I have no doubts that what Royce is admitting to doing right now is the cold, harsh truth.
And, by the disgusted look on his face, he didn’t enjoy a second of it either.
“Jesus,” Ned mutters. “What finally broke him?”
Royce hesitates, swallows. “The two guys I was working with went out and found the man’s fourteen-year-old daughter and took turns raping her in front of him. That’s what broke him,” he says quietly.
Ned is silent.
“These two other former Marines that I was stationed there with, they were something else. I don’t know where Alliance found them, but they should never have been hired. One of them, this guy Mario, he was seriously fucked in the head. He’d always be the first one in line to interrogate, to start smacking someone around. He loved to take on guard duties and go into the city. I think it was just so he could hold his gun to people’s heads and make them piss their pants.”
“Sounds like a real asshole,” Ned murmurs.
“He’s sadistic.”
“Sounds like it.” I can hear a distinct shift in Ned’s voice, from indifference to at least mild concern.
Royce’s jaw clenches. “That girl they raped? She wasn’t the only one. One night I caught him and Ricky in an interrogation room with a fifteen-year-old girl who’d been brought in on suspicion of aiding in a terrorist plot. She died the next day. Found out later that she was completely innocent.”
I hit Pause on the VCR as my stomach sinks. Bentley said that everything Royce was claiming was pure lies. But I’ve met Mario, and my ten-second gut read is that he’s a nutcase, and someone I don’t trust. He went against Bentley’s orders just by approaching me, and he seems hell-bent on not being tied to any crime, either overseas or here. Plus, he basically admitted to what’s on the tape as being true. And if that’s the case . . .
Bentley didn’t create Alliance to rape innocent young women. That isn’t for the greater good.
Taking a deep breath, I let the tape keep playing.
“He get into trouble?” Ned asks.
Royce smiles, and it’s not at all pleasant. “Who’s gonna give him trouble?”
“You said this was a private company, right? Ain’t the owner worried about employees doin’ that kind of stuff?” Ned has obviously been listening—and understanding—far more than he’s let on.
“John Bentley doesn’t give a fuck what happens over there as long as the contracts keep coming in. That’s why I got paid off and told to keep quiet.”
My stomach clenches. That’s got to be the bullshit Bentley was talking about. I know Bentley well enough to know that he would care about rape.
“Don’t nobody say nothin’?”
“This is war. It’s so easy to cover that kind of shit up, and all the other shit. And people there are scared. Say the wrong thing and you may find yourself with a bullet in your head. Enemy fire, of course.”
“But you’re back home now.”
Royce pauses. “Nobody in America wants to hear about how a Medal of Honor recipient stood by and watched women get raped.”
Ivy’s uncle works away and listens, dropping a question here and there, as Royce spells out countless other horrific things he saw while working for Alliance, all the times that basic human rights were clearly violated by Mario and Ricky and other employees—not to protect American lives or interests, but for pure, sadistic enjoyment.
But what about Royce? Did he partake? Is he saying he was always just an innocent bystander?
Their conversation eventually shifts to menial things, and then nothing at all, and after four hours in the chair, Royce is passing over a wad of cash. “I’ll wanna come in next week to finish this piece up here,” he says, tapping the top of his shoulder. “Same time, same day?”