The Brave

by Nicholas Evans

  "Am I invisible or what? The little prick didn't ask me a goddamn thing. Tell me, Diane, how has stardom affected you? Do you have a message for all your fans back home in England? Well, fuck him."

  Diane, with Molly's exhortation to work at it echoing in her head, would take a deep breath and kiss and console him. If the press sometimes seemed a little more interested in her than in him, she said sweetly, it was only because she was new. He was already a star. Everybody—the whole world, for heaven's sake—knew about Ray Montane.

  On the last Sunday in October Cal Matthieson phoned to say goodbye. He was about to leave for Montana for the final time. Diane drove Tommy up to the ranch and, as soon as she saw the place, wished she hadn't. The bulldozers had torn everything apart. All but a few of the trees had gone. The foundations for hundreds of homes were already laid, the hillside carved into a dirt geometry of streets and sewer ditches. Cal's house stood condemned in an ocean of dried mud, its contents already loaded into the truck that stood by the front porch.

  There wasn't much to be said and Tommy said nothing. His eyes kept wandering away to where the corrals had once stood and where now the last of the rails lay charred and smoldering on a bonfire. The smoke drifted away across the hillside like the aftermath of some lost and pointless war.

  Cal handed her a piece of paper on which he'd written his address in Montana and the phone number. He told her to call if there was ever anything she needed and made them promise they'd come visit. They were welcome to stay any time, he said, for as long as they liked.

  "You know, Tom, that little pony of yours is already getting grouchy on me. You'd better come ride him soon or he'll be heading down here to find you."

  Tommy smiled bravely, then looked away. Cal looked at Diane.

  "How're things?"

  "Good," she said brightly. "Better."

  She could tell he didn't believe her.

  "I hear the movie turned out real good."

  "So they say. We haven't seen it yet."

  There was a long silence. She wanted to throw her arms around him, hold him, tell him what she felt for him, that she couldn't bear the idea of his going. But of course it wasn't possible. Tommy was biting his lip.

  "I think we'd better go now," she said quietly. "Are you leaving today?"

  "Yep. Just a couple of things to clear up and I'll be heading off."

  "Well." She swallowed. "Go safely."

  "You too."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  THEY WALKED to the courthouse in the order Brian McKnight had stipulated. Danny's two uniformed military attorneys led the way, with Danny and Kelly, now eight months pregnant, arm in arm behind them. Following closely, dapper in their dark business suits, came McKnight and his assistant attorney, Kevin Nielsen. Then Dutch and Gina, also arm in arm, with Tom bringing up the rear.

  Ahead of them the crowd of TV and press reporters was waiting for them in the sunshine. It was the second day of the hearing and Tom had imagined there wouldn't be so many but there seemed to be even more. The security seemed tighter too. Everywhere you looked, even on the rooftops, there were Marine Corps police with M16s, talking to one another on their radios. Tom wondered what they were expecting. There had been many death threats against Danny on the Internet, e-mails that promised obscene and horrific retribution, not just against him but against Kelly too and even their unborn child. Whatever the reason, Camp Pendleton, this hot and cloudless May morning, was again in a state of high alert.

  The reporters had spotted Danny and his entourage coming now. Tom saw the crowd ripple with anticipation, the microphones bristling, cameras being hoisted to the ready.

  "Okay, folks," Brian McKnight said quietly. "Don't forget, just leave the talking to me."

  He had given them all a thorough briefing the day before on how to walk the media gauntlet. They weren't to answer any questions, however friendly or provocative. They weren't to look smug or scared or sour. They should walk at a reasonable pace, neither hurried nor too leisurely, and should hold their heads high, looking calm and modest and confident.

  "The impression we want to convey is that we know this fine young soldier is innocent but at the same time we respect the legal and democratic system that has brought him here."

  They had reconvened this morning in the conference room for what they all knew would be a much rougher session. The previous day had been mostly taken up with procedural formalities. Today was when the prosecution would be rolling out its big-gun witnesses. Danny looked paler and more drawn than ever. He had the spectral stare of the sleepless. While he was going through some last-minute briefing with McKnight and the other attorneys, Gina had taken Tom aside and whispered about the twitching muscle in the boy's left cheek.

  "Do you think he knows he's doing it?"

  "I don't think so. It's okay. He'll settle down."

  "He looks terrible. Have you seen his fingernails?"

  They were bitten to the quick. Tom tried to reassure her. He said any judge worth his salt must surely know these things were only the result of nerves and no more a sign of guilt than of innocence. Gina didn't seem convinced.

  McKnight had asked that Danny be allowed to wear his alphas—the formal Marine uniform with its dark green pants and belted jacket and necktie. But, as expected, the application had been denied. The reason, he'd explained, was that with alphas you got to wear your service decorations and the last thing the government wanted was any hint that the guy they'd put in the dock might be some kind of hero. Instead, Danny was wearing the same as all the other military personnel involved—regular digital-pattern cammies.

  Tom saw the boy's shoulders stiffen. Their little procession was nearing the courthouse now and on either side of the path, reporters were leaning out over the orange barriers, shouting questions and pointing their microphones and cameras at Danny.

  "Corporal Bedford! Are you feeling confident this morning?"

  "Daniel, over here, please!"

  "Kelly, how are you? When's the baby due?"

  "Boy or girl, do you know yet?"

  "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you," McKnight called out as they forged on. "If you could just let us through here, thank you very much. I'll be happy to answer any questions after the hearing. Thanks a lot."

  At last they were inside the building and out of the heat. Two Marine MPs shut the doors and the hubbub faded to a hum. McKnight plainly enjoyed this part of the process. He was as close to smiling as Tom had yet seen. The guy had better taste than to mention it, but it was obvious he thought Kelly's condition played well with the media. He put his arm around her shoulders.

  "Okay, young lady?"

  She nodded bravely.

  "Come on, you can tell us. Boy or girl?"

  "Win for Danny and I'll tell ya."

  Two more MPs stood outside the courtroom doing security checks on all who entered. The one with the metal detector smiled when it was Kelly's turn and let her pass unchecked. The room already seemed familiar. It had cream walls and a lot of wood paneling and a low white ceiling with concealed lights. The large red office chairs were comfortable enough to fall asleep in. The government attorneys were already at their table across the aisle and the lead prosecutor, Major Richards, gave McKnight a solemn nod.

  Wendell T. Richards was a seriously decorated Gulf War hero, six and a half feet of him, with the kind of stoical, steely gaze Tom remembered from his western comic books. According to McKnight, the guy's nickname was Maximus because he was the government's top legal gladiator.

  Tom followed Kelly and Gina and Dutch through to the family's allocated seats behind the defense table, putting a hand on Danny's shoulder as he passed.

  "Good luck, son."

  "Thanks, Dad."

  There were only a few seats for the media. Most of the reporters would be watching the proceedings on closed-circuit TV in another building. Apart from them, the only others present were the judge's legal adviser, a stenographer and, for some peculiar reason, a sketc
h artist. The jury box stood empty. Danny's fate lay in the hands of one man only, the man who now entered the courtroom to take his seat on the wood-paneled podium in the front left-hand corner of the room. Investigating officer Colonel Robert Scrase was a gentle-mannered Texan with impeccable credentials both as a soldier and as a military lawyer. And though both sides had yesterday had the right to challenge his suitability to hear the case, neither had sought to exercise it.

  Richards had already called two witnesses the previous afternoon, both members of Danny's company, who had set the scene and described the conditions in which they had been operating in Iraq in the weeks leading to the night of the killings. What they'd said had given Tom a vivid picture of the routine terror that was his son's life for so many months. Apart from a few points that McKnight had sought to clarify, the two soldiers' testimony went uncontested. But now Richards called Sergeant Marty Delgado.

  From what Danny had told him about the man, Tom had been expecting horns and a whiff of sulfur. He was broad and pumped and shaven headed but as he settled into the witness box and took the oath, his manner was polite and restrained, almost genial. It was all theater, of course. No doubt the prosecution lawyers were as shrewd as McKnight when it came to coaching credibility. Delgado kept his eyes on Major Richards without so much as a glance at Danny.

  Richards spent the first ten or fifteen minutes establishing Delgado's unblemished record as a soldier, what his job involved and the precise nature of the mission that he and his platoon had been on that particular night. Then, step by careful step, he began to take him through the events that led to the killings: the roadside bomb and its bloody aftermath, how he and Danny had found the detonation wires and followed them.

  "Whose decision was it that you were accompanied in this by Lance Corporal Bedford?"

  "Mine, sir."

  "You chose him to accompany you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "For any particular reason?"

  "He was in pretty bad shape after the IED, seeing his friend Private Peters wounded like that, I guess."

  "When you say in pretty bad shape, how was he behaving?"

  "He seemed angry. Kind of disturbed. I was worried about him."

  "Did he say anything in particular that you recall?"

  "Yes, sir. He kept ranting that he was going to get the little hajji motherfuckers, kill the hajji bastards, that kind of thing."

  "Hajji, meaning?"

  "It's a kind of insulting word for Iraqis, sir."

  "I see. I imagine after a bomb like that, when fellow Marines have been killed or injured, it must be hard to stay calm and self-controlled."

  "Yes, sir. But that's what we're trained for. Whatever happens, you have to keep your self-control. To be effective."

  "Would you say that Lance Corporal Bedford was able that night to keep his self-control?"

  "No, sir. I wouldn't."

  "Did he appear more excited or disturbed than the other men?"

  "Yes, sir, he did."

  "And is that why you ordered him to accompany you, so that you could keep an eye on him?"

  "Yes, sir. I was concerned about him."

  "Had you ever seen Lance Corporal Bedford react in a similar way on any other occasion?"

  "Not that I recall, sir."

  "How would you describe his attitude as a soldier, in general?"

  "I'd say his attitude was kind of average, sir."

  "Kind of average."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Had you any recent occasion to find fault with him?"

  "Yes, sir, I had. Two, as a matter of fact."

  "Could you describe them for us?"

  Delgado and Richards spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes going through the details of the two incidents that were supposed to illustrate Danny's inefficiency. It would have been quicker if McKnight hadn't been constantly bobbing to his feet to object. The first incident involved a search operation carried out in an area where there had been intelligence reports of insurgent bomb making. According to Delgado, Danny had failed to secure two houses properly, potentially endangering the lives of his platoon. The second concerned a failure to file some routine report back at the base in the time that was stipulated. Delgado attempted to spice it up with a generalized smear about Danny and Ricky Peters and the sarcastic banter they sometimes indulged in. Colonel Scrase sustained McKnight's persistent objections to this but overruled most of his earlier ones.

  Richards returned to the night of the killings. He had Delgado describe Danny's fall into the canal and how this had seemed to fuel his anger so that Delgado repeatedly had to tell him to calm down and pull himself together and then how they'd come under fire and seen the man in the cammie jacket with the AK-47. The picture Delgado calmly painted was that, by the time they ran into the courtyard of the farm, Danny was in a state of vengeful frenzy. This, Delgado claimed, was why he'd ordered him to stay with Harker, standing guard over the Iraqis in the courtyard, rather than have him join in the search of the house.

  During that search, Delgado said, one insurgent had been killed and although he wasn't wearing the camouflage jacket and no such jacket had been found, he did have an AK-47. Delgado believed it to be the same man who had earlier fired on them. Richards asked him what happened next.

  "Just as we'd made sure the house was secure, I heard shouting from the courtyard."

  "Do you know who was shouting?"

  "Yes, sir. I went to a second-floor window and saw it was Lance Corporal Bedford."

  "And could you hear what he was saying?"

  "Yes, sir. He was shouting at the group of Iraqis, telling them to be quiet. Some of them, the women, they were pretty scared and upset, wailing and all. He was telling them to stop."

  "What did he say, precisely?"

  Delgado paused for a moment and glanced at Colonel Scrase, as if for permission.

  "He kept saying, you fucking hajji bitches, shut the fuck up."

  Tom saw Danny, in front of him, shift in his seat as if he were going to say something to contradict this, but McKnight put a restraining hand on his arm and Danny just sat there shaking his head. Just in case anybody hadn't heard the first time, Richards repeated what Delgado had said. Then he asked the sergeant what Harker was doing during this time and Delgado said he'd heard him twice tell Danny to cool it.

  "Those were the words he used?"

  "Yes, sir. He said cool it, man. Then for christsake, cool it."

  "Then what did you see?"

  "Lance Corporal Bedford seemed to get even more agitated and then he yelled at Harker to use his weapon and opened fire."

  "What exactly did you hear him yell?"

  "I believe it was, use your goddamn weapon."

  "Use your goddamn weapon?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And then he opened fire?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "At the crowd, the women and babies, everyone?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And what about Private Harker?"

  "He opened fire too, sir."

  "Were you able to see which of them was the first to fire?"

  "Yes, sir. It was definitely Lance Corporal Bedford."

  Kelly was sitting between Tom and Gina. She swallowed and looked down and Gina reached out and gripped her hand. Richards only had a few more minor questions, just to clarify the horror for them all, to let the killer punch sink in. Then he courteously handed the witness over for cross-examination and sat down.

  McKnight started gently, so gently in fact that for a while Tom wondered what the hell the guy was doing, being so nice. Then, carefully, McKnight began to undermine Delgado's credibility.

  "This word hajji, Sergeant, the word you say Lance Corporal Bedford used so much. What does it mean?"

  "As I think I said, it's an insult word for Iraqis."

  "Yes, I heard you say that. But what does it actually mean?"

  "I believe it means someone who has visited Mecca."

  "And that's an insult, is
it?"

  "Well, literally, maybe not, but—"

  "Maybe not. And is Lance Corporal Bedford the only Marine you've heard use this word?"

  "No, sir."

  "You've heard others use it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Is it a word commonly used among US soldiers in Iraq?"

  Richards stood up to object but McKnight preempted him.

  "Let me rephrase that. Was the word hajji commonly used among the Marines you personally worked with?"

  "No, sir. I wouldn't say commonly."

  "Occasionally, then?"

  "I guess so."

  "Is it a word you personally ever use, Sergeant?"

  "No, sir."

  "Never?"

  "No, sir. Not that I recall."

  "So you don't recall saying on the night we're discussing, after the IED went off..." McKnight adjusted his glasses and read from the document he had in his hand. "Let's hunt their hajji asses down and burn them. You don't recall saying that?"

  "No, sir, I do not."

  For the first time, Delgado looked uncomfortable. McKnight moved on, challenging the sergeant's testimony about what had happened on the night of the killings, what he'd allegedly heard Danny say, asking him whether he might have misheard or misinterpreted any of these comments. The intention was obviously to dismantle the impression that Danny had been as out of control as Delgado alleged.

  How, for example, could Delgado have considered it unsafe to allow a man so overwrought to search the house but safe enough to have him stand guard over the group in the courtyard? How clearly had Delgado seen what he claimed to have seen from the window? Had he seen, in that crucial moment before they opened fire, one of the deceased, a man with one leg, reach down to pick up his crutch?

  To this last question Delgado, of course, said no.

  McKnight pressed on. With all the noise going on, the women wailing and screaming both inside the house and outside in the courtyard, how could he have heard so distinctly what Danny had shouted? Could he have been mistaken? For example, might he have misheard what Danny yelled to Harker before opening fire? Instead of use your goddamn weapon, might he in fact have been alerting Harker to the one-legged man lifting the crutch and yelled he's got a goddamn weapon? Delgado was adamant that what he'd seen and heard was exactly as he'd testified.