Boomer Dunning paused and looked around. Everyone was stern, thoughtful, and willing to be led by the former nuclear submarine commander.
“There are ample examples of Iraqi terrorists feigning surrender. Mack Bedford was correct to be cautious, to take no chances. I find him not guilty on all charges relating to murder. . . . Any dissent?”
Each man said no, as Captain Dunning knew they would. It was impossible not to understand this trial was being run under some kind of code. No navy court-martial was going to convict the lieutenant commander of any kind of homicide. Not unless they wanted to risk outright riot conditions in the U.S. armed forces.
As to the issue of the Geneva Conventions, Boomer Dunning said flatly, “Surprenant is plainly right. The accords cannot apply to these murderous mobs with the illegal missiles. And, with your support, I’m going to order any and all charges involving the rules of war to be dismissed. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Which brings us to the final, somewhat minor, issue of reckless conduct in the face of the enemy.” Captain Dunning seemed saddened yet resigned to the wearisome issue of finding the SEAL battle commander guilty of something. The orders had been passed down from the highest authority in the nation. Not to cooperate would be, in effect, to defy the commander in chief, the president of the United States. Boomer Dunning was privately sickened by the entire process. Reckless conduct! Jesus Christ, these fucking madmen had just murdered twenty members of the Special Forces. And he, Boomer, had been charged with the task of finding Lieutenant Commander Bedford guilty of being reckless.
Now he spoke confidentially to his panel. “Look,” he said, “none of us much likes this, being more or less told to find Mack guilty of recklessness, and I would like to ask the views of each one of you.”
All three lieutenant commanders were reluctant to convict but were not sufficiently rebellious to go against the wishes of the president of the panel. The fourth and youngest member, the lieutenant, Jonjo Adams from Alabama, was a SEAL. And he was very concerned. He looked at Boomer and said quietly, “Sir, like all of us, I’d be proud to fight under Mack Bedford’s command. And we can sit here for a thousand years, and I ain’t never going to find him guilty of anything. He did what was right. I was in Baghdad when that bomb went off strapped to one of the surrender guys. A buddy of mine had his head blown off. If I’d been at the bridge with Mack, I’d have shot ’em myself.”
“I understand,” replied Boomer. “And since I feel much the same, I’m going to find him not guilty of reckless conduct. That’s the best I can do. But I will have to issue some kind of a reprimand. That’s the absolute minimum I can do”—he paused for almost ten seconds before blurting out—“in this whole fucking lousy, rotten business.” All four members of the panel saw Boomer Dunning brush his coat sleeve across his eyes and walk to the other side of the room because he could not bear anyone to see him this upset.
They ate their sandwiches almost in silence. The clock ticked away the minutes until 1400 hours, at which time all five of them walked back into the courtroom and took their places. Everyone else was awaiting their arrival.
Captain Dunning made no preamble. He said simply, “Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford, you have been charged with the murder of twelve Iraqi citizens. The court finds you not guilty. You were charged with several offenses against the Geneva Conventions, and these the court has dismissed out of hand, thanks to the wise counsel of Commander Surprenant. You were further charged with reckless conduct in the face of the enemy. The court finds you not guilty.”
Mack Bedford turned to shake the hand of his attorney. But Captain Dunning was not through.
“The court, however, finds that this was not a textbook military operation. Several SEALs were ready to open fire if a fake surrender was being enacted. And the court detected an element of panic. With this in mind, I have issued against Lieutenant Commander Bedford, a GOMOR, a General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand. The court is now closed.”
Mack Bedford was appalled. He turned to Al Surprenant and almost cried out, “Sir, this ends my career as a SEAL team leader. I’m banned from command, out of the promotion ladder.”
“As I feared,” replied his attorney. “Very much as I feared.”
CHAPTER 3
My dearest Anne,
Right now the whole world seems to be falling apart. Only the thought of seeing you and Tommy is keeping me going. The Navy has been very decent about my payoffs, my pensions, and the extent of our health insurance. Commander Surprenant says it’s “conscience money.”
By the way, one of the guys on the panel which heard the court-martial has resigned from the Navy “in disgust.” He’s Brian Antrim, a surface ship missile director and a lt. commander. There’s a lot of unrest over what happened to me, but at least they never released my name.
I guess I mentioned I could have stayed and taken some kind of office job, maybe INTEL or Mission Planning. But I would never have advanced, not with a GOMOR hanging over me. Anyway, I only know combat command, and that’s now denied me.
There’s no place here for an out-of-work Team Leader. So it’s gotta be sayanara SEALs. God knows what will happen to us now. I’ve had a lot of offers of help from some highly placed guys. But I guess right now we need to concentrate on Tommy and getting him fixed up. Tell him to get ready for a lot of fishing with his dad.
All my love and I’ll see you next week,
Mack
He walked over to the mailbox and posted his letter. After all these years, it was the last letter he would ever send from this old, familiar place. Mack was scheduled to leave on Tuesday from the North Air Station on a navy flight to Norfolk, Virginia, then take another navy flight up to the New Brunswick Navy Station in Maine. From there he would take a bus home to Dartford.
Walking back from the mailbox, he passed a couple of young SEALs he had helped to train. Each one saluted him sharply, but it wasn’t the same anymore. There was something in their eyes, something wary, cautious, as if they were offering the ultimate military sign of respect to the wrong man, to some kind of an outcast who really should not be here.
Everyone knew Mack Bedford was finished, though very few knew why. Those who did were inclined to keep their distance in these final days of the brilliant SEAL commander. They were keeping their distance from a man whose heart was surely broken. A man whose private grief and regret really had no place on a naval station where young tigers were being revved up to face the enemy.
Mack Bedford understood. His friends were dead. His acquaintances were reluctant. There was no longer much to say right here in this cauldron of military training. This is a place where joy is measured in battlefield triumph, and where defeat has not a friend in the world. Lieutenant Commander Bedford had become the embodiment of that defeat.
He took his meals alone in his room, mostly because it was too awkward for him to engage in conversation. How many times could he hear other SEALs tell him how sorry they were that this had happened and how much he would be missed?
What was there to say? Certainly not the gut-wrenching truth that in the blackness of his own despair he had given very serious consideration to blowing his brains out. And that if he had not been married to the spectacularly beautiful Anne, with a little boy who needed him so badly, he probably would have done so. SEALs don’t bare their souls like that. Self-examination does not sit comfortably in their profession. They are trained to ignore personal feelings and needs, and to complete the mission. They are taught to train physically until they are close to the breaking point. And then to kill. Always to capture or kill the enemy on behalf of the United States. Men like that don’t usually spend a lot of time on self-pity.
“Oh, hell, I’ll be all right.” “Don’t worry about me. I got plenty of options.” “Maybe a security business, or a partnership in a fishing boat back in Maine. I got all kinds of stuff.” “Anyway, I’ve probably been in the navy for long enough.”
Long enough? How could i
t ever be long enough? What would “long enough” be? Maybe a thousand years? Because it would surely be a thousand years before the ethos of the SEALs could ever be driven into the backwaters of his mind.
Mack Bedford could scarcely remember any other life. He knew only the discipline, the unquestioning code of conduct, what was expected of him, and, as he grew into a field commander, what he expected of those young men who fought alongside him.
He had once read, and never forgotten, a book written by John Bertrand, Australia’s victorious America’s Cup helmsman in 1983. The Aussie wrote of racing yacht crews, men fighting against the odds to defeat the Americans in front of a world audience. “You can get them to go a long way for you by frightening them,” he wrote. “But if you want them to go all the way, they’ve got to love you.”
Mack’s men had always loved him. And they were surely going to miss his steadfast words of command, sometimes cautious, sometimes daring, but always sound. They were going to miss the hell out of him. And most of them did not yet realize how much. All they sensed was an inner anxiety. What the hell’s it gonna be like out there, without the boss?
The last three days passed slowly. Mack spent most of them alone. He packed and shipped to Maine some books and memorabilia, his uniforms, permanent SEAL equipment, personal mask and flippers, bearing the number he had been given at BUDs. He would travel home in civilian clothes, carrying just his big battle-scarred leather suitcase, the one he’d carried to hell and back, from the Afghan mountains to Baghdad, ar-Ramadi, Qatar, and Kuwait.
First thing tomorrow morning Jack Thomas would drive him to the North Air Station in the middle of San Diego Bay. Meanwhile, with less than twenty-four hours before his departure, Mack would attack the four-mile course along the beach, just one more training run along the edge of the water, straight down memory lane, one more attempt to drive his body to the limit.
He was, of course, no longer doing this in a manic last-ditch effort to hit a peak of fitness before combat duty on some foreign field, as he so often did. This run was not for any reason really. He was doing it, just . . . well . . . for the good times. The only difference was, now Mack would run all alone.
He jogged down to the ocean, and far down the beach he could see a BUDs Class pounding back toward him, strung out, in a long, irregular line, splashing, gasping, striving, driving on, keeping up, dropping out, instructors shouting, demanding to know whose heart wasn’t in it, who wanted to quit, who had nothing more to give. Nothing much changed here on the SEAL training beach at Coronado, where, every week, hearts were broken, reputations forged, and men became such men as they had never dreamed possible.
Mack could see a group of guests at the Hotel del Coronado standing out on the terrace watching the guys running. It looked like the opening scene from Chariots of Fire, but these runners were not the carefree young bucks of Cambridge University Athletic Club in 1920s England. These runners, right here in Coronado, wore khaki, the color of violent men.
This strip of tidal sand represented some kind of Greek tragedy where Navy SEALs prepared to go to war. It was a place of broken dreams, a place where ambitions were ruined, limitations ruthlessly exposed. Where only the best of the best could possibly survive.
My country expects me to be physically and mentally stronger than my enemy. . . . If I am knocked down, I will get up, every time. . . . I am never out of the fight. . . . I am a United States Navy SEAL.
The words of the SEAL creed whispered through the mind of Mack Bedford as he settled into his stride, every pace a stretch, every ten yards of wet sand covered with maximum effort. That was the way to complete the run, the only way, to make every yard of the journey the hardest yard you ever ran—just to be the best, the best, always the best.
Mack passed the BUDs Class a mile up the beach, and then drove himself on to the two-mile mark, where he turned back, running with all of his strength toward his start point. Only a very few of the BUDs students would ever attain fitness like that, because Mack Bedford’s long years of brutal daily training—running, lifting, swimming—had granted him animal strength. He was not like other men. Nothing like other men.
He smiled as he looked across at the BUDs Class, sweating and straining, lifting logs the size of telephone poles, nearly killing themselves hoisting the huge weight above their heads, the bigger guys taking the biggest strain. Mack watched them finally drop the logs down onto the sand, heard the familiar thud that shook the beach, and then the old SEAL ritual.
Class leader: Instructor Mills!
Followed instantly by the class roar: HOO-YAH, INSTRUCTOR MILLS!
No one really remembers precisely how it happened, but U.S. Navy SEALs have this private word: “HOO-YAH.” The BUDs students use it for greeting an instructor, and they use it instead of “Understand and will comply.” They use it instead of “Yes” or “Right away, sir.”
Standing there on the sand, catching his breath, Mack Bedford remembered his own stint as a SEAL instructor, pretending to be Gengis Khan, right here on this very spot. Frightening the living daylights out of the guys, pushing them, humiliating them, testing them, to find how much unfairness each of them could take without cracking. And how moved he was that, in the end, the survivors understood he wanted only the best for them.
HOO-YAH, INSTRUCTOR BEDFORD!
And now it was over. He walked back up the beach, and past the Grinder, the square of blacktop where generations of BUDs trainees had given their all, trying to become full-fledged SEALs. This was the square where they handed out the golden Tridents. The square where Mack Bedford, Honor Man, had received his from a SEAL admiral. That remained the proudest moment of his life.
That night he dined alone in his room. The last supper. He couldn’t face company, understanding, questions, support, and sympathy. Not tonight. He sat in solitude, still trying to accept that in five weeks he had somehow gone from highly regarded SEAL lieutenant commander to civilian, with an official officer’s reprimand forever hanging over his head.
Captain Dunning had mentioned the word “panic.” What a truly shocking allegation. If anyone had asked, Mack would have settled for “blind rage.” But not “panic.” He reached for a pocket dictionary he always kept in his room. And the definition made him feel, if anything, worse: Panic—a feeling of fear and anxiety. If anyone had panicked at the bridge, it sure as hell was not him. He could have been accused, probably fairly, of seeking revenge for his dead buddies, or even of using unreasonable force. Those moments had, after all, occurred during his own “hours of the wolf.” But not fear and anxiety. The hell with that.
Mack slept not a wink through his last long night within the confines of his personal alma mater, SPECWARCOM. It was a night he had never dreamed would come. If he slept, he would wake up a civilian. Which was probably why he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, torturing himself over the events that had all proved to be beyond his control. He couldn’t face company, and understanding.
At first light he climbed out of bed, showered, and stepped into his civilian clothes. He put on a clean white shirt, dark-gray slacks, loafers, and a blue blazer. He wore no tie but still looked every inch an officer. He picked up the morning newspaper and had a cup of coffee, black with sugar, and then sat quietly to wait for 0730 when Lt. Barry Mason would arrive to collect him and walk with him to Jack Thomas’s armored vehicle for the drive over to the air base. He felt like a man awaiting the arrival of the executioner.
Barry Mason arrived on time and picked up the leather bag. Neither of them felt like speaking. The young lieutenant just nodded and said, “Mack,” before adding, “This is probably the most God-awful fucking day of my life.”
“Mine too,” said the boss.
They stepped out into the morning light and began the three-hundred-yard walk toward the main gate, and as they did so, both men became conscious of throngs of people crowding around the entrance, beyond which was parked the armored vehicle. It quickly became apparent that it was some kind of
formation. It also became apparent that every single member of the SPECWARCOM campus, officers and other ranks, were, on this morning, at the gate.
They stood in silence. It was an unmistakable silent protest at the “justice” that had been handed out to the retiring SEAL officer. As Mack and Barry walked between the two four-deep lines of stone-faced men, a chief petty officer suddenly roared at the top of his lungs, LT. CDR. MACKENZIE BEDFORD! That deep-voiced SEAL response split the morning air, echoing up into the clear skies, rehearsed yet at once spontaneous. Every last man from admiral to BUDs student shouted the response—HOO-YAH, MACK BEDFORD! It was a cry from the uneasy soul of this stern and dedicated garrison of Special Forces. The last HOO-YAH.
Mack Bedford looked to neither his left nor his right. But as he reached the gate and the barrier was lifted, he turned one final time and formally saluted them all. Then he turned away, toward the waiting car. And no one saw him fighting to control his tears as he left them.
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