“What period of time are you talking about?”
“The last positive we got was two years ago from a new cadet candidate on the first day of Beast Barracks. He admitted having smoked marijuana several days before reporting to West Point. A determination was made that his behavior as a civilian was most probably an aberration, and he was admitted to the class, and he’s still here. He stands in the top third of his class, and is a candidate for a cadet leadership position this semester.”
“I see,” said Slaight. “Anything else, gentlemen?”
“That’s about it, sir,” said Percival. “We’ve done everything we can do unless and until evidence of criminal wrongdoing results from Major Vernon’s autopsy lab tests.”
“How about the body?”
“Major Vernon will release it to the parents tomorrow afternoon, sir.”
“Good.” As Slaight stood, the colonels jumped to their feet in anticipation. They both reached for their hats and snapped salutes.
“Do me a favor, will you?” asked Slaight.
“Yes sir,” Percival answered quickly.
“Inform me immediately if there are any developments—any at all. I’ll tell my secretary to interrupt whatever I’m doing to take your call.”
“Yes sir,” said Percival. “Glad to, sir.” Slaight waited until he could hear the sound of their leather heels on the stairs as they made their way quickly to street level.
“Melissa, get General Gibson on the phone for me, will you?”
“Right away, sir.”
GENERAL GIBSON hung up his call from the Superintendent and looked out the windows of his office, on the top floor of Washington Hall. The windows looked north at the sweeping curve of the Hudson River as it snaked around Trophy Point.
Not even Slaight has a view like this, he thought to himself with satisfaction.
General Gibson was a handsome man, deeply tanned from the biweekly golf games he had made time for over the summer, with thick brush-cut graying hair. He had pale blue eyes and an intense way of looking at people when he spoke to them that was just shy of being intimidating. Yet when he turned on his smile, the word telegenic came to mind. Indeed, when Brigadier General Jack Gibson had been promoted to general a year ahead of the next man in his class and had been assigned straightaway to the Commandant’s job, it had been taken in the Army as a sign that Gibson was one of that new breed of Army officers who could be counted on to represent the face of the modern Army to the nation. He was automatically seen as a man on a fast track to three or even four stars. Gibson himself had no doubt that he would achieve four-star rank. Indeed, he had his eye fixed firmly on the Army’s top job: Chief of Staff. His mentor, a man named Cecil Avery who had served a term and a half on the National Security Council in the last Republican White House, and who was now ensconced in a so-called chair down at the Council on Foreign Relations waiting out the reign of the current Democratic occupant of the White House, had assured Gibson that if he could rein in his ambition in such a way that it did not stand beside him like another person in the room, he would be a shoo-in for Chief within five or six years.
Gibson had controlled his ambition with some inconvenience, for what would an Army officer amount to without the psychic sidearm you carried with you at all times? And yet, he knew Cecil Avery was right. Ambition was one of the weapons in your arsenal that you couldn’t show. He knew the Army was funny that way. It was supposed to be a fraternity of warriors, soldiers who were trained to kill the enemy in as efficient a manner as possible, soldiers whose mission in life was to take the high ground and occupy it. Still, it seemed as if you could behave like a warrior against the enemy, but you had to behave like a damn gentleman with your fellow officers. You might be a killer by job description, but you were supposed to appear to your fellow officers and the rest of the world as a soldier-statesman, a man of quiet reserve and unquestionable ability, of patience and judgment, and in this day and age, even a dollop or two of political correctness.
That was the thing Gibson didn’t like about Slaight. The new Superintendent was one of those politically correct bastards who owed his career to Meuller, the Chief of Staff, who, nearing the end of his term, was pushing the integration of women into the fighting force of the Army way too fast. Now there was a dead female at West Point, and he knew Slaight was going to go out of his way to assure Meuller and the top brass how much he and West Point cared. There would be a great show of politically correct backing and filling, and Gibson thought it was probable that careers would suffer because the young woman had died at parade, and that those with the suffering careers would be men. Watching Slaight ride herd over the investigation was going to make him sick.
Brigadier General Gibson had been born in North Carolina, and he liked to think of himself proudly as a son of the South. He had a brother who had gone to The Citadel, and an uncle who had graduated from VMI. His father had come from a tobacco-farming family, and, having received a law degree from the University of North Carolina, had worked the state’s power structure expertly. He started out as an attorney for one of the major cigarette manufacturers, and was now counsel to the Governor and a major player in state politics.
You didn’t come from a family like Jack Gibson’s without having been steeped in the rituals and traditions of the Deep South. Gibson had driven a car with a Confederate flag license plate on the front bumper until a friendly brigade commander, himself a son of the South, pointed out to him that though about 40 percent of the Army’s officer corps was comprised of southerners, 60 percent was not. He was bound to come across a general officer who did not share his love of the South’s proudest symbol, the Confederate battle flag, and this political disagreement would end up affecting Gibson’s Officer Efficiency Report, the Army’s officer report card, which determined promotions, job assignments, and even changes of station.
So Gibson had removed the Confederate flag from his bumper. In doing so he had successfully concealed the most visible symbol of his hard-line conservative politics, which included his opinions about women in the Army. Gibson was one of those male officers who believed that skirts had no place on the battlefield. The presence of women in units that had contact with the front lines of combat was a trend that had progressed rapidly over the last ten years. Gibson felt women on the battlefield were detrimental to the combat effectiveness of the Army and a threat to the Army’s ability to defend the nation.
Gibson’s politics had made his assignment as Commandant of Cadets awkward, for West Point had somewhat ironically been on the front lines of female progress in the Army. Women had been admitted to the Corps of Cadets in 1976 and had thrived at the Academy. Even though West Point was a place that had been hidebound with tradition stretching back almost two hundred years, because of its high public visibility it was also a place that responded quickly to political pressure. If West Point had been seen as stiffly resistant to the admission of women, in the manner of The Citadel and VMI, the outcry would have been intense. Realizing this, West Point had put up a friendly public face and had moved quickly to integrate women into the Academy’s theretofore male rhythms. And to what must have been the surprise of the next several Academy administrations, young American women had met the challenges of West Point, and then some. The Academy had produced one female first captain, and women filled leadership positions at all levels of cadet life. Female Academy graduates had served the Army with the same distinction as male graduates. While equality of the sexes would never be absolute in the Army, West Point had probably done more to advance it than any other military institution.
Brigadier General Gibson was aware of this, and so when he moved into the Commandant’s office he immediately established himself as publicly friendly to the interests of women in the Academy.
In fact, a year previously, when he had escorted a crew from ABC TV’s 20/20 through a tour of cadet life, he had made sure that the achievements of female cadets were featured prominently. The correspondent for 20/20 had
been a woman, and he had played to her New York liberal media prejudices expertly. When the show aired, he came across as an exemplar of modern Army values. West Point was showing the way when it came to women in the Army, and Brigadier General Jack Gibson was leading the charge. There had been officers like Gibson in the Army before—men whose public personas belied private distaste for the political and social changes that had swept through the Army like a fast-moving train over the last thirty years. But Jack Gibson was really, really good at it. In another era, he would have made the cover of Life magazine. But a fifteen-minute segment on 20/20 was even better. Tens of millions of Americans had seen him on television and had apparently believed what they saw: a modern-day military man ready to become one of the top leaders in the twenty-first-century Army.
Gibson walked to his window. Down below, cadet joggers were circling the edge of the Plain, headed up Washington Road on the slow climb toward the North Gate. Over on Trophy Point, four MPs were folding the flag that they had lowered at Retreat. He picked up his cap and headed out the door.
***
SLAIGHT WAS seated behind his desk when Gibson was escorted into his office by Melissa Grant. Gibson snapped a salute and reported. Slaight returned salute and led the way to the sitting area across the office.
Neither man was happy that their first official meeting at the Academy concerned the death of a female cadet, but of the two, Slaight was probably the more unhappy, because if there was one man in the United States Army who knew the true political bent of the Commandant of Cadets, it was Slaight. He had been Gibson’s commander ten years previously, when Slaight had been a lieutenant colonel and Gibson as a captain had commanded one of the companies in his mechanized infantry battalion. Female soldiers were already showing up in jobs that put them in direct contact with the entirely male infantry battalion Slaight and Gibson were in, and Gibson at that time had made no secret of his distaste for female soldiers and their presence in a combat division. In fact, Slaight recalled the Confederate flag Gibson had sported on his front bumper, and he recalled as well when it disappeared, along with the overt signs of Gibson’s hostility to women in the Army. But reports from younger officers in Gibson’s company kept filtering up to the battalion commander. Gibson held “manhood sessions” with his young charges at a country-and-western bar some distance from the post, at which copious quantities of beer were consumed and antifemale marching songs were sung. While all of the young officers went along with Gibson’s program of machismo, several of them did so without enthusiasm. Among these were young West Point lieutenants who had graduated with female classmates and saw nothing wrong with the presence of women in the Army. So even as Gibson concealed his hostility to women from his superiors, his lieutenants concealed their disgust from him. The situation finally deteriorated to the point that Slaight felt it was necessary to call Gibson into his office and forbid the off-post shenanigans, an order with which Gibson vociferously disagreed.
It came as no surprise to Slaight when he learned that Gibson had successfully challenged the below-average Officer Efficiency Report Slaight had given him upon his departure from the battalion. Even then, Gibson made no secret of the fact that he had friends in high places, and apparently his friends had helped to quash Slaight’s OER, which would have ordinarily delayed Gibson’s promotion to major.
Now the two former combatants faced each other across the coffee table in the office of the Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. Slaight dismissed Melissa and listened for the sound of the door closing when she left.
“I guess we go back a ways, huh, Jack?” said Slaight, trying to start the meeting on a lightly ironic note.
“I guess we do,” responded Gibson without humor.
“Remember that time back at Carson when I was running the One-eighty-sixth, and you had C Company?”
“Yes sir.”
“I’m hoping we can start our association here at the Academy with a clean slate. Is that agreeable to you?”
“Yes sir.” Gibson’s voice was flat and emotionless.
“It would have been preferable if our first meeting concerned the cadet intramural athletic program, or some other piece of ordinary Academy business. But instead we’re looking at a situation that can go one of two ways. The death of the young woman this morning can be attributed to conditions beyond the Academy’s ability to have predicted or controlled, in which case it will be seen as a tragic accident and we can move on. Or her death may be proven to have been caused by some kind of misdeed here at the Academy, in which case we’ve got real problems, Jack. You’ve been Com for two years. I’m sure you realize how serious this could turn out to be.”
“General Slaight, I can assure you right now that there was no foul play involved in this young woman’s death. I think it’s pretty obvious that she couldn’t take the heat, and she passed away because of this obvious weakness.”
Here we go, thought Slaight.
“I hate to burst your bubble, Jack, but I’ve seen the initial autopsy report, and there has already been a determination made that this young woman didn’t die from heatstroke. So you can stick your weaker-sex notions back in your pocket. If I hear any talk around the Academy that she died at parade on a very hot day because she was a woman, you’re going to be answering to me. Is that clear?”
“Very,” said Gibson, dropping the “sir” that should have been appended to his statement.
Slaight noticed the lack of respect from his Commandant and thought briefly of saying something, but decided to move on. “Let me tell you how this is going to work,” he said pointedly to Gibson. “Tomorrow morning when the parents of Miss Hamner show up they will be greeted by you and me. Sometime later, there will be a movement of the body under Cadet Honor Guard from the post hospital to an awaiting hearse. I want the entire Third Regiment in full dress gray outside the hospital. I want that girl’s body to be transferred into that hearse with all of the pomp and circumstance we can drum up, do I make myself clear?”
Gibson nodded. “Yes sir. Sir, the Corps has a full day of classes tomorrow. Do you want me to ask the Dean to excuse the Third Regiment from class for the day?”
“I’ll handle that,” said Slaight. “I want you to get something straight right now, Jack. As of today, this is my Corps of Cadets. That dead body out there on the Plain today is my dead body. Therefore you will treat the death of this young woman as a tragic accident and accord her the honors which are due from the Academy and the Corps of Cadets. Understood?”
“Perfectly.”
“You have your marching orders,” barked Slaight, pointing toward his office door. “Get moving.”
Gibson stood, tossed off a salute, and left.
Outside the window, the Hudson was just catching the last rays of the setting sun. Even in the midst of the storm that he knew was gathering around the death of Dorothy Hamner, he felt calm. Back when he was a cadet, the notion that he would one day occupy the office of Superintendent with all of its history was so distant from his comprehension as to be unthinkable. And yet now, strangely, he could make sense of it. There had been a battle raging for the soul of the United States Army, and right now, at this very moment, guys like Meuller and Slaight were winning the battle. But just over the next hill—perhaps with the election of a President who was anti-woman in addition to being antigay, for example—were the legions of those who believed as Gibson believed. The turn-back-the-clock crowd, guys who believed the country could retreat to the “values” the country was imagined to have shared in 1950, and everything would begin working again, and moreover, would somehow work better.
Right now, he knew two things for sure: First of all, it was up to him to make the system work the way it was supposed to work. Secondly, he knew he would get exactly no help in that regard from his Commandant of Cadets.
But then again, what had his training led him to expect? A free ride? He looked out there at the Hudson and saw a tugboat pushing three empty barges upriver
. The barges hit some kind of mean eddy as they approached Trophy Point and began aiming themselves at the western shore of the Hudson. Slaight watched, fascinated, as the captain reversed engines and the river surged beneath his tugboat, and gently, ever so gently, the three barges began to realign themselves, and he was able to proceed upriver.
Four years at West Point and thirty years of life in the Army had reminded him again and again of Newton’s law that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Slaight watched the tug push the barges around the bend of Trophy Point and turned away from the window. “Are you ready to call it a day, Melissa?”
“Yes sir.”
“Come on. I’ll walk with you as far as the library.”
Outside the Headquarters Building, a lone cadet carrying an armload of files fumbled a salute and said, “Good evening, sir,” as they passed. Slaight returned salute. “Any thoughts?”
Her mouth formed a thin smile. “Well, sir, I didn’t hear what went on between you and the Com. But I can tell you that Colonel Percival is either very naive or he’s blowing smoke your way, sir.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well, sir, for one thing, there are about six effective ways to beat a urine test, and any cadet with nimble fingers can pull them off the Internet in about two minutes.”
They walked in silence for a moment, then Slaight said, “There were guys in my class who smoked marijuana. After graduation, I was one of them, briefly. I even inhaled.”
She laughed. “Sir, everybody here at West Point came from somewhere else, and in most of those somewheres, use of drugs by schoolkids is a given.”
“So the negative results on the urine tests Percival’s talking about could be misleading.”
“I’d bet my car on it, sir. Back in the division, I heard about guys who wouldn’t use drugs for a month or so, then they’d store clean urine in anticipation of the tests.”
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