Irving Wallace - The Man

“We have two courses of action,” said Dilman. “Either we sit back and wait for the Communists to make their actual attack, or we anticipate it and prepare for them, holding a mobile force in full battle readiness, and letting Soviet Russia know we mean business and will brook no evidence of bad faith. I don’t like the first course, sitting back and waiting, because then if we have to move, we may be too late, and it may cost us too many American lives to recover lost African territory. I prefer the second course. I want a full division alerted and ready to move on fifteen minutes’ notice, if required. Have you such a force, Secretary Steinbrenner?”

“I have,” said Steinbrenner, moving restively in his chair. “There is only one modernized force I can recommend that could swiftly and economically, yet successfully, pull off an operation of this kind. It has artillery battalions together with a guided missile, our new Demi John, and it has units incorporating the latest airborne cannon, and mobile rocket platforms with their movable launching ramps, along with standard, air-transported infantry units, and fighter-bombers, to give us diversified airborne firepower. This group is trained for speed and flexibility. It cuts in fast, sets up faster, opens full blast, and then zooms away before the enemy can zero in on it. This is our elite and most advanced division, Mr. President-you know-the Dragon Flies.”

“The Dragon Flies,” repeated Dilman thoughtfully. “Excellent. I want them put on battle alert.”

“Mr. President-!” It was General Fortney again, his scarred face glowering. He stood up and demanded heatedly, “Isn’t anyone in this office going to listen to some reason? Do you mean to say that it’s worth the risk of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, worth sending American soldiers into some black hole that isn’t on half the maps, so’s we can uphold a piece of parchment that says they’re a democracy when everyone knows they’re only primitive tribesmen who haven’t even learned how to read yet? Baraza isn’t worth the loss of a single American life, not one, let alone thousands, and if such a war spreads, maybe millions. Only yesterday, when I was talking to the Secretary of State-”

“General Fortney,” said Dilman, “you must be mistaken. There is no Secretary of State.”

Momentarily, Fortney lost his poise, stood bewildered, then recovered his equilibrium. “Okay,” he said shortly, “let the Senate settle that. I’m not interested in politics. I simply had to see Eaton about some old diplomatic problems-whom else was I to see? Anyway, I can’t condone any rash decision that will commit my most highly trained force, the best-equipped military outfit in the United States, the most technically proficient, to some unimportant jungle hell spot. If you want me to make ready a couple of ordinary infantry divisions, as a token gesture to the AUP-”

“General Fortney,” said Dilman firmly, “I want to make ready the Dragon Flies.”

“Mr. President, you can’t do that,” General Fortney insisted emphatically. “Do I have to spell it out for you because”-he looked disdainfully at the others in the room-”because no one else here has the guts to spell it out for you?” He stared at Dilman once more. “Okay, I’ve got the guts. I’ll spell it out, I sure will.”

General Fortney’s cold eyes seemed to fasten harder on Dilman. His thin lips by now seemed bloodless. He said, “No matter what you’ve heard, do you know what the Dragon Flies are, what they really are? They are a fighting force that is 100 per cent-not 99 per cent not 89 per cent, but 100 per cent-Caucasian white. This is a division composed from top to bottom, from Lieutenant General C. Jarrett Rice at the top to the lowest one-striper on the bottom, of militarily educated, all-white, fighting veterans. And in case this gets anyone’s dander up here, it is not all-white for discriminatory reasons-if Rice and I could’ve included colored boys, we’d have welcomed them-this group is what it is because when it was created, developed, and ever since then, it required fighting men with advanced technical know-how, good education, plenty of savvy, to handle this newfangled complicated airborne rocketry hardware, and we’ve found such men only among the white troops and white population. That’s the way it worked out, and that’s the way it is.”

Dilman’s expression neither evinced surprise nor conceded compromise. Not a muscle in his dark face moved. He waited.

“Now you know the military facts of the situation,” General Fortney continued relentlessly, “and knowing them, maybe you’ll have some second thoughts. Because I tell you, Mr. President, it’s my duty to tell you-you send that 100 per cent white elite corps of ours into that 100 per cent black hellhole, send our white lads in to fight and die for a pack of ignorant tribesmen and savages, and, Mr. President, you’ll have yourself a nationwide rebellion on your hands right here at home. You think the Congress of this country, or the people out there, will sit still and allow such an action for one solitary second? You bet your life they won’t… Look, don’t think I’m not considering you, too. You’ve got yourself enough problems with that impeachment trial under way. Why ask for more? Why try to commit suicide? Even one hint in public that you’re putting the Dragon Flies on combat alert for Africa, and you’re politically dead and buried. It’ll look just one way-like you are absolutely determined to sacrifice only American whites for African blacks, all the while keeping your Negro brethren who are in uniform safe at home-”

“General Fortney, if I may interrupt, sir.” It was General Jaskawich speaking for the first time. “If we are being absolutely frank, sir, why not go a bit deeper? I think it is well known in military circles that the Dragon Flies are today an exclusively white force because that’s the way you and your Pentagon command willed it to be ten years ago. If you had permitted young Negro recruits to have the same advanced education, technical training, military opportunity as those of us who are white, I venture to say that 30 per cent of that force would be colored today. I think the blame, sir, falls not only on your shoulders but on the whole country. Now we must all face the consequences.”

General Fortney shook an angry finger at Jaskawich. “Young man, don’t you try to tell me what’s going on right here on terra firma, because I’m the only one with enough military experience to know. You stay way out there in outer space where you belong, and leave the real problems down here to men who have to tend to them.” He turned upon Dilman. “Mr. President, you listen to me, for your own sake if not the country’s. You let me alert a couple of substantially Negro outfits, or evenly mixed ones. They’ll do well enough, and then we can stall along until we see what the future brings-”

For Edna Foster, absorbed in the verbal give and take, as well as her own pothooks on the shorthand pad, the sum total of Fortney’s resistance gradually became clearer. He was trying to stall for time until the impeachment trial ended. Then Dilman would be out, and Eaton would be in. Eaton would never commit any racially mixed American divisions, let alone an all-white battalion, to action in distant Baraza. She wondered: Does the President perceive this? She had her answer almost instantaneously.

President Dilman was on his feet. “General, if it is your hope that the near future will bring a more reasonable white President into this office, you may be right, but I cannot permit you to wait for him or for his orders. Nor will I endanger our integrity by allowing the country to wait. Right now, it will be my orders that count. I want the Dragon Flies readied.”