‘All right, listen up!’ Clark heard — the loud voice of the Navy Captain with whom he’d spoken. ‘We’ve got one hour to get this room in ship-shape for our first briefing. Let’s get that map going.’
Someone asked, ‘What color should the Chinese Army be? Red?’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ came the answer.
‘Should I use blue for the Russians?’ the same man then asked.
‘Use green,’ someone replied. ‘Always save blue for the good guys.’
On hearing the man’s words, Clark’s mood changed subtly. Save the blue grease pencils for the good guys, he thought. But there was no chance of that. There was no chance of any friendly units appearing on those maps.
‘All right, first unit,’ the captain said loudly from inside.
‘Chicom — 411th Infantry Division, eighty-five percent strength, Jiamusi.’
Clark headed down the corridor, repeating to himself over and over, ‘That’s not your show. That’s not your show.’
From the moment Nate Clark walked into the large office, he knew something was wrong. Clark was ready for broad smiles, warm handshakes and a slap on the back. Instead he was ushered in relative silence to a semicircle of chairs that faced the desk of General Dekker — Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army. Although he got smiles, they were of the polite variety. By the time he’d finished shaking hands with the half-dozen senior officers present, Clark’s own demeanor matched theirs. He was ready for bad news.
‘Have a seat, Nate,’ General Dekker said. The two- and three-star generals all sat on invitation of the four-star. Everyone was so somber that Clark was forced to confront the possibility that had, until then, seemed an impossibility — no command at all. Retirement. He’d gone as far as he was going to go. From the furthest corner of his mind, a voice screamed Why?
‘Nate,’ Dekker began, and Clark subtly stiffened his back — determined to greet the indignity of his professional failure like a man — ‘I know the scuttlebutt around these halls has been that you were in for U.S. Forces Korea. I’ve heard it myself, and, quite frankly, did nothing to squelch the rumor because, until very recently, that was the plan. That was your command.’
Clark’s jaw was set and his face a blank. But in his head he searched for any possible error he might have committed. Any impolitic remark that he or Lydia might have made in the final round of socializing. But whatever it was, he decided, it was going to come as a complete surprise.
‘Nate, the final decision is you’re instead going to command U.S. Army Pacific.’
Clark swallowed as he held Dekker’s gaze. Dekker paused, waiting for a response. Clark spoke slowly to better control what he said. ‘That command is up for decommissioning.’ He looked at the row of faces in the chairs to his left, and then turned to take in the officers to his right. All looked at him with discomfort.
‘We’ve been fighting to keep it, Nate, you know that,’ Dekker said.
‘It’s a two-star billet.’
‘Not technically. We’ve had a major general in there for the last nine months while the Armed Services Committee did their force levels review. But technically it’s a three-star command. And it is a command. You’ll have Ninth Corps under you.’
Clark swallowed, inhaling and exhaling slowly, calmly. ‘Ninth Corps only has one division attached,’ he said, then began to wonder where he was headed. They knew all that. It was done. He needed to start the process of accepting his fate — or decline and resign here and now. Those were his choices. He tried to run through his mind what they were asking him to command. ‘It’s a light-infantry division — the 25th,’ came out of his mouth.
Dekker nodded slowly. ‘Not much, I know that, Nate. But nobody has as much as we need or would want these days. We can maintain two and a half LIDs for every heavy mech or armored division because of the… because their equipment tables are so… light.’ Clark ground his teeth, and Dekker’s eyes drifted down to his desk. Light! Clark thought. Good word. So is ‘inadequate.’ Dekker finally looked up, a hardness now in his eyes. ‘It’s what we’ve got for you, Nate.’
‘Who gets Korea?’ Clark asked.
‘Tim Stanton,’ the Army’s head of personnel said from Clark’s left.
He was a classmate of Clark’s from West Point. At least he’s not from a class behind, Clark thought, then took a deep breath. ‘He’s a good man.’
‘So are you, Nate,’ Dekker said ‘Some would say — some of us here — that you’re the very best we’ve got.’ Clark didn’t look, but he caught sight of nodding heads from his left and right out of the corners of his eyes. Clark’s gaze remained fixed, however, on Dekker. So why the hell didn’t I get Korea? he thought. He imagined suddenly having to tell Lydia and almost cringed. He unclenched his jaw and swallowed to be able to speak, when necessary, with a natural voice. ‘That’s why,’ Dekker continued ‘you’ve been given USARPAC.’ He pronounced the acronym as if it were a word.
Clark had to take a deep breath now, and then loosen the cramping muscles of his neck by stretching back against his hard, starched collar. His green jacket was decked out with row after row of ribbons and badges. His officer record brief was filled. Every step on the ladder from platoon to Corps commands formed the perfect Army resume. His was a career to be capped, quite possibly, by Dekker’s job a few years hence. He’d even spent the better part of the last year since returning from Europe kissing butts all over the greater Washington area — until then the one base he hadn’t tagged. And now, after all that, he was going to be given a backwater command, probably to furl its colors while on his watch, and almost certainly thereafter to be retired at Lieutenant General. He had thought he could take it stoically, quietly, the way he’d always been taught to take adversity. But the cheap words of praise from Dekker just then seemed too much to bear.
‘Excuse me, sir, for saying so, but might I respectfully suggest that all sounds like a load of shit.’
Dekker wasn’t pleased by Clark’s comment, and he picked up and restacked some papers on his desk. The blue stone of Dekker’s West Point ring glinted in the light of his desk lamp. Dekker had been a fourth-year at the Point — Clark’s company commander when Clark was a lowly plebe. Despite being close in age — Dekker at fifty-five, Clark at fifty-two — Dekker had always been one grade ahead of Clark throughout their careers. Both were accustomed to the deference of Clark, the junior officer, to Dekker, the senior.
‘You are going to go to Ft. Shafer and assume that command, General Clark. You are going to kick their lazy butts off those Hawaiian golf courses and out of those nice warm winter barracks up in Alaska and turn USARPAC into a fighting command.’ Dekker looked at Clark now without any trace of consolation. ‘That is an order. What we’re, going to do — and I pledge this to you right here and now — is to lobby Congress to get you some extra muscle out there. To at least give you a readiness budget that’ll allow you to get Ninth Corps and the 25th into fighting trim, and hopefully to attach an independent brigade or two and maybe an armored cav regiment from FORCECOM.’
‘What about the decommissioning of USARPAC?’ Clark asked.