”

“I... I don’t know. Nobody would talk.”

“How many were killed, Tom?” she asked softly.

“Eighty-seven,” he choked out.

Now Claire closed her eyes. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered. She rocked back and forth in silence, murmuring, “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”

Tom, clenched and red-faced like an infant, sobbed silently.

13

A long silence passed.

At last he spoke again. “The unit was recalled to Fort Bragg for debriefing. The word had gotten out. There had to be sanctions.” He wiped his face with his hand, squeezing his eyes hard with his thumb and forefinger. “The colonel denied he gave the order, and he made his men say the same thing when they were interviewed by CID, the army’s Criminal Investigation Division. They pinned the blame on me. They said I’d lost it. I’d flipped out. I’d killed all these people. Colonel Marks was afraid that, since I wasn’t there and I refused to lie for him, I’d be the weak link who’d tell the truth. So he turned the tables. Had them all blame me. I was naïve. I had no idea what was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marks was spared. I was targeted for prosecution — for first-degree murder. Eighty-seven counts. And the ones who wouldn’t cooperate in the cover-up, one by one, each of them died — committed suicide in their cells, died in car crashes, you name it. And I knew I was next. Because the Pentagon wanted the entire incident covered up. You know the drill — any one of them could have tried to blackmail the Pentagon leadership, because they knew the command was complicit in the massacre.”

“So you escaped.”

“It wasn’t complicated. I slipped a bribe to one of the MPs, the military policemen watching me — asked him to step out and get me a Coke — and I disappeared.”

“Disappeared how?”