Free 'A' for Argonaut by Michael J. Stedman Page B

wasn’t yours to make, soldier,” Fahnestock said.
    “Sir, we were charged‌—‌ambushed‌—‌by American tanks and armored personnel carriers; it was like Custer’s Last Stand.”
    “Did you or did you not disobey a direct order?”
    A sharp pain hit Maran in the chest. His muscles tightened like cable on a winch. The room spun. His hands clamped the rail. He reached deep inside to hold onto the frayed ends of his resolve. A pause hung over the room. Maran toppled over the rim. Two MPs leaped the rail to catch him just in time before his head hit the floor.
    It took Maran two glasses of water and fifteen minutes to regain his composure. The incident impressed on him the wisdom of the doctor’s suggestion that he take some medication to alleviate the condition.
    He hated drugs.
    When they resumed the prosecutor opened.
    “You have entered a plea of not guilty. You deny the charges?”
    “No, sir. The charges themselves are true.” Maran’s voice shook.
    “Then‌—‌on what grounds do you plead ‘not guilty?’”
    Maran struggled.
    “No evidence. Just logic. We were about to free those hostages; then we received the order to pull out. It made no sense. The time was past for that. We had committed to the assault. We were betrayed.”
    The prosecution called Major General Randy Baltimore, Director of Counter-Terrorist Action for the entire United States military, provided with access to SCI, Sensitive Compartmented Information, and selected SAPs. His security clearance was TS/SSBI, TOP SECRET/SINGLE SCOPE BACKGROUND INVESTIGATION.
    Baltimore addressed the tribunal .
    Maran glared at him. His stomach turned as he listened.
    Baltimore, fair-skinned, about fifty, looked to him like a cross between a clean-cut quarterback and a public television pundit. Like Maran, he wore dress blues. Except for the eyeglasses, he looked like a poster boy for the recruitment highway billboards sprinkled through the poorer communities throughout the South, plugging the Army as a way up and out of poverty, which, in Maran’s experience, it was. The eyeglasses were not thick; they were just set in heavy, square, black frames. His blond hair was cut high and tight.
    He spoke.
    “Though I have the highest regard for Colonel Maran’s record as a combat veteran, based on our SatIntel, Colonel Maran’s mission was doomed to failure. That’s why he was directed to pull back to a designated landing zone, two clicks from the Congo River. Right here. Above these hills south of Landana, there,” Baltimore said, using a laser stick to point to the thin blue ribbon that meandered, snakelike, on the wall map set up at the front of the room. The ribbon flowed down from a large blue belly, the lake-like bulge just at Kinshasa, where the river muscled through the wild region at its widest point.
    Maran’s jaw tightened. The remembrance shook him.
    Sandbagged, like a green recruit, a Cub Scout.
    Recall flashed through his damaged brain. It threatened to ignite a new blast of memory. He gritted his teeth, refused to relive the horror. Rage boiled in his stomach, rose to the spitting point.
    “You lie. It’s all lies!” he leaped from his chair, shouted, beyond self-control. This insubordination tore at the core of his psyche, trained to a fine point in the order of discipline at the heart of an effective military culture. He knew the words Baltimore uttered were accurate. It was truth they lacked.
    Two MPs grabbed him. He fell back on his chair with their rough handling.
    The prosecution closed and Maran’s attorney called his key character witness, Brigadier General Bull Luster. Maran’s respect for this consummate soldier had grown from the first day under his command in Grenada and Panama. Relief swept over him when he heard Luster would be called to testify. He was certain of Luster’s pride in having trained him earlier in Israeli Kapap and Thai Army Muay Thai , lethal hand-to-hand combat techniques from the U.S. Army Field