But this was different. The U.S. media were chipping away at their very reason for existing, suggesting they were ruthless killers, devoid of any sense of decency or justice. They watched the television; they could read the newspapers on their computers. They knew what was being said.
This new sense of bitter unfairness pervaded their actions. No one wanted to go out on missions where they could come under heavy fire yet, somehow, be reluctant to shoot back.
For two days, Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford was ensconced with the senior officers of the garrison. There had still been no official complaint from the Iraqis, which suggested the missiles had been fired from an illegal insurgent unit. As for Commander Bedford’s actions, he admitted he had opened fire on the Arabs on the bridge and that he did not know if any of his men had also retaliated. He did not know how many had died, and, quite frankly, he did not care.
In the opinion of the senior command at Camp Hitmen, the real atrocity of the conflict had been the firing of an almost certainly illegal missile that had killed twenty U.S. military personnel in unprovoked attacks.
There was great disquiet in the garrison. And enormous sympathy for Mack Bedford. Behind it all, though, was the unspoken fear that the veteran SEAL commander had simply gone berserk after witnessing the shocking death of his closest friends, Frank Brooks and Charlie O’Brien. Both burned alive.
There was not one single resident of Camp Hitmen, serving officer or other rank, who would ever be persuaded to utter one word against the lieutenant commander. In fact, there was genuine worry among senior staff that men would lie, say anything, in defense of the commander.
Lies have never been tolerated in the navy. Instructors at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, will tolerate all manner of transgressions, except for lying. For that, a midshipman will be thrown out. Not might be, will be. Young men being prepared to take command of very expensive warships cannot veer from the truth. Ever. Every man on the ship is dependent on the straightforwardness of the captain and his commanders.
The navy’s SEALs, the combat elite, though normally far removed from life at sea, were nonetheless bound by the same dark-blue code of conduct. And here was an entire garrison of men preparing to close ranks in support of a hugely admired officer, who had essentially carried out what all of them would have wished but didn’t dare. Even Lt. Barry Mason.
There is a natural inclination in circumstances such as these just to shut up and say nothing. And it has doubtless been achieved many times when personnel were under constant attack. But this scenario had the added complication of a hysterical media, demanding justice, demanding punishment for the guilty, demanding the USA does not operate under the same lawless regimes as the terrorists. Which is all very well, unless you happen to have been Charlie O’Brien, Frank Brooks, or Billy-Ray Jackson. Or their many highly regarded, trusted friends.
As Admiral Bradfield had so succinctly put it—Hmmmmm. Very tricky.
In the end, the opinion that would count was that of the navy’s serving judge advocate general, the JAG, so often a reasonable and charming naval officer, but the one man whose shadow looms large over every single Special Forces operation.
A Navy SEAL, armed to the teeth, trained to the minute, with strength closer to that of a mountain lion than a regular human being, is a very dangerous character. Each one of them is conditioned mentally and physically to destroy his enemy. Which can be very awkward when he doesn’t know who the hell his enemy is.
In theaters of operation like Iraq and Afghanistan, the insurgent wears no uniform, may or may not be armed, may or may not be a spy, or a lookout, for a lurking al-Qaeda hit squad, may or may not be concealing a deadly cargo of explosive somewhere in his local streets. The Navy SEAL has a lot of thinking to do, which is why the vast majority of them have college degrees.
But SEALs are often placed behind enemy lines. Behind the lines of an unseen enemy. Way, way behind the lines of that unseen enemy. Which is where the game is likely to change—among young American servicemen who are far from home, far from help, and will not admit they are scared. These are guys who are operating under terrific tension, and who might blow some tribesman’s head off merely because of the massive twin pressures of fear and past experience. For such young men, the shadow of the JAG looms extralarge.
He is there to carry out the most impossible task—to decide the truth, to weigh the circumstances, to try to place himself in the SEAL’s combat boots for a while. And then to try to get al-Jazeera, the U.S. media, and all the appalling fabrications of the Islamist militants off the back of the Pentagon. The JAG, for a thousand reasons, must always be seen by all parties to be scrupulously fair on behalf of the U.S. military.
The JAG currently on duty in Camp Hitmen had his back to the wall. His current inquiry involved a very special man, Mackenzie Bedford, Honor Man in his BUDs Class, a decorated SEAL commander, beloved by almost every man who had ever served under his command. And worse yet, a man currently trying to cope with the most awful personal problem involving his only son, Tommy.
The JAG, Cdr. Greg Farrell, was not loving it. Not one bit. He had known Mack Bedford for many years. No matter how hard he struggled, though, he could never take away the atmosphere of prosecutor and prosecuted in their interviews together.
Even more unsettling was the reaction he was receiving from the other SEALs who had witnessed the murder of their colleagues. He could see it in their eyes: You bastard—you’re trying to court-martial our commander, and just for openers, don’t look for any help from me.
Greg Farrell understood the ramifications. He had worked in the navy’s legal department for several years. He had graduated from law school, passed the bar, and gone into private practice with a big Boston firm. But after a very messy divorce at a very young age, he had effectively elected to run away to sea, and joined the navy.
He blasted his way into officer training school almost immediately after he completed boot camp. He was a highly intelligent student and passed all tests the first time he took them. But at heart he was still a lawyer, a man who strove to see both sides of the equation. He always imagined first what he would plead if he were defending, and then what he would allege if he were prosecuting. Like many lawyers, this iron-clad training left him somewhat light on common sense.
In this particular case he understood one thing clearly: in terms of a popularity contest, he would earn the gratitude of the entire camp if he decided that the SEAL commander on the Euphrates Bridge that day had no case to answer.
However, on the other hand—the words that are engraved on every lawyer’s heart—the political climate was immensely problematic. There were new Middle Eastern peace talks coming up. Pakistan, which, up on the Northwest Frontier, had become the cradle of rabid Islamic fervor, was trying to enter a nuclear nonproliferation pact with India and China.
And right here, in his, Greg Farrell’s, backyard, there were a dozen dead Iraqi tribesmen, the supporters of whom were prepared to swear to Allah they had meant no harm to anyone and had never owned a firearm between them. Even the new Iraqi president had begun to refer to the incident on the bridge as the Massacre.
The JAG was nonplussed. The legal issue was in danger of being shunted aside between the two warring factions, the men on the ground and the powers that be. It was nothing short of a no-win situation, hereinafter to be known as “a sonofabitch.”
Commander Farrell decided that whatever the case against the SEAL commander was, it could not be shelved. The profile was too high; there was too much at stake. The Pentagon was insisting the case be put to rest, in a way that presented the United States in the best possible light. And that could not be done by sweeping it under the carpet.
Everyone involved in the Foxtrot Platoon disaster was leaving for San Diego in three weeks. And at 0800 hours, on a clear desert morning, Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford was formally told the case would be going to the U.S. Navy Board of Inquiry at SPECWARCOM. The recommendation was that he be court-
martialed on charges of reckless conduct in the face of the enemy and, very possibly, with the murder of twelve Iraqi tribesmen.
CHAPTER 2
The vast military Boeing C-17 came in low over the seaward suburbs of the city of San Diego. Still at only five hundred feet, it came screaming across the bay and touched down on the southwest runway of the U.S. Naval Air Station, North Island, Coronado, world headquarters of the SEALs. The aircraft, bringing home from Iraq the men of SEAL Team 10, finally taxied to its turning point out near Zuniga. And from there the SEALs could see the sprawling military cemetery high on Point Loma, a couple of miles across the water. Frank Brooks and Charlie O’Brien both had memorial gravestones there.
It was not much of a homecoming. The shadow of Mack Bedford’s probable court-martial hung over the entire team. Where normally there was laughter and joking around among men who have returned safely after a deployment in some Middle Eastern hellhole, this evening there was a grimness that pervaded the entire base.
Every man in the compound knew there were outside forces, political overtones, present in Lieutenant Commander Bedford’s case. The SEALs, by the very nature of their calling, were an insular group, men apart, and the intrusion of outsiders into their hard-edged world would always raise hackles.
The highly detailed report from the judge advocate general in Iraq had made the task of the Coronado Board of Inquiry relatively simple because the facts were not in dispute. The Iraqis had crossed the bridge with their arms held high, but that did not mean they were unarmed. It only meant they appeared to be unarmed, which is different. Shrewd observers of the Iraqi theater might conclude that such a surrender is an old trick, designed purely to prevent the U.S. troops from retaliating and killing them all. Against this, there were more than a dozen SEALs who had been present in the disaster zone, and who all gave the same reply to the question, “Were the Iraqis armed or unarmed?”
“No idea, sir. They might have been. They might not.”
Members of the Inquiry Board wished to speak to the men again before reaching a decision. And for that, they obviously had to wait for Foxtrot Platoon to land in San Diego. There would now be a three-day delay while they completed their work. Three days of hell for Lieutenant Commander Bedford, while his fate hung in the balance. He was a lifelong naval officer perhaps on the verge of being shown the door.
In the end, pressured by the Pentagon, which was in turn being pressured by the White House, the board decided there was a case to answer. They referred the matter to SPECWARCOM’s force judge advocate general, Capt. Paul Birmingham, who studied it and passed it on to the navy’s Trial Service Office.
From there, the wheels of military justice turned slowly. The burning question was, were the twelve Iraqis ruthlessly shot down in cold blood when they had plainly surrendered and were plainly unarmed? Some thought, probably; others thought, who the hell knows? But the SEALs, to a man, believed Lieutenant Commander Bedford had been amply justified in gunning them down, because no one could possibly have known what the crazy fuckers might have done next, having already murdered twenty of their buddies with a goddamned illegal missile.
Three days later the Trial Office made its final decision. Lieutenant Commander Bedford would be court-martialed for the murder of twelve Iraqi tribesmen, reckless conduct in the face of the enemy, and numerous offenses against the Geneva Conventions. These latter charges were not yet finalized but would involve Article 13, concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and the issues surrounding troops pretending to surrender.
As far as the SEALs were concerned, this was outrageous “grand-standing” for political purposes only, because the USA wishes to be seen by the world as fair to everyone at all times. Politicians and members of the administration were aware of this, and several prominent advisers to the president were warning against upsetting too badly the Special Forces of the United States.
The truth was that no one knew what, in the name of God, was the safest course of action. The only definite issue was that the USA could not be seen to turn its back on the problem. And with twelve Iraqi tribesmen shot dead on the bridge outside their home village (possibly) by a top SEAL commander, there was a very obvious problem.
The U.S. Navy Trial Office named the military lawyers who would take the lead in the case. Cdr. Harrison Parr, a forty-eight-year-old former frigate executive officer from Maryland, had given up the chance of full command ten years ago in order to concentrate on completing his law studies. He would handle the case for the prosecution, which was seriously moderate news for Mack Bedford.
Harrison Parr had already been offered partnerships in three San Diego law firms if he would retire from the navy. But little Harrison, who stood only five-foot-six and was built like a jockey, was passionate about the U.S. Navy and its role in the world. Nothing would coax him out of dark blue and into a pinstriped civilian suit. Harrison had no taste for legal tricks and the shenanigans of a civilian courtroom. He believed in the truth—the plain, unvarnished truth. And he had earned a towering reputation for locating that truth. He also believed the Iraqi tribesmen were not armed and that Mack Bedford had essentially gone berserk. The issue was, for him, did his masters want the big navy SEAL found guilty of murder or not?
Harrison would do his utmost to prosecute successfully, but he was also an astute politician, and he would rely on his officer’s antennae to alert him to the wishes of his superiors. If they wanted “guilty,” he was confident he could deliver. If, however, they tipped him the wink that this must look harsh, and resonant, but the lieutenant commander must, in the end, walk free, he’d make quite certain that happened. Harrison was a loyal servant of his commander in chief, the president of the United States. An idealistic zealot, he was not.
Against him, the Trial Office appointed Cdr. Al Surprenant to defend Mack Bedford. Al, at the age of fifty, was much more of a zealot, and he had a quiver full of absolute core beliefs, the principal one of which was an unshakable confidence in the U.S. Navy’s officer class. Al Surprenant did not believe that any U.S. combat troops should ever be hauled before a court-martial and accused of mistreating the enemy. As far as Al was concerned, the enemy was the enemy, and the first moment any of them raised a hand against the United States, then that enemy had no rights whatsoever. This did not apply to a formal war where one sovereign nation was in combat against another, with correct uniforms, codes of conduct, and observations of the Geneva Conventions. But it most certainly did apply to terrorist operations, insurgents, jihadists, al-Qaeda, Taliban, or any other armed group who opened fire, in any form whatsoever, on the armed forces of the USA.
Commander Surprenant had stringent views on all U.S. Special Forces operating “behind enemy lines,” where he believed they had every right to do anything necessary to protect themselves and their mission. Al’s creed was simplified: If they are not permitted to hit back at the enemy any way they see fit, then they ought not to have been sent there. He considered the unwritten law of natural justice quite sufficient to protect U.S. servicemen, but if it wasn’t, then he, Commander Surprenant, would give that universal “law” all the teeth and legal correctness it required.
Mack Bedford could scarcely have been in safer hands. Counsel for the defense would carry the courtroom fight to the prosecution and demand to know under which rule the Navy SEALs were suddenly forbidden to smash back at the men who had just murdered twenty of their teammates.
Surprenant was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His wealthy father had sent him to Choate School, and then to Harvard Law School, but the young Al did not relish the mountainous paperwork, written judicial opinions, and overall bureaucracy of a big law firm. So one day, despite his excellent law degree and ensured future, he just left and joined the United States Navy. He swiftly earned his commission, and rose rapidly to the rank of lieutenant commander and found himself serving as missile director on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf War. The following year he became a navy lawyer on the base in Norfolk, Virgin
ia, and then moved out to San Diego after he married a Hollywood actress.
Everyone on the SPECWARCOM base understood that senior command was not anxious to destroy Mack Bedford, and the appointment of Commander Surprenant was a probable sign that he was not going down for murder. Nonetheless, opinion persisted among the men that political forces were making the accused SEAL commander a sacrificial lamb on the altar of appeasement in the Middle East.
The court-martial would be heard in the courtroom of the Navy Trial Service in the middle of the San Diego base, far from the inquisitive eyes of the media, which had not, as yet, cottoned on to the judicial proceedings surrounding the incident on the bridge.
The Trial Service appointed a five-man panel to sit in judgment on Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford. As usual, they assigned one young lieutenant and three lieutenant commanders whose experience covered a wide range of naval activities both in war and in peace.
The court-martial’s president, Capt. Cale “Boomer” Dunning, former commanding officer of a nuclear submarine, was only a few months short of promotion to rear admiral. This was another sign of sympathy toward Mack Bedford. Captain Dunning was a hard-eyed combat veteran destined for extremely high rank. In the opinion of the SEALs, his natural allegiance and loyalty would rest with the accused officer. He was also a known friend of Cdr. Al Surprenant, both of them having family homes back east on Cape Cod. On the face of it, the trial was somewhat stacked against the prosecution assembled by Harrison Parr, because the issue was political, and no one knew which way it would swing.
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