And they were doomed to fail. They had no grasp of the larger consequences of what was going on, no appreciation for the subtleties of political maneuvering. Had they had their way, the war would have turned violent from the very first moment.
He shifted his bulk on the chair, trying to find a comfortable position. Old injuries ran deep in his bones and scarred his soul even more than his body. For just a split second, he wondered if there was more to his discomfort than his physical problems.
“I say we take them on,” one man said. Jack Sauers, a gaunt, hard man, face and hands darkened by the sun, his body underneath his clothes pale. Like Hoover, Sauers had been a Marine, on the ground and in the front lines in Vietnam. The years had not been kind to him, nor had the government. He had every reason to want revenge.
“Everything is in place,” the second man pointed out. There was a dry, precise tone to his voice that Hoover always found irritating. “The weapons and supplies have been checked and are quite safe. They will be disbursed in about”—he glanced at his watch—“four and a half hours, depending on the road conditions.”
The third man laughed. “And the way you run things, the paperwork will take another six hours on top of that.” He held up one hand to forestall protest. “Excuse me, five hours and twenty-seven minutes.”
Frank Woods, a machinist, younger than the other two. His military service had begun and ended with Desert Storm and Desert Shield. The others knew that he had a slightly unrealistic viewpoint of warfare based on those experiences. Desert Storm had been a cakewalk, nothing like the assorted affairs the other men had been involved with around the world. He was bright, capable, and a good addition to the team, but he lacked tempering. Sensing his own inadequacies, Frank often found relief in tormenting the slightly built accountant responsible for all supplies and logistics.
And who would have thought we needed accountants? Hoover shook his head slightly, as though in disbelief. But we did in Vietnam, didn’t we? They were the ones who kept the supplies and the ammo coming to the front lines. Not particularly glamorous, but a necessary part of any operation.
In the last three months, these three men had emerged as a group he had come to trust. Yes, they lacked his abilities to bring it all together, but each one brought something to the table that he could use.
“Ah, come on, sir,” the first man protested. He had taken Hoover’s involuntary shake of his head as a sign of disapproval. “This is just what we’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”
“It is, and it isn’t,” Hoover replied, picking his words carefully. It wasn’t enough that he must discern the proper course of action. He also had to translate it into terms that men such as these could latch on to. “Yes, it’s an opportunity — but there’s also some danger.” He considered a moment explaining to them that the Chinese symbol for crisis combined the symbols for opportunity and danger, but dismissed the idea. A good point, but they probably wouldn’t appreciate the value of the insight.
“We can’t let them get away with it,” Frank said, outrage evident in his voice.
“He wasn’t one of ours,” the accountant pointed out.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Perhaps it should. After all, our resources are limited. We can’t take on every opportunity that presents itself. We have to wait for the right time.” The accountant’s voice held a note of finality, as though that settled the matter.
“In a way, it’s even better that he’s not one of ours,” Hoover said, deepening his voice slightly. He saw the unconscious response in the others’ body language, and sent a silent prayer up to the Marine Corps drill instructor who taught him about tone of voice and command. “There’s no sense in what happened to them, not in the minds of the average Joe Citizen. These weren’t dangerous radicals. Although,” he conceded, “in time, they might have come over to our way of thinking. They were headed that way. But for now, there’s a good case to be made that Kyle Smart was just Mr. Joe Average Citizen. A farmer, facing all of the problems that farmers everywhere know about. Weather, banks, the feds — there’s a lot to identify with.
“But we’ve got to handle it the right way.” He fixed Frank with a hard look. “No violence. No guns. Nothing like that. Not at first.” He saw the grudging look of acquiescence in Frank’s eyes and continued. “We are patriots. We are concerned citizens who love our country and don’t want to see power-mad politicians murdering innocent citizens.”
“That’s not going to work in the long run, you know,” the accountant replied mildly. “No permanent change comes without bloodshed.”
“I know that.” They had the Marine Corps background in common, although they’d never known each other while in the Crotch. Still, service laid down some core fundamentals, particularly service in the Marine Corps. So there was that bond — and yet it was also a difference. Because the other man understood violence just as well as Hoover did, understood it and was willing to use it. Hoover had gone beyond that, looking for more effective ways. The danger was each knew the other so well that they could anticipate each other’s objections. If there were ever a serious challenge to his leadership, it would not come from one of the younger hotheads. No, it would come from this man.
“But we need an icon, not a martyr,” Hoover said slowly, still thinking it through. There was a difference — an icon was a symbol to rally around. A martyr, when you wanted revenge. If this was handled right, Kyle Smart and his doomed family would be a rallying point for everyone who knew — or even felt at some level — there was something wrong with the country.
Hoover took a picture out of his file and studied it again. The Smarts were a good-looking family, lean and hard-working. No softness to any of them — they lived a hard life and it showed. He was willing to bet that displaced auto workers in Detroit, dirt-poor farmers in the South, and even unemployed computer workers in California would find something in those faces to identify with. And parents, God, parents — no parent among them could look at the pictures of the murdered children without shuddering.
Hoover reached his decision. There were too many young Turks snapping at his heels, too many men eager to take his place. It was time for success, the kind of success that only he could pull off. And Kyle Smart and his family were going to insure that success.
Herbert Hoover believed no less fiercely than Abraham Carter in their cause. But while this intellectual commitment to patriotism and freedom matched the elder Carter’s, he had more in common with Carter’s son in terms of practicality. And, unlike the Carters, there was a degree of dark loathing and self-destruction that permeated Hoover’s being.
Not that anyone would ever suspect such dark recesses in the man. On the surface, all they saw was a large, jovial fellow, one with an endearing, guileless sincerity in his blue eyes. Few people noticed that the eyes were often unblinking, staring a little longer than was polite, that his teeth were often bared what he smiled. His demeanor was as smooth and polished as a televangelist’s, and he gave off the same dramatic sense of life-and-death that many of them did. A smaller man could not have pulled it off, but weighing in just short of 280 pounds, Hoover was built for dramatics.
Hoover’s disillusionment with the United States had begun during Vietnam. Raised on a small North Dakota farm, the then-lean and hungry Hoover had fervently believed that what he and his high school classmates were doing was laying their bodies in front of the line of advancing Communism. Dramatic self-sacrifice appeal to him, and the idea that he personally could die seemed very remote. He had enlisted in the Marine Corps even before the lottery numbers were picked.
In boot camp, he found himself surrounded by similarly minded young men, with the occasional recruit simply trying to dodge service in the Army. Their drill instructors had encouraged them to believe in the rightness of their cause as they broke down the would-be Marines’ characters and personalities and rebuilt them from the ground up.
It wasn’t until later — within a week of arriving
at his first assignment in Vietnam — that the illusion began to crumble. There, at the base camp, death became a reality. It was no longer self-sacrifice, but mutilation of dying flesh, death approaching screaming. There was nothing noble, he saw, about dying for your country. General Patton’s words came back to him — better to make the other son of a bitch die for his. And the pain, dear God, the pain. Returning from patrol mangled, screaming, parts of bodies missing or protruding through the skin.
Sure, there was the camaraderie he’d expected, but all tainted and perverted. It was, he began to realize, the fault of the United States. They had taken brave men, men willing to risk their lives for what was right, and perverted their dedication. They had wasted their favorite sons.
And for what? Nothing, as far as Hoover could see.
After he returned to the United States, Hoover’s disillusionment was completed. Besieged by rising gas prices and inflation, his parents had been unable to make the mortgage payments on their farm. It had been sold at auction and fallen into the possession of their family’s arch-nemesis. In the airport, he was spat upon, jostled, and called a baby-killer. His experience was all too typical for men returning from Vietnam, but Hoover’s anger took a different path. He blamed the government, not the hippies and the yippies and the protesters. At some level, he sympathized with them, because he knew firsthand just how misguided the war really was. He had been an intelligence specialist, and his quick mind had seen readily that America was not fighting to win. America was fighting to look good.
A knock sounded at the door. “Come in,” Hoover said, standing up. He walked around the desk to greet the thin, disheveled man warmly, throwing his arms around him and then shepherding him to the desk with an arm slung over the man’s shoulders. “You made it. Good, good. Let me introduce you to some new friends.”
Hoover turned the man around to face the others. “Gentlemen, I’d like you to welcome Jackson Carter. He’s got a little problem I think we can help him with.”
GLOSSARY
0–3 LEVEL: The third deck above the main deck. Designations for decks above the main deck (also known as the damage-control deck) begin with zero, e.g. 0–3. The zero is pronounced as “oh” in conversation. Decks below the main deck do not have the initial zero, and are numbered down from the main deck; e.g. Deck 11 is below Deck 3. Deck 0–7 is above 0–3.
1MC: The general announcing system on a ship or submarine. Every ship has many different interior communications systems, most of them linking parts of the ship for a specific purpose. Most operate off sound-powered phones. The circuit designators consist of a number followed by two letters that indicate the specific purpose of the circuit. 2AS, for instance, might be an antisubmarine-warfare circuit that connects the sonar supervisor, the USW watch officer, and the sailor at the torpedo launcher.
C-2 GREYHOUND: Also known as the COD, Carrier Onboard Delivery. The COD carries cargo and passengers from shore to ship. It is capable of carrier landings. Sometimes assigned directly to the air wing, it also operates in coordination with CVBGs from a shore squadron.
AIR BOSS: A senior commander or captain assigned to the aircraft carrier, in charge of flight operations. The “Boss” is assisted by the Mini-Boss in Pri-Fly, located in the tower on board the carrier. The Air Boss is always in the tower during flight operations, overseeing the launch and recovery cycles, declaring a green deck, and monitoring the safe approach of aircraft to the carrier.
AIR WING: Composed of the aircraft squadrons assigned to the battle group. The individual squadron commanding officers report to the Air Wing Commander, who reports to the admiral.
AIRDALE: slang for an officer or enlisted person in the aviation fields. Includes pilots, NFOs, aviation intelligence officers and maintenance officers, and the enlisted technicians who support aviation. The antithesis of an airdale is a “shoe.”
AKULA: late-model Russian-built nuclear attack submarine, an SSN. Fast, deadly, and deep-diving.
ALR-67: detects, analyzes, and evaluates electro-magnetic signals, emits a warning signal if the parameters are compatible with an immediate threat to the aircraft, e.g. seeker head on an antiair missile. Can also detect enemy radar in either a search or a targeting mode.
ALTITUDE: is safety. With enough airspace under the wings, a pilot can solve any problem.
AMRAAM: Advanced Medium Range AntiAir Missile.
ANGELS: Thousands of feet over ground. Angels twenty is 20,000 feet. Cherubs indicate hundreds of feet, e.g. cherubs five = five hundred feet.
ASW: AntiSubmarine Warfare, recently renamed Undersea Warfare. For some reason.
AVIONICS: black boxes and systems that comprise an aircraft’s combat systems.
AW: aviation antisubmarine warfare technician, the enlisted specialist flying in an S-3, P-3, or helo ASW aircraft. As this book goes to press, there is discussion of renaming the specialty.
AWACS: an aircraft entirely too good for the Air Force, the Advanced Warning Aviation Control System. Long-range command and control and electronic-intercept bird with superb capabilities.
AWG-9: pronounced “awg nine,” the primary search-and-fire control radar on a Tomcat.
BACKSEATER: also known as the GIB, the guy in back. Non-pilot aviator available in several flavors: BN (bombardier/navigator), RIO (radar intercept operator), and TACCO (Tactical Control Officer) among others. Usually wears, glasses and is smart.
BEAR: Russian maritime patrol aircraft, the equivalent in rough terms of a U.S. P-3. Variants have primary missions in command and control, submarine hunting, and electronic intercepts. Big, slow, good targets.
BITCH BOX: one interior communications system on a ship. So named because it’s normally used to bitch at another watch station.
BLUE ON BLUE: fratricide. U.S. forces are normally indicated in blue on tactical displays, and this term refers to an attack on a friendly by another friendly.
BLUE WATER NAVY: outside the unrefueled range of the air wing. When a carrier enters blue-water ops, aircraft must get on board, e.g. land, and cannot divert to land if the pilot gets the shakes.
BOOMER: slang for a ballistic-missile submarine.
BOQ: Bachelor Officer Quarters — a Motel Six for single officers or those traveling without family. The Air Force also has VOQ, Visiting Officer Quarters.
BUSTER: as fast as you can, i.e. bust yer ass getting here.
CAG: Carrier Air Group commander, normally a senior Navy captain aviator. Technically, an obsolete term, since an air wing rather than an air group is now deployed on the carrier. However, everyone thought CAW sounded stupid, so CAG was retained as slang for the Carrier Air Wing commander.
CAP: Combat Air Patrol, a mission executed by fighters to protect the carrier and battle group from enemy air and missiles.
CARRIER BATTLE GROUP: a combination of ships, air wing, and submarines assigned under the command of a one-star admiral.
CARRIER BATTLE GROUP 14: the battle group normally embarked on Jefferson.
CBG: see Carrier Battle Group.
CDC: Combat Direction Center — now has replaced CIC, or Combat Information Center, as the heart of a ship. All sensor information is fed into CDC and the battle is coordinated by a Tactical Action Officer on watch there.
CG: abbreviation for a cruiser.
CHIEF: the backbone of the Navy. E-7, 8, and 9 enlisted pay grades, known as chief, senior chief, and master chief. The transition from petty officer ranks to the chiefs’ mess is a major event in a sailor’s career. On board ship, the chiefs have separate eating and berthing facilities. Chiefs wear khakis, as opposed to dungarees for the less-senior enlisted ratings.
CHIEF OF STAFF: not to be confused with a chief, the COS in a battle group staff is normally a senior Navy captain who acts as the admiral’s XO and deputy.
CIA: Christians in Action. The civilian agency charged with intelligence operations outside the continental United States.
CIWS: Close-In Weapons System, pronounced “see-whiz.” Gatl
ing gun with built-in radar that tracks and fires on inbound missiles. If you have to use it, you’re dead.
COD: see C-2 Greyhound.
COLLAR COUNT: traditional method of determining the winner of a disagreement. A survey is taken of the opponents’ collar devices. The senior person wins. Always.
COMMODORE: formerly the junior-most admiral rank, now used to designate a senior Navy captain in charge of a bunch of like units. A destroyer commodore commands several destroyers, a sea-control commodore the S-3 squadrons on that coast. Contrast with CAG, who owns a number of dissimilar units, e.g. a couple of Tomcat squadrons, some Hornets, and some E-2s and helos.
COMPARTMENT: Navy talk for a room on a ship.
CONDITION TWO: one step down from General Quarters, which is Condition One. Condition Five is tied up at the pier in a friendly country.
CRYPTO: short for some variation of cryptological, the magic set of codes that makes a circuit impossible for anyone else to understand.
CV, CVN: abbreviations for an aircraft carrier, conventional and nuclear.
CVIC: Carrier Intelligence Center. Located down the passageway (the hall) from the flag spaces.
DATA LINK, THE LINK: the secure circuit that links all units in a battle group or in an area. Targets and contacts are transmitted over the LINK to all ships. The data is processed by the ship designated as Net Control, and common contacts are correlated. The system also transmits data from each ship and aircraft’s weapons systems, e.g. a missile firing. All services use the LINK.
DESK JOCKEY: nonflyer, one who drives a computer instead of an aircraft.
DESRON: Destroyer Commander.
DICASS: an active sonobuoy.
DICK-STEPPING: something to be avoided. While anatomically impossible in today’s gender-integrated services, in an amazing display of good sense, it has been decided that women do this as well.
DDG: guided-missile destroyer
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