"Well, Dave, I thought I would humbly ask your opinion, seeing as you're the one who's going to have to live with it. I think you know my opinion on composite teams. I didn't like them in Vietnam and now that I'm in command, I'd prefer not to do that now. Plus, I don't have the time or the inclination to be pulling everyone in. I didn't want to alert the other teams because of security."
Riley and Hossey had discussed the concept of composite teams several times in the past. Hossey felt that esprit and cohesiveness, buzzwords that he truly believed in, were more important than having twelve outstanding individuals. Riley agreed with him. Twelve good people who could work together as a team would beat twelve outstanding individuals every time.
Hossey continued. "Now don't get a swelled head, but I happen to think that, besides you being the best team sergeant in this unit, Team 3 is also the best team. But you still need an executive officer and another weapons man to fill you out. Also, if you'd like to replace anybody on the team, we can work something out. What about your junior medic, Comsky? He seems a little slow at times."
Riley smiled. "Comsky's all right, sir. He's a good medic. He isn't any Einstein, but I've got Hoffman to fill that role for me. As far as executive officer goes, I'd like to take Jim Trapp with me. We've worked together some other places and he knows his stuff. For junior weapons man I'd like Pete Reese from Team 1. He was a machine gunner in the Ranger battalion before he came to SF and jumped into Grenada, so at least he's had somebody shoot at him before. He's one of the best with automatic weapons I've seen in a while."
Riley waited as Hossey considered his choices. He mentally reviewed the qualifications of the two men he had picked. Chief Warrant Officer Trapp was probably the best warrant officer in DET-K. Ever since Special Forces had allowed senior noncommissioned officers to get warrant commissions and become detachment executive officers, that position had become an important one. Before that it had been just a nominal job given to new lieutenants in Special Forces, so they could get some experience before becoming detachment commanders. Now lieutenants weren't allowed into Special Forces and warrants filled the executive officer slot.
Trapp had been a sergeant first class before getting his warrant. He was the only executive officer in the unit with Vietnam experience. Trapp had spent two years in Southeast Asia as a young sergeant in Special Forces. He'd gotten out of the army when he returned to the States, but, bored with civilian life, he'd come back in ten years ago. Despite his age, Trapp was in superb physical condition, constantly working out.
The weapons man, Reese, was a good choice also. He was a rotund man who hid surprising strength behind an appearance of being overweight. Despite his size, Reese consistently scored a maximum score on the army's physical fitness test, as did most of the members of DET-K. In his off-duty time, Reese competed in Eighth Army power-lifting competitions. Riley had seen him wield an M60 machine gun at a qualification range and had been impressed with the ease with which the young staff sergeant handled the twenty-two-pound gun. With the addition of these two men, Team 3 would be at full strength.
Hossey appeared to have made up his mind. "OK, I'll talk to their team leaders tomorrow. You go ahead and track them down now. Tell them that as of this minute they're yours. You'd better get your people moving to be ready to go into isolation — it's supposed to start at 0500 at our Osan isolation facility. You need to at least be ready to receive the warning order by then. Sergeant Major Hooker is coordinating your vehicle and the iso area down there."
Hossey sensed Riley had something else on his mind. "What's the matter? I know this whole thing seems strange, but we're going to have to wait for the warning order in isolation before we find out what's really going on."
Riley wasn't sure how to broach the subject. "It's not that, sir. I know this whole thing seems funny. It's about your asking if I wanted to replace someone."
"Yes?"
"Well, sir… I'd like to trade off Captain Peterson. It's not that I've got anything against him. Well, sir, it's just that… well, you know. He's new and he doesn't know our standard operating procedures and all that."
Hossey shook his head. "I knew there was something we were forgetting. Where the hell is the young captain? I haven't seen him around."
Riley hung his head. "I forgot to call him, sir."
"Shit!" Hossey exploded, and then saw the humor in the situation. "Don't tell me you forgot. You didn't alert him on purpose." Riley could see that Hossey was at least considering his proposal.
The colonel countered Riley's earlier explanation. "Trapp and Reese won't know your SOPs either. You've got to give me a better reason than that."
Riley sighed. He should have known that Hossey wasn't going to let him off that easily. "OK, sir. The bottom line is that he's not that good right now. Maybe with some team time behind him he'll come around. Now that's only my opinion, and I'm only a lowly E-7 and all that, but—" He stopped at the colonel's snort of derision. "Anyway, even though I don't know what this is we're going on, I don't want to go with someone who doesn't understand the situation. Why are you briefing me instead of him? Why didn't you notice he was missing until I brought it up? It's because you know as well as I do that in Special Forces the person who can get the job done best is the one who should do it. At least that's the way it should be. Captain Peterson doesn't know that yet, and if this is a live mission, it isn't the time for him to be learning."
Riley would not have talked this way to any other battalion commander he'd ever had. But he trusted Colonel Hossey. Riley had served under him when the colonel was only a major during a six-month mobile training team mission to Thailand in 1982. They had developed a mutual trust there that had carried over the years.
"I understand that, Dave. I hate to ask, because I already know the answer, but who do you want to go with you as detachment commander?"
"Let me have Captain Mitchell back, sir. Just for this mission. With him there'd be a real commander on the ground to handle things, and I could do my job right, without having to do the commander's too. We did OK in Australia on the joint mission with the SAS there, as you might remember. Also, if he's up to speed on this USSOCOM planning you and he have been doing, he'd be a valuable asset."
Mitchell had been a team leader longer than any other captain in DET-K, until finally Hossey had had to move him. He had made Mitchell his battalion operations officer just two months ago, and he hated like hell to give him up now. But he had an uneasy feeling about this whole mission. He'd seen a lot of weird things in twenty-one years in the army, twelve of which had been in Special Forces. But he'd never seen a situation quite like this. China was hot right now. Hossey was smart enough to know that the situation in Beijing was not likely to end in victory for the democratic movements. He also read the daily classified intelligence bulletins that described troop movements in the country.
Despite his "just an exercise" theory, there was always the chance that this was the real thing. That meant this was probably not something to hedge on. Hossey felt that he needed to give it his best shot, even though it would hurt his headquarters to lose Mitchell as operations officer.
Hossey conceded. "All right. You call him. Anyway, ever since I moved him off the team he's been moping around my headquarters. This ought to bring a smile to his face. Now let me go make all these changes and place a few phone calls to Osan to get things ready down there."
The ringing of the phone woke Mitchell out of a sound sleep.
"It's for you," he mumbled to his wife, who was cuddled up next to him on a single-sized army-issue bed. "Probably one of your soldiers got in a fight downtown and is in the lockup," he added as she groggily got up and padded across the small room to the phone near the door.