Forty-Eight X (7 page)

By rote, he quickly consolidated his command to a defensive position. The situation was improving as his troops began to lay down counterfire. Then suddenly, a dozen of his frontline men began to run. He ordered them to halt, to take cover, to return fire, to resume their positions. With those dozen men fleeing, another twenty seemed unsteady and began to retreat farther. With their backs to the enemy, more ran, and more became casualties. He again shouted orders for the leads of this retreat to take cover, but they just kept running. Then, fearless himself in the face of enemy fire, McGraw rose, stood alone in the middle of the street, a stationary target with bullets splashing at his feet, and he yelled again.

“Halt! Take cover!”

He thought they had to hear him, but fear is a deafening voice. His command was fast falling apart. McGraw carried a short-barreled M249 Para light machine gun. His finger suppressed the trigger for two seconds, and his life changed. In that time, he fired thirty rounds, the retreat halted, and two of his men lay dead by his own hand.

There was a faint and brief defense as to whether his actions had prevented a rout by hardening his men to stand and fight and had actually saved more lives. But the families of the men killed would not have their sons called cowards. And the army, as well, was loath to label any of its soldiers as cowards. So, McGraw’s act was called fratricide. His leadership was described as inept. He was tried and convicted of murder, not heroism. Murder, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Section 918, Article 118, required a sentence of “confinement for life without eligibility for parole.”

His defense attorneys performed the routine appeals, but McGraw had no hopes of clemency. Military courts, judge and jury, are appointed by the highest-ranking officer in the field. The military commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq had enough political woes on his plate. Officers permitted to go free after shooting enlisted men, regardless of the circumstances, would not play well in the media. After his court martial, McGraw’s conviction underwent an automatic appeal to an intermediate court of review. That court also served on orders of the commander. He was then entitled to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF), the equivalent of a federal circuit court of appeals. That court, set up by Congress, followed a more civilian rule of law. But if a military court couldn’t find mitigating circumstances for an officer to shoot his own troops, was it likely a civilian court would?

While other men might have gone mad in a cell so small, with concrete walls decorated with nothing but moisture and the autographs of former residents, McGraw found solace there. He was allowed only two books at a time in his cell. No photographs. No pornography. When dusk came and with it “lights out,” he closed his eyes and felt the cracks in the cement walls as if they were letters and words and poetry. Reading those cracks in the concrete walls, he believed the words came from a higher spirit than himself. Of course, he wondered, too, if this mental poetry was preserving his sanity or actually a sign of insanity.

McGraw did not cling to any false hopes for freedom. His only hope was to remain sane—for as long as possible. Then one day, he was told he would be receiving a special visitor, a superior officer, not another JAG attorney. He knew something unusual was happening when he was handed a dress uniform to put on instead of his usual orange prison coveralls. The uniform had no insignia of rank, no name on the breast, and was bare of the emblems of his achievements—his gold parachute jumper wings, his collection of marksmanship awards, and a bevy of campaign ribbons he had once proudly worn. Nevertheless, he eyed the uniform with hope and was pleased. It was a soldier’s uniform, not a prisoner’s.

Though he sat in that Fort Leavenworth prison box day after day, he still thought himself an infantryman, a soldier still prepared to do his duty, to die for his country. McGraw knew that wars were fought and won by infantrymen—not naval or air power, not by someone lobbing artillery over a hill or dropping bombs from miles high—but by men on the ground. And he preferred it that way.

“It’s you, the individual infantryman,” he had preached to his men, building their esprit de corps, “that has turned the tide in every war America fought—from Revolutionary War colonial farmer soldiers at Yorktown, to citizen soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, to volunteer soldiers in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

McGraw dressed, set his jacket aside, and then lay in bed, waiting. He wondered if he should stay sitting on his bed when the officers entered. Did he owe them any honor, any allegiance? After all, he was, in fact, forbidden to salute. When he heard footsteps, he sat up. He slipped on the uniform jacket and eyed something he had never taken much notice of before—the buttons. The buttons on United States Army uniforms bear an eagle holding arrows and an olive branch. McGraw remembered his lessons as a cadet. The eagle faces to the right because, according to the rules of ancient heraldry, right was the side of honor. Honor… he was about to get it back.

T
here were 250,000 officers in the United States military services. Lieutenant General Maximillian Shell could have chosen any of them for the special duty he had in mind. He narrowed his search to a dozen men and finally, despite the consternation of several of his associates, he chose a soldier in custody at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence McGraw, a man being held for the crime of murder.

As General Shell reviewed McGraw’s record and studied his photograph, he felt he was choosing the right man—someone who had nothing to lose, but everything to gain; someone who had an allegiance to God, country, and honor that fit the fairy tale. McGraw was also a Southern boy. And that counted, too. But still Shell had a speck of doubt. That doubt would dissolve when he cast his gaze upon the man and sensed his aura. The general placed great faith on things unseen, and he had a knack for assessing character. As a member of a select hierarchy of the army’s general staff, Shell also felt some collective guilt about McGraw’s situation. The man was clearly a decisive leader, and sometimes decisions in war get men killed. In another war, at another time, McGraw’s actions would have drawn no punishment, and perhaps even quiet praise. To lead the troops that Shell planned to put under his command, McGraw would indeed have to be an unusual and decisive leader, someone exactly willing to put a bullet into his own men, if that’s what it took to get the job done.

McGraw was escorted by armed military police to an area out of the main prison compound. He was shackled, chains dangling from his wrists and ankles. Hobbling down several corridors, his metal chains clanged and echoed in the halls like effects in a horror film. He finally arrived at a conference room where two colonels awaited him.

“Take them off,” one colonel ordered.

The escorts removed McGraw’s shackles. The other colonel pointed for him to sit in a chair at the side of a long wood laminate table. Several moisture-beaded pitchers of ice water were set on the table. The walls were mostly bare, lined only with the standard issue photographs of the chain of command—the president, secretary of defense, secretary of the army, and chief of staff of the army. The colonels stared at him with curiosity and a bit of derision. They said nothing but wondered what their general wanted with a murderer.

When three-star Lieutenant General Mack Shell entered the room, the colonels popped to attention. And right along with them, perhaps with even more pomp, Link McGraw stood to attention as well. The general was exactly what he expected—spit and polish with a chest full of medals.

“At ease, gentlemen,” General Shell ordered with a Southern accent as thick as the humidity of Fort Benning, Georgia, where he once commanded the 82
^nd
Airborne Division. And, as he took his own seat, he looked to McGraw, who remained standing. “Be seated, Colonel.”

With barely a nod, he dismissed the two other officers from the room. McGraw watched them leave like puppy dogs. A lieutenant general rated two colonels as gofers. McGraw knew General Shell by reputation. He was well respected by soldiers and politicians alike. His peers, and his men—when he was not within earshot—respectfully referred to him as Mack.

The general let his head fall to his chest, sighed heavily, closed his eyes, and set his arms out and palms up. Shell knew he was embarking on a task that would change the way of warfare and the role of warriors forever, and it weighed heavily upon him. McGraw felt a little uneasy. The general seemed to be praying—or meditating.

McGraw eyed the folder the general had in front of him. It had McGraw’s name on it. However, what was most interesting about the folder was that it had red-and-white striped tape on its edges. Those markings indicated that the file was top secret. What about a convicted murderer could anyone consider top secret? Then, slowly General Shell lowered his arms, lifted his head, and turned to McGraw.

“Colonel, my name is Maximillian Shell.”

He stared at McGraw. It was a bit unsettling, as if he was trying to look into his soul. Then he got to the point.

“Any excuses, son, for your actions?”

“No, sir,” McGraw replied unhesitantly. “I stand by my account as before.”

“This was not your first combat action.”

“No, sir.”

“What was different, then?”

“It’s always different, sir. I’ve smelled blood and fire many times, and each time the smell is different.”

The general was fishing, McGraw thought. But what was he fishing for?

“Any lessons learned?”

“Can’t say for sure. I could have put my men a few meters off more or less, here or there. Moving faster. Maybe it would have made a difference. But retreat wasn’t the right thing to do. That I knew. And I had to put a stop to that.”

“And so what was the final score?” the general asked. It was a rhetorical question. He had the answer. “Five dead grunts, ten wounded; a dozen dead A-rabs; and one jailed notorious colonel.”

McGraw knew he was bordering on being a wiseass but had one more thing to say. “Sir, it rained that night, too. It hadn’t rained in Baghdad in two months. The rain bogged down convoys in the mud and made a few of them easy targets. I’ll take the blame for that, too, if it helps us get any closer to victory.”

“I believe”—the general took a moment to level his thoughts—“that you have been royally screwed. Having said that, I want you to know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to alter your sentence. But I can alter how you spend your time serving it, and I’m hoping that you are still a soldier willing to serve his country.”

“You ought not have any doubts about that, sir.”

The general was convinced that McGraw had the military chops to do the job. He wanted to be sure the man had the character, as well.

“How do you fill your time?” he asked.

“I read.”

“Anything in particular?”

“I used to like humor—Woody Allen, Steve Martin. Now it’s mysteries and historical novels. Anything that makes me think.”

“Playboy? Penthouse?”
the general smiled slyly.

“No, sir. They don’t allow porn. But if you can get it to me, I’ll read it. I still have a libido and a good hand. I may die here, but I’m not dead yet.”

Where was all this going? Link wondered.

“It wouldn’t have taken much lying on your part to lay this business off on the enemy.”

“It would have been a lie nevertheless,” McGraw quickly replied and smiled. “It would have ruined my perfect record.”

“Are you religious?”

From porn to religion—what did the general have in mind?

“I believe in God but not religion. I’ve seen too many men die in the name of it to believe in any organized religion. And you, sir?” McGraw parried back. It was time to have a two-way conversation.

“I fake Southern Baptist,” the general responded frankly. “To honor my mother. But I believe in God. I believe he gave us more potential than we’ve yet lived up to.”

The general sat forward, quiet, intense, his fist supporting his head like Rodin’s
The Thinker
. And Link sat there quietly, as well—but just for a moment before he opened up a little more. He hadn’t held an intelligent conversation with anyone for nearly a year and wasn’t about to let the time pass in silence. He had things worth saying.

“I do believe in reincarnation.”

“Oh?” the general replied, sitting more upright, interested. “I’m disappointed.”

“Why?” McGraw parried back, hoping he hadn’t gone one word too far.

“Too George Patton. Old Blood and Guts had the same beliefs. Excuse me for being a skeptic, but everyone I’ve ever met or read about who believed in reincarnation was once someone famous—Napoleon, Caesar, Genghis Khan. Nobody was ever a garbage man.”

“I don’t know about that. Maybe all men don’t get reincarnated. Or, maybe a former life collecting garbage is just full of memories, and odors, worth suppressing. I just know who I was.”