“But we’ll only be three or four hours away from each other, instead of a whole day’s drive. After all the work we did to get us both assigned to Germany, I’d think you’d be pleased.”
“Yeah, well. I want to serve with real soldiers — the SF guys at Bad Tolz. Those mech pukes will drive me nuts.”
“Can’t you just once say that it’s us that matters? Can’t you just once let down that exterior of yours and say it out loud?”
“No.”
“Griffin, I’m not sure I matter to you at all. There are lots of SF assignments stateside. Why are you going to Germany in the first place if it’s not to be with me?”
Mark Griffin saw his chance to change the subject.
“Maggie, it’s really because they’re afraid you’ll screw it up with the nukes and I’m supposed to watch out for you.”
She was out of the bed in an instant, half bent over and with her fists clenched. Maggie’s eyes narrowed as the rage that comes with an Irish temper boiled over.
“You mean to tell me that after more than fifteen years in the army and more ‘delicate,’ ‘demanding,’ and ‘sensitive’ assignments than I have freckles, some low-life male chauvinist has the unmitigated gall to suggest I can’t handle running a goddamned weapons storage site? After I supervised the destruction of all that nerve gas in ’91 without a hitch? I’ll tell the goddamn chief of staff himself what he can do with this assignment, I’ll…”
Griffin tried to keep a poker face, but smirked ever so slightly. Maggie caught it, and Mark knew she had.
“Gotcha.”
“Mark Gerald Griffin, if you ever, ever, pull something like that again I’ll, I’ll…” Maggie’s words trailed off as she dove onto the bed, shoving Griffin onto the floor and landing on top of him. Maggie
O’Hara was a strong woman, and he’d worked up a good mad in her. Griffin wrestled hard with her to keep her from pinning him on his back. At first they fought in mock anger, then the contest became earnest. She would hurt him, he would hurt her. Real pain, for the flush of a second. And then, because of or in spite of their contest, the pain dissolved to violent pleasure.
They had worked up quite a sweat in their wrestling match. Then, still on the floor, they worked up another.
“Ten days, gentlemen, ten days. That’s all that remains until the victory banquet.” Brig. Gen. Louis Hagan rose from behind his desk and began to pace. “My guest list includes the commander in chief, U.S. Army Europe; the corps commander; division commanders; the ambassador; and a truckload of very, very important people. This is the number one priority in this brigade and a zero defects operation. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Sir,” said Stern.
Griffin nodded, letting his eyes wander away from Hagan’s face to the wall behind the general’s desk. It was decorated with the usual amount of “been there” plaques and certificates, all from the correct assignments — the right “ticket punches”—to get Hagan into the command slot of a separate brigade. Yet Griffin noted something odd. Most of the pictures behind Hagan’s desk were of the 195th’s commander standing alongside three-stars or glad-handing some congressman. So that’s how he got here, Griffin thought. Bootlicking inside the army, politicking outside.
“Good,” Hagan said. “Make sure it stays that way. I was afraid that, after the staff updated you this morning, you might not have the proper focus. What are your questions?”
Stern pulled from his pocket a set of three-by-five cards with notes from the morning’s briefing.
“Sir, first there’s the matter of moving the brigade’s vehicles to the Theater Equipment Marshalling Area for redeployment. The logistics officer said she can coordinate rail movement of the vehicles and equipment, rather than a road march as is currently planned. I’d recommend we do that, Sir. It would save a lot of wear and tear on both the equipment and the soldiers.”
“No, no, dammit no! I’ve told her a dozen times we are going to road march. Does that black bitch of an S4 have the road clearances yet?” “Yes, Sir, but we can change them.”
“There won’t be any changes, Colonel Stern. I don’t care about ‘wear and tear’; we are going to motor across Germany in the biggest victory parade ever seen, and my vehicle will be in the lead. What’s the status of the repainting program?”
“Captain Dean said that — except for the trucks in A Company— all the repainting for l-89th Infantry’s trip to Kriegspiel is complete.” “She’s wrong. I saw at least ten tanks yesterday that have drip lines on them and will have to be repainted. I want those paint crews to work around the clock until they get it right.”
“Yes, Sir.” Inside, Stern winced. The crews were already pulling eighteen-hour shifts.
“I bet she’s stuffed your head full of that crap about using our trucks to turn in the ammunition we didn’t shoot up during the field exercise. That’s a no-go too. I’m not moving one truck, not after we just painted them. You tell her to get her priorities straight. She’d better get enough matching place settings, like I told her a week ago, or she’ll be out of a job!”
Stern nodded. He was learning more about the 195th in ten minutes in Hagan’s office than he’d learned in three hours with the staff.
Stern flipped to his next card. “Sir, the SI briefed me on the redeployment dependent care plan and the reassignments for the brigade’s soldiers once we get stateside. I think you need to get involved in this. As I’m sure you’re aware, most of our soldiers will find themselves forcibly discharged within thirty days of arriving stateside.”
With a wave of his hand Hagan dismissed the problem. “The soldiers will be taken care of when we get there. You and Johnson can handle that. Let’s worry about the here and now.”
“Sir?”
“Congressman Holster notified us that he won’t be able to make it. You have Johnson prepare a letter, for my signature, that acknowledges the congressman’s other duties but expresses my extreme disappointment that he will not be able to attend.”
And the soldiers be damned, thought Stern as he scribbled his notes.
Hagan fixed his gaze on Mark Griffin. “What about you, S3? I suppose as soon as I get those Bradleys cleaned up you’ll want to take them to the field.”
Griffin cleared his throat. “There is the local training area, Sir. A couple of days in the woods might improve morale after all the cleaning up the men have been doing.”
“They haven’.t cleaned a gosh-darn thing, at least not to standard. Request denied. Anything else, S3?”
Griffin was about to tell Hagan where to put both the banquet and this assignment when he felt a pain in his ankle; Stern had kicked him. “I said, ‘Anything else, S3?’ ”
“Yes, Sir. The Kriegspiel mission. My assistant, Captain Middletown, tells me we’re only sending sixty-two soldiers. Evidently that’s all that’s left of A Company, 1-89th, after you take out shortages, men near redeployment, and so on. We need to at least double that, Sir. I understand you received a ‘PERSONAL FOR’ message to execute that mission. Captain Cooper in the S2 shop told us this morning that there’s a threat to the Kriegspiel depot — and to us.”
“That geek Cooper has all those computers and what does he come up with? Not viruses, nothing that simple — not Cooper. No, he invents ghosts. He’s as bad as those doom and gloom people at USAREUR. There’s no enemy and no threat, despite what Cooper and the pessimists at higher headquarters say,” Hagan snorted. “Cooper badgers me constantly. It’s gotten so bad I’ve had the message center stop forwarding higher’s intel reports to him.”