“What’s that mean?” Jordan asked.
“It means,” Maxwell said, a bit of exasperation in his voice, ‘that they will be exceedingly polite to his face and say’yes, sir yes, sir, three bags full.” If he orders the Navy band to jump off the memorial into the Harbor, they will jump off into the water in perfect step. But he cannot control what they think or feel, and I don’t think he should try.”
“Is there something you aren’t telling me, general?” Jordan asked quietly.
Maxwell’s composure cracked slightly.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” Jordan pursued.
The mask returned to Maxwell’s face.
“Nothing.”
Jordan leaned forward.
“General Maxwell, I deal with half a dozen to a dozen crises a day. I have to be able to trust the people close to me to not only tell me the facts, but I have to trust their instincts. I haven’t been able to think about this trip to Pearl for more than a few minutes amid all my other duties. You’ve been across the river at the Pentagon and focused on it for several days. You seem a bit agitated about something. You just told me you believe this Line organization exists, yet you offer no proof.
If there’s something I need to know and bring to the attention of the President — even if it’s just speculation on your part — I need for you to tell me.”
Maxwell was ill at ease.
“I really don’t know. But I’ve had a strange feeling about this whole trip to Pearl ever since it was announced. Something’s not quite right. I used to be able to go anywhere in the Pentagon, but the JCS war room is now off limits to me.”
“That could simply be because you are no longer on active duty,” Jordan noted.
“No,” Maxwell replied.
“I had access until last week.
Now, though, they’re enforcing a new access roster — one that excludes me.”
“And?” the senator prompted.
“Is there anything else bothering you?”
Maxwell’s eyes were fixed on the bulkhead over Jordan’s left shoulder.
“I did my first tour in Vietnam as a lieutenant assigned to advise a Vietnamese Ranger company. They had an old Vietnamese sergeant that always walked point for them on patrol, and he’d never once led them into an ambush. He’d been fighting almost all his life. First with the French, then with us. One day I talked to him through an interpreter and I asked how come he never had been ambushed. He told me the spirits warned him of danger on the trail.”
Jordan took another sip of his drink, waiting for Maxwell to make his point.
“Later, on my third tour, I met some of the men we sent across the border into North Vietnam and Laos. Members of our best recon teams and I talked to them, and they told me the same thing — the ones that managed to survive dozens of trips into enemy territory — except they called it something different. They told me there was a sixth sense that they paid very close attention to — that they trusted their lives to. I felt it occasionally too in combat. Once before my infantry company got attacked, I could feel something was wrong — that something bad was about to happen. And it did.”
Maxwell shrugged.
“I’ve had the same feeling about this trip. I can’t put my finger on anything specific, but I have had a bad feeling about this trip from the beginning.” He picked up a folder from the seat next to him.
“I looked at the itinerary. I see that the President is to participate in a national command and control exercise on the night of the sixth. I assume that will be aboard the SHARCC.”
“Yes, that’s been scheduled for months,” Jordan replied.
“I don’t know the details of the exercise. It’s required by memorandum of agreement between the Office of the President and the Department of Defense that he participate in one C&C exercise every six months. Been in effect for over forty years.”
“I would say that is the opportune time for General Martin and the Joint Chiefs to confront him. Just before he gives the speech at Pearl,” Maxwell said.
Jordan smiled.
“Then we can cancel the exercise, which will solve that problem. We’ll make Martin and his cronies come to us.”
Maxwell nodded.
“That will help minimize the potential for problems. But don’t underestimate General Martin. In Vietnam he won the Distinguished Service cross-the second highest award, just below the Medal of Honor. He also has a Purple Heart with three oak leaf clusters, which means he was wounded three times — and he didn’t get those wounds sitting on his ass in the rear. He walks with that limp because a large-caliber machine gun bullet took away most his right thigh. I disagree with some of his philosophies, but he is one hell of a soldier.”
“I served my country, in World War II, so don’t be trying to pull the wool over my eyes because of Martin’s background,” Jordan said sharply.
“He’s not the only one who was shot at in the service of his country.”
“Senator, I say that merely as his due, because there are some nagging doubts about the general that even his record can’t remove.”
“For example?”
Maxwell held up a binder with top secret stamped on the cover.
“The Backfire incident.”
“I’ve read the report,” Jordan replied.
“I don’t think it’s complete.”
Jordan waited. Maxwell took a deep breath. He felt out of his league.
“I question how they knew that Ukrainian aircraft would be making that particular flight with this particular pay load.”
“According to that report the military didn’t know,” Jordan replied.
“It was coincidence. They picked it up on AWACS as it crossed the Black Sea. The two F-16s were participating in a NATO exercise and were able to be diverted to intercept the Backfire.”
Maxwell nodded.
“But the report states that while this was believed to be the first attempt by the Ukrainians to smuggle out a nuclear weapon, there were previous nights of the same sort, carrying conventional arms. How could General Martin and his people know that?”
“That information did not originate from General Martin,” Jordan said.
“It came from the CIA.”
“I know that,” Maxwell said.
“But when did the CIA report that to Martin? Before or after the Backfire incident?”
Jordan didn’t have an answer to that.
“If the CIA informed Martin before, then it should have been brought to the President’s attention, and he could have tried diplomatic means to stop the shipments, instead of ending up with a nuclear incident over a friendly country and the loss of two pilots.”
Maxwell flipped a few pages in the report.
“It says right here that Martin specifically ordered U.S. forces in Turkey on alert for three days prior to the incident looking for such shipments.”
“So you’re saying Martin allowed it to happen?” Jordan asked.
“Why?”
Maxwell ticked off reasons on his hand. “To support his own agenda.
Hard Glass. Shooting down the MRA. To reduce confidence in the President.” Maxwell picked up another folder.
“And then the incident in the Ukraine,” he continued.
Jordan finished his drink.
“What are you trying to say, General?”
“I don’t really—”
“If you have some facts, then you put them down on paper and you give them to me,” Jordan snapped.
“The President has a lot on his mind and until you have something solid, I’m not going to worry him with speculation.”
He stood up and left the cabin.
The head air policeman for Hickam Field threw a couple of extra-strength Tylenol into his mouth and washed them down with a swig of orange juice.
“Who the hell is that?” he asked irritably, as the chief air traffic controller acknowledged an inbound flight.