'Senator Orr says he would never entirely trust a person who was uncomfortable around horses,' she replied.
'The admiral does not strike me as an equestrian,' Rodgers noted.
'He isn't. But he hunted sperm whales as a teenager in Newfoundland, before it was banned. That registered big on the Orr machismo scale.'
'I hope the senator realizes I have nothing to offer along those lines
'
'But you do,' Kat commented. 'Tanks. Big beasts, difficult to tame.
To the senator, tank warfare is like a medieval joust. Very manly.'
'I see,' Rodgers said.
Kat was absolutely a good person to have on the team. Experienced, enthusiastic, energetic. It was not just Kat, though. The entire conversation felt good. It was full of insights and compliments, camaraderie and hope. When it was over, Rodgers decided to go back to Op-Center and clean out his desk. Though he was still technically on the payroll, he wanted no part of the organization. He did not want to hold on to the anger Hood had made him feel. He would say his good-byes to those who wanted to hear them, and then Mike Rodgers would do exactly what Kat Lockley was doing: use the considerable experiences of his lifetime to look ahead. Rodgers could not imagine that Paul Hood would want or need him for anything over the next few days.
He walked Kat back to the office building, then drove out to Andrews Air Force Base possibly for the last time. Mike Rodgers was not sentimental that way. Yet he did wonder if, on the whole, this had been a positive experience. So much good had been done but at an extraordinary cost. For himself, the sadness of the people he had lost would probably be stronger in his memory than the goals they had achieved. He also believed, as he had since Op-Center was chartered, that he would have done a better job running it than Hood had done. He would not go so far as to say that good things had happened in spite of the director. But he would say that Hood had not been as proactive as he would have been.
Hell, I was the one who assigned myself to the North Korea mission, Rodgers thought.
If he had not, Hood might have refused to let Striker act as aggressively as it did. His ClOC-friendly methods may have allowed Tokyo to vanish under a barrage of Nodong missiles. Waiting for approvals and charter revisions was the way to build a legal and clean-living entity, not necessarily the most effective one. It would be like soldiers in the field asking the president or secretary of defense to okay each maneuver. Rodgers always felt it was better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.
The air force guard standing near the elevator saluted smartly. Rodgers saluted back. Nothing in the young woman's eyes betrayed knowledge of what had gone on below. Perhaps she did not know. Op-Center's grapevine tended to grow, and remain, underground.
The initial discomfort of employees in the executive section had passed. They greeted Rodgers warmly as he made his way to his office.
Rodgers told Liz-Gordon and Lowell Coffey that he had decided to accept Senator Orr's offer and would be working on the campaign. Both wished him well. Rodgers did not know how he would respond to Hood if he saw him. The general could and would ignore his replacement, Ron Plummer.
The political liaison had not won that job, it had been granted to him by default. That made Plummer neither enemy nor rival, just a man with a catcher's mitt. Paul Hood was a different matter. He was the one who had made the default call. Rodgers imagined everything from ignoring him to grabbing the front of his lightly starched white shirt, slamming him against a wall, and spitting in his wide, frightened eye.
What stopped him, when they did meet, was the realization that Hood was finally doing what Rodgers had wished he would do for years: telling the CIOC to screw its own rules and doing what he thought was best for Op- Center. It was only too bad his newly found courage came at Admiral Link's expense.
Hood was talking to Bob Herbert in the intelligence chief's office. The door was open as Rodgers walked by. He offered only a peripheral glance inside. Eyes on the future, he reminded himself. Now that he thought of it, that mantra would make a terrific campaign slogan.
Neither man called after him nor hurried into the hallway. Rodgers felt relieved for a moment. There would be no confrontation with Hood.
He would not have to listen to Herbert explain why he had joined the assault. Then Rodgers felt offended. Who the hell are they to ignore me?
He should have known Pope Paul better than that. The man was a diplomat, and diplomats could not leave situations unresolved. Even without the blessings of their governments, they usually employed back-channel routes to try to defuse crises. Maybe they needed to do good. Maybe they needed to meddle or to be loved. The motives were too complex for Rodgers to fathom. All he understood was soldiering.
