Tomcat

by David E. Meadows

  The top of it was even with General Lewis’s belt line. Scene one, act one, thought Clive.

  General Lewis stared around the room, silent for several seconds, before he coughed and ordered, “Stand easy, gentlemen and ladies.”

  Admiral Cameron moved to the left side of the podium and stood quietly with his hands clasped lightly behind his back. He seemed so small to Clive, standing there beside the general, like a kid in the presence of the school bully.

  Clive noted the furrowed eyebrows of the admiral and knew Cameron’s first assessment of the new commander was not a positive one. Good first impressions were important in a military organization where faces come and go. Make a good impression the first time, and when you screw up later, you’re usually able to recover. Make a bad impression, and when you screw up, you meet everyone’s expectations and hidden wishes. Even the size of the military won’t protect, because reputations, once earned, germinate through a sailor’s, soldier’s, or airman’s community.

  Clive wondered what the skinny was on General Lewis. They’d find out eventually.

  Cameron turned to the taller Lewis. “General, welcome aboard the USS Stennis. On behalf of the Sixth Fleet and the United States Navy, we hope everything is to your convenience.”

  Lewis nodded without looking. “Thank you, Admiral,” he answered, his eyes scanning the crowd in front of him.

  His bass voice bounced off the bulkheads of the compartment.

  Was there nothing about this man that didn’t shout huge? There was a grated edge to his voice like a deep rumble of an approaching train. For some unexplained reason, Clive thought of it as part of the show.

  Admiral Cameron faced the audience. “Before I turn the podium over to General Lewis,”—It wasn’t as if he was standing in front of the lectern; the general still firmly held the sides of it—“I would like to give you a quick biography of our new boss. The new commander, Joint Task Force African Force. General Lewis until two days ago was the Army legislative officer to Congress, where he has held the post for three years. Before that assignment, Lieutenant General Lewis was the brigade commander for the Old Guard at Fort Mcnair. The Old Guard is the Army’s premier ceremonial division.” Admiral Cameron stroked his chin and grinned.

  Clive thought he saw a slight twitch to General Lewis’s cheek from the corner of his eye. The deliberate mixing of brigade and division irked Army officers as much as them calling ships boats irritated the Navy.

  “Most of you may not realize that they hung the assassins of President Lincoln at Fort Mcnair. Let’s hope the good general has better plans for us.”

  A nervous chuckle echoed from an audience comprised primarily of Navy officers. The two Air Force exchange officers standing near the front looked down at their feet to hide their smiles.

  “And we don’t join them.” He turned to General Lewis, who forced a smile across his tight lips.

  This is going to be a fun ride, thought Clive, shaking his head.

  “General Lewis is an Army Ranger and earned his combat experience while a major in Liberia and Iraq. He brings a lot of joint experience earned during the tour before his assignment at Fort Mcnair at the Joint Chiefs of Staff where he was in the J8, formulating war plans.” Admiral Cameron paused.

  General Lewis stepped forward. “Thanks, Admiral,” he interrupted. “I always feel uncomfortable when someone reads my biography.” He turned back to his audience.

  “Suffice to say, I have been around the block a few times.”

  He looked down at Cameron. “With your permission. Admiral, I’ll take it from here.”

  Without waiting for a reply. General Lewis continued.

  “Thank you for coming here this afternoon. It was nice to arrive earlier than expected and jump right into operations.

  I appreciate the fact that the cooks have turned out some nice finger food for us to get acquainted. Unfortunately.

  I don’t think we have time. I prefer to jump right into this mess and try to straighten it out. We need to move fast to disentangle from the situation we have gotten ourselves into here in North Africa. Before 1 depart for an executive session with the admiral and his deputies and aides, I would like to pass on some philosophy about how we function in a combat situation. I have never been a strong supporter of all these techno-geeks running around believing that computers will fix everything. There is no substitute for muddy boots on the ground, getting the job done. The same applies to boats at sea.”

  “Boats! Boa’s are submarines; surface ships are ships’” hummed Clive, under his breath, to himself.

  “I believe in a strong, inviolate chain of command. Too many times, the COC is jumped by well-meaning officers bringing confusion in the ranks over who is in charge and who is running the show. I want no mistakes that I am running this show. You have done an excellent job. and it is up to me to provide the focus and impetus to finish it. This will probably be the last time we meet as a combined group. Things function better when a proper chain of command exists, so I will issue my orders through my staff, most of whom I brought with me. Responses for me please send up via the COCA good, functioning chain of command ensures military order and discipline. We will have both in this Joint Task Force.”

  He gripped both sides of the lectern so hard the general’s knuckles had turned white. General Lewis knew how to use his size. The Army general casually, and Clive thought purposely, eased Admiral Cameron aside.

  Clive noted with surprise a rising anger toward this Johnny-come-lately who just marched in and told them how screwed up they were. The audacity of shoving the admiral aside. Everything Kurt brought him and Pete Dev lin earlier this afternoon seemed to confirm his impression of General Lewis as a political general. What they needed was a combat leader. Cameron had been that. Maybe Kurt’s friend at the Pentagon had been right about how the general got this job.

  Lewis leaned forward. “I know some of you may question why an Army general has been given command of primarily a Navy and Marine Corps operation. There are no easy answers other than we need the forces here re-staged ASAP to the Korean theater. The Mediterranean is small potatoes in comparison to the nation’s agony on that peninsula. 1 was briefed by the secretary of Defense before I departed Washington, and Secretary Maddock tasked me personally with doing whatever needs to be done to disengage here. Once that is done. I suspect the Navy and Marine Corps units here will receive new orders directing them to sortie at max speed to the other side of the world, where the real war is happening.”

  Real war? We have bodies in body bags stacked in the freezer, and he thinks this is not a real war? Clive saw the quick glance by Admiral Cameron at the general.

  A visible ripple swept through the audience like a miniature Mexican wave. A few mumbled bulls hits disguised as coughs brought smiles to the captured Navy audience.

  Lewis leaned back, looking at his audience as if evaluating his words. He saw the smiles and interpreted them as agreement. “We are going to be working harder in the days to come than you have been used to, and we will execute the orders of the secretary of Defense as we would the president’s.

  “Again, thanks for the nice soiree, but—” He turned to Admiral Cameron. “Admiral, where can we go for a private executive meeting?”

  “We can use my stateroom, sir.”

  Lewis shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks. Staterooms are for sleeping. I prefer an operations space where we can respond instantly to any changes in the military picture.”

  “Then we can go to the Sixth Fleet staff Operations space. General. It’s small, but it has the display screens and systems to monitor everything going on.”

  Five minutes later, the general sat at the head of the aluminum table in the staff Operations room. The reflective light beneath the charts had been turned off after the general complained about how it affected his vision. Admiral Cameron sat to Lewis’s left. Clive sat beside the admiral.

  Smiling, puppy-dog Colonel Brad Storey. General Lewis’s e
xecutive aide, stood behind the Ranger genera).

  Storey had already interpreted twice to Clive on their way down to the Operations space what the general meant in his wardroom greeting. Spin doctor came to Clive’s mind as he listened to the fawning colonel.

  Near Colonel Storey was Kutt Lederman, standing back as if seeking a shadow to hide in, in this well-lighted compartment, Clive would have smiled if he thought the action would have escaped the darting eagle looks of Lewis. Looks that seemed to say the new commander suspected everyone of being opposed to him, almost paranoid behavior, thought Clive. But what did he know about paranoia? He was a fighter pilot. Then again, just because the general might think everyone was against him didn’t necessarily mean he was wrong. Neither he nor Pete Dev lin was overjoyed about anyone relieving the “iron warrior,” Admiral Cameron. They had been through the entire “mess,” as Lewis called it, together. Had their noses bloodied and bloodied a few themselves. Right now, the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps team owned the Mediterranean, despite the political infighting by the French to bring Sixth Fleet under their NATO control or the French and Germans screaming at the other European countries to use the European rapid-reaction force.

  Clive didn’t see any Army soldiers over here with the exception of Lewis and the six he brought with him.

  A one-star brigadier named Allen Toon sat to the left of Colonel Storey. Clive and Pete Devlin had yet to figure out what Brigadier General Toon’s specific function was, but the man’s presence made him pensive over how this added flag officer was going to fit into the picture.

  Pete Devlin would never be a good poker player. Clive could read the discomfort on the pilot’s face. Pete sat beside Toon, silent and fuming. Other than a quick handshake with the two Army flag officers, Pete had kept his lips together and his comments to himself. Clive knew the new deputy commander. Sixth Fleet, was probably going through agony, staying quiet for so long and keeping his thoughts to himself. He hoped the man didn’t bite through his lips, he had them so tightly clenched.

  Clive glanced at Lewis to see if the new boss was aware of the dissatisfaction around the table. He fought the urge to look at his watch. The tension around the table was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

  Only dick Holman, sitting at the end of the table directly across from Lewis, seemed unaffected by the Army general. He met the general’s stare and nod with a slight nod of his own. It was almost as if Dick viewed the change of leadership as a common challenge. Captains of ships endured staffs when they were assigned aboard their vessels. To Dick, this was probably just one more headache to sort. Of course, with the impending temporary orders expected from the chief of Naval Personnel detaching Dick formally from the Stennis to Admiral Cameron’s staff, the maintenance of the embarked staffs would soon become the problem of the current XO.

  It would not surprise Clive if Dick Holman hoped General Lewis would return him to his job as commanding officer of USS Stennis.

  Something was going on behind the scenes that Clive was being kept in the dark about. Admiral Cameron was keeping something back. Clive knew from the moment the three-star returned from Washington and Stuttgart that something happened at either one or both of those places.

  He initially attributed it to the death of the admiral’s wife and the family turmoil in the admiral’s life. However, sending what appeared to Clive to be a political general— junior to the admiral — to relieve Cameron seemed too ill timed to be anything but previously planned. The recent shuffle to bring Rear Admiral Devlin up as his deputy and shifting Dick Holman to a job normally held by an experienced admiral had further convinced Clive Bowen that something was going on behind the scenes. Whatever it was, he was going to find out. come hell or high water.

  General Lewis looked directly at Holman. “We haven’t met, have we?”

  “No, sir. General. We haven’t. I am Captain Richard Holman.”

  “What is your job. Captain Richard Holman?”

  “General, as of this morning, I am the acting commander.

  Task Force Sixty-seven, in charge of the Naval Air Forces in the Mediterranean. I am also, or was. the commanding officer of the USS Stennis, the greatest aircraft carrier in the United States Navy.”

  Lewis nodded. “This is the Stennis, right?”

  Holman nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Nice ship. Captain, but I noticed when we landed that there seemed to be several people smoking near the island.”

  “Well, they shouldn’t be. The smoking area is on the stern of the ship. I’ll see to that. General. Smoking is only allowed in assigned areas.”

  Lewis nodded. “That’s not what I meant. Captain. 1 don’t like smoking at all. I do not want anyone smoking near me or around me. I do not want to walk through a hallway or near one of these authorized areas and smell the rank odor of old, stale smoke. So make sure your crew understands that. Okay? We understand each other?”

  Holman reached for his pocket. He started to bring out his chewed cigar and stick it between his teeth, but at the last second, his fingers exchanged it for a three-by-five card. He pulled a Skilcraft pen from his khaki shirt pocket. “Yes. sir. I shall personally take care of that, General.

  Are there any other odors, other than stale smoke, the general would like to steer clear of

  Clive looked down at his hands, waiting for the general to explode.

  “No, Captain, but from the fuel and oil atmosphere that permeates the ship, I suspect my uniforms will need special attention.”

  “There is no problem with that, General. 1 will ensure the laundry will give your uniforms special attention. I will make sure they know your instructions.”

  “I’ll get with you on that, Dick,”’ Colonel Brad Storey said, waving his hand a couple of times to catch Holman’s attention.

  There were several rules to sea life. Never piss off the personnel men who look after the service records; yours could wind up in Timbuktu. Never piss off disbursing clerks, who did the pay; you could find your pay screwed up so badly, it would take years to unravel. And never, ever piss off the ship’s servicemen who run the laundry by insinuating they need special directions. Telling the laundry gang to take special care of the general’s uniforms would be like waving a red flag in front of a raging bull.

  Dick Holman looked forward to allowing the general’s aide to give directions to the laundry on the general’s uniforms.

  “Thanks, Richard. I would appreciate that. 1 like to have a fresh uniform laid out every morning. Nothing makes a warrior feel better than a clean, freshly ironed uniform. I look forward to it after I finish my workout in the gym and my shower. Colonel Storey will get with you later to find out what he needs to keep me going.”

  Lewis looked at Cameron. “Let’s get on with the intelligence brief, and then let’s you, I, your deputy, and chief of staff get together with me, Colonel Storey, and General Toon afterward.”

  Cameron motioned Kurt Lederman forward, and for the next sixty minutes, the men sat silently while the general tore apart Kurt’s briefing. Lewis took pleasure in pointing out several grammatical errors on the printed Powerpoint slide. The general was quick to point out the different font sizes on the classification levels of several slides. “Uniformity,” the general had commanded as his finger bounced off the paper brief, acting as if the word was a profound quote for legacy. The general frowned continuously as Kurt tried to dodge machine gun questions about the Algerian Kilo submarine and why the Navy was unable to determine whether it was under way or not. The idea that thirty or more Algerian fighter aircraft were unaccounted for and hidden somewhere in terrain that had nothing to hide anything seemed to the general to smack of incompetence. It was the only time that Clive saw Dick Holman shift uncomfortably in his seat. By this time, Pete Devlin looked like a steam locomotive ready to jump the tracks. It would not have surprised Clive if the mercurial admiral had leaped across the table in an attempt to throttle the abrasive general. Unfortunately, the
general could probably pick Pete Devlin up with one hand and whip him around as easily as he would a length of lariat. Discretion is the better part of valor when angry.

  “I think that about wraps it up as far as I am concerned.

  I was briefed about the stranded Marines in south Algeria and your inability to help them. So, before I left the European Command at Stuttgart this morning, I asked the Air Force what they could do. Seems they have one of their Aerospace Expeditionary Force flying through the area tomorrow and have offered to divert its route so they can see if they can make contact with the Marines. Let’s hope they have better luck with their carrier in the air than you have had with your carrier on the sea,” General Lewis said. He looked at his watch. “We have been here for over an hour. Captain … what was your name?”

  “Kurt Lederman, General.”

  “Captain Lederman, in the future, let’s keep my briefings to no more than thirty minutes, and that’s to include any questions I may have. We don’t have the time to procrastinate or spend in endless briefings and staff meetings.

  You strike me as very bright for an intelligence officer, so … quick briefings and, if I have questions, you be sure to have the answers. Okay?”

  Kurt glanced at Cameron, who nodded. “Yes, sir, General.

  General, is there any special format you prefer for your briefings and any special daily information you want presented? Does your staff have the Microsoft Powerpoint format — fonts and size — that you prefer, sir?”

  “No specifics, Captain. Just uniform and consistent.

  Good staff work translates to good combat ops. 1 want a quick highlight on the plans for the next twenty-four hours along with the current force disposition. Following those two slides, tell me what the current intelligence picture is, what you think is likely to happen, and, if you have any recommendations, I also want to know what the negative fallout will be if I execute any of them.”