“He was air force. The other wounded were all army. And Powers wasn’t just air force. He was a pilot. A jet pilot. And all field officers in both the North Korean and Chinese armies were under orders not to harm captured American pilots. Pilots were considered the highest-value American prisoners by the Chinese, because it was their MiGs we were fighting in the skies over Korea. Even the Korean civilians had been ordered not to hurt our pilots if they parachuted down or crash-landed. Pilots were passed back up the chain until they were taken into China for questioning. My point is, a lot of them survived. So, while Powers surviving to live fifty-five more years to come here and testify might make it seem like Tom and I acted hastily that night, the fact is, those army boys were as good as dead the minute we went off that road. In that ambulance, only Major Powers had a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

While Shad tries to find a way to gracefully get Walt off the stand, the old Ranger says, “World War Two was the same. Hermann Goering had been a pilot in World War One, so he set up special camps for airmen in the next war. In some wars, being a pilot is kind of like being in an international gentlemen’s club. Not that some didn’t suffer—they did. But that’s not like having your eyes gouged out with a sharpened spoon, or having your balls cut off before they bayonet you through the mouth.”

Shad stares at Walt like a man watching an unpredictable dog.

“You know who really killed those boys in that ambulance?” Walt asks pugnaciously.

“Who?”

“Douglas MacArthur. The Chinese had said they would enter the war if we marched too far north, but MacArthur didn’t believe ’em. We’d been seeing troops wearing quilted coats and tennis shoes for three weeks, and finding perfectly square foxholes—which is textbook Chinese discipline—but our brilliant leader ignored the intelligence. He sat over in the Dai Ichi building in Tokyo, wearing his kimono, and sent thousands of boys to their deaths. That bastard should have been court-martialed the week after the Bugout. I don’t know why it took so long for Truman to fire him. If he was here now, I’d spit on him.”

“On Douglas MacArthur? An American hero and legend?”

“You’re damn right. Men have to die in war, but those poor boys died for MacArthur’s arrogance. For no other reason.”

“I suspect you’re oversimplifying matters, Mr. Garrity.”

“No, that’s what you’re doing. Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty, ain’t it, Mr. DA?”

“Whether it is or not, Major Powers’s vision was twenty-twenty when he watched Tom Cage kill three soldiers by lethal injection in 1950. You saw the same thing, correct?”

“I did.”