A God in Ruins - Leon Uris [76]
“You wouldn’t lie for General Duncan,” Zacco said, “or cover up out of your deep respect and personal friendship?”
Quinn felt his hands grip the arms of his chair, and he started to rise. Sit down! he ordered himself, sit fucking down, Quinn!
“Like flying to Vegas in a government helicopter to keep a hot date?”
“That is most disgusting,” Brickhouse exclaimed. “Don’t answer it, Gunner.”
“Now, gentlemen,” cooed Lightner, “I do believe it is within counsel’s purview to establish that if, in Duncan’s position of unlimited power without accountability, he might have crossed the line and taken advantage—”
“Of what?” Quinn snapped. “Taxpayers’ dollars? It’s clear what you two are trying to do. I don’t know how low you plan to take this, but I don’t rat on a fellow Marine on matters that are none of your fucking business.”
They had him.
“I’ve only a few more questions,” Zacco said eagerly. “These homemade cluster bombs. You helped Duncan concoct them?”
“We worked with the finest munitions and ordnance people in the country. The weight of the men, the weight of the bombs, the titanium wings, were all factored in to make the plane lighter.”
“This was not a safe bomb,” Zacco accused.
“It was as safe as we could make it. We tested over a hundred of them successfully.”
“But it was not a safe bomb because it exploded at the wrong time and killed five Marine officers. Gunner, they were killed by an American cluster bomb, were they not?”
“They were.”
“And you were wounded by the same bomb.”
“Yes.”
“Friendly fire,” the counselor snapped.
Hang on, Quinn, he compelled himself. Look at him in his rat’s eyes. But stay calm, bubba. Quinn shrugged. “That’s a stupid expression. It’s the biggest oxymoron in the language. There is no such thing as friendly fire—safe bombs.”
“It is a term commonly used to denote death at the hands of one’s own people.”
“The bomb was my responsibility,” Quinn said. “I will take the blame.”
The ash fell from Senator Lightner’s cigarillo.
Zacco looked confused. “Would you care to explain that?” he mumbled.
“Sure. From the design to the installation to the firing, it was my baby. I checked the bomb racks at the Tikkah Air Base. They appeared secure. That was proved by the wild flight to Urbakkan. We flew at various altitudes, and the plane was nearly shaken to pieces. No bombs went off. If one had exploded, it would have been the endgame. You see, Mr. Zacco, you work with your people and your equipment to the best of your human capability, and then you have to trust. The Marine Corps is built on trust.”
A silence followed. Quinn was dead calm, his eyes fixed on the lawyer. The lawyer didn’t like it.
“Shall I continue?”
Vito Vincent Zacco nodded cautiously.
“Between Tikkah Air Base and Fort Urbakkan, some glitch developed in bomb rack four. Could have been the plane shaking violently, drastic changes in temperature, perhaps a little ping of some sort of debris which was flying at us as we crossed closely over the ridge tops. I got no indication of a problem on the display panels or gauges.”
Lightner was transfixed. Zacco was confused.
“We positioned ourselves to fire,” Quinn said. “I had under a minute to unload the missile racks. One bomb obviously veered off course and fell short in the courtyard. It was too small for our FLIR to pick up, and we didn’t even sight it until the end of the raid. We moved our people away from the bomb, but she went off. Next half hour, forty minutes, was spent in ankle-deep blood, brains and guts on the ceiling, an amputation and a copilot with his guts about to spill out…we needed to patch a window…with Barakat’s knowledge of the terrain and IV’s courage, we made our rendezvous with the tanker plane…and after that…IV stayed alive and instructed me for over two thousand miles…that was five and a half hours from the time we left the fort. When I touched down on the helipad of our container ship and cut the engines, IV died instantly.”
Zacco knew that when the fourth version of this insane story was told, Quinn would riddle himself