The meaning of this encrypted analogy was as clear to Hightower as Smith's had been to the CinC NATO. Though it was not an order, exactly, or even a "recommendation," it was a directive that the Special Forces colonel, standing in the middle of a shattered pine forest in Siberia thousands of miles away, could not ignore. When their conversation was over, Hightower dispatched the radioman on a fool's errand. When that signalman was out of sight, Hightower knelt down in front of the satellite dish and detached the cable that led from it to the main unit. Standing up, he looked around as he slowly coiled the cable up before stuffing it in his pocket. Satisfied that no one had seen him, he turned his back on the disabled unit and walked away.
Movement through the shattered countryside was no easier than it had been the day before. In many ways, the slow and arduous task was even more trying. While the return of subzero temperatures had solved one problem, that of mud, the change generated others equally daunting. In place of the thick, gooey mud, the NATO commandos now found themselves plowing through knee-high snow and skirting around drifts. In addition, the sudden onset of seasonally cold temperatures had created vast patches of ice that made the crossing of open ground hazardous. The moisture that had coated the trees bowled over the previous day by impact shock waves had also frozen. As difficult as the trees had been to climb over before, the addition of this thick coat of ice made matters even worse.
Not all was gloom and doom as far as the environmental conditions were concerned. The snow and the diminishing winds had brought about a considerable clearing in their wake. Though the heavens were still gray and the sky was filled with dark clouds that rolled about, gone were the gale-force winds and dense, choking mist heavily laden with dust, microscopic debris, and fallout of all sorts. The snow had cleansed the air, leaving behind a countryside covered with a strange grayish blanket speckled with flakes of black soot and dirt. To those familiar with military history, the charred, jagged tree stumps jutting out of the tainted snow put them in mind of a scene reminiscent of the fabled Western Front of World War I.
Of this and other matters, no one spoke. Mute and withdrawn, the men of Fretello's ad hoc strike force struggled on toward their new objective. In addition to the equipment they carried and the heavy winter clothing that added its own unique difficulties to their endeavors, most of the commandos were afflicted with a deep foreboding that weighed down upon them like a heavily laden rucksack. This melancholy, exacerbated by exhaustion, so dominated every man's thoughts that it all but radiated out from each of them and overlapped those of their comrades until it cast a collective pall over them all. In light of the horrible losses they had sustained, not to mention their uncertain future prospects, this sad state of affairs was more than understandable. Yet there were those whose spirits could not, or would not, be diminished.
Chief among this fortunate handful was Andrew Fretello. He had listened to the same updates each of the team commanders had rendered to his colonel. Yet the tales of suffering by others did not have the same impact on Fretello as they did on Hightower. In part, this was due to the fact that Hightower was in command, and therefore responsible for everything that happened to the men under him. Even though he was as much a part of the process as a staff officer, he had not, up to this point, had to take on the sense of personal liability that Hightower did. For the moment, the opportunity to command a unit in combat was blinding the young officer to much of the grimness that surrounded him and the awesome responsibilities he would soon be taking on.
Another factor that took the sting out of the words that Fretello heard was the fact that he did not have any personal experiences with which to compare his situation. Never having been in combat before, the reports that were rendered did not evoke any strong emotions, frightening images, or feelings of despair. Though these reports concerned real people and real events, to the young American staff officer, they were not much different than similar reports he had heard countless times before during training exercises. Only a veteran like Hightower was able to relate to what they were being told.
This does not mean that Andrew Fretello was without his own concerns. Many thoughts and questions to which there were no answers ran through his mind as he made his way toward his objective. He was a commander now. As such, he had to assume all the burdens that the title carried with it. The speed with which he had been hustled off on his current impromptu mission still bothered him more than it should have. Though he knew in his heart that they did not have time for all the little niceties that both Fort Benning and the staff college at Fort Leavenworth enjoyed, simply throwing a group of soldiers together, pointing them in the right direction, and telling them to go didn't appear to be a sane choice either. While it was true that information concerning current enemy strength, location, activities, and intention in their area of operations was nonexistent, the least Colonel Hightower could have done, Fretello kept telling himself, was to slow down a bit. Speed in combat was a double-edged sword. While haste might get you to your objective before your enemy does, it might also deliver your forces in a state of confusion unprepared to execute the mission they were sent out to perform.
Another worry that dawned upon Fretello as he made his way along was the startling realization that he didn't know any of the people with whom he had been entrusted. A soldier who is knowledgeable about his enemy can make assumptions about its response when combat is joined. A leader cannot, however, comfortably do the same with his own men. The same speed that keeps him from performing precombat inspections also prevents him from obtaining even a passing acquaintance with his newly assigned subordinates. The soldier to his front, as well as the one to his immediate rear, are absolute strangers to him. The sole criteria used in assigning people to Fretello's team had been the order in which they stumbled into the assembly area.
The knowledge that every man with him was a trained professional, skilled in the demanding vocation of special operations, did little to ease this disquieting thought. How, he wondered, would he know who to pick when it came time for him to select individuals to perform the various tasks his team would need to execute once they reached their objective? His ignorance as to who was best qualified to do this or that would reduce his decision-making ability to little more than random luck, something that was against everything in which this compulsive planner believed.
Being the sort of person who was convinced that there was always a reasonable solution to every problem, Andrew Fretello turned his mind to finding one for this particular issue. A good place to start getting a handle on the men in his command, he reasoned, was to get to know his second in command. Since the British SAS captain had brought a sizable portion of his own command along with him, Fretello felt that an open dialogue with him would provide some insights on the capabilities of the SAS commandos he would soon be relying upon.
Stepping out of the line of march, Fretello waved the men behind him on. With little more than a quick glance at his commanding officer, the overburdened radioman who had been following in Fretello's wake continued walking, making no effort to close the gap left by that officer. Like his companions up and down the long, slow moving column, the radioman mechanically continued to throw one foot twenty-eight inches out in front him at a time. Again and again, when that foot came down and found firm footing in the deep snow, he lifted the trail foot past the lead foot and threw it another twenty-eight inches farther along. One foot down, one foot forward. Each step took him twenty-eight inches closer to his objective. Each step plunged him twenty-eight inches deeper into the same unknown that so troubled his commander.