Thriller: Code Name: Camelot - An Action Thriller Novel (A Noah Wolf Novel, Thriller, Action, Mystery Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m going to leave this up to you. You tell me what to do, right now, and I’ll do it. Do I keep trying, or do I just go through the motions and let them convict you?”
    Noah sat forward and put his right hand over her left. “Your CO is right,” he said. “If you keep trying to help me, this whole thing is going to blow up in your face and ruin your life, just the way it’s ruining mine. There’s no point in both of us going down. Give me whatever it is I need to file in order to fire you, so we can get you out of this mess.”
    Mathers sat in her chair, staring at the young man who was looking her straight in the eye as he gave her permission to send him to his death. She already knew enough about his condition to realize that he was simply making what he considered the logical choice, but that didn’t assuage her conscience in the least. Without her help, he was going to be convicted, sentenced to death and executed, and probably within a very short time.
    She had done a little research on death row at the US Disciplinary Barracks, and found out that there were several people awaiting execution there. Most of them had been waiting for years, but with the appeals process and changes in the White House, there were various reasons why they had not yet had their sentences carried out. Mathers didn’t think Foster would get to hang out with them for very long. Her gut hunch said that his execution would happen within months of sentencing, with all of his appeals exhausted as quickly as possible.
    “And what if I can’t do that?” Mathers asked. “What if my conscience just won’t let me walk away? Sergeant Foster, the biggest problem I’m facing right now is the fact that I believe you. Yeah, yeah, I know there’s no evidence to back you up, but when I sat here and listened to you the other day, all I heard was a man who was calmly recounting exactly what happened. You weren’t telling me some elaborate story, you didn’t try to come up with excuses for why no one corroborates your claim, you didn’t try to protest that you are being mistreated—hell, Sergeant, all you did was answer my questions. A man who’s truly guilty, a man who’s trying to put one over on the system, he’ll come up with all sorts of things to say to try to throw us off. He’ll tell me how the men who are willing to testify against him are upset because he refused to participate in some ritual, or that their ringleader is gay and he refused an advance from him. You didn’t give me any BS—you just told me what happened, without any embellishments. In my experience, and in my professional opinion, that is something that only a man telling the truth would do.”
    Noah smiled. “Lieutenant Mathers,” he said, “what on earth do you think truth has to do with it? This case isn’t about who’s telling the truth, or there would’ve been a real investigation of my report. Since we know there wasn’t one, then all this case really is about is pinning the blame for the congressman’s son’s death on somebody as quickly as possible. Now, I’ve admitted that I shot him, and they got all the other guys making statements saying that I did it just because I’m nuts, and calling me a liar about what really happened. People who just want to put something away as fast as possible don’t want to take the time to examine the facts. It’s easier just to point their fingers and say I did it, and here’s what they’re going to do to punish me, put the whole thing to bed in a hurry. That’s all they want to do.”
    “That doesn’t make them right,” Mathers said. “You want my opinion, it makes them monsters. I went to law school because I believe in the law; I joined the Army because I wanted to make a difference in military law. Now I’m just supposed to walk away and watch you go into the lethal injection chambers? How am I supposed to live with myself, after that? You answer that for me.”
    Noah pulled his hand back.