So why the all-out necessity to get this guy? Aside from the moral issue of letting a killer escape justice, in some ways letting him go away and die peacefully made the most sense strategically. The bottom line was, Hayes was acting somewhat irrationally and he was not an irrational man. There had to be another reason.
Knox stared at the screen, reading the military records of the men and women who had served in Vietnam. He exhausted the digital trail and had to resort to the boxes after consulting with another attendant who helped him narrow his area of search. He went through thirty of the boxes without success. He was about to call it a day when his hand gripped a sheaf of papers, the top page getting his immediate attention.
As Knox leaned forward, the rest of the room seemed to slowly disappear around him. He was reading the official history of a soldier named John Carr, an enlisted man who'd quickly risen to the rank of sergeant. The account Knox was enthralled with was Carr's heroic actions during one five-hour period nearly forty years ago.
Outnumbered dozens to one, Carr had almost single-handedly turned back an attack by the enemy, saving his company and carrying several of his wounded comrades to safety on his back. He'd killed at least ten enemy soldiers, several in hand-to-hand fighting. Then he'd manned a machine-gun nest to hold back the North Vietnamese while mortar and rifle rounds hit all around him. He'd left that post to radio in air support to allow his men to retreat safely. Only then had he walked off the battlefield drenched in his own blood and permanently scarred by bullet and machete wounds. Knox had experienced combat in those jungles and knew the confusion and horror that such confrontations almost always held. He'd been wounded. He'd been scarred. He'd been routed in action thinking this was surely his last day on earth. And he'd been part of successful attacks in the last days of America 's participation in that war in Southeast Asia, although by that time little victories in the field meant nothing. If they ever did.
Yet Knox had never read or heard of any soldier doing what Carr had done that day. It was beyond miraculous. It was beyond human, in fact. His respect, along with his fear of the man, notched upward even more.
With such heroism there must've been reward. The military was often slow in many ways, but it was quick at awarding bravery and selflessness in the field if for no other reason than to inspire other soldiers. And such accounts also made for great PR. The extraordinary heroism and extreme gallantry Carr had demonstrated that day not only easily qualified him for the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award the army could bestow, but, in Knox's judgment, it should have earned him the country's highest award for military heroism, the Medal of Honor. John Carr a Medal of Honor winner? Hayes had not mentioned any of that in his briefing. Nor had that piece of background made its way into press accounts when the man's grave had been dug up at Arlington.
Knox flipped through page after page and explored several more boxes before he was able to piece the story together.
Carr's Purple Hearts could not be denied him because the wounds alone were proof enough. All told, he received four of them, counting injuries received in other battles. Then there had been talk of awarding him a Bronze Star, but the date of this document was long after the fact of Carr's miraculous actions in the field. And the Bronze Star-while certainly prestigious-didn't come close to recognizing what the man had done, Knox felt. The Bronze was a bit of a hybrid in Knox's mind. It could be given out for bravery in battle with a Valor device attached, but also for acts of merit or meritorious service. The Silver Star, Distinguished Service Cross, and Medal of Honor, the acknowledged triumvirate of recognition for the fighting soldier, were for bravery and heroism in combat, pure and simple.
He finally found a sheaf of documents showing that Carr's immediate superior had recommended Stone for the Medal of Honor. The man had filled out all the requisite documents and assembled all the required proofs and eyewitness accounts. He'd then sent it up the chain of command. The date on the documents showed it to be shortly after Carr's actions in the field, long before the documents talking about awarding him the Bronze Star. What the hell was going on?
And nothing had happened. It apparently had stalled out at that point. Knox could find no other documents that touched on it. But why? It was a perfect story. The man was a hero. Instead Carr had disappeared from the ranks shortly thereafter. Knox thought he knew why. That's when he'd been enlisted by the CIA for its Triple Six Division. The spooks, Knox was aware, often trolled for their assassins in the ranks of the military's best.
He put the documents back in the box. And that's when he noticed it. Two pieces of paper stapled together that had slid down in between the interior flap of the box and the exterior cardboard wall. Knox almost didn't read it, so disgusted was he at the military's injustice to a man who should have been one of the most legendary recipients of its highest award.
But Knox did reach for the papers.
It was an order, a simple one. It shut off any further consideration of John Carr receiving the Medal of Honor or any other commendation. As Knox read through the document it was filled with official mumbo jumbo about unreliable evidence and inconsistent eyewitness accounts and conflicting background documentation. It made no sense at all until Knox's gaze reached the signature line where the name of the officer appeared.
Major Macklin D. Hayes.
CHAPTER 26
KNOX SLOWLY DROVE his Range Rover into the garage of his town house. Before he hit the button on his remote to close the door, he scanned the street in his rearview mirror. They were out there, he was pretty sure, watching him. Hayes typically covered all the bases.
The former general trusts me about as much as I trust him.
There might come a time when Knox would have to give those boys the slip, and when and if the time came, he hoped he was up for the challenge.
It might seem bizarre to ordinary citizens that a government agent like Knox would be nearly as fearful of his employer as he was his quarry. Yet Knox was only called in when things had gone to hell and people were already pointing fingers at each other and essentially building their "blame" strategies. He sometimes compared his job to that of an internal affairs officer in a police department. No matter what you did, someone was going to be pissed at you. And being pissed off and taking somebody's life as payback did not require a great leap of thought. Sometimes, it simply needed a walk across the street, a decisive trigger pull and a good cover strategy.
And from what Knox had learned about John Carr's military past, Hayes was definitely playing his own agenda on this one. He had clearly lied to Knox already. He'd commented on what an honor it would have been to command a killing machine like Carr. Well, the man had commanded him. In his murderous prime. And denied him the honor that was surely his. What had Carr done to tick the man off? Hayes was known to hold grudges for decades, and it seemed like that reputation was proving true here.
Knox had spent several more hours in the records room trying to find an answer to that question, but had come away with nothing more than speculation.
The dark thoughts going through his mind right now were nearly as numbing as what he'd experienced in his last nights in a Vietnam jungle before his country had called it a war and gone home. Knox's battalion had been one of the last to be sent to Southeast Asia. He'd been there all of eleven months and it had felt like eleven years. When he'd gotten back with a piece of shrapnel in his left thigh and a truck load of recurring nightmares as reminders of his time there, he'd decided that war was not a particularly smart way to decide global issues, especially when politicians rather than the grunts on the ground were calling the shots. That's when he'd worked his way to the Defense Intelligence Agency and from there to the civilian side and CIA.