Free Diamondhead by Patrick Robinson

. he hits back.”
     
    Levy paused and let his words hit home. And then he said quietly, “And you, ma’am, and others like you, want to charge him with murder? I hope I’ve made myself clear about why there’s outrage on the San Diego Naval Base.”
     
    Jessica Savold, the blonde interviewer, had not often been lectured like that. And she was almost overwhelmed at the lesson in journalism she had just been handed. Jessica did not live in the real world; she lived in the quasi-fantasy realm of media reporters, guys who knew a few facts, some of which might be true, but had no time or patience for the true depths of the events they related to the public. Jessica understood at that moment why her employers had paid five thousand dollars to hear the words of a big newspaper editor, a man of vast experience who would be a cut way above the rest. “Thank you, Mr. Levy,” she said, reluctant for another exchange of thoughts, even more reluctant to be made to look more like a child.
     
    Geoff stood up and nodded. But as he reached the door, he turned once more to Jessica, and he patted the left-hand side of his chest. “Heart,” he said. “Until you learn heart, you’ll never be worth a damn as a reporter or an interviewer.” Luckily for the luckless Jessica, that part was off-camera. And with that he left the room and headed back to the news desk to urge his boys to (a) identify the SEAL officer he believed to be a towering hero and (b) provide him with backup evidence of the inferno of death, hard by the bridge over the Euphrates River. At least that’s how he phrased it. Geoff, after all, was a master of his craft.
     
    A round of applause from the newsroom greeted him when he returned, delivered by colleagues who had watched the Fox telecast. His deputy said, “Tell you one thing, Geoff. Right now we got e-mails flooding in, and half of them are saying this SEAL commander should be given the Congressional Medal of Honor, never mind a court-martial.”
     
    “Trouble is,” replied the boss, “I don’t really know what the hell’s going on, except that they are about to court-martial him on murder charges and that a lot of guys at the SEAL base are very seriously pissed off. And that’s got to be the thrust of our story tonight—the outrage. Because we’re on the side of the guys who do the fighting, because we’re a very pro-navy operation, not like those comedians in Washington and their lightweight puppet reporters.” Geoff ended his little pep talk with the words, “C’mon, guys, let’s round up some real hard quotes from named sources, people railing against charging our combat troops with serious civilian-type charges. Let’s round ’em up, and then stick it to these assholes, right here in the Telegraph. Right now, while we got national attention.”
     
    Three thousand miles away, in the White House, the president of the United States was in a major quandary. Yes, he had approved the court-martial of Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford, mainly because of the upcoming Middle East peace talks, and also to head off accusations from Iraq that U.S. troops could do anything they damn well pleased in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In his own mind, as commander in chief, the president had approved the court-martial “for the greater good.” Greater good, that is, unless you happened to be Mack Bedford.
     
    However, this story in the San Diego Telegraph, and this interview with the goddamned news editor, had painted the entire issue a very different color. The Middle East peace talks could go to hell in the face of a domestic uproar, currently being ignited and fanned and publicly blazing on California’s coast.
     
    There are only a few true copper-bottomed taboos that all presidents must observe, and one of them is, Don’t Pick Fights with Your Frontline Troops. There are several billion reasons for this, the main one being you will receive zero sympathy from the public, who do not trust