What a mess. I finally decided to take a page out of my Bronx Empire days, and took my staff – usually intended for longer-term strategic issues – and pulled them in to help with the day to day running of things. That means I had Bradburry for personnel issues (G1), Another Lieutenant Colonel who I rarely worked with for Intel and Security (G2) handling the interactions with the Military Intelligence Battalion (MIB), I took care of the operations and planning (G3), G4 handled logistics and worked with the Logistics Support platoon. G5, sigs and technology, didn’t really need a lot. G6 was engineering, and like the G5, just didn’t need a lot of attention. G7 was finance and Contracts, which we rarely had to deal with, and there WASN’T a G8 (Civil Affairs) since the public didn’t know we existed.
The only thorn in my side here was Captain George Strong in the headquarters company. I’ll always remember that name, because I’d ask him a question, and he’d give me the weakest possible answer – on a good day. On most days, the answer he gave, didn’t match the question I asked at all. The guy had such poor skills, he’d been a captain for nearly 12 years at that point, and his underlings referred to him as “Captain Forever.” He was a mustang – former enlisted – and he probably should have stayed enlisted.
“Captain, what’s the status of Team 1’s return trip from Australia?”
“Sir, there are three aircraft available, only two of which are available. Both of those have enough space for the entire detachment, and a cruise speed that will-“
“Captain, they’re already in the air. Where is the airplane?”
“It departed Sydney International Airport this morning sir.”
“Where. Is. The. Airplane?”
“It’s in the air sir.”
“Well, it sure as fuck isn’t in underwater, so WHERE IS IT?”
I never did get an answer from him; I ended up calling the airfac’s control tower and asking them for an ETA. “2130 hours tonight, sir.” Sad.
I honestly don’t know how that kid could walk and breathe at the same time. He was the only person I ever seriously considered a general court martial for being a fucking idiot. Lucky for him, that’s a charge the Judge Advocate General said didn’t exist. Yes, I did ask.
I shouldn’t complain; I got a chance to continue taking it easy so my chest could heal up. The entire time, though, I was anxiously waiting for a replacement to be selected to run COB, so I could go back to running my team.
Running the Covert Operations Battalion was hectic, and a major headache, even with all of the delegation I did. Inevitably, there were exceptions that I had to address, and more often than not, at first anyway, I had to deal with sticky situations directly.
By the end of the two months’ worth of forced light duty, I was calm enough on a daily basis I didn’t need to kill anyone – and General Watts gave me a fantastic present, right before my birthday.
28 MAR 2101
In Re:Lieutenant Colonel Wolf
S/N 20690401142857
Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier is returned to active duty, effective 1 APR 2100.
…
That wasn’t the best part, though – I got to issue a set of orders of my own.
28 MAR 2101
In Re:Colonel Bradburry
S/N 204107041922317
Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier is transferred, effective 1 APR 2100.
Subject soldier to assume role of Commanding Officer, Covert Operations Battalion.
…
It’s not every day you get to order your subordinate who outranks you, to become your boss.
I spent the next 2 years rolling around the entire globe, killing bad guys and breaking their things. It was a good time – I watched my team get promoted, I had to say goodbye to some and hello to new ones, and help the new ones get up to speed with team expectations.
Sometimes, the missions were easy. We had one where we probably screwed off far more than we should have; we got to destabilize the Polynesian islands. Frankly, I think we destabilized their bars more than their governments, although we did spend a lot of time building an insurgency there. You know, in retrospect, how the heck do people get unhappy in a place like that? Over a thousand islands, population density was absurdly low. Only four or five independent nations really existed, with the rest of the islands being territories of other countries (like, for example, Hawaii and American Samoa), or having no real government at all. We probably spent a little too much time in Tahiti and Bora Bora, but I assure you, we truly destabilized them. Seriously. Really. I mean it.
Other times, the missions were miserable. Do you know how crappy it is to be in the Rocky Mountains, surveilling some army-wannabe militia member who’s scaring the crap out of people, making them run for the nearest arkscraper,and sending HIM running to the woods in the mountains? We just hung out and watched him for nearly 2 weeks – in the cold, wet rain in the Rocky Mountains in the northern half of the State of British Columbia. I hated that mission, and I was miserable for a week even after we got back, thanks to the cold I caught while we were up there.
In China, acting as tourists, and being watched by their security forces as intently as we were watching them. Granted, they didn’t realize that we were planning out a new land invasion in the event that they decided to resume the 8 day war – and they actually helped without realizing it, when their officials always steered us away from something, towards something else. I’ve never worked closely with goats, but apparently the best way to get them to where you want them to go is to try to push them in the opposite direction. I don’t think they ever heard that story.
Germany. Mmmmm BEER! We didn’t drink quite so heavily as we did when we were in Polynesia, but not for lack of trying. The Polizei had been infected with a small group of fundamentalists and their KSK (Kommando Spezialkräfte) just couldn’t get a handle on it – which is understandable; they were more of a direct action group (like us) but didn’t do much in the way of counter-espionage (like we do) and definitely not as much counter-terrorism (which we do). That was an in-and-out, 3 weeks from “where are we going” to “here’s the head of the ringleader; his associates are handcuffed in the back of your building, with their hands and fingers all broken.”
Sometimes, we had some that could have ended quite badly, but ended up being (relatively) quiet, where we snuck in, did our thing, and then snuck back out. We actually went back to eastern Europe again, this time to Sarajevo, for a sniper issue that was causing our deployed forces there all kinds of grief. By the time all was said and done, there was one less sniper, and I had spray from a close-range headshot that meant I had to throw away that uniform top. Everyone knows what blood tastes like…but brains? Brains are gritty. I think, anyway – it could have been skull fragments for all I know. The spinal fluid was amazingly slippery, however, and my lips were coated in the stuff – it felt more than a little bizarre. Maybe a bit kinky?
I liked the work, I did. I could go to strange and interesting places, meet strange and interesting people, and as you can see, kill them in strange and interesting ways.
I was 34, a Lieutenant Colonel, my only significant long-term relationship (if you could call it that) was with a woman I later killed because she was trying to kill me – after she’d been fucking my boss. I had no family (I never bothered to check on Mary but odds were good she was long dead; Pip, who I figured was my father, I was quite certain was dead), no friends outside of work, no…. life. I lived out of a duffle bag and a barracks box – and couldn’t even cleanly take the barracks box with me when I deployed.
I found myself feeling lonely, again – unlike before, though, this was difficult for me. When I joined the army, I left behind an empire that I ran, I built, I owned… to joined a team. I built it, I created it, so it was easy for me to leave it. Here? I was one of five team leads, and that helped - Major Bekins in Team 1, Major Fields in Team 3, Team 5’s leader - Lieutenant Colonel Trudeau - was gone, killed
in a blast, and had been replaced by Major Christopher Condin, and Major Hule ran Team 7 – but those weren’t friends, they were professional colleagues.
I had no friends. Hell, after the last few years, I didn’t have a lot of people I could trust with personal issues. Yeah, my team were solid, and I literally trusted them with my life, but I couldn’t talk to them about personal stuff – you don’t do that with your subordinates.
I felt pretty low when I put it into terms like that, and realized I was depressed.
It didn’t get any easier.
17 DEC 2103
In Re:Lieutenant Colonel Wolf
S/N 20690401142857
Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, and in accordance with operational needs, subject soldier is promoted from O4 rank to O5 effective 01 JAN 2104.
Subject soldier transferred effective 01 JAN 2104 from 75th Ranger Regiment, to the 82nd Airborne Infantry Division, First Regiment,Fort Gibson, North Carolina, to assume Command.
Subject soldier to report to receiving unit NLT 31 DEC 2103.
…
Chapter 30: Here we go again!
I packed my stuff – what little of it there was – and arranged for transport to Fort Gibson. Rumor has it that, like Fort Mcclellan, it hadn’t always been named that. Since I’d arrived a few days prior to when I needed to officially assume command, I spent the time familiarizing myself with the area.
Digging through base history books (Some of Colonel Haskins had apparently rubbed off on me) I found that it had originally been called Fort Bragg, after one “Captain Braxton Bragg” – who was later a general in the Confederacy that tore the country apart close to two hundred and fifty years before I showed up. Apparently, it wasn’t named for him as a confederate general – it was named for him before the American Civil War. That didn’t seem to matter to the powers-that-be, and instead, was renamed after Horatio G. Gibson, a Lieutenant who established the post on a Native American reservation back in 1857.
I had a nice office all to myself, in a building that was dedicated to our – MY – regiment. That was probably the hardest part; I was sitting on my ass, reading reports, WRITING reports, interviewing staff for transitions… It felt wrong. The 82nd had a long history of participating in war, all the way back to the First World War, up to and including the extended “Sandbox War” in the middle east. Here we were, doing routine jumps, scrabbling for funding to pay for more exercises, more ammunition to practice and train with, more money for fuel for aircraft so we could maintain the “airborne” part of our name.
It was a full three months in the job before I was in any kind of position to start doing what I knew I needed to do – lead, by leading. I had my orderly hold my calls, I told my regimental sergeant major I was going to be gone for a while, and… I walked out.
Right into General McFarlane, my CO – and the commanding officer of the division. Fuck.
“James my boy, glad to see you, glad to see you! I was just headed over to see how you were fitting in, maybe spend some time having a little chin-wag, eh?” I fucking hated listening to this condescending prick. He was … how’d they say I had to put this… “Of African American Descent.” Normally, that’s not any kind of problem. In his case? He abused the situation far more than was reasonable, far beyond what was tolerable. That wasn’t the worst of it.
“Sir, I was ju-“
“Please, James, call me Bobby. You know I don’t want to stand on formality, especially between two leaders of one of the most illustrious combat units of the most powerful army in the world! Let’s go inside and chat, shall we?”
I didn’t have much option but to comply. This fat, lazy motherfucker had no place running a combat unit. Hell, he had no place in uniform!
I turned around and led back up the stairs, opening the door to my front office. Suzy – Corporal Hazlitt – looked up as the door opened. “Sir! I wasn’t expecting you back so…” Her voice died as Brigadier General Robert “Bobby” McFarlane walked in as I held the door, then she jumped to her feet. “Sir!” He smiled in what I imagine he presumed was an ingratiating way, and walked into my office.
“Continue holding my calls please, Corporal.”
She smiled as if to say, “Oh you poor sorry bastard” and nodded. She’d been here longer than I had been, by a long shot, and she knew what I was going to have to put up with.
I turned and walked into my office, where General McFarlane – Bobby, I mean – had laid down on my sofa. He pointed to the comfortable chair close to the arm of the couch his boots were propped up on, and waited for me to sit.
“So, James, how are you adjusting to life in the real world?”
“Doing well sir, thank you.”
“Bobby – Bobby – drop that rank shit when we’re in private, I told you. Don’t make me order you, man!”
“Wilco, s- Bobby. To what do I owe the pleasure, Bobby? Something wrong?”
“Yes, actually, there is, dude.” What a loser. He was easily in his 50’s, and I was still looking ahead to my thirty-fifth birthday, if only barely. I wasn’t “man”, I wasn’t “dude”, I wasn’t even “James” – I was Colonel Wolf, the newest regimental commander in his team.
“A little birdy tells me you’ve been working too hard, Jimmy.” I hated that name. “Pulling 12 and 14 hour days, including weekends. That just won’t do, it won’t do at all.”
“Sir – I mean, Bobby – I don’t think I understand. I’m hitting my PT numbers, which I know is common for new commanders to miss. I actually kind of like it, so it’s easier. I’m working to come up to speed as fast as I can, since running a regiment is still somewhat new, and I’m pretty sure I’m doing a good job of delegating everything possible to my XO, anything involving the troops gets handed to Skip, “ Sergeant Major Skip Trickett was my Regimental Sergeant Major, “and I’m left with oversight, strategy review, and reports – which, I agree, there are a lot of. I’m hitting 12 hour days, but that’s not uncommon from what I can tell – heck, the commanders of the other regiments in the division are pulling the same kind of hours.”
“Ahhhh you’re getting warrrrmerrrrrr,” I really hated how this guy acted like I was a kid and he was playing a game. “Jimmy, you’re the new kid. Literally, a kid – I’m 58, the colonels running the other regiments are all at least eight years older than you, if not more, and you’re doing the job as well as - or better than - all of them. You’re working TOO HARD – because at 32, you’re the youngest colonel I’ve ever heard of, and it doesn’t look good that someone so much younger is doing the job so well.”
“Bobby,” I felt like I was in a coffee shop with some senile old man, “I’m 34, I’ll be 35 in a couple of weeks. I know my PER has restricted sections, but bluntly, none of this is that new to me – the quantity of troops is certainly new, but I’ve had leadership positions for quite some time now, and have done them all quite well. Are you saying I should intentionally screw something up? That doesn’t exactly sound like anything healthy for my career.” I felt myself getting hot under the collar, and I really didn’t want this dickhead pushing me to start slagging my work in favor of whatever goofy plan he seemed to have for me.
“Well, whatever. Age is just a number, right? Relax a little more, Jimmy. You need to enjoy life more, you gotta stop working so hard. You don’t have anything to prove to these guys; you’re still one of the youngest colonels ever, you can afford to slack off a bit and look a little more like a rookie than someone bucking to replace me.” Aha! Now this is starting to make a little more sense.
“What do you propose I do, Bobby? I’m from the streets. I get along well with fellow soldiers, I lead troops under my command, but most of the people with an arkscraper origin know I’m not one of them, and they aren’t exactly welcoming to people from the streets. It’s not that I WANT the rank – I just keep getting promoted because I do a good job.” A teensy little half-truth might get him off my ass, maybe…
“Oh, nonsense, Jimmy. Come on, we�
��re going to go to the officer’s mess and get fucked up like a couple of recruits on their first leave pass.” Shit. There goes my time with my troops.
It was a pretty pathetic attempt to get me to do something stupid – he kept pushing me to drink, then drink more, and when I suggested I should slow down, started buying shots.
I guess he wasn’t much of a drinker, because he pretty quickly fell apart, just from trying to keep up with me. I knew I was feeling it, but I was still fairly lucid. When I looked over at him, though… he was face-down on the table we were sitting at, in a pool of his own drool.
I stood up and walked – surprisingly well – to the bar. “Excuse me ma’am, how do you normally handle those who’ve, shall we say, overdrank their system?“
Rage & Fury Page 30
