It was this ability that had caught the attention of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Special Operations Forces, who had drawn him into exercises at the Pentagon, much to the annoyance of Fretello's immediate chain of command. A man of uncompromising beliefs and the personification of the term "type A personality," Colonel Robert Hightower made sure that Fretello was aware of his displeasure each time the ambitious young major was called away to Washington. "A man cannot serve two masters, Major," Hightower had warned Fretello after he returned from his latest exercise in D. C. "You're going to have to make a choice, soldier. I can't afford to have my staff gallivanting off to Washington every time those folks want to play a war game."
Attuned to the internal politics of the Group, as well as to the personal animosity Hightower felt toward the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for Special Operations Forces, Andrew Fretello took the warning quite seriously.
Still, even Colonel Hightower understood that there was little he could do. Like the people in the Pentagon, the Group commander saw Fretello's potential and value. To punish a subordinate for simply doing his duty was not an option. It would be both mean-spirited and unprofessional, something that Hightower was not. So the colonel ignored the special taskings that robbed him of his most talented staff officer as best he could.
On occasion, however, Fretello's activities in one world collided with the other.
Orders for the Group to stand by for immediate deployment came down the chain just as the news media broke the story about the impending encounter with the rogue asteroid. As was the practice in the Group's operations section, a TV was wheeled in and tuned to CNN. The value of that network as a source of information and intelligence, long ago confirmed during the First Gulf War, could not be ignored. In many ways, CNN made the task of the American military easier by providing an overview and a background of a developing situation and thus allowing higher headquarters to skip some of those details when passing orders down to major subordinate commands. It also permitted those commands concerned with operational security and the running of deception plans to gauge the success of their efforts. Though the media types tended to become self-righteous and somewhat enraged when they were accused of being unwilling accomplices in the dissemination of government planned disinformation, the manner in which they conducted their business made them the perfect dupe in the dark and murky business of illusion and lies. For those like the operations-and-plans officers of the 22nd Special Forces Group, who knew what was fact and what was fantasy, it was a hoot to see which reporters were hitting near the mark and which ones were making asses of themselves.
At times like this, news shows also served as a diversion. With nothing but a very ambiguous warning order in hand but no specifics, the officers of the operations section had little to do but wait until they received definitive planning guidance with which they could work. This uncomfortable period, the time that existed from when they knew they would soon be receiving orders but didn't know what those orders entailed, could be very unnerving. With each ring of the phone, all eyes would turn from the TV screen or whatever busy work they had been pursuing and glance over to the ops sergeant, who took all incoming calls. When the call turned out to be from nervous battalion staff officers, calling on behalf of their impatient commanders or just trying to get a head start on their own planning process, each of the anxious staff officers would go back to what they had been doing. When a summons from the Group commander's executive officer finally did come, it was greeted with a palpable sense of relief.
It surprised no one that Andrew Fretello had been the one tagged to report to the Group commander, where the Group operations officer was already waiting. While Fretello gathered himself and his notebook, his fellow officers threw witty comments his way in an effort to cut some of the tension. From the desk that sat butted up against Fretello's, Kevin Spatlett turned away from the TV toward Fretello. "Hey, Andy, what course of action are you going to go for? The one using astronauts to plant nukes on the asteroid, or the one using a gang of roughnecks?"
Since the asteroid story had broken, the TV had been awash with scenes taken from popular movies about just such an encounter. To Fretello, the reliance by supposedly serious journalists on Hollywood's view of the forthcoming real-world disaster was a bit disquieting. It did, however, provide practitioners of graveyard humor such as Spatlett a great source of comic relief from an otherwise ominous event.
Playing along with the theme, Fretello looked at his fellow officer with a shout of deep concern on his face. "I'm not sure. A lot, I imagine, depends on how much we have left in the Group's annual budget for hiring outside contractors. We may find that we have no choice but to task this week's duty unit with the responsibility of saving the world."
From his little corner across the room, Captain Tony Jones called out to Fretello as he was headed out. "Hey, Major. Just be sure when it comes time to make the movie about this that you hold out till they agree to cast Tom Hanks as you."
Fretello paused at the door, turned, and was prepared to reply to the young captain when Spatlett cut in. "No way Hanks is going to go for that," the major sneered. "An actor like that would never consent to play a bit part in such a major production."
Rather than seeing the humor in this remark, Andrew Fretello was stung by the inference that what he did was, in the greater scheme of the universe, nothing more than a supporting role. Without another word, the miffed plans-and-operations officer stepped out of the crowded office and made his way down the corridor to where his boss and the colonel awaited him.
With no details to mull over and nothing to distract his mind, Fretello was left to reflect upon his personal thoughts and feelings. It annoyed the Special Forces major that neither superior ranking officers outside of his immediate chain of command nor historians recounting this episode at some later date would give him due credit for whatever plan he was about to generate. Outside of one or two sentences on his next officer's evaluation report, his talents, skills, and labors would go unnoticed. That this was the normal lot of the staff officer was taken in stride by most professional soldiers. It was part of the game, an unwritten rule in the Army stating that a staff officer's primary function was to make the commanding officer he served look as good as possible. In turn, the staff officer could expect to be rewarded with glowing evaluation reports and, if luck smiled on the superior officer and stars one day graced his shoulders, elevation to higher rank and positions of great responsibilities for all the little people who had made that possible.
But it went against Andrew Fretello's nature to wait patiently for a ride on another's coattails to fame and glory. Such a course of action left too much to chance, too much in. The hands of others over whom he had no control, no influence. Fretello was the sort of soldier who wanted to be the master of his own destiny, his own future.
That he was about to be a participant in what could be the single most important operation that the Army engaged in during his entire career was quite clear to Fretello. That he had to do something to capitalize upon this for himself was equally beyond dispute. As he turned the corner and entered the outer officer leading to the group's conference room, Andrew Fretello straightened up, banished whatever thoughts he had concerning his own ambitions, and prepared to do his duty as all good little staff officers were trained to do.