Dick Couch - Out of the Ashes

Before his exec could reply, Blackman demanded, “Well, what’s our helo bringing us?”

“Oh, our bird is bringing that Center for Analyses rep joining us for the deployment.”

“CNA rep? What the hell are we supposed to do with a geek from some think tank?” Blackman asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

The XO had nothing to offer his captain. Nor was he in any mood to listen. He’d leave it to the CNA rep to tell Blackman why she was there.

Brian Dawson strode into Chase Williams office for their scheduled meeting with the staff international crisis manager, the N31, Hector Rodriquez, in tow.

If Op-Center had a de facto chief of staff, it was the operations director, the N3. Williams liked and needed Dawson, but he was certainly not your run-of-the-mill former Green Beret officer. Williams had recruited Dawson soon after he retired from the Army as a young colonel, based largely on his command tour with the 5th Special Forces Group and his proven ability to think outside the box to get things done. He had precisely the talents and experience Williams knew he needed in an ops director.

No one, in or out of uniform, had Dawson’s unique skill set. He spoke all the “right” languages (Arabic, Dari, and Pashto). He was skilled in assignation, extortion, bribery, agent handling, and false-flag recruitment. He had a deep and abiding knowledge of tribal politics, and leaders from other cultures seemed to like and trust him as if he were almost one of them. He also had baggage. As a B-Team leader, he planned the takeover of a small Central Asian country, and was almost cashiered from the Army when he set himself up as the interim ruler. He had recovered from that miscue and had, at one time, been a strong candidate for general rank. Yet the Army didn’t like controversy surrounding their general officers. Dawson decided not to put it to the vote of a promotion board. He decided to leave the Army following his last operational command.

Williams hired him conditionally, to a one-year-long tryout to see if he could play nice with others. If he passed that test, Williams promised he’d have broad authority as the ops director. Dawson had been with Op-Center for just over ten months, and while he was sometimes impatient and exacting in dealing with others, he had impressed Williams thus far and was on the road to fulfilling his expectations.

“Boss, you wanted to talk about our trip down to Fort Bragg next month to meet with our JSOC troop, so I asked Hector to come on in with me.”

“Good call, Brian. Hector, how’s it going?”

“Good, Admiral—”

The small man at Dawson’s elbow froze as Williams narrowed his eyes. After thirty-one years in the Army, if anyone at Op-Center had trouble not addressing the director by his military rank, it was the former battalion sergeant major, Hector Rodriquez.

“I mean, good, boss!” Rodriquez corrected himself.

“Mets doing OK in spring training so far?”

“Naw, lousy as always, boss, but they’ll bounce back come regular season.”

Williams just nodded in agreement. He knew his international crisis manager was a passionate New York Mets fan. Unless there was an operational crisis, he made every Mets — Washington Nationals game and bought the highest-price tickets he could afford.

“I’ll let Hector brief you on our plan,” Dawson began.

If there was one Op-Center staff member Dawson wasn’t impatient with, it was Rodriquez. As the international crisis manager, he was “Mr. Outside” and Op-Center’s primary link to their JSOC troop. The entire special operations community had enormous respect for Rodriquez and always welcomed him as a brother, and with good reason.

Puerto Rican by birth, Hector Rodriquez was born and raised in New York City and enlisted in the Army right out of high school. He came out of boot camp as an infantryman and went immediately to the 75th Ranger Regiment. After eight years in the 75th, where he rose to E-7 platoon sergeant, he transferred to the Army’s Delta Force, where he served for the next five years. As a senior E-7, he then went to the Q-course and into Special Forces, where he became a team sergeant, moved up to battalion sergeant major, and finally became command sergeant major for the 3rd Special Forces Group. Fluent in Spanish and Arabic, he finished his service career as the command sergeant major for the Joint Special Operations Command. Rodriquez knew everyone in the special operations community, and they knew him. Both Williams and Dawson knew he could open any door.

Chase Williams had gotten to know his international crisis manager well. Rodriquez was fifty-two years old, married with six kids. He lived for his family and for the United States of America. He was still fit and looked like he was thirty-five. His wife was twice his size and they were still in love. Their kids lived in fear of disappointing their father. For Williams, Rodriquez was America.

“So this is our agenda,” Rodriquez began. “You’ll see we’re going to go over some Operational Plans with Major Volner and Master Guns Moore. Then we’re going to review how the logistics worked out for that last surge we did.”

The easy banter continued between and among the three men, mapping out their day with their JSOC troop. More so than any two members of his Op-Center staff, Dawson and Rodriquez had bent over backward to acquaint their boss with the special operations community and the Joint Special Operations Command. They knew that when the time came, it would be Williams who would send these professionals downrange into harm’s way.

As Swampfox 248 approached the ship, the weather worsened, making Normandy ’s flight deck appear small — that is, when Sandee Barron could see it at all. They were slipping below flight minimums, and she had a decision to make.

Ah, but Sandee, darlin’, that’s why they pay you the big bucks. Not many squadron pilots can do this, but you sure as hell can. She knew they’d be watching. Read ’em and weep, boys.

Then she went into the zone. It was part total concentration and part forced relaxation. She knew a part of her had to fly the helo, and another part of her had to let go in order to release all that muscle memory and experience from hours of flying in dog-shit weather like this. It was not unlike John Williams on the podium with the Boston Pops when he was really on his game — it was experience and technique, but it was also feeling and art.

Sandee Barron came by her confidence naturally. The only child of two Northwestern University college professors, Sandee had an idyllic childhood growing up in Evanston, Illinois. Her parents had visions of her following their same career path and becoming a tenured professor at Northwestern after receiving an Ivy League education. They enrolled her in only the best preschool and primary schools and carefully selected the exclusive Roycemore School as her high school.

Slight in stature, Sandee’s focus was on academics and the arts. Always near the top of her class and a straight-A student, Sandee had after school hours that were filled with piano lessons and ballet classes. Her parents didn’t wait until her late high school years to begin taking her on college trips. She visited her first Ivy League Campus, the University of Pennsylvania, the summer after her sixth grade, and the college trips — and parental pressure — to pursue an Ivy education only intensified from there.

Midway through her junior year at Roycemore, something happened to Sandee. Even now she couldn’t put her finger on it, but it all became too planned, too predictable, too someone else’s choice, not hers. She wanted something more, something different, and something she chose. Just what that would be eluded her. Then one evening, while she was laying out her clothes for the next day’s classes at Roycemore with the TV on in the background, she heard the sonorous voice of James Earl Jones intoning “America’s Navy — a global force for good.” For Sandee, it was the solution, a life of adventure, not comfortable predictability.