The Crisis

by David Poyer

  Dan choked on his tonic to hear an attempted assassination described as a “contretemps.” He coughed into his fist. “Uh . . . yessir. Right.”

  “You were with Blair Titus. I served with her on a medical compensation panel. Sharp lady. I know you’re proud of her.” Contardi beckoned past him to someone, but added, as Dan started to turn away, “You and I had a chat that evening, as I recall. I complimented you on the Congressional, then we had a few words about a faster, nimbler military.”

  “I remember that, sir.”

  “Our ideas were sketchy then. Fuzzy, versus crisp. But since—you listened to our paper?”

  “Yessir, I did.” It and the Q and A afterward, billed as the highlight of the symposium, had been filled with geekspeak: revolution in warfare, battlespace awareness, decision-making nodes; the PowerPoint slides had flashed by at bewildering speed. Dan had been intrigued, then baffled, and to judge by the faces of the rest of the audience, he wasn’t the only one. “But, uh, I wasn’t really—”

  “I tried to talk Mac out of those equations, but he said anybody could follow it. Anyway, we’ve put some theoretical meat on the bones. Have you met Dr. Cormac Fauss?”

  Fauss was six inches taller than Dan, a scarecrow in tweed jacket and black slacks and tasseled cordovan loafers, with a spiky mustache that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a British col o nel. Contardi lifted his glass and drifted away, leaving Dan with his new friend, who he assumed was not a medical doctor, but one of the academics who assisted flag-level officers; mathematicians, physicists, the occasional economist. The British called them “boffins,” but the genus didn’t really have a name this side of the Atlantic.

  “Commander Dan Lenson,” Fauss said, measuring him like a tailor. “Reynolds Ryan. The Syrian incursion. Van Zandt. Desert Storm. USS Horn. And I heard something from Jenny Roald about your involvement with the Korean navy. Still at TAG?”

  Dan nodded. The Tactical Analysis Group was the Navy’s think tank, gaming and testing the three-dimensional tactics the fleet needed to fight at sea. He’d been there for two years, with his commanding officer posting him overseas again each time he returned from an assignment. After what had happened in the East Wing, there were still elements in the command structure that might very well want his hide.

  “It’s really the wave of the future.” Fauss’s confiding monotone managed to make everyone within twenty yards turn and look at them. “Transformation rests on three legs. One: networking. The transformational shift from industrial-era command structures to a robust network flow that lets co-protagonists self-synchronize decisions. More like a swarm of bees than a rigid hierarchy of information flow.”

  “Don’t bees have queens?”

  “We’re talking about command, not insect reproduction.”

  “Sorry. But TAG doesn’t get involved in—”

  “It will, Dan. Transformation means changing everything—command and control, comms, intelligence, logistics, acquisition. It’ll have a resounding tactical impact, especially on the smaller, faster nodes on the pointy end. The units the admiral calls the ‘Bar Brawlers’—that make initial contact with the enemy, and act as targeters.”

  “Uh, I can see that.”

  “But entrenched forces will resist.” Fauss leaned close to Dan’s ear. “The ‘We’ve always done it that way’ crowd. Your CO knows what I mean.”

  His commanding officer was Captain Todd Mullaly, who was around somewhere; they’d driven up from TAG together. Dan looked, but didn’t see him.

  “And that’s where you come in.”

  “Me, Dr. F?”

  “I mean, both TAG and the O-5, O-6 community. You’ll be our shock troops. Senior enough to see the need, junior enough not to be calcified. Those who comprehend the world to come, and make it happen, will be the admirals and generals of the future. Those who don’t—well, ‘It is the business of the future to be dangerous.’ Alfred Whitehead.”

  Dan’s grip tightened on the glass. Was this fool threatening him? Sometimes he sensed threat where none existed. A doctor had called it post-traumatic. Maybe so, but it meant he had to keep a close rein. Step back sometimes, and calm himself. “You’re talking to the wrong guy, Doctor. Making stars hasn’t been on my agenda for quite a while.”

  “But you have something most three-stars would kill for.” Fauss gestured at Dan’s ribbon bar. “The Congressional gives you credibility. We’d like you on our side. Help us pry boulders aside, shake some foundations.”

  “But what exactly are you trying to sell, Doctor? I don’t get a clear picture when you start talking. Networking—what exactly do you mean by that? I know what the word means, but—”

  “That a whiteboard over there? At that booth?” Fauss pushed his way between strolling senior enlisted. “I’ll draw it for you.”

  The dry-erase marker squeaked. A typical org chart took shape, commander at the top, subordinates beneath. Dan noticed each level below the next increased by seven, the proper number for optimal span of control.

  “Industrial——age militaries. Weber’s bureaucratic hierarchy. Information flows up, decisions down. The most rational and efficient organization. At least, in the nineteenth century.”

  “Of course. How else?”

  “Of course.” Fauss looked around the circle of faces that had gathered, attracted by that subtle ozone. “How else indeed.”

  The marker squeaked again. This time, instead of a pyramid, a circle. Squiggly lines interlocked in its vacant heart. Threads webbed from one boundary to the other, intersecting at nodes Fauss emphasized with thumping dots of the felt tip.

  “The outer ring: in contact with the enemy and the environment. They interact directly, through decision nodes that share and store information. The commander sets goals, rather than directing action.”

  “Then who gives the orders?”

  “Outgrow the concept of ‘order’ and ‘command.’ In the Weberian Force, only the commander had information, and it was always partial and faulty—Clausewitz’s ‘fog of war.’ In the Networked Force, technology enables perfect knowledge of own force, enemy, and environment. When the chessboard’s clear, and each piece selects its own move, no ‘player’ is necessary.”

  “The commander withers away?”

  “He takes on a new role: system administrator. He defines broad goals; the ‘swarm’ self-adjusts to achieve them. This is Admiral Contardi’s transformative insight.”

  Dan rubbed his chin as the engineers and consultants around them waited for him to respond. But the circle looked like a pyramid, only seen from above. The “swarm” idea was interesting, but hardly any armed force operated in a vacuum, with only a blank field, a blank sea, just it and the enemy. Setting heavily armed, autonomous actors loose amid a civilian population sounded like a recipe for My Lai or Wounded Knee. “Uh, but do you—I mean, the admiral—does he really believe perfect knowledge is possible?”

  “Given adequate bandwidth, the fog of war is a relic of the past.”

  “Sun Tzu?”

  Fauss smiled, as if he’d found a worthy opponent. “ ‘If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory you will suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.’ For the first time, modern sensor, data-processing, and communications technology makes it possible to know the entire battle-field.”

  “That’s the revolution,” one of the onlookers put in.

  “Diastrophic change,” Fauss said. “Diastrophic—meaning radical. Based on new technology and a new paradigm.”

  The computer salesmen smiled. Dan cleared his throat, not eager to interrupt the cheerful tone, like that of a church group unleashed on the dessert table. But unable to let it just go unchallenged. “Sun Tzu. All right. ‘All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we
must convince the enemy we are far away; when far away, we must convince him we are near.’ ”

  Fauss tilted his head. “Meaning what, Commander?”

  “Meaning whichever enemy we face next has probably also read Sun Tzu. And won’t do us the favor of making all that information we’re gathering correct.”

  “They won’t have a choice,” a woman in a business suit put in. Her name tag read TRANSCRYPT TECHNOLOGIES. “They can run but they can’t hide. Not on the electronic battlefield.”

  Fauss beamed around, then at Dan. “Maybe that’s too simple?”

  “Maybe that’s too simple.”

  “What about empowering the operators? Is that too simple? Or has every order you’ve ever gotten seemed wise to you?”

  “To tell the truth, that’s what appeals to me about what you’re describing,” Dan told him.

  “I thought it would.” The doctor pushed through the crowd, which began to drift apart, still discussing what he’d said. Some held out opened copies of a green-covered book, on which Fauss, hardly looking, dashed off a signature. The title, in bold print, read The Transformation Paradigm. He took Dan by the elbow, looking around. Caught the eye of the aide who’d been with Contardi a few moments before.

  “The admiral’s in the greenroom,” he said quietly.

  DAN’S commanding officer was there too, in one of the upholstered faux-bamboo chairs near the silver trays of cookies and the rumbling coffee urn. Todd Mullaly sipped complimentary beer from a Lockheed mug, leaving foam on his upper lip. Beside him Contardi sat with not a hair out of place, a cup of tea steaming at his elbow. He glanced up from a wafer-thin notebook computer as Dan came in. “Mac fill you in on what we’re asking you to do?”

  Dan sucked air. Had he missed something? He glanced back, but Fauss had vanished. “Uh, did he—no sir, I don’t think he did. Not in so many words.”

  Contardi placed one hand over the other and rested them on his sternum, the slightly old-maidish attitude he’d assumed on the podium. “Our little revolution, on the Navy’s level at least, is three-pronged. First comes networking. Robust C4ISR, lateral information flows among operational units. Every commander since Pharaoh’s tried to win by concentrating forces at the point of breakthrough. But if we seamlessly link scattered platforms and sensors, we can concentrate fire while maintaining dispersal. Dominant battlefield awareness buys disruptive, concurrent operations with small, agile forces.”

  “Yessir. Got it.”

  “The second is crew swapping. You’ve heard of that.”

  “Keeping ships in theater, and flying crews out in rotation. The way the boomer force rotates Blue and Gold crews.”

  “Essentially.” Contardi scrolled; he was reading something on the notebook even as he carried on the conversation. “We invest a billion dollars in a state-of-the-art destroyer, but it spends only a quarter of its life deployed. We’re still crunching numbers, but what seems to be falling out is a four-three model. Four crews for three ships. We rotate back for maintenance and dry-docking, but keep one hull on station at all times. A one-in-four rotation for the ships, instead of a one in three. Eventually we may get to one in two. And don’t forget, these will be much more capable units.”

  “That’s the third prong in the trident,” Fauss put in, having returned while the admiral was speaking. “How we spend acquisition funding.”

  “We don’t need to go into that here,” Contardi cut him off. He tapped keys as they waited. Then looked up, amber gaze flickering among them. “I want TAG to take a piece of the transformation process. Todd, we need several in-depth studies. One will be an evaluation of the crew-swap concept for a squadron of Tornadoes deploying to the Red Sea to surge our force levels there.”

  For a moment Dan was confused—the Tornado was a British attack aircraft, and he hadn’t heard about any surge in the Red Sea—but then realized Contardi must mean the Cyclone-class patrol ships, one of which was USS Tornado. Larger and more heavily armored than a World War II PT boat, but shallower-draft and more maneuverable than frigates.

  But Mullaly didn’t say anything, just waited for Contardi to go on. After a moment he did. “I know Commander Lenson’s work aboard Horn. He took a challenging concept, integrating females, and made it work. No ordinary crew could have saved that ship, with the damage you suffered.”

  “Thank you, Admiral.”

  “Wish we could have recognized you for it. But word gets around. And I know about your accomplishment with Team Charlie, securing the ShkvalK. You have credibility in the Fleet. Engineering experience. You’re the most decorated officer we have. I want you to manage the migration, then sum up your lessons learned in a report we can use to expand the crew-swap concept to the rest of the Fleet.”

  Mullaly raised his eyebrows, watching the ball pass to Dan. Who bought a few seconds by crossing to the coffee urn. The joe smelled burnt, but he’d had worse, in the shaft alleys and chief’s messes and engine rooms of a score of ships, here and there across and beneath the watery face of the planet.

  “To be honest, Admiral—”

  “I want you to be.”

  “—I’m not entirely certain crew swap’s a great idea. What we might get is a fleet that’s smaller but costs more. I get that the forward units spend more time on station. But fewer ships and crews at home reduces the surge capacity for a major contingency.”

  “Don’t start with a closed mind, Dan,” Mullaly put in. “Dr. Fauss asked for the best I had. This issue’s right in TAG’s strike zone.”

  “My mind’s not closed, sir. I’m just not certain I’d come back with the positive evaluation the admiral might expect.”

  Contardi’s lips thinned. Not exactly a smile, but it might not have been intended as one. “There’ll be no command influence on your conclusions. Tell me what’s wrong, what needs to be fixed if it’s to work on a larger scale. Report directly to me. Your recommendations will be acted on.”

  Dan looked again at Mullaly, who had laced his fingers over his stomach. Benign but poker-faced.

  Contardi pushed a button, snapped the notebook closed. He handed it to the aide, who’d come in so noiselessly Dan hadn’t noticed him, and stood. Mullaly rose too. Contardi turned the handle of the teacup in a quarter circle. Then patted Dan’s arm, stepping in close. Dan smelled after-shave and fresh cotton and a disconcerting whiff of sweat.

  “I want you with me on this, Lenson,” he murmured. “There are those who are with me, and those who are against. The same way, they tell me, it is with you. More may depend on it than we know.”

  Dan had a sinking feeling. He wasn’t sure he believed in what this man and his staffers and consultants were selling. Sometimes it sounded like snake oil. At other times, like Billy Mitchell or Heinz Guderian: other military geniuses who’d had to battle naysayers to change the world. But certainly the way to test it was with a squadron of small boys, before the whole Fleet got reformed willy-nilly from above. Every time that happened, it shot retention and combat effectiveness to hell.

  Mullaly was frowning, and Dan remembered: his was not to reason why. He was no longer in awe of admirals. The gloss of unreasoning obedience inculcated at Annapolis had long ago worn off. But he was still in the Navy. Until he wasn’t, if a three-star wanted him to stress-test a new organizational concept, his duty was perfectly clear.

  “Yes sir,” he told Contardi. “If those are my orders, I’ll do my best.”

  Ghedi

  THE pickups career across the desert, throwing up a dusty smoke that smells of death and terror. It catches in Ghedi’s teeth, scratches under his eyelids. He coughs and coughs as he and two other boys slide on the sand that coats the jolting bed. A brown she-goat with a red ribbon plaited around her throat pants at their feet, blood pumping from a slit that looks like another ribbon. Her frantic eyes search theirs. The oldest boy swings himself out of the gate. He hits the sand running, but another truck swerves instantly to smash him down.

  Rocks fly out of wheel wells,
dust boils, shots crack in the adobe murk. The men shout and gesture to one another as they drive. They’re stringy, dark, with white cloths wrapping skulls shaped like ax heads and burning black eyes that turn now and again to look back at their captives like the hungry eyes of locusts.

  The goat kicks, the blood pumps. Then it slackens. The animal relaxes. Her gaze goes polishless and fixed, filming with the dust that throngs the dry wind.

  Ghedi screams without words, looking back into the boil that writhes and tumbles in their wake, blotting out everything behind them. The road, the clotted multitudes of refugees. Who’d scattered, screaming, clutching their pitiful belongings, their children, their feeble elders, as the trucks first circled, then, seeing no one armed, screeched around to plow into the crowd.

  Right into where he’d left his brother and sister. “Let me go,” he’d screamed, struggling with the man who’d hauled him up by one arm kicking and struggling into the bed of the truck, like a fish suddenly jerked into a fine thin element where breath itself could not be had.

  Now that man smiles, showing yellow fangs like a hyena’s. His fingers dig in like the cold claws of a rooster. He leans till his lips brush the boy’s ear. His breath smells rank, meaty, like old blood.

  “You do not jump off, like that fool. You look like a wise, brave boy. Yes? We will see how clever you are. And how brave.”

  They ride locked gaze to gaze, Ghedi looking back into those eyes as if reading that which is written and must come to pass. His gaze slides down long bare forearms, scarred and puckered with old burns, to dusty, mahogany-toned hands.

  To the weapon they grip, its blued steel worn to silver. The stock scarred where something very hard and moving very fast tore through the fibers of heavy-grained wood. The doubled jut of the barrel. The black curve of the magazine.

  The man pulls a fold of fabric up over the lower part of his face, and shoves Ghedi down into the rusty bed.

  THE camp’s a rock-walled ravine only partially sheltered from the rising wind. Heat radiates from it as from a burnt-over field. As the trucks halt beneath an overhang the bandits leap out, carrying the weapons they’ve picked up from the floorboards. Some pull drab tarps from behind the seats. Others cradle rifles as the boys climb slowly down. They huddle coated with dust like tan flour, sticklike arms and legs quivering, hugging themselves as they wait for what comes next. Ghedi glances at the sun, figuring the direction back to his brother and sister. But surrounded, boxed by steep stone, he doesn’t dare make a break.