Diamondhead by Patrick Robinson Page B

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