Talion Justice Read online

  TALION JUSTICE

  A Frank Luce Thriller

  Rick Bosworth

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part III

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Prologue

  July 6, 2006

  Pentagon

  Arlington, VA

  “The U.S. Army—my army—was in the field long before the ink dried on our Declaration of Independence,” U.S. Army Chief of Staff Matthew York said, his voice rising. “And in all those 231 glorious years, do you know how many men have had the audacity to refuse the Medal of Honor—our country’s highest award for valor?”

  York did not pause long enough for me to answer.

  “None!” he shouted, making a zero with his thumb and forefinger as he leaned across the table, neck veins straining, eyes afire. “Not one, Major Luce. There has never been a soldier in this republic’s history who hasn’t bowed his head for his commander-in-chief to place that medal around his neck.”

  York held his gaze, the same one that had chilled the blood of friends and foes alike on distant battlefields over the past three decades. It hit me like a gut punch. They were right. York was a fighting general. All six feet two of him. He had only recently been promoted to CSA and given his fourth star, which made him the highest-ranking active-duty officer in the U.S. Army. York reported only to civilians, specifically the Secretary of the Army, who answered to the Secretary of Defense, who answered only to the president.

  York’s sharp eyes wandered over my face, as most people’s did now, and lingered on my left eye, scarred and still swollen from shrapnel I’d picked up from an ISIS IED in Afghanistan. The scar, still red and inflamed, started below my eye, split my eyebrow in half, then faded as it stretched for my hairline and angled away from my nose. The army doctors were amazed I’d regained my sight, and said the scar would be less noticeable in time. I didn’t care. About the scar, at least.

  This was the last place I wanted to be. Stateside. Away from my men. Answering to the number one man. I had tried to settle this properly, observing my chain of command, who now flanked me in York’s vast office at the Pentagon. Sitting to my right at the grand conference table was my boss, Colonel Roland Velazquez, a squat, fleshy man who failed to impress even in the pressed uniform of a full bird colonel. He was the bad cop, the one who had yelled and dressed me down for embarrassing him in front of the brass. Velazquez had threatened and cussed like a petulant child. He’d ordered me to accept my MOH. I’d respectfully refused. Sir.

  Next came Velazquez’s boss, one-star Brigadier General Margaret Fitzgibbon, the good cop, now seated to my left. Fitzgibbon was an attractive woman, late forties, slender and tall, with sandy hair worn in a tight bun. She seemed genuinely baffled by my refusal to accept our country’s highest military honor. She had questioned me as to my reasons, and I had given her the whole story. She’d listened with the practiced empathy of a human resources director. She had then spoken of honor, tradition, and duty. How things were not always black and white, especially in battle. I’d told her I saw no gray that day. I spoke of my men; she spoke of her army. She saw my resolve and accepted her failure to convince me otherwise. She’d still issued me an order, for the record, which I had also respectfully refused. Ma’am.

  Less than one week later, I was summoned to Matt York’s office. This was an order I could not refuse.

  York settled back in his chair, his scowl replaced with a searching expression I took as paternal.

  “What’s the problem here, son?” York asked.

  “It’s all in my report, sir,” I replied, hoping to expedite this. The air in York’s commanding presence felt thin, like summiting Everest. My breathing became rapid and shallow. I was not acclimated to this altitude, as Fitzgibbon and Velazquez were, having base-camped at the Pentagon while I was over in Afghanistan fighting another kind of war.

  “I know what’s in your report, Major, and I know what General Fitzgibbon has briefed,” York said. “I want to hear it from you.”

  I looked into York’s dark eyes and saw the warrior, aged but unbowed, behind the reading glasses perched at the end of his nose. Still fit and able to lead in battle. I made the split-second decision to trust this man, trust that he would see my refusal for what it was—an honorable stance on principle.

  So I drew a deep breath and began.

  It all happened one July day in 2006, the summer of my 30th year. I was leading my company in a convoy through a contested pass in the Kunar Province in Afghanistan. As we came to a choke point in the road, I saw it was blocked by hostile local tribesmen. I knew an ambush when I saw one, and ordered fire just before the IEDs went off, the sequence a technical violation of a standing order not to fire upon locals except in self-defense. Armored transports were blown skyward; a chaotic firefight ensued. The fog of war, as they say. I lost ten good men that day, took many more of the enemy, and almost lost my eye. They say I fought heroically, running from Humvee to Humvee, firing on the enemy and pulling wounded men from burning wreckage. It happened so fast; one moment calm, the next chaos. All instinct and adrenaline. I did it to save my men. I did it because other men were trying to kill them. I guess that makes me a hero. If true, I saw a lot of heroes that day.

  So I passed the army’s MOH valor test. But it was messy. First, I had intentionally violated a standing order by proactively engaging the enemy. When questioned, I acknowledged my action and said I would do it again if faced with the same circumstances. I got bawled out by my colonel for this, but he was a West Pointer like me and I got off easy. And the army could overlook this act of insubordination when committed in the heat of battle by a bona fide war-hero-in-the-making.

  But the army had a much bigger problem. During the after-action review, it came to light that one of the most beloved soldiers in my company was killed by friendly fire. It had only been two years since the Pat Tillman fiasco, and the army scrambled into damage control. At first all appeared proper. Army CID rushed in. Statements were taken. Evidence gathered. Everyone in the company knew the truth of what had happened. We mourned all fallen soldiers the same and tried to quietly console the soldier who had accidentally killed his comrade. The poor kid was inconsolable. He left the army soon after. Went home, then got and stayed drunk. He shot himself in the face and was dead before his 22nd birthday. Another casualty in the pass that day.

  They nominated me for the MOH before the CID investigation was even concluded. I was honored on behalf of my company. I saw
it as a team rather than an individual trophy and had every intention to accept it as such. Then I read the MOH award narrative. A nice piece of fiction. It captured all my feats of derring-do and graciously omitted my insubordination. But most importantly, it also ignored any facts surrounding the friendly fire incident. I read this as a betrayal of two brave soldiers who had died that day: one in the pass and the other six months later by his own hand in Portageville, Missouri.

  At first, I respectfully requested my MOH narrative be rewritten, which was denied. I then less respectfully demanded this, which got me a curter rebuke. I tried to withdraw my nomination, but the army explained that it was not my prerogative to do so. Finally, I resorted to my last option: I advised my command that I would respectfully refuse the MOH if awarded, which came out like Lyndon Johnson’s refusal to seek a second presidential term in 1968: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

  As one would imagine, my command in Afghanistan was not amused, and they shipped me stateside. I would be the Pentagon’s problem now. First the headshrinkers took a whack at me, and finding nothing wrong, handed me over to Velazquez. A little good cop/bad cop later, and I ended up in the big man’s office, baring my soul.

  York looked down at the conference table, rubbing his temples hard with the fingertips of both hands. He blew out a deep breath and looked at all three of us across the table. Velazquez squirmed in his seat. I could smell the fear leeching off him. Fitzgibbon cleared her throat and began to respond. York raised his hand for her to stop, and she broke off in mid-word, as if choked.

  York looked only at me now.

  “That’s one hell of a story, Major,” he said. “I have spent some time on the battlefield myself, and I want you to know I understand. Things can get complicated if we lose our focus on what matters most. Sometimes we have to sacrifice for the greater good. Sometimes the most courageous thing a soldier can do is to mind his tongue and salute. You understand that, don’t you, son?”

  That’s when I knew I was done. I had trusted this man to champion the truth, to do the right thing. Eventually, I would come to learn that these concepts were subjective and pliable in the hands of the powerful.

  But today was the day when I learned my truly big lesson—that evil thrives when the good do nothing. York could have ended all this with a stroke of his pen. He could have provided justice for all the heroes who’d sacrificed their lives in the pass that day. Could have kept me in the army, too, serving my country with distinction for another twenty years. But he didn’t. He would do nothing.

  I boiled inside, shook as I fought to hold my silence.

  “Major Luce?” York bit off the last word.

  Fitzgibbon exhaled a breath she had been holding since I’d begun talking. Velazquez straightened up in the seat to my right. He raised his hands from beneath the table and placed them in front of him, fingers laced. I gave him a side glance and saw the corners of his mouth rise in a grin.

  “Sir?” I mustered.

  “You will not be the first soldier to refuse the Medal of Honor. Not on my watch. Of this I can assure you.”

  I started to respond when, under the table, Fitzgibbon placed the heel of her shoe on top of my foot and pressed down hard. I swallowed my response.

  “You will go to the White House when told, and you will bow your head and accept your MOH with the grace and humility of all who came before you.” York squared his shoulders back and gripped the table in front of him. “This is a direct order, Major Luce. Do you understand?”

  I cleared my throat and tried to respond. No words came.

  “Am I understood, Major?” York shouted.

  I nodded in resignation, my eyes downcast, shoulders slumped. I felt York’s glare radiate upon me, like the heat of the sun.

  “Your answer, Major!” York demanded.

  I looked up from the tabletop and locked eyes with York. I heard the leather of Fitzgibbon’s seat squeak as she squirmed in her chair. She could endure my silence no longer and began to issue an apology. Again, York raised his hand to silence her, and again she obeyed.

  I straightened myself in my chair, feet braced flat on the floor. Fitzgibbon’s foot flopped off mine and fell to the floor with an audible thump. She quickly tucked it back under her seat.

  I had run my conscience as far as I thought it could go. Maybe this would be best for everyone. Maybe everyone was better off not knowing the truth. Certainly it was in the best interest of the U.S. Army. And wasn’t that what this was all about anyway? It certainly was not about what was best for Frank Luce.

  What I didn’t know, couldn’t know then, was that the answer I was about to give would change my life, dramatically and forever. I would do nothing. And evil would flourish.

  “I’ll take your answer now, Major,” York said.

  “Yes, sir,” was what I said.

  And so it was that I accepted the MOH.

  I resigned my U.S. Army officer’s commission less than one year later.

  Part I

  We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.

  ― Edmund Burke

  Chapter One

  August 6, 2016

  Hospital Emergency Room

  Washington, DC

  Jill Everett was midway through the day shift at George Washington University Hospital. She had been a nurse for nine years but had only worked day shift for the past eight months, since she had taken sole custody of her nine-year-old daughter after she and her husband divorced. She had spent her entire career at GWU Hospital, all of it on the night shift, before her marriage fell apart. Everett found the day shift nurses aloof and unfriendly. She missed her night shift friends dearly.

  Which was odd, because everyone liked Everett. Patients most of all. She bounced around the wing, all five foot three inches of her, spreading a flawless smile and her goofy sense of humor. Just shy of thirty, she still had her college gymnast body, although she’d lost some weight with the recent stress of her divorce. She’d shorn her flaxen hair to shoulder length and kept it pulled back tight into a stubby ponytail at work.

  Everett was attending to an elderly patient on the end of the wing and had the woman giggling. Another nurse, prim and stern, popped her head in the door and announced that Everett had a phone call at the nurses’ station. No chitchat, all business. The old woman made a sour face at the other nurse’s back. Everett just rolled her eyes and said she would be right back.

  She hustled down the hall in her red Crocs and grabbed the telephone. It was the vice principal of her daughter’s school. Everett attempted small talk, but this was the third time they had spoken in the last two months and the vice principal was beyond cordial banter now. She explained that her daughter Kate had had a fight with another girl in her fourth-grade class, and that she had to come and pick her up. Now.

  Everett asked for details. The vice principal informed her that Kate had slapped another girl, that she ran a zero-tolerance school, and that Kate had been suspended for three days. She said Kate was awaiting pickup in her office right now. Everett said she was currently on shift and asked if the vice principal had called her ex-husband. Yes, the VP said, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Everett sighed and said she would be right down.

  Everett handed the phone back to the desk nurse and rubbed her face with both hands. She turned to walk towards her boss’s office when she spotted Naomi, her only friend on shift.

  Naomi shrugged, mouthed “What’s up?” from across the nurses’ station. Everett shook her head, and Naomi followed her out into the hallway. “What’s up, girl?” Naomi asked. “Was that your dick ex-husband?” Naomi was half a foot taller than Everett, a proud first-generation Jamaican who hid her soft heart behind piercing dark eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor.

  “Nah,” Everett responded. “It was school. Kate got in another fight. She got suspended this time. She’s in the vice principal’s office now. I gotta go get her.”

/>   “Shit,” Naomi said. “Dr. Douche is on shift now.”

  Everett grimaced. “Yeah, I know. He hates me.”

  Naomi looked around. “Just go. The school’s not far. I’ll cover for you. Shoot down there, pick Kate up, and bring her back here. We’ll find something for that little troublemaker to do till end of shift.”

  “Thank you! Thank you!” Everett exclaimed, and ran to get her coat and keys. She returned to Naomi, hugged her, and said she would be right back. She took two steps toward the door and stopped dead in her tracks.

  Everett smelled it before she heard it. Heard it before she saw it. She’d worked long enough in the ER to know what this was. The pungent, acrid odor. The rush of gurney wheels and EMT chatter. The doors then flew open and in rolled another dying homeless man. Everett gagged as the gurney whooshed past her. ER policy dictated that they would extend treatment to the homeless only if their condition was life threatening.

  One quick look at the guy and Everett knew he was in big trouble. Everyone knew that Everett was the best trauma nurse on shift, probably the entire hospital. And she loved saving lives. For her, it was what gave her job real purpose.