Heart of War

by Lucian K. Truscott

  “Her roommate made it sound like she was the one who was pursuing him.”

  “See? Nothing ever changes. I see this thing one way, and you see it another, and you’re a man and I’m a woman, and I guess that’s just the way it’s going to be, no matter what we do.”

  “Well, I’ll concede that your experience has been different from mine. But I still don’t see how her having an affair had anything to do with her death. The way her roommate told it, she went into the affair willingly, with eyes wide open, even to the point that she refused her roommate’s entreaties to give it up and walk away from the guy.”

  “Women do that to each other. Hell, they do it to themselves.”

  “Do what?”

  “Doubting. Questioning. Wondering. What-ifing.”

  “Men do it too.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Hollaway slowed down, peering out the windshield. “I’m looking for your driveway.”

  “It’s a little farther, around that bend in the road, just past the trees.”

  Hollaway rounded the bend and turned into her drive and pulled to a stop. “I’m going to need you to come by the office and sign a statement. If you could make it later today, that’d be a big help.”

  Kara opened the door. “I’ll do it. Thanks for the ride, Frank.” She stepped out of the car.

  “Listen, I’m sorry if . . .”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She closed the door and started to walk away. Then she turned and walked back to the car and tapped on the window. He rolled it down. “Let me tell you, Frank. There’s more to this thing than we know. Look at it this way. You’ve got a negligent homicide on your desk if it could be shown that she was responding to pressure from a superior officer to drive out there and meet him.”

  “We’ll never know that for sure.”

  Kara grimaced. “Maybe we will. I hope not.”

  Inside, she took off her coat and put on a pot of coffee. She sat down and pulled off her shoes and rubbed her feet.

  She had been born into a different Army, and yet it was still the same. The men who ran the Army did what-ever the hell they wanted, and were answerable only to each other. Men around the office still talked about “the little woman” back home. There was at Fort Benning, and on other posts where she had served, the old military ethic that women were supposed to keep their mouths shut and their blouses buttoned and their children at heel.

  She leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. She remembered the fear in her mother’s eyes when she heard the lock turn in the door at night, announcing the return of her father from work. Her mother had spent the last two hours straightening up the house, emptying ashtrays, cleaning out waste baskets, trying to insure that everything was in its place and spotless. It was like their home was an extension of the barracks. She half expected her own father to put on a white glove and run it over the tops of the kitchen cabinets, looking for dust.

  It was all about power, but it was more than that. It was about fear. The men in the Army had turned on the television at night and watched the world changing, outside of their control. Women began to act differently. They were on their way in a different world, and soon they would be admitted to West Point and be on their way up the ladder in the Army. Kara remembered how her father had reacted when she told him she was going to apply to West Point. It was like he had just taken a hammer blow to the solar plexis. His eyes bulged, and his cheeks reddened, and he stared at her for what seemed like minutes but was probably a few seconds, and then he got up and left the room. He went to work the next morning and didn’t come home until three days later. Her mother had written off his disappearance to “maneuvers” or “Army business” or something like that, but Kara had understood what it was. She was a woman and she was going to enter his world, and in doing so, she was going to change it, and he didn’t like it one bit.

  Her relationship with her father had always been stiff and formal and distant, but after her appointment to West Point it became downright icy. Her mother had been the one who drove her to the airport the day she left to report to Beast Barracks. After that she saw her father only a few times before he died.

  Now she thought of him and the Army he represented. Somewhere out there was a man who shared her father’s proprietary instincts about women, that they were things to be possessed and used. Somewhere out there was a man who had been having an affair with the young woman they found in the rushing waters of the swollen river. Somewhere out there was the man who killed her, and his presence was as fresh and real and painful to her as the memories of her own father.

  Chapter Three

  Captain Randy Taylor was standing at the coffee maker at 0700 when he looked out the window and saw a group leaving the Fifth Army Headquarters across the way. The headquarters buildings of the Third and Fifth armies stood less than a football field away from each other across a grassy parade ground, and they shared a concrete helicopter pad located halfway between them.

  Randy knew that it drove Beckwith mad, having the two headquarters located so close to each other. Fifth Army had been headquartered a hundred miles away at Fort Jackson, but downsizing had changed the landscape in more ways than one. Fort Jackson had been closed by the congressional base closure commission, and was now used as some kind of internment camp for youthful offenders. Fifth Army Headquarters had been moved to Fort Benning and now stood just across the way from Third Army Headquarters, so General Beck-with could look out his window at the four-star general who headed up another Army command.

  That two such high-ranking generals were head-quartered so close to each other was not only a sign of the economic times facing them, it was a recognition that there was a narrowing of room at the top of a shrinking Army. It used to be understood that an Army post was big enough for one commanding general. Now the crowd of flag-bearing staff cars at Fort Benning was large enough to cause a traffic jam in the reserved spaces at the PX parking lot.

  Randy watched the group of men as they walked down the sidewalk toward the chopper pad. He chuckled, remembering something his father had told him a long time ago.

  You can tell a lot about a general from the solar system of aides who are in perpetual orbit around him wherever he goes. Deputies, usually brigadier generals, are the planetary ring closest to the general’s sun. Lesser bodies orbit farther away—a couple of colonels, a moon ring of majors, an asteroid cloud of captains, and in far space perhaps even a frightened lieutenant or two, floating out there like space debris in the command cosmos.

  But Randy’s father was very specific about the most telling detail of them all. Pay close attention to the command sergeant major, he had said. He’s the one who knows where the bodies are buried.

  Randy thought back to a day at the Infantry School, right there at Fort Benning, only weeks after he had received his commission. He was out in the field on a fire-and-maneuver exercise when a helicopter carrying the commander of the Infantry School landed near his training company. Immediately all instruction came to an abrupt halt, and the officers teaching the class in small-unit tactics hurried over to greet the chopper. A brigadier general who commanded the Infantry School got out of the chopper, followed by several aides. He walked quickly toward a shed where the company commander was hurriedly preparing a briefing on the day’s training. The general was a good fifty yards from the chopper, which had already shut down its engines, when Randy noticed the command sergeant major climb out. He strolled over to a group of lieutenants who were hunkered down in the shade of a large oak. He plucked a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth and chewed contentedly.

  “Briefing goin’ on over there at the shed, huh?” he asked. One of the lieutenants answered affirmatively. “I don’t much like briefings, myself. Guess you all been briefed till your ears hurt, huh?” The lieutenants chuckled nervously, wondering what the sergeant major was getting at. Alone among them Randy laughed so hard it brought tears to his eyes, because he understood immediately that the ser
geant major had just told them all they ever needed to know about the general he served under, without saying hardly anything at all.

  The blades of a big UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter were beginning to turn as General Bernard King neared the chopper pad. Command Sergeant Major Ted Conklin was walking next to him, an eager spring in his step, an almost devilish grin on his face. They were followed by a clutch of colonels and majors carrying brief-cases and clipboards. Conklin leaned in close to the General as they neared the chopper.

  “We got this guy’s PR people topped off with high-test this mornin’, sir. Close as he knows, you’ve been water-walkin’ since your mama said you were old enough to tie your own shoes.”

  General King laughed. Conklin stopped at the door of the chopper and waited while the General got on. He pulled the door closed, leaving the clutch of aides standing at the edge of the pad, holding onto their hats as the blades of the Blackhawk beat the air.

  The big helicopter lumbered aloft at precisely 0702 hours. Four gold stars glinted in the early morning sun as General King pulled on his flight helmet. The intercom crackled, General King adjusted the volume, and his voice boomed into the headset of the other passenger on the Blackhawk.

  “Morning, Senator. Did you sleep well last night?”

  Senator Hershell Maldray, who was about ten years younger and a hundred pounds heavier than the General, grabbed a cargo strap to steady himself as the Blackhawk leaned into a steep turn. Maldray’s face was round and red and youthful, topped by a shock of prematurely gray hair. Less than fifty feet below them, the tops of pine trees skimmed by at better than one hundred fifty miles per hour. It had stopped raining. Scattered patches of fog struggled to break through a dense cloud cover.

  “The accommodations were excellent, General. It’s gratifying to see that tax dollars are being so well spent here at Fort Benning.”

  General King had come to accept the fact that he was a mandatory stop for Washington politicians who shamelessly craved photo-ops that could be exploited with constituents back home. This was because King was the highest-ranking black man in the United States Army, and every junketeering politician who made the stop at Fort Benning had a large percentage of minority voters he had to cater to. Though escorting wayward senators was a part of his job he could do without, he was good at it. But this was no ordinary politician. This was the majority leader of the United States Senate. This was a man who quite literally held the budgetary health of the Army and all of its units and installations and personnel in his hands. King knew he was a man who could make or break a general’s career with the lift of an eyebrow, a nod or shake of the head. On this morning it was General King’s job to keep Maldray’s eyebrows firmly seated above his twinkling blue eyes and convince the majority leader that the separate commands at Fort Benning, and indeed Fort Benning itself, were worth saving in the latest round of cuts that would be recommended by the joint House-Senate congressional base-closure commission.

  General King had an idea that this wouldn’t be too hard. Senator Maldray was one of two Republican senators from the state of Georgia, and he had grown up in a military family that had been stationed for many years right here at Fort Benning. The state of Georgia had a large black population, and they turned out to vote. Maldray had squeaked through his last election with just 50.2 percent of the vote, and he was facing another trial at the polls next year. Indeed, you could make the argument that Maldray needed King more than King needed Maldray, but the General didn’t like to think in terms so nakedly political. He was an Army officer, and for thirty years he had endeavored to put as much distance between himself and politics as he possibly could.

  He looked across the helicopter’s troop-carrying bay at Maldray. The senator rooted around in a briefcase and pulled out a book with a large color photograph of himself on the cover.

  “Have you seen my new book, General?” He handed the slim volume to General King. The title, Decay and Renewal: America on the Rebound, was in type half the size of the type used for his name.

  “No, I don’t believe I have,” said General King.

  Maldray pulled out a pen. “Here, I’ll autograph it for you.” He quickly jotted his name inside the cover and handed it to General King.

  “Thank you, Senator. I’ll have a look at it as soon as I get back to the office.”

  “Don’t bother. It’s actually a collection of recent speeches, and you probably got the sound bites from most of them from the news.”

  Smiling: “You’re right. I probably did.”

  “You don’t mind if we do some inside-the-Beltway talking this morning, do you, General?”

  “No, sir. Of course not.”

  “You are no doubt aware that we’re taking a hard look at budget priorities this year. Everything is on the table, including defense. We’ve got a bipartisan commission looking at a new round of base cuts right now.”

  “They shot Fort Jackson out from under me earlier this year, Senator. I hope you’re not here to tell me they’ve got Benning in their crosshairs.”

  “No. Of course not. Fort Benning has an advantage that Fort Jackson didn’t have. It’s in Georgia.” Maldray threw his head back and laughed long and hard at his own joke.

  General King smiled thinly. “That’s what Senator Alford told me last year about South Carolina.”

  “Senator Alford didn’t have the benefit of my perspective, General. The landscape changes completely when viewed through the windows of the office of the majority leader.”

  “That’s what Senator Alford told me about looking at things from the chair of the Armed Services Committee.”

  Maldray chuckled. “I’ll have to talk to him about that when I get back to Washington.”

  The helicopter slowed as it passed over the rolling hills of the western part of the Fort Benning Military Reservation. King pointed out the door.

  “I wanted to show you our new area for field exercises, Senator. We’ve got it set up where two brigades can go up against each other with mechanized infantry, armor, a live fire zone, the whole business.”

  Maldray glanced quickly out the window. “Interesting.” He turned back to face the General. “There’s something else we’re taking a hard look at, General, and I wanted to get your thoughts on it.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The closure commission is going to look at force structure. We haven’t announced this publicly yet. And we won’t for a while. I wanted to get your thoughts before I turn them loose. Everything’s going to get a tough going-over.”

  “I’ll be glad to help in any way I can, Senator.”

  “This next round of budget cuts is going to take a larger bite out of Defense than it did last year. We both know that. The question is, where, and how much? It’s my feeling that we could cut a couple of commands. We need the divisions, but I’m not sure we need the top-heavy bureaucratic structures that go with higher commands. We’re going to run into opposition from the Sec Def on this. He’s going to go crying to the White House and get the chief draft dodger on his side, and they’re going to defend the status quo.”

  King looked out the window. This lunatic was trying to pull him into the dark alley between the Republican Congress and the Democratic White House, and that was an alley he wasn’t going into without a fight.

  Maldray glanced at the pilot and co-pilot over his shoulder, then leaned forward, closer to General King.

  “There could be a promotion in this for you, General. When we reshuffle the command structure, there are going to be openings up and down the line. I’m thinking of a particular slot that will open up in about two months’ time. I think you know I’m talking about the office of chief of staff of the United States Army.”

  King was still looking out the window when he said: “What unit did you serve in when you were in the Army, Senator?”

  “I don’t think I heard you.”

  “I asked what unit you served in, sir. Back when you were a soldier.”

  “I
was never in the Army, General. I had a sensitive teaching position at the University of Georgia that made me ineligible for the draft.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you have a point, General King? Am I missing something here?”

  “I was just curious which unit you served in, sir, because I thought if you had served in, say, the Fifth Army or the Third Army, you would probably have some loyalty to your former unit, because I know I would. I’ve got to tell you, Senator, I don’t envy your position. It would be hard as hell for me to disassemble an entire Army command. You probably know that the Fifth Army took Anzio and Salerno and Rome and later conquered the rest of Italy and took the surrender of Kesslering’s entire forces. They captured the German 18th Army Group in France, and drove straight into southern Germany through the Strasbourg Gap. The only all-black unit to serve in ground combat was part of the Fifth Army. So was the famous 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the unit with the most casualties, and the most medals, of the entire war. It would be hard as hell for me, with all that history in front of me, looking at that flag with those battle streamers, to throw the whole damn thing in the shitcan and pretend that somehow dollars are more important than the lives that were shed to put those battle streamers up there on that flagstaff. It would be just hard as hell, Senator.”

  The helicopter banked steeply, and General King pointed out the window.

  “That’s Fifth Army Headquarters down there, Senator. It’s not very big, only about a hundred in staff, maybe another sixty, seventy in enlisted support. You couldn’t even put a down payment on an F-14 for what you’re paying out yearly to the entire command. So if you want my feeling on this one, sir, I’ve got to put it to you like this: I understand the need for the cuts, and I’m all for saving the money, but there’s a part of me who walks into that headquarters down there every morning, who wakes up and reads the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and realizes down in the pit of my soul that a lot of what we’re talking about here is just a big shell game, that the buck we save here"—he pointed at one side of the parade field—"just ends up shifting over there.”