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  Something involving the head of Navy Seals had happened to Duncan James before he arrived in the war theater. Lots of unknowns, even to Holman, who was a close friend of James. What little Holman knew had to do with a female officer who wanted to be a SEAL and a now long-gone admiral who had ordered James to retire. Duncan James had never deemed it necessary to share any of that information with Holman, as much as Holman would have enjoyed hearing it. Whatever happened, the previous chief of Naval Operations had had a closed-door discussion with the old head of Navy SEALs, and when the door opened, the troubled, pale-faced Navy SEAL admiral had requested immediate retirement. James had been promoted directly to two-star and ordered to the Pentagon as his replacement.

  As they exchanged small talk, Holman noticed James still had the hard figure of a Navy SEAL. Tight skin around the neck and a waist significantly smaller than his chest. Holman hadn’t changed either since the North African crisis. He was still photogenic but pudgy, though he never failed a Navy physical fitness measurement. He nodded curtly to himself. While he was a pudgy one-star, Duncan was still a muscle-bound, desk-bound Navy SEAL who, like him, missed the field, missed doing what they were trained to do. But the good thing about being commander of the world’s mightiest amphibious fleet was that he could go out to sea anytime he wanted, even if the Navy had decided his flying days were over.

  “… so, they seem to be getting better.”

  “Sir, if I may,” Willis interjected as they neared the end of the eighth corridor. “If Admiral James will escort you to the Tank, I will see if I can find a replacement shirt for you.”

  Holman saw Duncan’s right eyebrow rise as he looked down at the stain.

  “You’ve had something like this happen, I’m sure,” Holman offered.

  “Yeah, but at the time I had about a hundred screaming Jihadists begging for martyrdom charging at me. Of course, my stains weren’t around the waist. And I ended up giving them their martyrdom.”

  “Lieutenant,” Holman said. “Go. Your ears aren’t meant to hear what two of the finer admirals in the Navy are discussing.”

  With a quick nod and acknowledgment, Lieutenant Pat Willis headed down the hallway, his steps rapid as he hurried toward the center court of the Pentagon.

  “Who’s your EA? He your physical trainer?”

  “He’s a young lieutenant who is making it a habit of being up my ass at every moment. And he takes too much pleasure in physical fitness,” Holman complained, adding, “Leo assigned him this morning for the trip.”

  “Dick, you ought to keep him. EAs are a Godsend when you’re hurrying from one place to the next.”

  The two men turned and continued down the “E” hallway, exchanging small talk, and discussing the new chief of Naval Operations who had started a series of Naval Administrative messages, called NAVADMINs, detailing several new initiatives designed to encourage sailors to make the Navy their career. Most the information wasn’t new, just repackaged encouragement both had seen in past NAVADMINs, but it didn’t mean the information wasn’t pertinent. They knew that, periodically, leadership mandated you reemphasized policies so they were forever anew. The Navy, like a commercial firm, changed as its manpower aged and new leaders ascended to the forefront.

  “Ever been in the Tank?” Duncan James asked as they passed through a set of double-glass doors.

  “Only a couple of times. I try to steer clear when and where elephants dance. Don’t want to find myself a smear between their toes.” Holman glanced down at the brown smear on his shirt and shook his head slightly. What a fool I am sometimes.

  Many believed the Tank to be a fabrication of a bunch of wild-eyed fringe conspiracy elements that believed a shadow government met within its sound- and electronic-proof walls. However, the Tank was real. It existed, and the shakers and movers of government, and those within the Defense Department, used it. It wasn’t a big compartment, but it was secure from penetration by any known technology that might try to discover what was going on within its four sides. Members of both the United States military and the notorious Defense Security Service guarded it. Each carried an automatic weapon and a sidearm. Discussions in the Tank had the potential to cause grave consequences for the nation, hence the checks and balances of two differing teams of guards who eyed each other with distrust and whose members were rotated in such a fashion that discouraged any bond of friendship between members of the two teams.

  At any time of the day or night, the Tank may host senior officers of the military and senior civilians of government to discuss critical items of national security, items best resolved out of the public eye. The Tank was where the military met to develop overall missions and strategy for the armed forces, to determine how the four services would divide the funds Congress gave, and to develop a vision of where the military needed to be ten, twenty, and thirty years hence down the road. Without those decisions, America’s power would slowly degrade over the years, and the lone superpower status enjoyed for so many decades would one day evaporate.

  Holman and James usually discussed the still-secret, while the public debated decisions made many years ago in the Tank. Today, though, they were discussing one of those now-public topics which came out of the Tank years ago. The Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time — who all serve for two years at the request of the president — voiced during a press interview that probably within the next ten to twenty years America would have to fight China unless certain geopolitical changes occurred much sooner. It was not greeted with enthusiasm by the administration in office at the time. Quite the opposite; headlines blaring to the world that America was planning to fight China within the next ten years made the chairman an overnight pariah within an administration which was quickly distancing itself from such an idea. After all, China was America’s number one trading partner, where the bulk of factory-made goods that serviced the American economy now originated. The chairman had retired shortly thereafter.

  Holman subscribed to the conservative belief that the People’s Republic of China had been for years engaged in a secret economic war against the United States. And he liked to talk about it. The Chinese government had taken a lesson from the U.S. economic defeat of the Soviet Union and was waging it against us. Economic warfare didn’t mean economic conflict. With a world economy, you could just as easily degrade a nation’s capability to fight by luring its elements of national security, such as factories and mills, away to another country. What remains are service-related businesses that don’t manufacture anything. It’s hard to build weapons in a service economy. At least, this was the point Holman was trying to make now.

  Holman had been in the Tank a couple of times for briefing workups being prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. You never went into the Tank cold, flipped open your notebook, and started briefing the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There was a long road to reach that point, and Holman had been involved in some of the preliminary tasking of developing such briefs. The Director of the Joint Staff, lovingly referred to as the “DJS,” was the real power behind the throne. The one in charge now was a Lieutenant General Winifred Hulley, United States Army, known as “Win” by his friends. From his well-earned reputation, those friends were few and far away. Hulley ripped briefs to shreads. No brief survived unscathed the first time across his desk, and only a few survived the second and third times.

  By the time a briefer reached the chairman and his four Joint Chiefs from the services, the brief never resembled anything the originator intended.

  The two men passed the “River Exit.” A man in a dark blue suit leaned against the outside wall of the hallway, his eyes sweeping back and forth. His suit buldged slightly under his left arm where a concealed weapon disrupted the symmetry. The man’s eyes swept across Holman and James, lingering for a moment before continuing their sweep. A coiled wire ran from an earpiece, disappearing beneath the back collar of the man’s suit coat. Secret Service or Defense Security Service, Holman thought as he listened to Duncan finally turn awa
y from the coming war with China to discuss the challenges of the upcoming fiscal year budget.

  Holman was glad he didn’t have to fight budget-weenie battles at the Pentagon level. It was bad enough at the Group level fighting with Commander Second Fleet and Fleet Forces Command for his paltry amount. If he had to do what Duncan James did on a daily basis, he’d drive into North Parking in the morning, open up the trunk, and toss his integrity into it. At least it’d still be there when he left at night.

  “What do you think they want to discuss that is so critical and so super secret that we have to come to the Tank to hear it?”

  James shrugged. “Don’t know. I know about as much as you do, Dick. I didn’t even know they called you until I saw the attendee list. When I saw your name, my first thought — or question — was who did they call first, you or me?”

  “Why would that matter?”

  “If they call me first, then it’s something to do with sending Navy SEALs to your command to do something neither of us probably wants to do.”

  “Duncan,” Holman said with a slight smile. “You’ve been in Washington too long if who gets called first carries such unintended consequences.”

  “When you’ve been in the Pentagon more than six months, you discover quickly that no meeting is held without each participant having their own hidden agenda.” He laughed. “Not everyone is as up front as I am.”

  “Either way, my friend, I would have to give it a lot more thought than you did to determine why they would call one of us ahead of the other.”

  An Air Force sergeant wearing five stripes stood outside the Tank, near a square sign with the words QUIET MEETING IN PROGRESS. On either side of the door stood two guards, a U.S. Army officer wearing a Ranger badge on his left shoulder, and a member of the Defense Security Service. Both men watched the two admirals approach. Holman had never figured out whether they were there to keep people out or keep those inside in. The couple of times he went, all he wanted to do was leave; but once you were inside and those massive doors locked, you were in for the duration. Water and coffee were available, but there were no head facilities within, which can be a killer if you have a fifty-something-year-old bladder. Maybe that’s why there’s an informal law that says no brief to a flag or general officer can be over thirty minutes long, he thought.

  You didn’t walk out during a Tank meeting.

  “Sir, are you here for the meeting with Ms. Chatelain-Malpass?”

  Holman looked at Duncan. “Is that who we’re here to meet?”

  “Got me, Dick. What time is this meeting with Ms. Chatterly…?” his voice trailed off.

  “Ms. Chatelain-Malpass, sir, and the meeting is scheduled to start in seventeen minutes.”

  “How do they do that, Duncan?” Holman said in an exaggerated whisper. “Is there some sort of internal timing mechanism where they don’t need watches?”

  James turned his head and nodded over his shoulder. On the wall behind them was the standard government-issue white-faced analog clock. The hands showed seventeen minutes to ten. Here they were, near the quarter — twenty-first century mark, and the Department of Defense still had those battery-driven clocks mounted on walls and bulkheads throughout the military.

  “I guess we are, Sergeant,” Admiral James said, “if this is the one the Chairman and Admiral Yalvarez are also attending.”

  “Yes, sir, it is. Ms. Chatelain-Malpass will be a few minutes late, sir. She has to come from the White House.”

  Two minutes later, after having their security clearances verified and signing the attendance log, the two men were ushered into the Tank. Inside, behind those wooden walls, were half-inch-thick magnetized metal plates designed to thwart outside attempts to monitor what was going on. Both men discovered nameplates at the rectangle mahogany table that filled the center of the room. A chair for the chairman was placed at one end of the table so he could look directly at the two gigantic split-screens on the far wall.

  “Never sat at the table before,” Holman confessed.

  “Makes two of us,” Duncan said. “Most times, I’m relegated to one of those six chairs—” He pointed to the chairs lining the wall nearest the “E” corridor. “—and then, only after being admonished to keep my ears and eyes opened and my mouth shut. One and two-stars are seldom in here.”

  Holman pulled his chair away from the desk. James walked around the table, stopping for a moment in front of each nameplate.

  “Here is Ms. Alice Chatelain-Malpass, Dick.” James lifted her nameplate for a moment and then set it back down. “Says she’s from National Security Council.” He moved to the next one. “Looks as if the DJS is going to join us for the meeting.” He reached forward and lifted this nameplate, turning it so Dick could see it. “Lieutenant General Win Hulley,” James said with a trace of humor. “Wouldn’t want to use his real name.”

  At the head of the table was the chairman’s plate. “Can’t say he takes himself too seriously, Dick.” He held up the nameplate. It read HALFPENNY. “Of course, if you’re the chairman, you don’t need a nametag to tell people who you are.” James walked around the head of the table, crossing to the side where Holman sat. “Admiral Jesus ‘Jay’ Yalvarez,” he announced, nodding at the place directly left of the chairman’s seat. “And, here I am. Right beside the Chief of Naval Operations. How about that for career opportunity, Dick?” James pulled the chair out. “Looks as if you and I have two grand opportunities here, Dick. We have an opportunity to make a lot of brownie points and to catapult our careers onward and upward.” He sat down. “Or, when we leave here we could see our career in handcuffs, heading for the Devil’s Island of the Navy — forced retirement.”

  They laughed.

  Large plastic bottles of spring water were set in front of the five spaces. The two men opened theirs and sipped. The wall clock showed ten minutes until the meeting started. Time was a precious commodity in the Pentagon, and seldom did anyone arrive for a meeting until seconds before it began. Less wasted time made meetings less boring. But when you were the junior trooper on the roster, it helped to be a little ahead of time, and Holman and Duncan were the two junior people at this important, urgently called meeting.

  Holman’s executive aide walked into the compartment. A sprinkling of perspiration dotted the lieutenant’s forehead. “Admiral,” Willis said, holding up a milky-white plastic bag with the blue-red logo of ARMY-AIR FORCE EX–CHANGE SERVICE on the side. “I have your shirt, sir.”

  “How’d you do that?” he asked, his eyebrows rising. Pointing at the sweat on the man’s forehead, Holman asked, “And, don’t tell me you jogged up and back to the Arlington Annex? That’s a good two miles away.”

  “There’s a small Army-Air Force uniform shop on the fourth deck,” Duncan James volunteered. “Does’t have much of a Navy selection, but they do carry a few shirts.” He touched Holman on the shoulder. “Primarily size Small.”

  “Admiral, there’s a small room next door where I’ve arranged for you to change.”

  Five minutes later, Holman was back. Sitting and talking with Duncan James now was the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jesus Antonio Yalvarez, called “Jay” by his counterparts. Counterparts who consisted of the other thirty-four four-stars in the military. Holman shook the newest Chief of Naval Operations’s hand before he sat down beside Duncan. Jay was the first Hispanic Chief of Naval Operations in history, and one of only five Hispanic four-stars on active duty. While he had the Hispanic countenance of graying black hair and brown eyes, the accent was flawless American English, which, if referenced, received a curt admonishment by Admiral Yalvarez to the fact that he was an American; why would he have an accent? The ribbon of a Silver Star led the CNO’s seven rows of medals. Yalvarez had a colorful reputation loved by the news tabloids. Even the supermarket tabloid the Sun periodically carried tales of the Navy’s leader.

  Yalvarez was a folk hero to the Hispanic communities, not only in the United States, but throughout Latin and Sout
h America as well as with Spaniards. Colombia even had a statue of this American in the main square of its capital. They loved him. A decade ago, when Yalvarez commanded a small U.S. frigate patrolling the Colombian coast during the Colombia police action, he had successfully defeated a multiple-small-boat attack launched by rebels associated with the drug cartels. He had sunk two of the boats, rammed a third, and when his gunfire disabled the fourth and largest boat, he personally led the boarding party. It was the first hand-to-hand combat at sea by American sailors boarding another vessel since the age of sail. The newspapers and news magazines ate it up. They wrote about the exploit for months, and the photograph of Yalvarez, taken by a signalman from the top deck of the U.S. frigate, became an instant icon for America’s commitment to freedom. It showed Yalvarez holding a Navy sword above his head as he leapt onto the disabled drug cartel warship. To the side of him and behind him, tens of sailors with carbines blazing followed. The photograph earned the signalman ten thousand dollars and made the cover of Time magazine.

  People just didn’t fight with swords anymore, in this era of guns. Holman always wondered why Yalvarez went with a sword when a fully loaded M-16 would have been more effective, but the impact of that photograph sent Yalvarez’s popularity soaring past rock stars and movie stars. Women wanted his baby. Several men did, too. Movie companies wanted his life story. Nike offered him a contract, but the shoes weren’t Navy regulation and that was where Yalvarez confessed his loyalties lay. In another first, he was the youngest Chief of Naval Operations, surpassing the great Admiral Zumwalt, who in the seventies was leapfrogged over many senior flags to lead the Navy. The same thing happened with Yalvarez. Sure, the CNO had his detractors — those who believed him to be too political, or too self-serving. Holman didn’t know the admiral other than through word-of-mouth reputation and newspaper articles, of which there were many. Christ! Being too political didn’t sound like a negative point to Holman. You wouldn’t survive a junior officer tour in the Pentagon if you didn’t have some political savvy.