American War(116)

COL. SINGER: That’s right. It was two days to the Reunification Ceremony. The entire Southern border was on lockdown.

SEN. AIKENS: So the two soldiers at the Rossville checkpoint would have known ahead of time that this bus was to be allowed through?

COL. SINGER: They would have known it was an authorized vehicle, but we would never tell our soldiers to simply let a vehicle through. They would have known they would be expected to inspect the vehicle and check the paperwork of every passenger. Same as they would with anyone trying to come north from the Red.

SEN. AIKENS: So if we can go ahead and skip to the point where the passengers disembark…yes, thank you. Now at this point, one of the two young men—Private Martin Baker, I believe—is still inside the guard building. So what we have here is his brother, Bud Baker Jr., essentially ordering the passengers to line up for individual inspection. Is that correct, Colonel?

COL. SINGER: Yes ma’am. Again, standard procedure.

SEN. AIKENS: Now I see that, with the first two patients in line, Private Bud Jr. is perhaps a bit curt, but those interactions take just a minute or two. When he sees the third patient, however, I think it’s fairly evident that his demeanor changes, wouldn’t you say?

COL. SINGER: I suppose.

SEN. AIKENS: Any idea why?

COL. SINGER: Could be the size of the individual. You can see she appears to be a fairly intimidating woman, from a physical standpoint. Could be because she appears to be much younger than the first two people in line. Could be she reminded him of someone, or he thought he’d seen her before. Could be he just got a bad vibe from her—an instinctual thing.

SEN. AIKENS: So the young man who wheels her forward, he hands the travel permits to the Private for inspection. And now—if we can just pause it here—Colonel, can you tell me what the Private is saying here?

COL. SINGER: He’s asking her what her illness is.

SEN. AIKENS: He didn’t do that with the first two patients.

COL. SINGER: No ma’am.

SEN. AIKENS: And her reply?

COL. SINGER: The way she’s facing, the overhead doesn’t catch her face.

SEN. AIKENS: But is it a fair assessment, Colonel, to say that the Private doesn’t believe her?

COL. SINGER: I couldn’t tell you. Obviously he doesn’t just let her pass.

SEN. AIKENS: That’s right. He orders her to stand up.

COL. SINGER: That’s what the lip readers tell me.

SEN. AIKENS: And when the young man pushing her wheelchair interjects, the Private doesn’t hesitate to raise his rifle at him and order him to his knees.

COL. SINGER: Senator, you’re talking about two boys who were bound and blindfolded and made to sit there while a Red insurrectionist—one who was never captured—tortured and killed their father. You’re talking about two boys who lied about their age on the recruitment form so they could get out to the front, two boys who’d only been stationed at that crossing a few weeks. Obviously this isn’t the way we train our border guards to perform inspections. Maybe he was having a bad day. Unfortunately we’ll never know, given that, by the end of the week, everyone you see on that screen was dead.

SEN. AIKENS: That’s not what confuses me, Colonel. If we could move ahead…so he turns back to this woman in the wheelchair, and it’s safe to say he orders her to stand up once more. And when she doesn’t, he kicks her chair over, sending her to the ground near where that young man is kneeling. Now he’s got the rifle pointed at the two of them, and I would expect at this point that, at the very least, he’s going to detain these two, if not the other ten patients as well. You stop the video right here and ask me what’s going to happen next, and I would bet my bottom dollar that nobody’s going to cross the border that day.

COL. SINGER: I suppose.

SEN. AIKENS: But then the other soldier, Private Martin Baker, comes out from the guard building. And he immediately lowers his brother’s rifle, tries to defuse the situation, correct?

COL. SINGER: It appears so.

SEN. AIKENS: And then he looks at the medical permit—the same one his brother just inspected—and he looks at the young woman on the ground and the young man on his knees beside her. But he doesn’t detain them, he doesn’t interrogate them. He…well, I would go so far as to say he takes pity on them. He tells his brother to let them through. To let the whole convoy through.

COL. SINGER: Yes ma’am.

SEN. AIKENS: In fact, if my briefing notes are correct, I believe nobody else in line even had their paperwork checked after that. The guards simply ordered them back on the bus and let the bus through. If indeed the person responsible for the Reunification Plague was anywhere further back in line, he or she wouldn’t have even gotten a once-over, is that correct?

COL. SINGER: Yes ma’am.

SEN. AIKENS: And that’s what confounds me, Colonel. Here you have these two young soldiers. Both of them having suffered the horrific experience of witnessing their father killed by insurrectionists. Both of them, as you put it, “wired for kinetics.” And yet one seems ready to shoot two of the patients and the other helps them back to their feet and waves everyone through. Don’t you find that at least a little perplexing?

COL. SINGER: I’m not sure, ma’am.

SEN. AIKENS: I mean, I read the military records that survive, Colonel, and both these boys, in just a few weeks on the job, had been reprimanded numerous times for mistreating Southerners at that crossing, and this was at a time when hardly anybody was crossing at all. Obviously they joined the military because they were hell-bent on revenge against the people they held responsible for the killing of their father. And yet on this day, of all days, Private Martin Baker decides to show compassion. If indeed your hunch is correct, and in watching this video we are in fact watching whoever unleashed that terrible illness on our country, can you imagine how many millions of lives would have been saved if he hadn’t?