Chapter 5: Snake Eyes' Testimony
Abbie stood. "For its next witness, prosecution would like to call Master Sergeant Snake Eyes. I will say that this is not this soldier's real name; however, his real name is classified due to the nature of his military operating specialty, so we will use his codename here. Also, I'd like the court to know in advance that he is mute, having lost his voice in an accident several years ago—the events surrounding that will be part of his testimony as it has some relevance to the case. We have an interpreter available who will translate his AMESLAN for the court. As well, there is a copy of his written testimony available as the jury goes in to deliberate should a review of his testimony be necessary."
The door opened and Snake Eyes marched in, dressed in his class B's, eyes front, every inch the disciplined soldier. He marched down the center aisle of the courtroom, ascended the witness box, signed a brief 'I do' to the oath, and seated himself. "Master Sergeant Snake Eyes, thank you for being willing to testify for this court. We have an interpreter fluent in AMESLAN with us, so please feel free to converse in whatever manner is most comfortable for you." Snake Eyes gave a quick nod, and Abbie continued, "Please explain to the court who you are."
My name is Snake Eyes, and I am a Master Sergeant with the same unit stationed at Fort Hamilton as Master Sergeant O'Hara. Jointly we handle training of recruits in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts disciplines, as well as unconventional weapons combat. I am Master Sergeant O'Hara's fiancé and I was part of the rescue team that went to the island to rescue her.
"You are her fiancé? How long have the two of you been together?" And Clayton suddenly saw Abbie's strategy. She'd been aware that the defense was going to try a smear campaign, making it seem like Shana and Cam's fault, and she was carefully trying to structure her questioning to not only present the real facts of the case but also to provide refutation of the defense's assassination of Shana and Cam's characters.
We have known each other since she was posted to the unit nearly ten years ago. Our commanding officer, General Abernathy, asked for her to be assigned to us so that hand-to-hand combat training could be taught from the viewpoint of the male and also from the viewpoint of the female. Since she was the first woman assigned to our unit she had a hard time gaining acceptance from the other male soldiers until she faced me on the mat and proved herself every inch my equal when our match ended in a draw. Since then she has had no problems with respect from our unit and General Abernathy considers her a valuable, irreplaceable asset to the unit.
We were friends from the beginning, she recognized something in me that she liked, and I recognized in her someone who was my equal in every way. We trained together, we fought together, but I didn't realize I had grown to love her until a mission some years back, which is classified so I can't give details. But Master Sergeant O'Hara was caught in a helicopter going out of control, her seatbelt was stuck, and while everyone else jumped, I tried to protect her in the crash. She survived—and my face was badly burned in the fire that resulted from the crash and I lost my voice. She stayed with me throughout my recovery, bullied and coaxed me into feeling better about myself, and loved me even after it was discovered that I no longer had a voice with which to talk again. None of it mattered to her. We've been committed to each other for ten years.
"Had you talked about getting married?"
The topic came up but we were both committed to our careers. I did purchase a ring for her right around Thanksgiving of last year with the intent to propose to her over Christmas, but then this mission came up and she was captured. It wasn't until this happened that I realized that time is short, life is precious, and every possible minute I have, I want to spend with her. I didn't know how much I depended on her, cared about her, loved her, until this happened, so as soon as she recovered after we rescued her from the island, I asked her to marry me. And she said yes. There was a broad smile on his face, the smile of a man in love. Clayton wondered if he looked like that when he thought about Olivia, then grinned himself. Yes, he did, Allie had told him that. And Ettienne got that look whenever Alex's name was mentioned, and Dash looked like that when Allie was mentioned.
There were smiles from the jury box too, and even Abbie smiled; Clayton was absolutely sure that was a sincere smile, not a professional one that was part of the careful strategy she'd worked out to win this case. "Congratulations on your engagement. You are planning on getting married?"
When this is over, yes. Snake Eyes turned hard eyes toward Damien Kennedy, and there was no mistaking the poison in his glance. So his assertion that she is trying to trap him in marriage with these 'trumped up charges' is wrong. For the last ten years there has been no one but me for her, and there has been no one but her for me.
"So this whole fiasco has to have been difficult for you. Her going missing, and then being on the rescue team that found her…can you tell us about that?"
I couldn't think of anything but her while she was gone. I realized just how much I loved her, depended on her…all the times when we argued over something little and I said things to hurt her feelings, or I refused to go to a movie with her because I was self-conscious about my face and how I looked and so she wouldn't go either. Little joys, things she wanted to share with me but I was self-conscious and she wouldn't go because I wouldn't…and our cabin in California, where we go when we're on leave…it was originally mine, but we've shared the work on it, shared ideas, made it a personal space for both of us. But I never put her on the lease. While we're on our honeymoon I'm going to change the deed so she is on it.
A deep breath. When we got to the island and I saw her nailed to that cross…the bottom dropped out of my world. She looked…she looked dead, I couldn't imagine that anyone could have survived being crucified. There were tears running down his face, and there wasn't a single face in the jury box that didn't look sympathetic; somehow, seeing Snake Eyes crying unashamedly was making an impact on the jurors and the spectators. There were ropes around her wrists that kept her from moving her arms much, because when she was crucified at Damien Kennedy's order the nails were carefully placed so that they didn't damage muscles, nerves or blood vessels. I believe his intention wasn't to kill her, he was going to take her just to the edge of death and then take her down, let her recover just to hurt her more.
I was part of a team that included First Sergeant Conrad Hauser, Staff Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett, and Specialist Ironknife as well as two of our unit's medics, Medical Specialist Edwin Steen and Thomas Larivee. We found Corporal Arlington first—we stepped into the boathouse and she'd been left to hang for an extended period of time by her hands with boat anchors tied to her ankles; her shoulders were terribly swollen from having been dislocated. Damien Kennedy was right there, with his pet doctor Hans Keil and Rosa Capelletti; the Naval troopers and FBI agents who escorted us took them into custody. Charlie and Lifeline stayed to help stabilize Cam, and Stretcher, Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett, First Sergeant Hauser and I went to find Shana. They got her down—I wasn't even really paying attention, as soon as her cross was on the ground I went to her head to try and keep her still and focused on us while Duke and Allie and Lifeline got her arms off the nails and got her free of the cross.
Abbie cued up the videoscreen and put up a photo. "Prosecution is admitting into evidence exhibit E, a series of photos of the facilities on Kennedy's island. This photo you see here is the subterranean torture chamber that Damien had constructed in an old lava chamber in the heart of the extinct volcano that forms the island." She paused. "The next photo I will show you will be graphic—it was taken with one of the naval troops' cell phones as Master Sergeant Snake Eyes, Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and First Sergeant Hauser were attempting to get Master Sergeant O'Hara off the cross. This was taken as the cross was laid on the floor." Having issued that warning, she cued the next photo on the computer.
One of the jurors gasped in horror and covered her mouth; the male juror sitting beside her put a hand on her shoulder and patted it awkwardly. Snake Eyes didn't look at the screen; instead, he stared hard at Damien Kennedy, who simply shifted in his chair, looking calm and unruffled.
Snake Eyes's fingers flashed. To everyone who knew him, the fast, jerky movement of his fingers signified his anger. Her recovery has been…hard. Hard on her, hard on those of us who love her and care about her. When I was recovering from the helicopter accident, she was by my side every step of the way. She sympathized when I needed sympathy, she held me when I needed a human touch, and gave me a kick in the butt when I started to feel too sorry for myself. Her recovery…between the massive amounts of drugs and physical trauma, she was in so much shock that she didn't talk for a few days. She wasn't consciously aware of what was going on around her. She just lay and reacted. She finally regained conscious thought, conscious movement, but she then became aware of what she looked like, bruises, welts, scabbed cuts, scars…and she didn't want anyone near her anymore. Anyone. Including me. Her pushing me away was the hardest…I wanted so much to just hold her and make it all go away and I just couldn't.
She recovered, but she still has a way to go. And I will be with her every step of the way, beside her for the rest of her life, and to even think that she would consider trying to entrap Kennedy into marrying her, after the horrible, inhuman things he did to her…He looked directly at Damien, and there was something cold and hard and implacable in his eyes. I will kill her myself to keep you from touching her again. It would be far kinder than anything you are capable of doing.
Abbie said quietly, "No further questions."
And to everyone's surprise, the defense lawyer rose from his chair and said, "We have no questions for this witness."
The judge nodded to Snake Eyes. "Please step down, Master Sergeant. Thank you for your testimony and thank you for your service to our country." Snake Eyes simply nodded, stepping down from the witness box and marching, with a measured tread, across the floor to exit the room. He never looked at Damien again.
Abbie rose, her voice steady as she said, "Prosecution calls Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett to the witness stand."
Allie was duly sworn in and she sat quietly, collecting her thoughts, trying to figure out what to say. Finally, she looked up helplessly. "I don't know what to say, where to begin. This whole winter and spring have been a nightmare. Starting from the moment we at base found out that Shana had gone missing, when we learned about the accident that swept her away from the rest of the unit in the Congo—it's been a nightmare since then. Shana O'Hara is one of my best friends—we were the only two women in our unit for a long time, and I'll admit that while she wasn't the type I usually called friends, well, when you're around that many guys it becomes an 'us against them' situation." A hint of a smile. "But when I first met Corporal Arlington when General Abernathy brought her back from a training class in which prejudice against her race made her a target for abuse and mistreatment during one of the most difficult parts of a soldier's training, I liked her immediately. She's a complex person, a study in contradictions; a small, delicate looking young woman who has an incredible talent for dancing and yet chose to become a soldier; someone to whom so much has happened, someone to whom life has been massively unfair, and yet she keeps getting up, keeps finding the strength inside her to do the things that few people would think of.
"At fifteen her Aunt and Uncle took her to a vacation cabin in western New York and forced her to become a child sex slave to a huge ring of pedophiles who paid exorbitant sums of money to hurt, abuse, torture and rape her. Somehow she survived all of that to become an intensely empathetic, extraordinarily giving girl, giving everything she had to her life and the people around her. She is unfailingly fair to the people around her, even when they aren't fair to her. This trait has quickly made her one of the most-liked people on base, and that was one of the things that cemented her friendship with Shana. They both share a love of swordsmanship. Before she came I'd pick up a sword and spar with Shana, but she knew my heart wasn't in it. When she met Cam it was like two kindred spirits meeting—they are alike in so many ways, although outwardly they are very, very different. And then Shana went missing.
"We all discussed various plans for getting her back, but nothing seemed plausible. Until Cam came up with the unthinkable—she would go deepcover, find Shana and we would get them both out with an implanted GPS chip. None of us could believe what we were hearing—out of every person on base, she would have been the last one we'd have thought would come up with a plan like this. We'd all been aware that she was struggling with PTSD due to her earlier experiences as her Aunt and Uncle's cash cow, and she was proposing things that we weren't sure we could even do…" Allie closed her eyes, remembering an afternoon in the Girls Only workout room and Cam crying out that she seemed to be the only one willing to do what it took to bring Shana back.
"The slave market…I can't begin to describe what that was like. Human beings, men, women, and worst of all, the children, packed into pens, haggled over like…like goods in a store. The slave dealer wanted a sample…" her voice broke. "He handed us ten thousand dollars and we had to walk away, leave her lying on the floor crying with the pain. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do…"
She went on to tell a silent courtroom how she and Duke had felt having to leave Cam there; about the two weeks of waiting, about the trip to Fiji with the drone, about their anguish and rage and pain as they saw Rosa dislocate Cam's shoulders, about Kennedy placidly watching. She described the rescue from her point of view, the anguish as they saw Cam hanging there with dislocated shoulders; about their numb shock when they saw Shana brutally crucified. The pain they all felt watching both women try to struggle back; how Cam had been in so much agony that her husband hadn't even been able to sleep in the same bed with her. How she was so weak she hadn't been able to get out of bed and Charlie had had to carry her to and from the bathroom.
The defense had no questions for her either, but they did have questions for Duke, who sat and ground out the words of his testimony through gritted teeth, staring at Kennedy in open hatred. "Yes, I went to the function with Shana. We were friends at the time, nowhere near the kind of friends Shana and Snake Eyes are, but friends. She hated going to these Atlanta society events, she only went because her mother wanted to parade her in front of all the eligible bachelors in Atlanta, and seriously I didn't realize I had met…Mr. Kennedy…until I saw the picture. Most of that function was spent fending off the pointed advances of Shana's sister, Siobhan—Shana and her sister don't quite see eye-to-eye on certain things, and Siobhan told me once she couldn't see why Shana wasn't in love with me; she was. She spent the entire night trying to seduce me, and I swore to Shana afterward I would never ever attend another party in which her sister was included."
His disgusted face actually caused a smothered chuckle from one of the jurors in the back. "But Shana was never serious. Marriage was the last thing on her mind, falling in love was the last thing on her mind. She was, to me, like a butterfly, flying along with a mind of her own and determined not to let anyone or anything chain her down. When we parted ways at Fort Benning, I had no idea that I'd meet her again years later in New York…and I never once expected that she was going to fall head over heels for Snake Eyes. This theory that Shana's doing this to entrap Kennedy into a marriage is just a story—and a ridiculous story at that. There has been no one but Snake Eyes for her since she met him, and no one but her for Snake Eyes, ever. As much as I regret letting Shana go, he makes her so happy that I can't do anything but let her go—I never once saw her look at me the way she looks at him. And…I'm okay with that. If he didn't worship the ground she walks on I'd be trying to steal her away from him…but they adore each other and anything I tried would just get her mad at me." He smiled crookedly, ruefully. "Trust me, no sane male would want Shana O'Hara mad at him. We've all seen her chop carrots."
Several jurors laughed outright at this; all women. The men just looked pained and shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. The defense seemed wholly incapable of cross-examining Duke; the same testimony coming from all of them—that Shana and Snake Eyes were committed to each other and trapping Kennedy into marrying her was the last thing Shana would ever do—had taken all the wind out of the defense's sails.
The judge called a halt after Duke's testimony; it was getting towards late afternoon and everyone felt exhausted; they had all been on a rollercoaster of emotions that day. "We'll pick up tomorrow. Court is dismissed for the day."
Snake Eyes was as relieved as anyone as they headed for the Hummer outside, again with the honor guard of Joes. Their presence seemed to intimidate the firestorm of media, and in the melee Snake Eyes felt a hand on his arm. Alex. "Come on. Shana can go back to base with the others, she'll be fine, but I wanted to get you alone. I brought my car, hurry up and get in."
Mystified but willing to trust her for now, he got in Alex's Mustang.