Patriot games - Tom Clancy [57]
"So, when you finally did look up, you had not seen what had immediately transpired?"
"Correct, sir." Okay, Charlie, ask the next question.
"You did not, therefore, see my client fire his pistol, nor throw a hand grenade?"
Cute, Ryan thought, surprised that he'd try this ploy. Well, he has to try something, doesn't he? "No, sir. When I first saw him, he was running around the corner of the car, from the direction of the other man, the one who was killed-the one with the rifle. A moment later he was at the right-rear corner of the Rolls, facing away from me, with the pistol in his right hand, pointed forward and down, as if-"
"Assumption on your part," Atkinson interrupted. "As if what? It could have been any one of several things. But what things? How could you tell what he was doing there? You did not see him get out of the car, which later drove off. For all you know he might have been another pedestrian racing to the rescue, just as you did, mightn't he?"
Jack was supposed to be surprised by this.
"Assumption, sir? No, I'd call it a judgment. For him to have been racing to the rescue as you suggest, he would have had to come from across the street. I doubt that anyone could have reacted anywhere near fast enough to do that at all, not to mention the fact that there was a guy there with a machine gun to make you think twice about it. Also, the direction I saw him running from was directly away from the guy with the AK-47. If he was running to the rescue, why away from him? If he had a gun, why not shoot him? At the time I never considered this possibility, and it seems pretty unlikely now, sir."
"Again, a conclusion. Sir John," Atkinson said as though to a backward child.
"Sir, you asked me a question, and I tried to answer it, with the reasons to back up my answer."
"And you expect us to believe that all this flashed through your mind in a brief span of seconds?" Atkinson turned back to the jury.
"Yes, sir, it did," Ryan said with conviction. "That's all I can say-it did."
"I don't suppose you've been told that my client has never been arrested, or accused of any crime?"
"I guess that makes him a first offender."
"It's for the jury to decide that," the lawyer snapped back. "You did not see him fire a single shot, did you?"
"No, sir, but his automatic had an eight-shot clip, and there were only three rounds in it. When I fired my third shot, it was empty."
"So what? For all you know someone else could have fired that gun. You did not see him fire, did you?"
"No, sir."
"So it might have been dropped by someone in the car. My client might have picked it up and, I repeat, been doing the same thing you were doing-this could all be true, but you have no way of knowing this, do you?"
"I cannot testify about things I didn't see, sir. However, I did see the street, the traffic, and the other pedestrians. If your client did what you say, where did he come from?"
"Precisely-you don't know, do you?" Atkinson said sharply.
"When I saw your client, sir, he was coming from the direction of the stopped car." Jack gestured to the model on the evidence table. "For him to have come off the sidewalk, then gotten the gun, and then appeared where I saw him-there's just no way unless he's an Olympic-class sprinter."
"Well, we'll never know, will we-you fixed that. You reacted precipitously, didn't you? You reacted as you were trained to by the U.S. Marines, never stopping to assess the situation. You raced into the fray quite recklessly, attacked my client and knocked him unconscious, then tried to kill him."
"No, sir, I did not try to kill your client. I've already-"
"Then why did you shoot an unconscious, helpless man?"
"My Lord," prosecutor Richards said, standing up, "we have already asked that question."
"The witness may answer on further reflection," Justice Wheeler intoned No one would say that this trial was unfair.
"Sir, I did not know he was unconscious, and I didn't know how long it would be before he got up. So, I shot to disable