Bright Star

Chapter 1

Three officers, a Sudanese major followed by two Americans, emerged from the two-room hut that served as headquarters for regional defense force, a small force consisting of two under-strength infantry companies. The tall, black major — the force's commander — paused, straightened his lanky frame, then led the two Americans toward a waiting helicopter, walking with a casual, easy gait. Even the wave of his right hand as he acknowledged the salute of the two guards posted at the door of the hut was casual and unhurried. Part of his easy manner was for show, an effort to impress the American officers that all things would be done in his time. But part was due to the fact that he really was in no hurry. The war he and his men were waging against the communist guerrillas had been in progress when he joined the Army and would no doubt continue long after he returned to the hands of his God. He therefore found it difficult to understand why the Americans were always in a hurry, setting deadlines and rushing about. Battles, after all, couldn't start until both sides were present.

The two American officers following him were a study in contrast. The first lieutenant was as tall and as black as the Sudanese major, to whom he served as an adviser, but, unlike the lanky major, he had wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore a set of faded and well-worn battle dress — BDUs for short. The edge of a folded map protruded from the pocket on his right thigh, while the top of a spiral notebook wrapped in plastic popped out of the left thigh pocket. The other pockets of his BDUs bulged too, to varying degrees, hinting of more hidden cargo. Hanging from a web belt was a well-wom government-issue holster for his M1911A1 .45 pistol, an ammo pouch, a lensatic compass, and a two-quart canteen. His uniform was topped off by a well-molded green beret worn at a rakish angle. He walked with a purposeful gait that hinted at a swagger. At twenty-four years of age, First Lieutenant (Promotable) Jesse Kinsly was the very image of the field soldier, a warrior leader.

The other American, last of the three men to emerge from the hut, was Lieutenant Colonel William V. Dedinger. The colonel's attire left no doubt that he was a staff officer who neither belonged to the remote military post nor had any intention of staying. His BDUs were clean and appeared new. Despite regulations to the contrary, they were starched, with neat, sharp edges, and the pockets were ironed shut. The colonel didn't even carry a pen in his left breast pocket. His BDU cap, neatly blocked, was centered on his head, with the brim coming down and lightly touching the frame of his aviator sunglasses. Like the pilots of his helicopter, he was armed with a .38 pistol, which he carried in a highly polished shoulder holster under his left arm. The only other equipment Dedinger carried was a large black leather briefcase.

The appearance of the colonel and his briefcase was both scorned and dreaded by the men of Kinsly's Special Forces A Team. "Never trust an officer who takes a briefcase to the field," Kinsly's team sergeant, Sergeant First Class Hector Veldez, always reminded Kinsly when Dedinger arrived from Cairo. It didn't take Kinsly long to learn what Veldez meant.

Dedinger was the operations officer for the 2nd Corps (U.S.) (Forward), located in Cairo. Part of the 3rd U.S. Army, which itself belonged to the Rapid Deployment Force, 2nd Corps (Forward) was a planning headquarters only, manned by a skeleton staff. The bulk of the corps headquarters was in the States, along with all the troops belonging to it, ready for deployment in the event of an emergency.

Ostensibly, the mission of the 2nd U.S. Corps (Forward) was only the planning of training exercises in cooperation with various countries in the Middle East. In a crisis, it would conduct military operations until the full corps staff was deployed to Egypt. In the past year, however, a new mission had been added. The Iranian conflict two years earlier had driven home the importance of Soviet air and naval bases on the Horn of Africa. From there, the Soviet Union presented a threat to the Middle East, Central Africa, and the Indian Ocean. Translated into practical terms, from the Horn of Africa, the Soviets, or their surrogates, were in a position to interrupt the flow of oil and mineral resources from the area.

In an effort to deny the Soviets free use of the Horn of Africa and to keep Soviet-sponsored covert operations from subverting Ethiopia's neighbors, the United States had initiated covert operations in Sudan and Ethiopia. Code-named Twilight, this operation involved a number of Special Forces, or SF, teams operating in central Sudan. These teams assisted a number of groups, including Sudanese government forces, Eritrean insurgents, and Ethiopian guerrillas. The immediate goal, and the one briefed to Congress, was the preservation of the current government in Sudan. The long-range goal, more of a hope and seldom discussed, was the restoration of a pro-Western government in Ethiopia.

Dedinger, as the operations officer for 2nd Corps (Forward), was responsible for the activities of the SF teams — planning their operations and coordinating them with Air Force and Navy operations. He produced and issued orders to the teams for their operations and received reports on those operations. Based on those reports, he assessed the situation and revised plans as necessary, resulting in new missions and orders. He coordinated transportation and resupply, evaluated the wounded, and arranged for replacements where necessary. The black briefcase, used to transport the written orders for the A teams in the field, was Dedinger's main weapon.

A man whose career was on the fast track, Dedinger enjoyed his role. Based in Cairo, Dedinger spent a great deal of time bouncing between Atlanta, Georgia, where the 3rd Army had its headquarters, Washington, D. C., and the Sudan. Dedinger had a great deal of "face time" with the senior staff of the Army. If it weren't for the fact that his boss expected him to personally issue the orders and receive reports from the A-team commanders in the field, Dedinger would never go out into "the bush," as his section referred to the Sudan. At this stage in his career, if he wanted to stay on the fast track, it was critical that he do exactly what was expected of him.

Dedinger was painfully aware of how tenuous that position could be. Though he had managed to survive a successful task-force command in Germany, he had not served in Iran. This alone threatened to knock him out of the lead in his race for promotion and brigade command. The war in Iran had put a severe crimp on his well-laid career plans. Not long after that conflict, rumors began to circulate that any lieutenant colonel who had served in Iran, especially as a task-force commander, would be a shoo-in for full colonel and selection for brigade command, the final stepping stone to the stars. The first promotion board for full colonel after the conflict seemed to confirm that rumor. Though he was angry that the war in Iran had changed the rules of the game, Dedinger was nonetheless determined to get his brigade.

While the pilots of his helicopter prepared for takeoff, Dedinger paused for a moment to remind himself of his career goals. His current job meant that he spent a great deal of time in Washington, a fact that could not help but increase his chances of making it to full colonel. As he looked around at the dry, parched landscape and the motley collection of mud huts, one thing was certain: the eagles of a full colonel wouldn't be found here.

The crew chief of his helicopter gave Dedinger the signal that they were ready to go. Feeling the need to give some final order or advice before leaving, Dedinger turned to Kinsly, ignoring the Sudanese major, as he had done during most of the just-concluded meeting. "Remember, Lieutenant — time is everything, and you don't have a lot of it."

Staring at the colonel, Kinsly tried to understand why he had just said that, but couldn't. He simply replied, "Yes, sir, no need to worry."

The Sudanese major also looked at Dedinger, then at Kinsly. He wondered why it was so critical to attack the airfield at Gondar, Ethiopia, on the date designated, or, for that matter, on any particular date. The planes and helicopters had been there for months and would still be there when his unit got there. Perhaps he had missed something in the discussions. If he had, Lieutenant Kinsly could explain after the pompous American colonel had left.

Satisfied that all was in order, Dedinger saluted Kinsly, turned, and trotted into the swirling dust storm created by the helicopter's blades. Once in the aircraft, he secured his seatbelt, stowed his black briefcase securely under his seat, put on his flight helmet, and made an intercom check with the pilot. Ready, he told the chief pilot to pull pitch whenever the crew was ready. Leaning back, he closed his eyes and prepared to enjoy the long flight back to Cairo via Khartoum.

Five kilometers to the north, the whine of the helicopter's engines alerted a small band of guerrillas: their hours of patient waiting were, they hoped, about to pay off. Holed up in hiding near the compound since the previous night, the guerrillas — members of the SPLA, the Sudanese People's Liberation Army — had waited for the helicopter that was due to land at the compound that morning. They would have struck had it not been for a last-minute turn by the pilot — instead of flying in a straight line from the north, he had made a wide approach from the south before landing. To make sure that another miscalculation didn't ruin their chances, the detachment commander bribed a young boy tending a flock of goats to go down to the army compound and see which way the American helicopter was pointed. The boy returned with the news that it was pointed north. Though there was no guarantee that the pilot wouldn't alter his course after takeoff, the guerrillas could only be in one place. Deciding that where they were was as good a place as any, they waited until the helicopter's engines began to crank up.

The man selected to be the gunner opened the shipping container and carefully lifted the cover, raising it up and over the SA-7 surface-to-air missile. The missile was well traveled. Manufactured in the Soviet Union, it had been delivered to the Ethiopian army years ago. Unused, outdated, and replaced by an improved surface-to-air missile, it had been passed on to the SPLA, which the Ethiopians were supporting. It had but one more trip to make — this one under its own power.

Training on the employment of the missile had been almost nonexistent. Since the instructions supplied with the missile were in Russian and English, all the gunner and the commander knew about it had been passed on to them verbally. Its internal workings, what would happen when it was fired — even whether or not, stored for who knows how many years, it would work at all — these were a mystery.

Hoisting the missile onto his shoulder, the gunner popped the fixed sights, one near the front and one in the center, into the upright position. Supporting the launcher with his left hand, he carefully wrapped his right hand around the trigger grip and turned in the direction of the army compound to watch for his target to appear.

He didn't have long to wait. Out of the swirling cloud of dust that rose from the center of the army compound, the unmarked helicopter appeared. Doing as he was told, the gunner looked along the open sights, centered the helicopter, and began to follow it. Applying a slight amount of pressure with his right hand, he pulled the trigger back to its first position. A red light came on, just as the Ethiopian instructor had said it would.

Momentarily distracted by the appearance of the light, the gunner allowed the helicopter to fly out of his sight picture. He quickly corrected his error, bringing the muzzle of the launcher around until the helicopter once again appeared to be perched on his sights. As he continued to maintain his sights on the helicopter, he watched for the red light to turn green. Once it changed colors, he pulled the trigger all the way in and braced for the explosion.

The initial reaction of the missile, however, was a surprise. There was dull explosion as the booster charge kicked the missile out of the launcher. As they watched the missile emerge from the launcher and hang in the air for a second, both the gunner and his leader thought it had been a dud. But their anxiety was replaced by joy when the sustainer motor ignited and kicked the missile out, accelerating it to Mach 1.5. Relieved that he had done nothing wrong, the gunner lowered the launcher and watched as the missile raced to catch the departing helicopter.

"JESUS CHRIST! Missile, seven o'clock — headed right for us!"

The scream from the crew chief startled Dedinger. He lurched forward and looked to his right, then corrected himself and looked to the left. The copilot was also looking left, as was the crew chief.

Recognizing the danger, the copilot barked to the pilot, "Jerry, bank right and take it down, now!"

The resulting violent maneuver threw Dedinger back against his seat and blocked his view of the incoming missile. The crew chief was also thrown off balance. Barely hanging on, he regained his balance, then lunged forward toward the open door in order to track the incoming missile.

"Where is it? Can anyone see it?"

For a second, no one answered the pilot. The crew chief spoke first. "I lost it. Colonel, look out the right door. I can't see it from the left side."

Dedinger was about to shift position when the impact fuse made contact with the side of the helicopter's main engine and set off the five-and-a-half-pound warhead. The resulting detonation caused a violent jolt, giving the occupants just enough time to realize that they had been hit before the catastrophic explosion engulfed the helicopter, its crew, and its sole passenger.

Kinsly stood there for the longest time, watching the bits and pieces of the helicopter rain downward. The main frame and the heavier fragments fell as part of a huge fireball that reminded him of a great burning meteor. Following the fireball, small, light pieces floated downward, each trailing a thin wisp of gray smoke against the harsh blue sky. There was nothing Kinsly could do. The Sudanese major had already turned away from him and run off to rally his men to pursue the assailants. The odds of catching them were slim to nonexistent, but they would try.

Unnoticed, Sergeant Veldez came up behind Kinsly. "Well, sir, looks like we need to get a new colonel."

Stung by the callousness of Veldez's remark, Kinsly turned on his heels and faced Veldez. "Sergeant, I don't appreciate that kind of humor. I don't give a damn what you thought about that man — he was one of us and now he's dead."

Veldez, startled by his lieutenant's response, was about to respond but stopped when he saw the anger in Kinsly's eyes. They stood there for a moment, Kinsly enraged and Veldez not knowing how, or if, to respond. He had fucked up. Everyone reacted to death differently. Veldez's efforts to soften the harsh reality of their stock-in-trade, death, were not appreciated by Kinsly. Kinsly's approach was proper, dignified. Each man had great regard for the other as a soldier; they understood each other's position on most issues, and respected it— most of the time. It was a rare occasion when Veldez overstepped his bounds.

Kinsly waited, staring at Veldez as he allowed the tension of the moment to ease. Veldez responded by coming to attention. "Sir, permission to take the team out and recover the remains of the crew and Colonel Dedinger."

Relaxing his stance, Kinsly turned his head in the direction where the helicopter had disappeared. A pillar of black smoke rose in the sky. He studied it for a second before turning back to Veldez. "Take your time, Sergeant Veldez. It will be a while before we can get them out."

"Will you be coming with us, Lieutenant?"

Kinsly considered the question. It would be so easy to say no. Veldez could handle it. There was no need for an officer to accompany the recovery party. Kinsly had no great desire to see more charred remains; he had seen enough of them in Iran. But it wouldn't be proper for him to stay behind. He was their leader. It was expected. It was the American way — leaders sharing the shit details as well as the good deals. Besides, he had to recover Dedinger's briefcase or, failing that, at least confirm that it and its contents were destroyed. "Yeah, I'll be going. But first I need to report. Have Terrel crank up the radio." Looking at his watch, Kinsly considered the time difference between the Sudan and Washington. When this hit the Pentagon, someone, no doubt, was going to have a great Monday morning.

As he wandered along the seventeen and a half miles of corridors of the Pentagon, affectionately known as the Fudge Factory, Major Scott Dixon couldn't make sense of the excitement generated by the report of a training accident. For the past hour and a half, he had been bounced from one office to another, hand-carrying a sealed folder that, as far as he was concerned, dealt with nothing more than a routine occurrence. In each office, he handed the folder to the secretary or an aide, who immediately whisked it into the general's office. Five minutes later, the secretary or aide was summoned back into the presence of the unseen general to retrieve the resealed folder. Each time it was a little fatter and had a new routing slip attached to it. Except for a perfunctory hello, no one spoke to Dixon or asked him any questions. In effect, Dixon was a highly paid mailman.

On normal duty days, Dixon was the operations officer for one of five duty teams that manned the Army's Operations Center round the clock. Reports of serious training accidents were only a fraction of the dozens of operational reports and messages concerning the daily status of the Army units and operations in the field handled by Dixon and his enlisted assistant. It was his task to ensure that the reports and messages were routed and handled properly. He or his assistant would check the addressee and make sure that the incoming report was in the proper format and that all information needed by the action agency was included. That done, they would verify that the final product was routed to the appropriate agency or that the proper actions required by the situation were initiated. In the case of a message concerning the death of a military member, Dixon's responsibility ended with an annotation in the duty log and the routing of a copy of the message to personnel, so that notification of the next of kin could begin. Only when such an incident had an impact on operations or held the potential for future problems did Dixon become involved.

From the beginning, everything concerning this notification of the death of a lieutenant colonel and the crew of a UH-60 in the Middle East was wrong. The initial message was a FLASH-OVER RIDE message from the chief of the Office of Military Cooperation, or OMC, in the Sudan addressed directly to the office of the deputy chief of staff for operations, with an information copy to the chief of special operations. That alone was enough to arouse Dixon's interest. The content of the message was even more extraordinary. Classified top secret, it simply stated:

Never having heard of Twilight, Cardinal, or Briar Patch Base, Dixon flipped through his briefing book to make sure that he hadn't missed something. Finding nothing there, he quick-referenced his listing of contingency plans and their code names. He found nothing there, either. He was about to turn the message over to the full-colonel team chief when a second FLASH-OVER RIDE message, this one from the Office of Military Cooperation in Egypt, came in, referencing the message from OMC Sudan. The first paragraph of the message from OMC Egypt ordered that the initial message from OMC Sudan be disregarded and destroyed. The second paragraph announced that Lieutenant Colonel William V. Dedinger, 176-44-9238, and the crew of a U.S. Army UH-60, names currently unavailable, were killed in an accident at 1208 hours ZULU (1406 local) during a routine training flight. The third paragraph simply stated that the cause of the accident was unknown and currently under investigation.

Befuddled by the two messages, Dixon took both to Colonel James Anderson, the watch officer, his immediate superior. Anderson was seated at his desk, leaning back in his chair, talking on the phone. Waving the hard copies of the two messages, Dixon signaled that he had something hot. Anderson wedged the phone between his shoulder and his ear and continued to talk while reading the two messages. Where Dixon's reaction to the messages had been confused, Anderson's was electric. In a single movement he bolted upright in his chair, hung up the phone without so much as a goodbye, and was out of his seat, headed for a small cubicle where selected contingency and operational plans were stored.

Dixon was now totally confused. It was apparent that indeed there was something going on that he had not been made privy to — a suspicion that was reinforced when Colonel Anderson emerged from the cubicle with a sealed folder sandwiched between two yellow-and-white Top Secret cover sheets. Handing the package to Dixon, Anderson told him to get it to the chief ASAP. Dixon looked at the folder and at the simple handwritten note on a routing slip that addressed the folder to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans. "PRIORITY — EYES ONLY," in bold letters, was the only message written on it. Looking at the folder, then at Anderson, Dixon asked, "Am I supposed to know something about this or provide anyone with additional information?"

Anderson's reply was about what Dixon expected. "Scotty, you're not to talk to anyone about this or leave this package out of sight until everyone who needs to see it has had an opportunity to do so. When they're done with it, bring it back to me. Clear?"

Scott gave him a crisp "Roger, out" and left without further delay, still befuddled, but confident that at least Anderson had a handle on whatever it was that had happened or was happening.

Thus began Dixon's odyssey through the halls of the Pentagon. First stop was the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans. From there, he was directed to carry the folder to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Special Operations. Next came the Vice Chief of Staff for the Army, followed, in turn, by the Chief of Staff of the Army, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Joint Chiefs, the office of International Security Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and finally, routing to the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

No doubt, Dixon thought as he moved along the corridors, there was something unique about this lieutenant colonel who had died. And odds were, based on the initial report from the OMC Sudan, that the accident had not taken place in Egypt, as the second message stated. He was even willing to bet that the "accident" hadn't been an accident. Beyond that, Dixon had nothing. Finally resigning himself to the fact that he would never be able to figure out what Dedinger had been up to, he let his mind move on to other, more mundane things as he wandered the halls of the Pentagon.

The first thought to cross his mind was more of an observation. For the better part of the morning Dixon had been playing errand boy. It never occurred to him to be indignant or feel any degradation that he, a promotable major, had been given such a menial task. He reflected on that thought for a moment. Had someone told him three years earlier to do what he had been doing all morning, Dixon probably would have told him where he could route his folder. Then Dixon corrected himself: there would've been no "probably" — he would have told the offending superior where to stick it.

But that was a long time ago, during a time when he was full of piss and vinegar, confident in himself as a soldier, his abilities to make things happen, and a career that was well charted and firm. Iran had changed all that. He had started that war — now commonly referred to as "the Iranian conflict" — as the S-3, or operations officer, of Task Force 3–4 Armor, a tank-heavy combined-arms maneuver task force stationed in Fort Hood, Texas. His task force had been with the first heavy maneuver brigade to arrive in Iran. Its arrival coincided with the first major crisis for U.S. forces in the war, allowing almost no time for the full acclimation of the men or proper organization of the brigade for combat. They had literally gone straight from the docks in Bandar Abbas into combat. Within seventy-two hours of arrival, the lead elements of his brigade were moving to establish defensive positions along the Soviet main axis of advance. Five days later, they were in contact with the lead Soviet combat units. The brigade, and Task Force 3–4, had remained in contact for another twenty-four days. On the twenty-fourth day, the task force again faced the main Soviet effort, the last Soviet offensive in Iran.

That battle was also the last for Task Force 3–4. Though the actual combat lasted less than forty-five minutes, when it was over, the task force had ceased to exist as a fighting force. Dixon, the senior officer alive and unwounded, had managed to halt the Soviets in his sector through a series of counterattacks. The initial defense and counterattacks that followed, however, had cost him two-thirds of the personnel in the task force and attached units. It was a month before the unit was ready to be committed again. Even then it was only a shell, with less than 75 percent of authorized personnel. Not that it mattered. The "conflict" had shifted into its "political" stage then, with an armistice separating the combatants. That lasted for six months — long enough for Dixon's psychological scars to begin to fester.

Traumatic as battle and its immediate aftermath had been, it wasn't until he was preparing to return his task force to the United States that Dixon realized that the real war, the war within him, was only beginning. Memories and thoughts that he had been able to push aside to a dark comer of his mind now came forth. While most of the men in the task force greeted the prospect of returning to "the world" with unbounded joy, Dixon found himself gripped by a formless and overpowering apprehension. In the beginning he didn't see it for what it was, for it crept upon him like a shadow. First he lost his ability to concentrate. By the time the unit closed into its final staging areas at its port of embarkation, Dixon was unable to deal with even the simplest problems. And along with his difficulty to deal with the problems of command came violent mood swings. Fits of depression were suddenly displaced by unexpected outbursts of rage.

Unable to control himself, Dixon withdrew within himself. He did so in part in an effort to protect his subordinates from being the objects of an undeserved eruption of rage. He also realized that he needed to sort himself and his feelings out before he returned home. His last days in Iran were spent in almost total isolation as his attempts to muster enthusiasm about going home were met instead with fear and apprehension for the future. Finally, on the last night in country, the last piece fell into place.

In the quiet darkness of his tent, it all came back. The images of war, dormant and all but forgotten for six months, burst forth. In his mind's eye Dixon began to relive the final battle. The dream crept over him like diesel-and-artillery-generated smoke. For a moment there was nothing; he could see nothing in the white, manmade fog. He could hear, however, what he could not see. Above the idling engine of his own tank, Dixon could hear the squeaking of tracks on drive sprockets and the straining of engines as other armored vehicles moved about in close proximity. The noises they made ebbed and flowed like waves on a shore. Some of the sounds were familiar, like the whine of a Bradley fighting vehicle making a sharp turn. Others were not, since they came from Soviet armored vehicles.

The crack of a tank cannon firing, followed by the screeching of metal ripping metal not more than a hundred meters from where he sat, finally convinced Dixon he had to move. Sitting there waiting to be found was worse than blundering about in the smoke. Barking out a short order, he instructed the driver to move out. The M-1 tank lurched forward, rolling in the direction of what Dixon thought was the east. Since leaving his initial position and submerging himself and his tank in the manmade smoke, he had lost his orientation and what little command and control of the battalion he had had when he gave the order to counterattack.

As his tank rolled forward, an object moving out of the smoke to his flank caught Dixon's attention. Instinctively he turned — and froze in horror. Less than twenty meters away, the muzzle of a Soviet 125mm tank cannon emerged from the smoke. Transfixed, Dixon watched as its gaping maw slowly turned toward him. Panic, helplessness, and unbridled fear seized him. The Soviet tank cannon grew nearer and larger. He was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He closed his eyes for the briefest of seconds, then opened them again. It was gone. The Soviet tank and its main gun were gone. So was the smoke and the tank he was riding. Instead of on a battlefield, he found himself in a dark tent, in bed, and alive. The nightmares had begun. And they were destined to continue, a constant reminder that he, a commander who had so freely committed his men to battle, was alive while many of those who had so willingly followed him were not. The question of whether he had been right or wrong never figured into the equation. All attempts to rationalize that what he had done had been right failed to bring even a modicum of relief to his troubled mind. Unable to come to grips with himself, Dixon couldn't make the transition from war to peace.

Dixon hadn't been the only casualty of the war in his family. His wife, Fay, with little warning and no preparation, had suddenly found herself facing the prospect of losing her husband. Plans built on the promise of twenty years in the Army followed by retirement on half-pay, a home in the country, and a second career were in jeopardy. For the first time in her life, Fay Dixon was helpless, unable to do anything to save their once precious vision of a happy future. At first Fay banded together with other wives of the Task Force's officers and NCOs in an effort to present at least the appearance of normalcy. That pretense, however, came to an abrupt halt shortly after the first battle.

Military sedans, each bearing an officer, a chaplain, and, whenever possible, the wife of the senior officer in the unit, began to make their rounds, delivering the dreaded message: "I regret to inform you that your husband was killed in action." In short order, the appearance of any type of military vehicle in the military housing area where Fay lived brought fear to the wives. Soon, the moving vans appeared, removing the shattered remains of broken families while the military sedans weaved in between them, carrying the dreaded message to more wives and families.

Dixon's reunion with his family was a cold event, almost totally bereft of emotion. For Dixon, the war continued. He had lost all confidence in himself and his abilities as a soldier and destroyed forever any illusions Fay had about the future.

So Dixon's almost aimless wanderings throughout the Pentagon that morning were symbolic of his passage through the last two years. Though eventually he would get someplace, it didn't matter to him. Until such time as he was able to pull himself together, to bury his ghosts and to breathe life into a marriage that was on a holding pattern, Dixon was content to pass the time doing what he was told, within the secure bosom of the same Army that once had been home to the same men who now peopled his nightmares.

Bob Mennzinger brought his car to a stop across the street from the duplex where his old-time friend Jerry Eller lived. The duplex was modest in appearance, a simple one-story brick home that looked, and was in fact, exactly like the others that surrounded it. It was, as Jerry once said, "a place to hang your hat between flights." Looking about, Mennzinger didn't see the Army sedan that was supposed to meet him. He mumbled a curse under his breath while he considered his next move. The first thing that came to mind was swinging around the block to his own quarters and changing out of his flight suit into a clean set of BDUs. While he was doing so, he could call the unit adjutant and find out where the notification team was. The thought that they might show up while he was gone was overridden by his desire to postpone what he had to do for as long as possible.

Though Jerry Eller no longer belonged to his unit, Mennzinger felt a sense of obligation to be with Betty in her time of need. Snatched up by the Department of the Army four months early and reassigned to a special general-support aviation detachment in the Middle East, Jerry Eller had seemed to drop off the face of the earth. As it was an unaccompanied tour, better known as a hardship tour, his wife and their six-month-old son had been given the option of remaining in quarters or moving back to his or her hometown. Betty Eller had decided to remain at Campbell, living in her own home rather than moving in with her mother and risk suffering round-the-clock advice on how to raise her son. As the unit commander and a personal friend of Jerry's, Mennzinger made sure that Betty felt like part of the unit family. He had told Jerry before he departed that he would do whatever was necessary to make the separation easy for Betty. But the news that Jerry had been killed in a helicopter crash in Egypt — how could he make that easy?

He was about to pull away when Betty, her baby riding on her hip, emerged from the side door of the house and headed for the car parked in the driveway. Mennzinger watched for a moment, pondering his next move. As Betty opened the car door, he threw his car door open and called out to get her attention. "Betty!"

Surprised, she turned, then smiled when she saw Mennzinger. "Bob, what are you doing home so early?"

Getting out of his car, Mennzinger straightened out, wiped his sweaty palms on the side of his flight suit, then began to cross the street. "Betty, I need to talk to you."

Despite Mennzinger's hesitation and tone, Betty continued to smile. "Sure, Bob. Only let's go inside — the baby will catch a chill. And besides, I don't want the neighbors to see me conversing with a strange man in the middle of the day. You know how rumors get started — a wife with a husband overseas entertaining men in the middle of the day is sure to get a rise out of someone!"

Betty's attempt to joke with him wasn't making his task any easier. He had lost friends in combat in Iran, but that had been different. They had been at war, in a combat zone. And Mennzinger didn't have to face the families afterward. Most of the time he hadn't even seen the bodies. It had been so clean, so impersonal, so quick. This was entirely different. For a second, Mennzinger thought that facing antiaircraft fire had been easier. The dread of telling Betty was so overpowering that it all but crippled him. Death had come quickly for Jerry. He was beyond pain and suffering. But that thought was small comfort, for Betty's own pain was about to begin. Mennzinger continued to look at her, standing there with a quizzical look on her face as he struggled for the right way, any way, to tell her that she would never see her husband again.

The awkward silence was broken by the appearance of a military sedan pulling into the driveway behind Betty's car. She turned and looked at the sedan, watching while the unit's chaplain got out of the passenger side. The chaplain looked at Mennzinger, then at Betty. Assuming that she already knew, he simply said, "Betty, I'm sorry. Is there—"

A shrill "NO!" cut him off. Clutching her baby to her breast, her face contorted in horror, Betty yelled again, "No! No! It's not true. It can't be!"

Before either man could move, she turned and ran to the door of her house, fumbling with her keys as she tried to open the door. All the while she kept yelling over her shoulder, "Go away — go away!" When she finally managed to open the door, Betty dashed in and slammed it behind her, leaving Mennzinger and the chaplain standing where they had been, wondering what to do next.

The camera opened with a wide-angle shot of a studio decorated to look like the typical middle-American home, then slowly zoomed in on two people seated in overstuffed chairs. They appeared to be having a casual conversation, which continued until the camera had closed in on them. On cue, the two people, co-hosts of this morning show, nonchalantly turned to the camera and flashed big, toothy smiles. The woman, dressed in a radiant yellow-and-black dress, beamed a bright and cheery greeting: "Good morning to those of you just joining us."

The man's smiling face now changed, on cue, to a serious stare. "Two years after the shooting stopped," he began, "the debate over whether we should have become involved in the conflict in Iran rages on in the chambers of Congress. Defenders from the right claim that we had no choice but to intervene in the region militarily in order to protect our national interests. To have allowed the Soviets to gain control of the Strait of Hormuz would have been, in the words of Republican senator George Ryan of Maryland, 'tantamount to surrender.' Critics from the Left, on the other hand, contend that U.S. interests were never endangered, that the decision to send troops into Iran was a knee-jerk reaction that almost led to Armageddon.

"Today we have with us in our Washington studio one of the most vocal critics of that conflict. A veteran, Representative Ed Lewis was a battalion executive officer in a Tennessee National Guard unit at the time. His unit fought in the final campaign that stopped the Soviet push to the gulf and brought them to the negotiating tables. Today he continues to fight, not in Iran but in the chambers of Congress, and not against the Soviets but against the dangerous involvement of the United States in alliances and covert military operations." He turned to his left as the camera panned out, showing him facing a man of forty-two, in another overstuffed chair.

"Congressman Lewis, in a very short time you have become the spokesman for many antiwar and antimilitary groups in this country. To what do you credit this distinction?"

Turning to face the camera, Lewis canted his head before he spoke. "Well, for one thing, I have seen war and what it can do. Any sane and responsible person who has survived the horrors of war should, and must, do everything in their power to keep such a thing from happening again. My success, if you care to call it that, in leading the fight to reduce the size of our military and avoid unnecessary involvement in affairs that are not our country's concern is based on my belief that until someone takes a meaningful step in that direction, we will continue to live with a sword hanging over our heads."

The host asked his next question. "There are those who insist that the Soviet reductions that continued even after Iran are merely symbolic, that the Soviet Union retains forces far beyond its stated needs for self-defense."

Lewis smiled. "Someone has to make a first move, symbolic or not. America has yet to make a meaningful response of any kind. Until we do so, I can't blame the Soviets for not making real, substantial reductions in their forces."

"Congressman, the Pentagon claims that it is currently unable to contain any further expansion of the Soviet Union given its current troop levels and that any reductions would mean that somewhere, something would have to give. Your critics claim that your proposals are tantamount to unilateral disarmament, with no guarantee that the Soviets will reciprocate in kind. How do you propose to protect our national interests without a military capable of enforcing our policies overseas?"

Looking back to the camera, Lewis smirked. "You make it sound as if we are still at war. And that is precisely the kind of attitude that I am fighting to put an end to. The Pentagon has been a major player in determining our foreign policy for far too long. Additionally, the cost of maintaining a large military has resulted in a national debt that has been an incredible drain on our economy for years. Until the military is reduced to a manageable size commensurate to our nation's needs and budget, this nation will always be in danger of war. Strict control of the military and its budget, along with drastic reductions in troop strength, are the only means we have available to ensure that we maintain peace in our time and allow for the reduction of our national debt. Someone has to make the first move. The Soviets have on numerous occasions stated publicly that they would match our reductions man for man, weapon for weapon. We, the United States, must have the courage of our convictions, to take that step."