The Girl in Green by Derek B. Miller Read Free Book Online

still being lined up and executed in front of their children to make sure the rebels (if there were any rebels) ‘got the message,’ which they did.
    Lieutenant Morgan’s rant may have begun as a walk-and-talk lecture, but it did not end as one.
    â€˜You are in the worst kind of shit you can possibly imagine,’ Harvey yelled in front of everyone. ‘You can’t even spell the kind of trouble you are in right now. I’m going to have to go home tonight and re-read the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice just to understand what the hell just happened here. Are you getting this, Hobbes?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    Arwood wasn’t paying attention. Lieutenant Morgan was speaking to the gallery. Arwood was merely a prop, and he knew it. He didn’t care. He was still looking at the girl who was looking at him.
    Besides, this man wasn’t going to take out a pistol and shoot him. This man wasn’t going to stare him down with a Makarov pistol on his belt, and mock him. This man wasn’t going to shoot a girl in the back. This man, whatever his faults, was not preternaturally evil, and there was nothing he could do to make himself matter in a moment like this compared to what Arwood had just experienced.
    Or so Arwood thought until Lieutenant Morgan proved him wrong by saying this: ‘And for what? For what? You did all that for what? For some fucking Arab bitch.’
    What struck Arwood in his gut, as a wordless pain that he could not articulate until much later, was a sudden understanding that the only thing worse than evil was deciding that evil didn’t matter.
    And for that reason, and that reason alone, Arwood Hobbes stood up in front of fifty other soldiers, without hesitation or regret, and beat the living shit out of Lieutenant Harvey Morgan.
    Arwood Hobbes was collected by the military police. Thomas Benton was sent to Harvey Morgan’s commanding offer, Major Alan Wilcox, and Wilcox told Benton calmly that he was to now consider himself persona non grata at Checkpoint Zulu. His credentials would be pulled, and he was to go away. Wilcox was a midwesterner, and did not raise his voice or use hysterical language or gestures. He communicated his decisions to Benton, and Benton said that he understood.
    â€˜One thing, Major.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜If you court-martial Arwood Hobbes, I’ll make sure it’s covered in the press. I know people at the Boston Globe , the Baltimore Sun , and the Washington Post — people who cover the Pentagon and the White House. They will ask questions publicly and on the record about why Arwood Hobbes is being prosecuted.’
    â€˜The army does not have to answer those questions,’ Wilcox said. ‘We have procedures. I don’t know how it works in Britain, Mr Benton, but in the US those questions will be ignored for reasons of due process.’
    â€˜No, Major. They won’t be answered. But they won’t be ignored. Because it won’t be the answers that’ll hurt the Bush administration — it’ll be the questions.’
    Later, when Lieutenant Harvey Morgan was sent to the infirmary for general care, stitches, and a cast, he was advised — very quietly and without any hysterical language or gestures — that it would be best for him not to file a report of the incident. The problem, Major Wilcox explained, was that a few days earlier, on the twenty-sixth, General Schwarzkopf had made a major political gaffe by telling David Frost on international news that the US had been ‘suckered’ into letting the Iraqis fly helicopters in the ceasefire agreement, and that in retrospect he thought the Iraqis had planned to use them against the rebellion the whole time. Now the White House was in full defensive mode over his comments, because every Iraqi civilian death suddenly seemed like America’s fault as a result of Stormin’ Norman having been hoodwinked by a bunch of