Chapter 11: Witch Hunt

This is the latest chapter of The Ice Man, my book about the Navy SEAL platoon in Iraq that took the blame for a CIA homicide. The book is available only to paid subscribers.

“Rest assured, we want to get to the bottom of this.”

Jeffrey Harper was in the office of Navy Captain Raul “Paul” Pedrozo, the top lawyer at Naval Special Warfare Command. He was listening as a Navy lawyer coaxed him into telling his story. The problem about what to do with Harper had fallen in Captain Pedrozo’s lap. A room full of Navy lawyers was eager to hear from the man who had just lost his Trident for lying and stealing a teammate’s body armor.

“This is bad for the community, and if there’s people out there doing those things, we need to address them and we need to discipline people. We need to cut out the cancer or whatever it takes, so it doesn’t happen. … We view this as extremely serious. The last thing we need is our reputation tarnished.”

“I understand,” Harper replied.

“If it is tarnished, we want to show that we’re going to be aggressively proactive in trying to address it,” the Navy lawyer continued. “That’s the only way you try to save face is you go after the bad guys,…