Ian Slater - Choke Point

“Ex?” said the President.

“Yes — ah, well, yes. Story is, he choked.”

Ten minutes after the President had given his televised press conference the switchboard received a call from retired general Douglas Freeman, the George C. Scott lookalike who had been conscripted from the “retired” list to go on a sponsored goodwill tour for the troops in Afghanistan.

The general knew very well that his ad hoc phone call from Tora Bora was definitely not the way to make contact with the White House. Retired officers, even four-star generals, were supposed to follow normal channels, like everyone else. Write a letter. But even as a young officer, long before he had become a legend and what was known as a perennial PITA — pain in the ass — to Washington’s bureaucrats, Douglas Freeman had adopted Von Rundsted’s advice to an up-and-coming Wehrmacht oberleutnant, namely, that “normal channels are a trap for officers who lack initiative.”

“White House. How may I direct your call?”

“Yes,” said Freeman forcefully. “General Freeman here. I’d like to speak to the President. He knows who I am.”

That was the problem; the President certainly did know about the general, who, though retired, felt free, “like any other goddamned citizen,” as the general once put it, to give advice to the CEO who ran the world’s only superpower. Freeman wasn’t an arrogant man, but he was known to be as persistent as an M1, America’s main battle tank, the kind he had led during the famous winter battle in which, outnumbered by Russian-made T-80s, he’d ordered a running retreat in what was initially regarded by his men and an appalled Pentagon watching on live satellite feed as a blatant act of cowardice.

The operator directed the general’s call to Public Relations, who in turn promised to connect him to a presidential aide.

“Presidential aide ? I don’t want some damn gofer who picks fluff off the President’s suit. This is a matter of national urgency, goddammit!”

“I’ll direct your call to Ms. Prenty’s office. She’s our National Security—”

“Yes, I know who she is. I gave a visiting lecture to her IR course at Emory in Vir—”

Ms. Prenty was “unavailable.” Would the general leave his number, and a member of her staff would—

“Goddammit!” exploded Freeman, slamming down the phone. Two minutes later he called back. It took him four more White House operators to reach the one he’d sworn at. She’d sounded so young. “May I ask your name, ma’am?”

“I’m Operator Eight, General.”

“Yes, well, look, I apologize for my rudeness.” A long, long silence. Goddammit, she wants me on my belly, thought Freeman, like Eisenhower wanted Patton on his belly before he’d forgive the general for slapping a soldier he’d accused of cowardice in Sicily. Patton sent Ike a damn turkey — big son of a bitch — for Christmas. Didn’t make any difference. Ike kept him out in the cold. Freeman knew he had the same problem. Temper. But goddammit — He took a deep breath. “Us older guys get a bit cranky now and then. Sorry.”

“Old or not, General”—the bitch, he’d said old er , not old—“it’s still no excuse for rudeness.”

“No, no, it isn’t. You’re quite right.” Then a short shot of his own. “Operator Eight , you’re quite right. My profoundest apology. I’d be very grateful if you’d have one of Eleanor’s people call me back.” The “Eleanor” should help, he thought.

“Your name again, Colonel? Nicholas Feedman?”

Colonel —

Operator Eight heard an expulsion of air like a tire deflating. “Name is Freeman,” the tightly restrained voice answered her. “General Douglas Freeman, as in ’land of the free and the home of the brave,’ “ which if you want to help keep it free, you dozy dame —

“Would you like her voice mail, Colonel?”

“I’ll call back!”

Old! she’d said. He was sixty, for crying out loud. Douglas MacArthur was still active at seventy-two. Younger generation didn’t know a damned thing. Appallingly ignorant of the past, both geographically and politically. He recalled the young woman on NBC’s Late Show who’d thought it was the French who had attacked Pearl Harbor. And NBC hired her later as a reporter! So how in hell could they be expected to know who he was, about the stunning victory he’d pulled off years before during the U.N. intervention in the Russian taiga, a victory so brilliantly executed, so particularly reliant on his command of the minutiae and sweep of military history, that his exploit had fired the imagination of every soldier in the army.

One of those soldiers had been a young lieutenant called David Brentwood, who had gone on to win the coveted thirteen gold stars on the pale blue ribbon that signified he had joined the hallowed hall of warriors, the elite. Some wore the medal easily, part of a willingness to take life as it came to them; others, like Brentwood, accepted it with deep reservation born of a private conviction that in another place, at another time, they might just as easily have disgraced themselves. And now Freeman had heard that Brentwood was here at Tora Bora.

David Brentwood lay in the MASH’s post-op recovery tent, his right arm wrapped in virgin-white bandages, his bloodshot blue eyes squinting out through the triangle of his tent door up into the hard blue of the Afghan sky and the distant Hindu Kush. Brentwood had already court-martialed himself. He was too intelligent to wallow in the charge of cowardice — he knew he’d done his best. But he was guilty of something. Any mission leader who takes in six of the most highly trained men on earth and loses every one of them, plus the helicopter medic … Yes, he knew the medic probably would have survived if he’d been wearing his Kevlar helmet, which undoubtedly would have protected his head from the impact of the falling rocks. David dragged himself up higher against the pillows, his pajamas soaked through with perspiration. They’d given him a couple of Oxycodone pills three hours before, but the pain that even military physicians, who should have known better, insisted on calling “discomfort” because it made them feel better, was so intense, he felt on the verge of passing out.

Normally, he would have been delighted to see his old commander among the visiting morale-boosting USO party. But this day, as he saw a Humvee approaching along the Afghan plain then coming to a stop in a rush of gritty dust that swept in front of the vehicle, enveloping his tent, the pain of his wound assailed the Medal of Honor winner and temporarily rendered him speechless when he spotted the unmistakable figure of Douglas Freeman emerging ghostlike from the cloud. By way of compensating, he gave the general an awkward left-handed salute.

Freeman, wearing his Afrika Korps cap, returned the salute with the familiar swagger stick he’d been given as a token of appreciation by members of the British Special Air Services. He had known the renowned but publicity-shy elite British commandos long before they’d unwittingly burst upon the world’s consciousness in London on May 5, 1980, executing the perfect and dramatically televised takedown of hostage-holding terrorists in the Iranian embassy. Following the example of U.S. Colonel Beckwith, Freeman had always insisted his Special Forces teams be involved in joint Delta/SAS exercises in the grueling terrain of Wales’s Brecon Beacons, as well as in Fort Benning, Georgia.

“To the bone, I hear?” said Freeman, indicating David’s bandaged right arm as he took off his Afrika Korps cap. Putting it down on the end of the bed, he remained standing and unsmiling.