Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  “You came aboard to brief me when Nate Green took over from BG 4, right?” Those quick head movements took in the office, the stacks of briefing books, the old squadron photos and decals, the pictures of Rose and Mikey and even the dog, my God, that seemed pretty dumb suddenly to Alan. The admiral smiled a little, nothing very warm; he didn’t seem to think much of the dog photo, either. “Weren’t you Jack Parsills’ AI in the Gulf War? Mike Craik’s son?”

  There it was; Mike Craik’s son. To the admiral’s generation, he’d never be anything but Mike Craik’s son. And some remote briefing during turnover in rota. “Yes, sir.”

  “How’d you end up in this job?”

  This was not a topic Alan was prepared to be entirely up front about, certainly not with a senior officer. “Detailer recommended it, sir.”

  “Parsills said you were some sort of Africa expert, am I right?”

  Alan felt that the questions were coming a little fast.

  “Not really an expert, sir.”

  The admiral leaned over Alan’s desk and started leafing through the notes on Rwanda. “Right.”

  The commander was still in hover mode out there in the corridor. “Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

  “I want to pick this guy’s brain.” The commander backed away.

  The admiral pulled up Alan’s desk chair and sat down, started to read again and waved a finger at the straight chair that was half hidden by the file cabinet. Alan sat down, a guest in his own office. The admiral scanned another page and tossed the papers aside. “It’s Alan, right? Alan, are you sure that Peacemaker is on schedule?”

  The question took him by surprise. Another change of subject. He had to move his brain to the new subject. Not Africa. Peacemaker. Briefers are always short on sleep at the Pentagon, and his son, Mikey, was not being very cooperative lately. And had to be picked up from day care in an hour.

  “Yes, sir. Rose—that’s my wife, she’s a lieutenant-commander on collateral duty—she implied that the techs are impatient to get through the Fleetex tests to start the final process.”

  The admiral looked away. He ran his hands down his immaculate uniform trousers and stood up. Alan stood up.

  “Tell me what you think will happen in Rwanda. Make it short.”

  Alan took a deep breath, changed mental directions one more time, and launched.

  “Sir, as you probably know, the Tutsis have regained control of Rwanda. They’re still being hounded by remnant Interahamwe forces operating out of UN camps in Eastern Zaire. They’re having limited success interdicting attacks on both their own ethnic tribesmen and on Hutus.”

  “Why would the Hutus attack Hutus?”

  “To terrify them into support of the Interahamwe, sir. To show them that the Tutsi government can’t or won’t protect them. To drive them out of the country and increase their power base in Eastern Zaire.” It was like a digest of O’Neill’s letters.

  “Okay. Proceed.”

  “Sir, at some point, the Tutsis, and their allies the Ugandans, will take some step to eliminate the Interahamwe. Or they’ll attack the Hutus in Rwanda, for ethnic cleansing purposes, or both. The Rwandan People’s Army, that’s the Tutsis, are pretty good. They could probably accomplish anything they want. France and Russia back the Hutus. That’s an over-simplification, sir. We back Uganda, who backs the Tutsis. That’s another simplification.”

  “How will this affect the next ten months?”

  “Not my department, sir.”

  “Guess.”

  He wasn’t prepared, but he made a prediction, anyway. “Sir, I think the Rwandan Tutsis will find a pawn and use him to cover an attack on Eastern Zaire. They’ll annex Eastern Zaire long enough to eradicate the Interahamwe. If Zaire, and thus Mobutu, and his ally France, react, it will be a fairly hot war. With a bunch of US NGOs—nongovernmental organizations—in the way. That will mean an evacuation operation.”

  “When?”

  Alan hesitated, then went for it.

  “Any day.”

  “During BG 7’s deployment?”

  “If not sooner.”

  The admiral summoned the commander, who had not drifted very far. She frowned faintly at the chummy scene in Alan’s office, which was so small that the admiral’s and the lieutenant’s medals were almost touching. “Sir?”

  The axe head turned toward the commander. “I’ll square it with the CNO. I’d like this guy to brief the Rwanda crisis tomorrow. Get some support from DIA. Okay? Great.” Pilchard looked back at Alan, touched the pink ribbon that was a little off by itself on his chest. “What’s that?”

  “Italian, sir. Humanitarian contribution.”

  The admiral shot a look into his eyes. The look was inscrutable—a little amused? Did he know about the adventure with the Italians and Kenyans in Bosnia? “See you tomorrow.”

  Admiral Pilchard went through the door like a launch off the catapult. Alan called a babysitter and asked her to pick Mikey up from day care. The commander poked her head into his cubicle as he called a guy he knew at DIA.

  “What crisis in Rwanda?” she asked.

  Day Two, Startex plus 34. On the flight deck of the Andrew Jackson.

  Rafe stood next to the aircraft and stared down the deck at the JBDs. Cyclic ops were going on as if things were normal, and things weren’t normal, and he didn’t know what was going on. He did know that his squadron had for the second time that day failed to be on station to provide fuel, and two F/A-18s had had to divert to the beach at Guantanamo, one of them almost dry when he touched down, and Rafe himself had just dumped fifty thousand pounds of fuel because he had been hundreds of miles from anybody who could have used it.

  He suppressed the idea that it was Christy Nixon’s fault. But a traitorous part of his mind whispered that if Al Craik had been the squadron AI, things wouldn’t have happened this way. But Craik wasn’t a pretty woman who was turning Rafehausen’s head, either.

  It was bad. It was very, very bad.

  Startex plus 34.30. Langley.

  George Shreed spent five minutes on the telephone, listening to General Touhey burn with a flame so hot it could have welded steel. Touhey hated the Navy as a matter of course, but today he hated it with a passion that was epic.

  The Navy had screwed up his project. Peacemaker had aborted.

  “I’ll call Wick,” Shreed said for the fourth time. He said it again twenty seconds later. “I’ll call Wick.” Wick was his man at the White House. Touhey also had a man at the White House, Red, a figure of some note on the National Security Council. Thirty seconds later, Shreed said, “You call Red. I’ll call Wick.” He hung up, grinned, and called the White House.

  Day Two. Washington.

  Alan got to brief Rwanda and Fleetex. The commander cited Alan’s experience and kept her favorite, the ops briefer, out of what appeared to be a very contentious issue.

  The Rwanda piece went early in the briefing cycle and passed almost without questions. Alan showed some tape from a recent BBC piece on the ethnic struggle there while he went through a two-minute summary of the events in the region since 1994. He used the rest of his five minutes to lay out his theory, as modified by a harried CIA analyst and an excited DIA guy who seemed glad that anyone was interested in Africa at all. His suggestion that an evacuation operation might be necessary passed without remark. One admiral asked how many Americans were in the potential conflict area and Alan gave the CIA figure of about six hundred. That was it.

  The rest of the brief, about BG 7, went smoothly, too, because everyone knew that an explosion was coming and nobody wanted to be in the way.

  Alan didn’t like briefing this disaster that was occurring in the Caribbean. But he did it, and he did it well. He showed a nice slide with ship positions and noted in passing and without comment that Battle Group Seven was now several hundred miles off station. It was only when he reached the umpire reports from Phase One that the silence from the audie
nce became oppressive.

  “Lieutenant Craik, do I understand that Admiral Newman has suspended the Peacemaker exercise launch indefinitely?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alan turned up the lights. Most of the officers were now sitting at attention.

  The CNO shook his head. He, alone, looked composed. He turned to Admiral Pilchard, who sat two rows behind him.

  “You were right, Dick.” He stood. “Get down there and clean it up.”

  With those words, although he did not yet know it, Alan began to get back on the wheel.

  Day Two. Aboard the Andrew Jackson.

  It was quiet on the carrier—eerily quiet. The ship made all the same noises—propulsion, laundry, maintenance—but air ops were canceled and everybody seemed to be holding his breath. Waiting.

  Sneesen was in the ship’s electronics shop on the third level, trying to stay out of everybody’s way. He was also trying to extend the life of an aged transducer that nobody else in the squadron wanted to tackle. He was doing it because CDR Rafehausen had asked him specially. You couldn’t refuse a request like that. And he had asked—not ordered. And down here in the shop, nobody was screaming that the fleet exercise had gone one hundred percent to hell.

  Sneesen had pretty well decided the transducer was hopeless, but he was going to go one more step, just because it would be so totally great to fix it. He had found himself a spot on a bench behind a floor-to-ceiling bank of steel shelves that were loaded with electronics equipment, a kind of cubby-hole. He wanted some space.

  Now he worked in his little cubby-hole and hoped for a miracle. He was trying to get into a black box that wasn’t meant for him to get into, when he heard the door open and at least two people come in. At least there were two voices, both male, and he thought he knew one but couldn’t place it. The talk was low, the sounds rumbling, meaningless. Then the door opened again and there was a silence and then a new voice, tenor, almost shrill, said, “Borne! So this is where you guys hide!”

  Borne. He knew Chief Borne—the guy who’d been managing deck traffic when Rafehausen’s plane had almost piled in! The great guy with the blue eyes.

  Something was wrong out there. Sneesen could tell from the tempo of the talk. It changed the moment that new voice struck in, and the tones shifted—louder, a little more assertive. He couldn’t understand Borne, but he recognized his bass tones.

  “Chief, don’t bullshit me! I’ve got a bullshit detector! I want that guy’s draft fitrep and I want it today. Get me? Get me?”

  Sneesen peered at them between pieces of old equipment. He could see Borne’s back and the face and hat of a very young jg. He must have been all of twenty-three, Sneesen thought—half Borne’s age. Ship’s company also—not a squadron officer. What was he on Borne about? Borne was a great guy, in Sneesen’s book.

  “You get me, Chief? Do—you—get—me?”

  “I get you. Sir.”

  The jg smirked. “Then get to it, Chief. Today, or it’s your ass.”

  Sneesen ducked. He heard the door open and then close, and then Borne’s deep voice said the words that would change Sneesen’s life: “Yes, sir, Lieutenant Jew-nior Grade Jew-Boy!”

  It struck Sneesen like a slap. Of course, that was what he hadn’t liked about the jg—he had one of those Jewish faces. But what Borne had said—Jeez. Hadn’t he had sensitivity classes? You just weren’t supposed to say stuff like that, even if you thought it. Which everybody did, but—

  He must have made some sound, scuffing his foot in the silence after the guffaw that had followed Borne’s outburst. Something had alerted Borne, anyway; a moment later, his face appeared in the gap between the pieces of equipment, and he said, “Who’s back there?”

  Sneesen waited, feeling himself go red and hot. “It’s only me, Chief.” He stepped to the end of the equipment rack where they could see him. He was trembling. He swallowed.

  Borne looked at him. Hard. Then he glanced at the other sailor, a ship’s company sailor Sneesen didn’t know, and he rumbled, “Give us some room, will you, Billy?” He waited until the other man had left and then he stepped closer to Sneesen, and he said, “Don’t I know you? Aren’t you the kid that saved that S-3 on the deck?”

  “Yes, sir.” Sneesen looked as if he was going to cry. “Sneesen, sir.”

  And then Borne smiled.

  Borne had a wonderful smile, made more so by the terrific frown he usually used. His pale-blue eyes seemed to glow when he smiled, as if they had been lit from within. “I guess you heard what I said just then, didn’t you, Sneesen?”

  Sneesen wanted to lie. He had told a lot of lies, in high school and to his mother and like that, but he thought that if he lied to Borne and got caught, he wouldn’t get out of it the way he used to. Hardly breathing, he muttered, “I guess so.”

  “Sure, you did.” Borne’s smile stayed just as bright. “You know I can get in trouble for saying that, don’t you, Sneesen.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah, but I won’t say anything! Really!”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I just won’t. I don’t care. If you wanta say stuff about—you know—what the hell. Not my business.”

  Borne studied him. Borne’s smile slowly went out, and the face that replaced it was more thoughtful than threatening. Almost fatherly.

  “Son,” Chief Borne said, putting his hand on Sneesen’s shoulder and looking into his eyes, “do you believe in equal rights for white, Christian men?”

  Fleetex, Day Two, Startex plus 47. The Andrew Jackson.

  The COD made a perfect landing, and the thud of the wheels on the deck was exactly matched by a bosun’s whistle over the ship’s loudspeaker and a voice saying “Admiral, US Navy, arriving.”

  All through the ship, men and women waited. It was night, but people were wakeful and edgy. The cyclic ops that had been scheduled were on hold; the intel and ASW spaces were not empty but were silent. Activity around the blue-tiled area had come to a standstill three hours before, and, ever since, the ship had seemed to hold its breath.

  Down the passageway in the ready rooms where the aircrews fidgeted, conversation was stilled, waiting for an explosion. Everybody knew when Admiral Pilchard and his staff of one came down the portside passageway from the ATO. Hundreds of eyes watched Admiral Pilchard enter the admiral’s briefing room.

  The hatch closed behind him.

  There was no explosion.

  In Admiral Newman’s quarters, the flag commander of the failed Fleetex waited. He felt almost light with relief, and he admitted that relief to himself. The exercise—yes, even his proper role—had escaped his grasp. He had failed. The failure would haunt him, later. Now he was mostly happy it was over.

  His flag lieutenant ushered Admiral Pilchard into the day cabin. Pilchard was a smaller man, only six feet, and his face was relaxed, easy. Newman stood as Pilchard entered, and they shook hands with apparent warmth.

  “Nice to see you, Dick.”

  “Sorry it has to be like this, Rudy.”

  Newman glanced around the day cabin. Everything that mattered to him was packed. The rest was somebody else’s problem, now.

  “Go a little easy on my people,” he said. “They were following my orders.”

  He put on his cover and went out. This time, there were no eyes in the passageway to watch.

  Months later, sitting at the breakfast table with his wife because there was no point in hurrying any more, he would suddenly blurt out, “I know what I did wrong!” It would have come to him in the night, as revelations will. “I tried to make it perfect!”

  And, with this essential truth of leadership at last in his brain, he would prepare to accept enforced retirement.

  13

  September – October

  Norfolk and Washington.

  The Andrew Jackson had thirty days to repair the errors of Fleetex before it began its cruise. The battle group ran a reduced version of the LantCom scenario without Phase Three, and, with prayer an
d baling wire and spit, they got through it and almost believed they were competent.

  The squadrons flew back to their bases and set to work to correct what they had learned about themselves. For Rafehausen, this was to be days and nights of exhaustion, trying to bring too many new people up to standard. For Christy Nixon, they were days of self-doubt and outward good humor; she knew she had made a disastrous mistake for her squadron in the Fleetex, but she could not see what she should have done differently. She was hardly alone.

  Admiral Pilchard went back and forth between the Jackson and his offices in Norfolk and the Pentagon. He could not replace Newman’s flag staff without reason, and the spelling-out of reasons meant wounded, sometimes finished careers. Nor could he do it without Newman himself, and so there was the delicate, sometimes embarrassing matter of regularly consulting the man he had replaced on the culpability of his own chosen aides. Pilchard knew he would have to go with some of them, and he let those who had been farthest from the Fleetex debacle in rank or function stay on. For his own chief of staff, he pulled from another duty with BG 7 a man whom both he and Alan Craik knew: he requested, and got, Captain Jack Parsills, once Alan’s S-3 squadron skipper and now captain of the BG oiler. He let Newman’s flag captain and lieutenant stay. He let the O-4s and below stay. Still, blood flowed. He judged and cut, and he judged and cut again, and he waited and reasoned and examined, and, only days before he was to sail, he reluctantly axed the flag intelligence officer and his assistant.

  Rose was in constant motion during those days. Threatened by what she saw as a black mark on her career, she tried to work still harder. She started with the defense of the Philadelphia. If she could help it, nobody was going to sink her launch ship again, BG or no BG, even if she and Valdez had to stand out on the deck with crossbows. She requested weapons. She requested a squad of marines. She went looking for some Stingers that might have been left around someplace.