Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

“Oh my God,” Laurie said, although no one could hear her.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the COD began to climb away from the water. The lighting flashed around them, and Laurie silently prayed to be delivered from what she was sure was going to be the aircraft crashing down into the swirling Atlantic below.

“Greyhound, the pattern is yours; when comfortable, turn downwind,” the air boss instructed.

“What happened?” Laurie shouted to anyone who might hear her as her terror ratcheted up several notches, especially after catching a momentary glimpse up at Truman ’s flight deck. No one heard her above the din of the aircraft noise, but the look in the crewman’s eyes, a look of someone who had been through this harrowing experience many times before and was almost gleeful these poor devils were experiencing it, too, told her more than she wanted to know. This was a really bad idea.

“Here we go again, folks,” the crewman shouted three minutes later, after the COD had lumbered around the landing pattern and lined up on short final for another attempt.

“Easy with it, easy with it,” said the landing signal officer. This LSO was a pro. His voice was neutral, controlled, and even a little gentle. A bolter sapped any pilot’s confidence, and he wanted to get the COD down on this approach before its pilots really started to clutch.

“Little power … you’re a half mile from the ship … easy with the power … EASY … right for lineup … keep her coming … easy, easy with the power,” he said in the most soothing voice he could muster, trying to coax the aircraft down onto the gyrating deck.

Lightning flashed again, and the booming thunder told them the developing storm was intensifying.

With only a quarter mile to go before impacting the deck, the COD wallowed like a drunk as its pilots struggled desperately to follow the soft-spoken commands. In the tube, there was complete silence, and even the crewman had lost some of his bravado. Laurie willed herself to keep her eyes open, although she didn’t want to.

“Left just a bit … OK … don’t settle … little more power … that’s it … attaboy … power, more power!”

Faster control movements by the pilots now, seconds away from the moment of truth, the round-down, the curved, aft end of the flight deck, looming up at them, almost daring them to impale their aircraft on it short of the landing zone.

“Right for lineup, a little right, steady, easy with the power, easy, easy with it ”—the LSO’s commands were coming on now like a tape on fast-forward—“steady, steady, don’t settle, a little power, easy with it …”

SLAM … SCREECH … the COD smashed into Truman ’s deck, caught the number four wire, the last arresting wire, and was jerked to a halt in seconds, slinging Laurie and her terrified fellow passengers against their seat belts like rag dolls. Laurie Phillips took a deep breath. My God, I’m alive — I think . She didn’t know what was ahead of her or what awaited her on board Normandy, but surely it couldn’t be worse than this. Could it?

One of the first things Chase Williams did after hiring Anne Sullivan was arrange their calendars to enable him to have lunch with his deputy once a week without fail. This was a carryover from his many command tours during his Navy career. He believed strongly if the relationship between the commander and the deputy wasn’t rock solid the enterprise would fail, and fail spectacularly.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s atrium cafeteria wasn’t gourmet, not by a long stretch, but it made a decent chicken salad. Two chicken salads, along with freshly baked croissants and two glasses of Diet Coke, were sitting on the small, round table in Williams’s office in the NGA basement when Sullivan arrived at his door precisely at 1130.

“Mornin’, boss. Still good for lunch now?” Sullivan asked. Wearing a Blue Akris suit and off-white blouse with Manolo black pumps and sporting a twenty-inch Akoya pearl necklace with matching earrings, Anne Sullivan looked the part of a powerful, but understated, professional woman.

“As always,” Williams replied as he rose from his desk to greet his number two.

As Chase Williams seated Sullivan, he remembered why he hired her. He needed a number two who brought things to the table he did not. She did that in spades.

Anne Sullivan was a retired General Services Administration super grade who had made a career in Washington. She knew all about the government, including government contracting, hiring, firing, and funding, and how to sidestep the issues. These were things Williams never had to deal with, even during his multiple tours in Washington.

Unlike Williams, Sullivan came from money. Her father had fashioned a successful and lucrative career in finance with Bain Capital Ventures. Between that family money and her GSA pension, she was looking forward to a comfortable life as a retiree. She enjoyed the D.C. social and cultural scene and traveled often, primarily to Europe and especially to Ireland. That plan was interrupted when Williams recruited her — charmed her, really, she readily admitted — to be his deputy.

“So what’s on our agenda today, Anne?”

“You wanted me to update you on how close we are to getting our Geek Tank fully up and running. As you know, they’ve been pretty demanding, and there’s always some latest technology that they’ve simply got to have. Now that we’ve got their last server rack installed, I’ve just got to get them one more LCD display and I think they’ll be pretty happy — for now.”

“Still take some getting used to, don’t they?”

“Ah, I’m OK with them, boss, but I’m afraid Roger is still struggling. Coming from where he spent most of his professional life, he still does a double take every now and then. Yet we agree on one thing: They are all incredibly gifted, and they don’t mind working long after all the rest of us are done for the day. I can see why you recruited them.”

“I promised the president we’d create something different, and they are the cutting edge of our intelligence operation.”

“They’re good alright, and Roger says they’ve mostly stopped griping about no surfing beaches nearby and having to wear grown-up clothes. Still, they come in every Friday wearing their T-shirts.

“T-shirts?”

“Yeah, boss, they had some high-end designer make them these gaudy T-shirts with a picture of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s HQ building in the background and the words ‘Geek Tank’ in huge letters on top of that. It’s kind of their fashion statement.”

“Sounds like what we used to call unit cohesion in the military,” Williams replied, smiling.

If there was one part of Op-Center that was completely different from anything that had ever existed before, it was the unit Chase Williams and Roger McCord dubbed their Geek Tank. Williams had promised the president he would build an intelligence organization with a collation architecture and algorithms that could electronically filter all raw intelligence data and distill the basic elements of a problem faster than even the best analysts. He drew great satisfaction that he had done just that.

On his first flag officer assignment, Williams had directed Deep Blue, the Navy staff’s think tank. During that time, as well as during his subsequent tours, Williams had been a champion of innovation in the Navy. He had consulted frequently with the best minds in Silicon Valley and was on a first-name basis with many of its industry leaders. When he showed up years later, this time in a business suit rather than a Navy uniform, he found those CEOs still remembered him. When he asked for help in recruiting top talent for a classified national defense project, those same corporate leaders proved to be patriots. Far from being territorial and guarding their best talent, they helped Williams find those young men and women who were not only technically brilliant, but also welcomed the challenge of being involved in national security work. Aaron Bleich was his first hire and had already earned his spurs with the hits on Perkasa and Kashif. Now under McCord and Bleich’s direction, they had built the capability Williams had promised the president.