And I can’t see any alternatives to the setup we’re using. We can’t run the entire Navy with middle-aged sailors, and I wouldn’t want to try. We need the wise old goats, and the young up-and-comers, and the core of seasoned ones in-between.
Besides, all those old timers and veteran sailors had to come from somewhere. Every one of them (and I’m not excluding myself) started out fresh-faced and wide-eyed. The path to knowledge and experience must inevitably pass through youth and then leave it behind.
In case you’re wondering, I do recognize the contradiction in what I’m saying. Here I sit, bemoaning the deaths of young men and women, even as I’m pouring my thoughts and energy into killing sailors who may not be a day older than my own youngest crew members.
I don’t know what to say about that, except to invoke the logic of tribe. My sailors are my people, as the congregants of Temple Beth Israel are your people, and as the citizens of the United States are both your people and mine. The compulsion I feel to protect my sailors is either instinctive, or so deeply ingrained in my social conditioning that it feels like instinct, and it overrides any qualms I have about the youth of enemy sailors.
Sorry, I’m probably not making much sense right now. I really just needed to vent some of my doubts and frustrations, and these are not the kinds of thoughts I can share with anyone on the ship. For my officers and crew, I must always be the captain: a paragon of pure and unruffled confidence, no matter how I’m actually feeling beneath the façade of command.
When you are troubled, you lay your problems at the feet of El Shaddai. My connections at the front office are not as good as yours, so I lay my problems at the feet of my father instead. Of the two of us, I count myself as the luckier man. Your questions and confessions may be heard by a higher power, but mine are answered with compassion and wisdom.
Thank you, as always, for listening without judging. For guiding me without trying to control me. For finding it in your heart to be proud of me, despite the many disappointments I have caused you.
I love you, Abba.
Shalom Aleikhem.
Zach
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CHAPTER 40
Secretary of Defense Mary O’Neil-Broerman rested her head against the window of the Pentagon limousine, eyes only half focused as the buildings of Georgetown University slid past at the edge of her vision. She would be home before 10:00 p.m. for the first time since that Coast Guard boarding team had gotten their tails shot off trying to inspect a North Korean freighter.
The Georgetown campus was well lit. Mary tried not to think about the speed with which electricity had been restored to this area, while families in some of the Ward 7 and Ward 8 neighborhoods were still shivering in the dark.
There was an unpleasant negative symmetry in that. The people who were best equipped to survive an extended blackout were also imbued with sufficient clout to guarantee that their electricity was restored quickly. It was the people without fireplaces and well stocked pantries who languished at the bottom of the priority list.
Power was back on in nearly all parts of the city, and the few remaining blacked out areas now had functioning emergency shelters and portable generators to help the locals ride out what should (hopefully) be the last night of the outage. Even so, it was difficult not to notice that the last neighborhoods to receive assistance just happened to coincide with the lowest per capita incomes in the district.
The divide between the haves and the have nots had always been well defined in DC, but an infrastructure failure of this magnitude could bring the inequities of the system into uncomfortable clarity.
Mary wondered — not for the first time — if there was something she should be doing to improve the lives of less fortunate people. But smarter minds than hers had been wrestling with the problem for centuries, without much evidence of tangible success. And she had a big enough job trying to protect the American people (rich and poor alike) from outside enemies, such as a couple of dozen nuclear warheads parked just south of the Florida Keys.
For all its truth, that felt like the sort of easy-out answer that she hated. Just another way of saying, ‘if it’s not my job, it’s not my problem.’ But poverty and social inequalities were everybody’s problem, weren’t they?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a buzz from the limo’s STE phone.
She picked up the handset, clicked the crypto card into the slot, and pressed the ‘Secure’ button.
Following a brief warble of synchronizing encryption, a voice came on the line. “Madame Secretary, this is Lieutenant Colonel Maxwell, the NMCC Communications Officer of the Watch.”
Mary closed her eyes. She was no stranger to nighttime calls from the National Military Command Center, and not one of them had ever been good news.
“Good evening, Colonel. What can I do for you?”
“Ma’am, Kim Yong-nam is making another proclamation right now. It’s being carried live by all the major networks as a breaking story. You’re going to want to find a television as quickly as possible. Either that, or I can have the Signals Office cross-feed the video to your cell phone.”
“Give me the quick and dirty,” Mary said. “I’m not going to watch it on a screen the size of a postage stamp.”
“Ma’am, the short of is that he’s giving us a deadline. The president has one week to publically agree to the whole laundry list of demands. Withdraw our troops from Korea; turn over South Korean assets held in U.S. banks; lift all sanctions and embargoes. Everything.”
“Did he give us a drop dead date, so to speak?”
“Twelve noon, Korean local time, on Sunday the eighth of March. If the president doesn’t make a binding public commitment before then, the warheads start flying.”
“Not one thing on that list is within the scope of presidential power,” said Mary. “Apparently, Mr. Kim doesn’t understand how our system of government works.”
“Kim is a dictator,” said Maxwell. “He probably thinks the president can strong-arm Congress and the courts into submission.”
“Maybe,” said Mary. “Or maybe he knows we can’t meet his demands, and he just wants an excuse to nuke us from Hell to breakfast.”
“Could be, Madam Secretary. Either way you figure it, we’re on a countdown now.”
“Understood,” said Mary. “Thanks for the report, Colonel. I’ll check in with NMCC after I’ve had a chance to touch base with the national security advisor.”
She hung up the phone and tapped on the glass of the partition to the driver’s compartment.
When the driver met her eyes in the rearview mirror, she made a circling motion in the air with her finger. Turn it around. Back to the office.
So much for making it home before ten.
General Garriga locked his office door and turned up the volume of the phonograph. The pop and hiss of old bolero music swelled to fill the room as he walked quietly back to his desk.
Seated in his chair, he retrieved the metal lock box from behind the humidor and rum bottle in the lower left desk drawer, and twisted the combination dial through the necessary pattern to unlock the lid.
He went through the rigmarole for powering up the satellite phone, synchronizing the encryption, and punching in the phone number.
As usual, his North Korean contact took eight or more rings to answer. Also as usual, the man began with his familiar complaint. “I’ve asked you to only call at the agreed-upon time! We have the schedule for reasons of security.”