Kurt said, "Come on, Pike, I can't run an exercise for two months."
"I know, I know, but there's got to be a happy medium. I mean, the exfil plan is dictating my operation. I'm told a boat exfil for the target at oh-two-hundred tomorrow, but I don't even know if I'll have the target. It's canned. Way too canned. I need to make my men think. To solve problems. Not sit back and wait on headquarters to feed us the answer."
"Whoa. Hold on," Kurt said. "Have you ever been on an exercise that duplicated combat? Ever? I can't invent the variables that will happen in combat and still maintain control over the exercise. You know that. Especially with this unit. Compromise on an exercise is the same as compromise for real. We have nothing to fall back on."
"That's not what I meant. This one actually did duplicate com.bat exactly for the reasons you just stated. The stakes became very, very high. It's just that you never used to hand us answers. Back in the unit you trusted us to solve the problem, and enjoyed making the problem hard. It's like you threw these teams together and don't trust them."
Kurt was considering what to say when Pike's next words gave him pause. "And I'm with you. I'm not sure I trust the team you gave me either."
"What do you mean?"
Pike relayed last night's activities, ending with, "You forced me to take this double-oh superspy as a two IC, and he's show.ing his ass."
"Pike, we're not in the unit anymore," Kurt countered. "We have a much, much harder mission and we're going to need to leverage the expertise. It's not all door-kicking, and the CIA guys know that arena better than us."
"Bullshit! He might know the tactics, but his judgment is shit. Send me, Retro, and Bull to the damn training courses. This isn't rocket science."
"I don't have time to do that. I'm under some pressure to get operational. Bottom line: I expect you to lead. Get him to do what you want. It's no different than the leadership challenges you had in the Ranger regiment."
"Jesus, sir! That was a long time ago with way less sensitive missions than what you're asking me to do now."
Kurt bristled at the exchange, letting a little of the pressure he was experiencing seep out. "End of discussion, damn it. I've got a target and I'm briefing the Oversight Council in an hour. I'm trying to get Alpha authority to send you overseas. You want me to pick the other team?"
The Taskforce called each phase of the operation a different letter of the Greek alphabet, with alpha being the initial introduction of forces. Which, to this point, had never happened. The pixilation of the screen did nothing to hide Pike's surprise.
"A live target? No exercise?"
"Yes. In Yemen. An easy one. A confidence target. No kill/capture on the terrorist."
"What's his status?"
"He's a passport guy. Someone that knows the identities for
operational terrorists. We don't want to take him out and spike that he's blown. We just want his computer." "And you think we're ready to do that? Operational cover's ready?"
"You tell me."
Pike paused, and Kurt could see he was torn. Soldiers like him were few and far between. Ones that would always run to the sound of the guns, always want to be on the X in the middle of the mission. But one who also had the intellect and judgment to back off when necessary, to assess and explore both friendly and enemy weaknesses which is why he had been recruited in the first place. Kurt knew Pike would make a call he believed in, just as he had with the exercise.
"Sir, you remember when you had us all read about the formation of the OSS? Saying there were parallels with today's fight? Well, there are. The OSS grew too fast and tried to do too much initially. They made a lot of mistakes, but nobody was looking because it was World War Two. We don't have that luxury."
"So you're saying let this guy go?"
"No. I'm saying we need to learn from OSS's mistakes. From our mistakes. The success or failure of this organization won't be with the widgets or the cover. It will be with the men. Sooner or later we're going to be called upon to snatch a guy in a sovereign country without a trace, and we can't do that with teams made up of someone else's idea of what right looks like."
"Meaning?"
"I'll go get this guy's computer. I'm pretty sure we can do that. But when this is done, we need to establish some assessment and selection criteria. Something created by us for us."
Inwardly, Kurt breathed a sigh of relief and realized he had been trying to do too much on his own. He hadn't trusted his men, precisely because of the reasons Pike had stated. Outside of the ones he had personally recruited, like Pike, he had no idea of their capabilities.
But he did know the capabilities of some. And it was time to leverage that.
Chapter 4
Inside the parking garage under his office, Kurt waited in his car on his deputy commander, absently watching some workers cementing a brass placard next to a door.
Blaisdell Consulting. A simple bit of camouflage that hid what really went on upstairs. Just like the Office of Strategic Services's building on E. Street in World War II.
Pike had been right about the OSS. While they eventually had become very effective, initially they made a tremendous amount of mistakes, most centered on bad ideas propagated by people who didn't have the skills for the arena they were entering. People who had been selected solely because of friendships or prior working relationships. The one area that had proven successful was Operation Jedburgh, in which Special Forces had parachuted behind enemy lines into France, Belgium, and Holland. Those teams had gone through a rigorous selection process prior to becoming operational, a fact that hammered home what Pike had said.
He saw George W olffe through the glass of the door and pulled the car around. Soon they were crossing the Roosevelt Bridge, leaving Clarendon behind and entering Washington, D.C., with George engaging in small talk.
Getting bogged down in traffic, Kurt stopped the chitchat with a pointed question. "How were the CIA guys picked for Project Prometheus? Who made those decisions?"
Although he had come over from the CIA's National Clandestine Service, George Wolffe had been handpicked by Kurt and was a close friend as well as second-in-command of the entire project. The question caught him off guard.
"Why? Is there a manning issue?"
"I don't know. Might be. Could also just be a little bit of wolfpack infighting for alpha male."
"Well, unlike you, I didn't get to handpick from the NCS. I nominated and then was told who was coming over. I could have vetoed, but that would have just left an open spot. The power brokers who are read on to this project aren't exactly one hundred percent supportive. They think we're stomping on their turf."
"So how do you know if the guy's worth a shit? What's the cut line? No offense, but my guys have all been through multiple assessment and selection courses to get to where they were before I asked them to join. How does the CIA do that? Is it just the course at the Farm?"
"No. It's more of a performance check after that. Seeing how they act under pressure in situations that I felt we would encounter. There aren't any tea-and-crumpet guys on the list. All were picked from hardship tours. Who's this about?"
"Kranz. Pike thinks he has some judgment issues. What do you think?"
George said nothing for a moment, choosing his words. "He's one of the guys that was forced on me as a replacement for my choice, who was 'unavailable.' He's done some seriously dangerous work in his career, but I don't really know him. After checking, the word I got back was that he was a little bit of a blowhard, but competent."