Red Hammer 1994

But a freak accident cut short his dream command and almost his charmed life. One hot summer afternoon, an engine flameout during takeoff in a newly reworked F-15 sent him plunging into the dense tree line adjacent to the base perimeter. He luckily punched out just seconds before the fully fueled jet exploded into an orange fireball that roiled the forest. Far too close to the earth, his main chute never fully deployed. He was sent twisting and flailing into a tall pine. His broken and gashed body was rushed to the base hospital, where the expert medical staff saved his life, but not his career. A smashed pelvis left him with a distinctive limp, and a tree branch cleanly sliced his cheek open like raw meat. He lay in the hospital for weeks, depressed and despondent, nursing himself back to health, but destined never to fly his beloved fighters again. A replacement for squadron commanding officer was named before he ever left the hospital.

Transferred to DC, Thomas had begun what was for him a series of dreary, unpleasant staff assignments, some air force, some Joint. He continued to excel based on hard work and a stellar reputation for getting the dirty jobs done, but he fought the system at every turn and made his life miserable. His running mates had won the right to command air wings, while he languished behind a desk, beset by mind-numbing drudgery. It was tough to stomach. He wasn’t sure what kept him going through those rocky years, although most certainly his wife played the central role. His beautiful, strong, caring wife, who gently encouraged and cajoled, was always sensitive to the hurt left by the cold, official termination from flight status and the scars that still haunted his body. When he felt too sorry for himself, she would give it to him with both barrels.

Making brigadier general had been a watershed. His peers called it a miracle. That prized milestone signaled a continued career in uniform and wiped away any residual self-pity and doubt. He was a military man to the core, and he knew it.

His current duty assignment had been serendipitous. A close friend, now in the government, had introduced him to the current secretary of defense years earlier when the friend and Secretary Alexander were both still in private industry. Thomas was on his way to Colorado Springs for a tour as a watch commander in the Missile Warning Center at Cheyenne Mountain. He fell into an unplanned lunch with the two in Alexandria. They had enjoyed a lively discussion about the course of events in Russia, with Alexander optimistic and Thomas pessimistic. Alexander was noticeably impressed with Thomas’s lack of rigid dogmatism, which crippled so many bureaucrats, military and civilian alike. Later, as a two star on the Air Staff, he was unexpectedly tapped out of the blue as Alexander’s senior military advisor. The secretary hadn’t forgotten the tough-looking general with the scarred face who spoke his mind.

With the new job came a third star. He rose in seniority over forty or fifty general officers in the air force, not the best way to make friends among the senior-officer corp. Friends told him it was a guaranteed stepping stone to four stars and a major air force or unified command. The old luck had returned in spades.

Thomas found the job exhilarating. He felt renewed after years in the bureaucratic trenches, fighting narrowly focused air force budget battles. He was a big-picture man. The world he and Secretary Alexander now faced was startlingly different from the unparalleled drama, breathtaking euphoria, and plain giddiness that gripped the planet early in the decade. Ice-cold reality had hammered home with a vengeance. The epochal upheavals in the world’s supposedly rigid power structure left everyone breathless and cultivated a breeding ground for international mischief.