frivolous scribbling, for novels and that sort of thing. But all his life he’d studied his profession, past campaigns, leaders, international affairs, economics, religion…
Harris had never been one for golf or tennis or season tickets. Or for extramarital affairs. Or for much of anything beyond the Army, his family, daily five-mile runs, and the ramparts of books that filled “his” room at home.
Now the books were already lost to him. Although he took pains that no one but his aide knew that his sight was failing. And he believed he could trust young Willing, the son of a retired general who had mentored Harris early in his career. The Army was a small tribe, in the end.
Major Willing knocked on the office door. His knock was always recognizable. Respectful, just a bit timid. Young Willing’s fault, if he had one, was a lack of self-confidence. General’s sons were like that. Either they thought themselves entitled to every deference, or they feared not living up to a father’s standards. Or both.
Harris rose from the cot and told the younger man to come in.
“Sir? I’ve got the global INTSUM from the Two shop.”
Harris just wanted to take off his boots and sleep. But he said, “Good. Hold here, John. I want to make a last stop by Plans.” He pulled on his body armor and picked up his helmet to walk down to the building where the planners had set up.
The planning-cell officers had not bothered to take down the Druze posters and framed photographs on the walls of the house allotted to them by the headquarters commandant. They were a good team, Harris knew, oblivious to anything but their work.
“We’re moving right along, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Marty Rose said, by way of greeting.
“Give me the condensed version, Marty.”
“Sir… if you’ll step over to the map… It’s easier to see this than it is on the monitor…”
“I know the map. Talk to me.”
Marty Rose never needed a second invitation to talk. Harris saw his lead planner as brilliant but uneven, the intellectual equivalent of a manic-depressive. Once, Harris had taken the lieutenant colonel aside to tell him, “Please, Marty… a little less Clausewitz and a little more common sense.”
The other thing that both Harris and his G-3 both recognized was that Marty Rose tended to put more effort into his own vision of future operations. It was a constant struggle to get him to devote equal energy to the potential courses of action raised by others. Even when the “other” was the corps commander.
But the care-and-feeding was worth it. Rose delivered.
Midway through the briefing, Harris said, “Good work, Marty. But I also want you to give me an option where the main effort’s a wide swing to the north. Left-flank
“Yes, sir,” Rose said, disappointed that his cell’s efforts hadn’t satisfied the boss. Harris realized that the planners were weary and frazzled, running on nerves. But they were going to have to keep producing. Harris needed someone thinking seriously while the rest of the corps was fighting.
“Sir… your instructions about avoiding contaminated zones… If we shift north, we’ll come up against—”
“Work it out. If we have to pass through any of the dead zones — if we have no choice — we’ll move fast. My point, Marty, was that I didn’t want anybody lingering where there’s residual radiation. But we’re going to do whatever it takes to win.”
“Yes, sir. As for Damascus… I understand the mission. But do you really think the MOBIC corps is going to let us make the grand entry?”
“Marty, just draw up the plans. I’ll worry about Sim Montfort and his gang.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And stay in bed with the Four. And with the Marines. If we
Rose looked at him. “You know, sir… I never figured out why the Israelis didn’t just wipe Damascus off the map, why they just went small-yield on the government sites. After they erased just about every city in Iran.”
“My guess,” Harris said, “is that they planned to come back. And Damascus is a lot closer to Jerusalem than Qom or Tehran. Besides, they’d shot most of their load on the Shias before the Sunni Arabs figured out that a nuked Israel was an invitation to the dance. Speaking of nukes, Marty: I want every plan you concoct to have a nuclear- defense variant.” The general knew that every officer in the plans cell had been listening all along, but he raised his voice slightly and peered around the room, giving official notice to them all. “If the Jihadis
They nodded and murmured. Harris knew the entire staff thought his concern about a last few nuclear weapons in Jihadi hands was evidence of early-onset senility. And he possessed sufficient self-awareness to recognize that he’d allowed it to become at least a mild personal obsession. But his guts just contradicted the intelligence.
And gut instincts had saved his life more than once. Even if they hadn’t saved his eyes.
After Harris cleared their area, Marty Rose said, “All right, back to work.”
A major asked, “How far north does he want us to plan?”
Rose shrugged. “Fuck, I don’t know. Look at the road networks. Identify a close option and a long-march option. Then do the branches and sequels. You’re all SAMS grads, aren’t you? Just do it. Reichert, you’ve got the lead. I’m going out to take a dump.”
When Rose, too, had gone, one major said to another, “Guess Big Marty didn’t get his daily ration of praise from Flintlock.”
“Want to know what I think?” his comrade said. “I think Flintlock Harris is losing it. Nukes on the brain. He wants to worry, he ought to worry about Montfort. That Bible-thumper’s going to eat old Flintlock for breakfast.”
As Harris dragged himself back toward his room, the deputy G-3 ambushed him, excited. There had been two rear-area attacks. That hardly seemed a surprise to Harris, who’d expected more raids and sabotage by now. Proud of himself, the deputy Three told the general that he’d sent out a message by land line, warning all subordinate units to increase their security posture.
Harris almost told the lieutenant colonel that his message was all well and good, but what about the units still not up on land line? Instead, he just folded his arms over his body armor, pressing it into his sweat-damp uniform. The deputy Three was a talker, and Harris knew he wasn’t going to get off lightly.
The poor bugger’s just trying to do his best, the general reminded himself.
“And lastly,” the deputy Three said, “the division surgeon from the Big Red One reports thirty-seven confirmed cases of amoebic dysentery.”
“Navy food,” Harris responded. “Good night, Bruce.”
He walked off to his office-bedroom. Wondering at the kind of sensibility that would build a mansion-sized home such as this, then furnish it with bare, dangling bulbs.
His aide stood up as Harris entered. He looked the general over and asked, “Want me to hold this stuff until morning, sir?”
“No, John.” He dropped onto his cot a little too heavily and immediately began unknotting his left boot. “Sing me to sleep.”
The remark, often repeated, was a private joke that Harris never explained to his aide — who simply accepted it as a peculiarity of the general’s speech. Harris long since had thought, without satisfaction, that the two of them resembled Saul and young David. And Saul’s was not a role Harris wished to play.
Well, better than Abraham and Isaac, Harris told himself. Or blind Tobit.
As the general drew off his boots and socks, the major said, “Sir, the big out-of-area headline is that the Turks demolished St. Sophia’s in Istanbul. Blew it to rubble.”
Harris looked up. And?
