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 US Navy Board of Inquiry at SPECWARCOM. The recommendation was that he be court-martialled 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 500 feet, it came screaming across the bay and touched down on the southwest runway of the US 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 US 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 martialled 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 US 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 US 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 re
putation 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 US Navy’s officer class. Al Surprenant did not believe that any US 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 US 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 US 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 US destroyer in the Gulf War. The following year he became a navy lawyer on the base in Norfolk, Virginia, 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.
And therein rested the disquieting aspect of the case. It was as if the final decision had been taken out of the navy’s hands, that somehow the verdict had been agreed before the trial started, won and lost before it was heard. Was Mack Bedford the officer whose fate was already decided? No one liked the sound of that.
The days passed slowly in the two weeks leading up to the trial. Bedford himself became very withdrawn. The navy had arranged for him to spend this time in private officers’ quarters and make his own decisions about attending work and training with Foxtrot Platoon. Almost surreptitiously, new men had been brought in to replace those who had died.
No one mentioned the tragedy, and the leading petty officers supervised the brutal fitness regime being played out on the long beaches, out in front of the world-famous Hotel del Coronado. Every day, damn near all day, they pounded along that tidemark in their boots and shorts, searching for the firmest wet sand, trying to beat the clock. Some days Mack Bedford joined them, running easily alongside the new kids, demonstrating a naval lifetime of supreme physical fitness, strength that bordered on that of a wild animal, determination, and discipline ingrained in him since he had first pounded this same stretch of beach as a BUDs student.
In the evenings, he saw very few people, not simply because his close buddies had all died in the tanks but because he sensed he was now isolated until the court martial was over. He spent long hours with Al Surprenant, endlessly poring over maps of that western side of the Euphrates where the SEALs had been hit by the missiles.
Every night Mack wrote to Anne at their home in Maine, trying to explain that the forthcoming court martial was only a formality and that he would not be found guilty. But he also needed her to understand that he was the unnamed commanding officer in the newspaper reports describing the “massacre” on the bridge. He did not go into any detail, and neither did he point out that he was the only American to have opened fire on the tribesmen. Mostly, his carefully written lines concerned Tommy and the fact that there was no improvement in his condition.
Anne’s news from the health insurance company was not encouraging. Despite that blanket coverage the navy had provided for him and his immediate family, none of the underwriters had come forward to volunteer payment to the Swiss clinic, which increasingly seemed to be the Bedfords’ only hope.
It was difficult for Mack to find anything much to feel cheerful about. On every front there was trouble – career, money and family. Sometimes, in a darker mood, he felt the shadow of death formed an unfair canopy over him alone. Every day the court martial loomed closer, that moment of truth when his peers would sit in judgment. After all these years, was he still a right and proper person to lead the front line of US military muscle?
Five days after the return from Iraq, the story leaked out to the San Diego Telegraph. They did not name the commanding officer at the bridge, but someone had briefed them well. The story ran over four columns on the front page of the newspaper beneath the headline:
US NAVY COURT MARTIALS SEAL COMMANDER CHARGED WITH MURDER OF SURRENDERING IRAQIS
The United States Navy confirmed last night that the SEAL commander whose men shot dead twelve surrendering Iraqi tribesmen has been court-martialled. He will be tried this month in the navy courtroom at the SPECWARCOM base on Coronado Island, San Diego. The officer stands accused of murder, shooting unarmed men in cold blood.
The incident took place three weeks ago on the western bank of the Euphrates River south of
the ancient Mesopotamian town of Hit. According to the navy, armored vehicles transporting the SEAL team had come under rocket attack from insurgents on the other side of the river. The SEALs had prepared to return fire, but, according to the Arab television network al-Jazeera, the tribesmen had surrendered and started to walk across the bridge with their hands held high.
At this point, the Arab network states, the SEALs opened fire, gunning down the unarmed tribesmen until not one of them was left alive. Several witnesses from the Bedouin village of Abu Hallah have come forward to confirm this account. A spokesman for the Iraqi parliament says the prime minister is “shocked beyond belief” at the conduct of the Americans.
No details have ever been made public regarding losses sustained by the SEAL convoy. And the navy has resolutely refused to reveal the names of any SEAL combatants who took part in the action. They have also refused to reveal the identity of the officer who will stand trial in San Diego this month.
Last night there were rumors in the SEAL compound that the SEAL team had come under sustained attack across the Euphrates and suffered many casualties. A military source, who cannot be named, confirmed that at least four US tanks were damaged in the battle. He stated that the account from al-Jazeera was dangerously one-sided and was unlikely to stand up to searching cross-examination at the court martial. A spokesman for the SEALs’ public information department, Lt. Dan Rowe, explained to our legal staff that, pending the court martial, nothing further could be confirmed.
Would the identity of the commander eventually be revealed? “Unlikely,” he said. “Unless the SEAL officer is convicted of murder. And no US serviceman has ever been found guilty on such a charge. Not if it was based on a confrontation with the enemy.”
The story was masterminded by the Telegraph’s formidable news editor, Geoff Levy, a former military staff reporter in the San Diego navy yards. Geoff knew his way around both the service and the law. He also knew what he called a “rattling good yarn” when he heard one. And the fact that the Silent Service had apparently turned on one of its own had a special, private journalistic glory all its own.
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