During the Second World War, they hadn’t second-guessed Henry Mucci and his Sixth Ranger Battalion. Mucci’s bosses had simply turned him loose and told him to get the job done any way he could. An order put like that, Ritzik knew, gave a commander flexibility, the freedom to lead from the front, and the luxury of occasional failure on the way to victory. It allowed an officer to employ individualism, initiative, and audacity. Today, those character traits were likely to get you a letter of reprimand. Of course, Mucci didn’t have CNN war tarts, Fox News Scud studs, Sunday-talk-show second-guessers, or al-Jazeera to worry about either. Or for that matter, an Army chief of staff who thought buying new berets was more important than buying bullets.
But then, this was the new Army. The Army of One (although precisely one
And a few years later, Johnny Vandervoort, CENT-COM’s commander, had led — if you could actually call it leading — the campaign in Afghanistan from the manicured safety and four-star comfort of MacDill Air Force Base, half a world away. It was another sorry military first for the Army of Washington, Grant, Patton, Merrill, and Beckwith: war by speakerphone.
While Ritzik and his people had been freezing their asses off in the mountains, COMCENT and his staff worked regular hours. Somehow, the guys with stars on their collars managed to get in their eighteen holes on MacDill’s PGA-grade golf course. Somehow, their aides always roused them in time for an early set of tennis before the daily conference call to Bagram Air Base. And while Ritzik and the rest of his team ate roasted horse anus and grilled sheep’s brain, the generals went off to dinner at Bern’s steak house, where the wine list ran thirty or so pages of fine print.
Ritzik wasn’t resentful about the disparity of lifestyle. Rank, after all, has its privileges. And he’d actually grown perversely fond of roasted horse anus after the first month or so. What he took exception to was the vacuum of leadership and loyalty demonstrated by his Florida hibernation. COMCENT was remote, aloof, and distant — both literally and figuratively. To those who actually prosecuted the war he was far more an abstract concept than a flesh-and-blood combatant commander.
The problem was compounded further because Johnny Vandervoort was not in his heart or soul a man o’ warsman, but a manager of war’s men. Oh, he was a talented manager; a decent if stiff and standoffish peacetime general well-versed in flowcharts, PowerPoint presentations, and systems analysis. He even had a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pennsylvania. But he was absolutely the wrong man in the job of war fighter. Because this new kind of warfare, Ritzik understood, needed a Grant — a doer — motivated to succeed by private demons, not a McClellan — a ponderer — who preferred even-keel, slow-paced stability to the uncomfortable, rushed tumult of warfare.
He pulled the retaining flap from the radio on his vest, reached down, and for the eighth time in two hours switched frequencies to try to contact Almaty. “TOC, Loner.”
He was amazed to hear Dodger’s voice reverb into his earpiece. “Loner, this is the TOC.”
Ritzik excitedly pulled a marker and a notebook out of his cargo pocket. “Sit-rep, TOC. We’ve been running in circles out here with no eyes, no ears, and a bunch of hostiles chasing our behinds.”
Dodger’s voice came back five-by-five. “You can think that if you like, Loner, but from what we saw, we suggest you change your call sign.”
“To what?”
“Tommy.”
“Come again?” Ritzik didn’t have time for this nonsense.
“Tommy.”
“Come again?”
“Tommy. Because for a bunch of deaf, dumb, and blind guys, you sure play a mean pinball.”
“Compliment accepted. Now stop kissing my ass and give us what the hell we need before the damn comms screw up again.”
“That’s why he’s a sergeant major. He’s always right.”
Sam said, “You ever fly one like this? A HIP?”
“Once,” the warrant officer said. “During a training course on former Soviet equipment. About three years ago.”
“No kidding.”