"You have something?" Naylor asked.
"Yes, sir. General, I know who the CIA guy is in Angola. He's one of us," Potter said.
"One of us what?"
"He's a special operator, General," Potter said, smiling again. "He took a pretty bad hit in Afghanistan with the 160th, and when he got out of the hospital on limited duty we loaned him to the agency. I thought he was going to help run their basic training program at the Farm, but apparently they sent him to Angola."
The 160th was the Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
"You have his name?"
"Miller. H. Richard Miller, Jr. Major."
"Good man," Naylor said.
"You know him?"
"Him and his father and grandfather," Naylor said. "I didn't get to meet his great-grandfather, or maybe it was his great-great-grandfather. But in the Spanish-American War, he was first sergeant of Baker Troop, 10th Cavalry, when Teddy Roosevelt led the Rough Riders through their lines and up San Juan Hill. I heard he was hit:" Charley told me. ": in Afghanistan. They shot down his helicopter: a Loach, I think."
"Yeah. It was a Loach. A piece of something got his knee."
"Have we got a back channel to him, George?"
"It's up and running, sir. We got a back channel from Miller about this missing airplane before you heard about it."
"And my notification was out of channels," Naylor said, just a little bitterly. "But I suppose, in good time, CentCom will hear about this officially. I'm really sick and tired of Langley taking their goddamned sweet time before they bring me in the loop." He heard what he had said and added: "You didn't hear that."
Potter smiled and made an "I don't know what you're talking about" gesture.
"Let me see whatever he sends," Naylor ordered.
"Yes, sir."
[THREE]
What was at first euphemistically described as "establishing some really first-rate liaison" between the CIA and the FBI and CentCom was a direct result of the events of what had universally become known as "9/11," the crashing of skyjacked airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon and, short of its target in the capital, into the Pennsylvania countryside.
No one said it out loud but Central Command was the most important headquarters in the Army. According to its mission statement, it was responsible "for those areas of the world not otherwise assigned."
Army forces in the continental United States were assigned to one of the five armies in the United States, except those engaged in training, which were assigned to the Training amp; Doctrine Command with its headquarters within the thick stone walls of Fortress Monroe, Virginia.
Southern Command, which had had its headquarters in Panama for many years, now listed its address as 3511 NW 91st Avenue, Miami, Florida 33172-1217. It was responsible for Central and South America. No one feared immediate war with, say, Uruguay, Chile, or Argentina, or even Venezuela or Colombia, although a close eye was kept on the latter two, and, of course, on Cuba.
The Far East Command had responsibility for the Pacific. There were no longer very many soldiers in the Pacific because no one expected war to break out there tomorrow afternoon. The European Command, as the name implied, had the responsibility for Europe. For nearly half a century, there had been genuine concern that the Red Army would one day crash through the Fulda Gap bent on sweeping all of Europe under the Communist rug. That threat no longer existed.
Some people wondered what sort of a role was now left for the North American Treaty Organization, whose military force was headed by an American general, now that the Soviet threat was minimal to nonexistent, and NATO was taking into its ranks many countries it had once been prepared to fight.
The Alaskan Command had the responsibility for Alaska. There was very little of a threat that the now Russian Army would launch an amphibious attack across the Bering Strait from Siberia with the intention of occupying Fairbanks or Nome.
That left Central Command with the rest of the world, and most of the wars being fought and/or expected to start tonight or tomorrow morning. Iraq is in CentCom's area of responsibility, and CentCom had already fought one war there and was presently fighting another.
But the reason General Allan Naylor believed that he commanded the most important headquarters in the Army was that it wasn't just an Army headquarters but rather a truly unified command, which meant that Naylor more often than not had Air Force, Navy, and Marine units, as well as Army, under his command.
The operative word was "command." He had the authority to issue orders, not make requests or offer suggestions of the other services.
And for this he was grateful to one of his personal heroes, General Donn A. Starry, USA, now retired. Starry, like Naylor, was Armor. As a young colonel in Vietnam, while leading the Cambodian Incursion from the turret of the first tank, Starry had been painfully wounded in the face, had the wound bandaged, and then got back in his tank and resumed the incursion. One of his majors, who had jumped from his tank to go to the aid of his injured commander, was himself badly wounded and lost a leg.
Many people in the Army had been pleasantly surprised when Starry had been given his first star. Officers who say what they think often find this a bar to promotion, and Starry not only said what he thought but was famous for not letting tact get in the way of making his points clear. People were thus even more surprised when he was given a second star and command of Fort Knox, then a third star and command of the V Corps in Frankfurt, Germany, charged with keeping the Red Army from coming through the Fulda Gap, and then a fourth star.
The Army thought four-star General Starry would be just the man to assume command of what was then called "Readiness Command" at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. General Starry, however, said, "No, thank you. I think I'll retire. I don't want to go out of the Army remembered as a paper tiger."
Starry's refusal to take the command came to the attention of President Reagan, who called him to the White House to explain why.
Starry told Reagan that so far as he was concerned, Readiness Command was useless as presently constituted. It was supposed to be ready to instantly respond to any threat when ordered.
But when ordered to move, Starry told the president that the way things were, the general in command had to ask the Air Force for airplanes-for which they certainly would have a better use elsewhere-and ask the Navy for ships-for which the Navy would have a better use elsewhere-and then ask, for example, the European Commander for a couple of divisions-for which EUCOM, again, would nave a far better use elsewhere.
It was rumored that Starry had used the words "joke" and "dog and pony show" to describe Readiness Command to the president. No one knows for sure, for their meeting was private. What is known is that Starry walked out of the Oval Office as commanding general of Readiness Command and the word of the commander in chief that just as soon as he could sign the orders, the CG of Readiness Command would have the authority Starry said he absolutely had to have.
The president was as good as his word. Starry reorganized what was to become Central Command so that it would function when needed and then retired. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and the first President Bush ordered CentCom to respond, its then commander, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, went to war using the authorities Starry had demanded of Reagan and Reagan had given to CentCom.
Schwarzkopf's ground commander in the first desert war was General Fred Franks. Franks was the U.S. Army's first one-legged general since the Civil War. He'd lost his leg as a result of Vietnam wounds incurred as he rushed to help his wounded colonel, Donn Starry.