The Guardian - 35

Harm defended Paul Bauwer, a homeless former SEAL who killed three convenience store robbers/murderers in order to protect his son, Marty, who was playing a video game in the store. Bauwer had been MIA for 4 years as a POW and his personnel file was mostly sealed. Bauwer had gone AWOL from a psyc evaluation nine years previously for nearly killing a man who Bauwer had claimed was stalking his wife. He now watched his son anonymously while he was living on the street. He fled to a church where Bud just happened to be praying about not studying for his final law exam. H got B out and tried to protect Bauwer from trigger happy police but he was wounded by a sniper. H defended Bauwer against the "hot shot" prosecutor, Nardoni, who snidely gloated "welcome to the big league" when the judge refused Hs motion. Bauwer told H to NOT contact his ex-wife "under any circumstances." Nardoni went for the highest penalty because the last of the thugs was killed while he was running away from Bauwer. B was able to enhance the video surveillance tape by looking at a reflection in the cooler door and identified a boys baseball cap. Bauwer admitted that it was his son but wouldn't let H use him. He said that it was better "to put an old dog down who is more trouble than he's worth once he's outlived his usefulness." H finally found the boy, without help from Bauwer, then got the judge to order the prosecutor not to inform Marty about his dad. While passing the frustrated Nardoni in the hall, H told M "I think I like the big leagues." Nardoni laid it on about Bauwer having an antisocial personality disorder from complete hearsay evidence. Mac took him down showing that the man Bauwer had attacked for stalking his wife (and had been wrongfully prosecuted) had actually stalked two other women. Nardoni began harassing Marty on the stand so Bauwer grabbed him in a chokehold and had to be subdued. They gave an eloquent defense so Bauwer was found not guilty of murder. H arranged for him to apply for work at one of his friend's parachute schools. Marty came back and apologized to Bauwer for running away and said he hoped he wasn't a coward. Bauwer told him that he would see him around.

Force Recon - 33

Mac and Bud were assigned to investigate two injuries during marine Force Recon training. Lt Col HR Malcom requested the investigation. Sgt Maj Sauer was shown "whipping Harm into marine shape" so he could go undercover to the Force Recon training without telling M. He posed as Gunny Post in order to investigate internally the training methods of legendary Capt "John Wayne" Koonan, who routinely went beyond established battle plans and made each assignment "harder" than needed in order to make his men "tough." Gunny Krychuck had been wounded while attempting to save Cpl Bell, who got scared and "froze" while explosions burst all around them, because they were too close to the fire (Koonan's "extra" problem). M was upset with H for not telling her about his under-cover assignment; so, when Malcom introduced H as the new Gunny she tried to make him look foolish by making up a story-line of her own. H ingratiated himself with the men and stood up for the unit in a bar fight against another unit who insulted them. When Koonan extracted Hs unit from the brig and pointed out that he didn't see any of the other unit in there with them H responded that they all went to the infirmary. Eventually Bell told H that he saw Koonan rubbing the map with dirt and redrawing the line with pencil.

In the recon unit's "live fire" graduation exercise, H took the men into a mock town to rescue POWs before the town was leveled by artillery. H told his men that in this exercise "Murphy will make an appearance." In his usual tampering, Koonan switched their radio to a disabled one; but, Sgt Tesla saw him do it and switched it back (so Koonan's radio was the one disabled). They retrieved the dummies they were to rescue and called "clear," but Tesla went back in to retrieve some orange rags which he thought looked like an extra POW. While in there, a beam fell on him and pinned him to the ground. H had to go back to rescue Tesla and ordered the team to proceed on out of the area; but, he was unable to lift the beam by himself and the shelling had started. The team, however, came back to rescue them both, midst live bombing. Koonan was watching through binoculars but couldn't radio a cease fire because he was the one who had the disabled radio. H eventually got the men out without injury and Koonan admitted his method of "trickery" in front of M & B so that Malcom wouldn't be blamed with complicity. Koonan got reprimanded and left corps.