Larry Bond - Vortex

Combat in Africa. He shook his head. His Marine career had already included a lot of combat duty, always in godforsaken places nobody sane would ever want to live in, just fight over. But he’d never had the opportunity to command so many men in battle. At full strength, a Marine

Expeditionary Force could muster up to forty thousand sailors and

Marines, two hundred fighters and attack jets, four hundred -plus helicopters, and hundreds of tanks, light armored vehicles, and artillery pieces. In Craig’s admittedly biased view, it was the world’s most perfect combination of strategic mobility, firepower, and pure guts.

Just thinking about handling all that in the noise and confusion of battle was enough to make a man sweat bullets, Craig thought. You couldn’t just lead your boys forward in a head-on slashing attack. You had to know how to mass air, land, and sea power into a single, flexible whole. Still, he was ready for it-ready for anything. Or so he told himself.

During a long and distinguished Marine Corps career, he’d held a variety of staff assignments, not just troop commands. Every Marine officer, even the most gung ho, had to spend plenty of time commanding a desk. And his time at the Pentagon and at various duty stations around the world had shown him to be a good planner-a thinking soldier who never lost sight of the shortest, least costly route to the objective.

Despite what at times seemed an inordinate number of people shooting at him, Craig had stayed healthy and moved up the hierarchy, one slow rung at a time. Now he’d reached the penultimate step of his career-commander,

Fleet Marine Force Atlantic and commanding officer of the Second Marine

Expeditionary Force, one of only three such forces in the Marine Corps.

The general looked up as the helo came over Cherry Point Marine Corps Air

Station. He started packing up his paperwork. Once overhead, it took several more minutes to reach the flight line, a huge expanse of bare concrete bordered on one side by a row of boxy, metal-walled hangars. The runways themselves seemed like a study in perpetual motion. Of turboprop cargo planes taking off with supplies for carriers at sea. Of fighters practicing touch-and-gos in a howling roar of powerful engines. And over it all, the pervasive, biting tang of raw jet fuel.

His helo landed near a twin-tailed F/A-18 parked next to a grimy yellow starter cart. A long hose ran from the starter cart to the Hornet, blowing air into its jet engines to get their turbines spinning. A small group of men in camouflage uniforms came to attention as the engines stopped. They saluted Craig as he stepped out.

Leaving his briefcase for his aide, Craig returned their salutes and walked quickly over to the senior officer, a lieutenant colonel.

“Good afternoon, General. I’m Steve Walker, squadron commander.” He pointed to a lieutenant wearing flight gear.

“This is Tom Lyles, your chauffeur for this trip.”

Lyles was a short, stocky man with a broad, clean-featured face. Craig liked him immediately. Their eyes were on the same level.

He held out his hand.

“Lieutenant.”

An enlisted man ran up carrying a pile of flight gear, and they quickly fitted Craig with coveralls, g-vest, and a helmet. He noticed that there were several sets of equipment, all in different sizes, lined up on a nearby jeep.

As the sailor helped him lace up his g-vest, Craig asked, “How long a flight to Andrews?”

“About thirty minutes, sir. ” The young Navy flyer grinned at his surprised expression.

“We’ll be at Mach point nine five as soon as we get to altitude. “

Though he did his best to hide it, Craig was impressed. Just driving from

Andrews to the Pentagon around Washington’s traffic-choked Beltway would probably take twice that long. In his case, though, another helicopter would carry him to the Pentagon.

His aide ran up.

“Your gear’s stowed in the baggage pod, General. “

“Great.” Craig pulled the helmet onto his head.

“Signal my ETA to the commandant. And I’ll need another fast fide back after this meeting.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Ten minutes later, the Hornet roared off the runway, climbing fast on full throttle. At twenty thousand feet over the wooded Virginia countryside, Lyles leveled off. He kept his throttle shoved forward, though.

Most Navy pilots spend their lives computing flight profiles that give them the longest possible time aloft. Lyles evidently planned to make the most of a mission that let him fly almost as fast as he wanted to.

The Fighter roared on, boring a hole through the air at over six hundred knots. Craig’s mood soared along with the plane.

THE PENTAGON

Craig strode briskly up the wide set of steps to the Pentagon’s River

Entrance, greeted by a forest of salutes snapped his way by officers and enlisted men coming and going through the set of double doors.

A Marine major hurried forward.

“General Craig, sir. Right this way.

They’re waiting for you downstairs.”

Craig had expected to go straight to the commandant’s office in the Navy

Annex, but had found himself deep inside the Pentagon instead-midway along a poorly lit basement corridor he’d never seen before. His guide stopped in front of an anonymous metal door.

“In here, General.”

The man punched in a four-number security code on a keypad and pulled the door open.

Hat under his arm, Craig stepped through into a wood paneled conference room, complete with a long mahogany conference table and beautifully upholstered furniture. Even the room’s utilitarian fluorescent lights had been tastefully enclosed.

His first glimpse of the men waiting for him wiped away any lasting impression of the room. He’d been expecting to see Wcs Masters, of course. But he sure as hell hadn’t expected to see a group that included the rest of the Joint Chiefs, the secretary of defense, and the Vice

President. He stopped dead in the doorway.

“Come on in, Jerry. Take a pew. ” Masters stepped around the table, shook

Craig’s outstretched hand, and steered him toward an empty chair.

Oh, boy. Although some of the glitter had worn off those in high places as he advanced in rank, Craig still found himself a little awed in such company. Here he was, the commanding general of a Marine expeditionary force-the absolute lord and master of nearly forty thousand men-and he was still the junior man present in this small, secret room. He wasn’t used to that.

Also, just what kind of orders was he going to get? There was an old rule in the Corps that the higher a job started, the tougher it got.

Wordlessly, he nodded to the assembled group and sat down.

Masters took the seat next to him and nodded to an Air Force officer standing near the wall.

“All right, Colonel.”

A projection screen slid down from the ceiling, and the lights dimmed.

For twenty minutes, Craig sat through another briefing on South Africa.

Though shorter than his G-2’s version, the data was a little more timely and a little more complete. Nevertheless, Craig made a mental note to tell

Slocomb he’d been pretty close to the mark.

The lights came up, and General Masters looked at him.

“Jerry, we want you to take the Second MEF to South Africa. “

Bingo. His earlier guesses had been on the mark, too.

“Our people are still putting a plan together, but right now we anticipate an initial landing at Cape Town-followed by extensive operations inland and east along the South African coast. “

With two briefings under his belt, Craig understood exactly what this entailed. Cape Town was eighty-five hundred miles from the Marine amphibious base at Camp Lejeune-an incredible distance for an operation of that kind. Automatically, he glanced at the map still displayed on the screen.