Heart of War Read online

  Phone calls were starting to come in about the weather. Control was everything in the Army, and weather was just about the only thing a commanding general couldn’t control, and he wasn’t happy about it. The phone calls meant problems, and problems meant the General had to find people to solve the problems for him, and the kind of people you could count on to solve problems for you were getting damn hard to find in the Army.

  The storm outside was whipping through the post with more than winter’s usual discontent. Trucks in the motor pool rocked noisily on their shocks, canvas tops whipping against steel frames like snare drums. M-1 tanks pinged and creaked as frigid air contracted their heavy iron turrets imperceptibly but noisily. Teenagers leaving the early movie were hit hard by the wind, clutched at each other, screamed soundlessly into the teeth of the storm. A girl fell, a boy tried to help her, fell on top of her; they skidded on the icy walk. A light pole snapped, crashed to the ground, its halogen bulb exploding next to them. Someone screamed. Blood stained the sidewalk. MP’s arrived, brandishing flashlights. An ambulance drove up, lights spinning, siren wailing. Over at the post hospital emergency room, two medics went through a dozen needles and two packs of suture thread stitching up cuts.

  Flooding had started across the post, near the river. The water was over the curb, up to the front steps of barracks in some areas. The chief of staff, a florid-faced colonel by the name of Roberts, entered at a run.

  “Sir, we’re getting calls. People are wondering what you’re going to do about the flooding.”

  Beckwith barked his displeasure. “They want me to stop a goddamned flood? The goddamn weather isn’t my responsibility! They should take their complaints to the big man upstairs.”

  There was a long pause as Colonel Roberts thought about what he was going to say. Finally he settled on an old military axiom. When in doubt, flatter.

  “Sir, to them you are the big man upstairs,” the chief of staff replied without irony.

  A thin, self-satisfied smile played across the General’s handsome features as he looked out his second-floor window. Roberts’ ploy had worked.

  The big man upstairs. Yes, indeed.

  General Beckwith wasn’t physically a big man; he stood five nine, he had narrow shoulders, a thin face with sharp features, but the way he filled up a room, even standing there in his drawers, had been remarked upon since he was a lieutenant. He was quick and direct, and his voice boomed when he addressed the target of his attentions. At West Point, instructors in the Tactical Department had called it “command presence,” and Bill Beckwith had it in spades, even as a plebe.

  He turned around. His aide, Captain Randy Taylor, was standing in the door, a pair of uniform trousers over his arm. “Sir, your dress blue trousers are ready.”

  “Put ‘em down, Randy,” boomed Beckwith. “I need a drink.”

  Randy neatly folded the General’s trousers over the back of a chair and opened a mahogany cabinet, exposing a built-in wet bar. He filled an old-fashioned glass with ice and poured it half full of gin and dropped an olive into the mix. He picked up a cocktail napkin decorated with Infantry crossed rifles and handed the drink to Beckwith.

  “Your martini, sir.”

  “You didn’t put too much goddamned vermouth in this thing, did you, Randy?”

  “No, sir.”

  Beckwith took a sip, smacked his lips. “Damn good martini, Randy. You’re getting it down.”

  “Thank you, sir.” There was a knock at the door. The General’s secretary, Miss Flaherty, walked in. She was nearly six feet tall, and when she spoke, the windows shook.

  “Wife for you on line two, sir!”

  “Tell her the car will be there at 1900.”

  “I reminded her of that fact, sir! She wants to speak to you anyway, sir!”

  Beckwith walked over to the phone, waved his hand, dismissing his secretary. Randy was about to walk through a connecting door to his office when the General stopped him. “Just a minute, Randy. I’m going to need you.” He picked up the phone. “What’s going on, hon?” He listened for a moment, nodding his head. “I’ll see what I can do. Right. Okay. See you at the club.” He hung up and collapsed on a leather sofa, ran his hands through his hair. When he looked up, Randy could see his eyes were red, and his face had lost some of its color.

  “Answer me this, Randy, will you? God is fixing to dump about twelve inches of water on this Army post with which he has entrusted me, and he’s already knocked down about thirty trees, and we’ve got an overflowing emergency room over at the hospital, and my wife calls up and tells me Colonel Sumner’s wife next door is going to wear the same dress she’s wearing to the club and what can I do about it.”

  Beckwith walked over to the window, which was being pelted with rain.

  “The President is about to pick the next Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and I’m on his short list. I’ve got the Sec Def coming down for a private inspection tour next week, and the biggest problem I’ve got is Mrs. fucking Colonel Sumner and her goddamned dress.”

  Randy stood before the General as though he’d been training for this moment all his life, what to do when an irate general appears to be reaching the end of his tether. In the old Army, the Army of his father and his grandfather, they’d tell you to make a quip, get a laugh, help the old man over the hump. Grin and bear it. His father had been a general’s aide when he was a young man, and his grandfather had been a general. Randy had been in the room hundreds of times when moments like this were shared by men who considered that the world was a place full of people who had no understanding of those who were part of the warrior caste, those who formed a Brotherhood of the Gun, those who gathered together under the banner of Duty, Honor, Country, to guard against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But this was the new Army, and this was a new kind of general. He didn’t want brotherhood; he wanted confirmation and most of all, he wanted help. He wanted his trousers pressed and his martinis mixed. He wanted his tie adjusted and his wife subdued. He wanted his shoes shined, his ego massaged. He wanted his way smoothed, and his life not just validated by companionship and camaraderie, but managed the way “handlers” groom and buff modern American politicians.

  And so Captain Randy Taylor, who was six feet tall and wise beyond his years, and had long since realized he was a handler, once again endeavored to handle the life of General William Beckwith, the commander of the Third Army at Fort Benning. He picked up Beckwith’s martini.

  “Let me back that up for you, sir.”

  He dropped in a couple of ice cubes, topped it off with gin, handed it to him. Beckwith drank eagerly.

  “I’ll pick up Mrs. Beckwith, sir. I’ll take Corporal Weyerich with me. He’s the clerk who used to work in a hair salon.”

  Beckwith, wearily: “Right. Weyerich. Of course.”

  “Corporal Weyerich will comb out her hair. I’ll fix her a Manhattan. While Weyerich is doing her hair, I’ll give Mrs. Sumner a call and tell her she’s not to wear the same dress as Mrs. Beckwith. I’ll coordinate with your driver and make sure we arrive at the club the same time you do, so she won’t have to stand around waiting.”

  Randy handed the General’s dress blue trousers to him. Beckwith stepped into the trousers, pulled the suspenders over his shoulders.

  “I guess the question I ought to be asking myself is, What would I do without you, Randy? Order myself up a concierge, I guess.”

  A knowing smile: “I don’t believe Army commands come equipped with a concierge. Not provided for in the TO&E, sir.”

  Beckwith laughed, threw an arm around Randy’s shoulder. “Listen to me, now. I want to get this thing tonight over with as quickly as possible. I give my speech to the ladies at the club at 2100. I’ll conclude at 2120 and circulate. I want you to get word to me by 2130 that there’s a power line down, or lightning has hit some fucking building, or the parade field’s waist high and rising, something that will require my immediate attention.”

  Randy nodded. “
I’ll call Peters, sir. The O-club manager. He’ll give you the message.”

  “Good work.”

  Beckwith walked over to the wardrobe stand, where his dress blue jacket hung. Lovingly he ran his fingers over the ribbons above the left breast pocket, touched the stars on the jacket epaulets. Randy started to leave. Beckwith stopped him.

  “Who’s driving me tonight?”

  “Sergeant Taylor, sir.”

  “Tell Taylor to leave the staff car in front of the club for me. I’ll drive myself home.”

  Despite the fact that Army policy required an enlisted man to drive the General’s staff car, this was a request that General Beckwith had made before, and Randy didn’t hesitate. “Right, sir. I’ll tell him.”

  “You’d better get a move on if you’re going to get the missus over to the club at 1900.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Randy scooted through the door to his office and picked up the phone. “Weyrich? I’ve got a mission for you.” He grabbed his overcoat and was out the door.

  The storm caught them just outside of Eufaula, Alabama. The road was obliterated by blinding sheets of rain that slowed them to twenty miles per hour. Mace was driving. It took nearly an hour to make the fifteen-minute drive from Eufaula to Phenix City, just across the Chattahoochee from Fort Benning. Mace could barely make out the edge of the road. The defroster was on full, and failed utterly to clear the inside of the windshield. Kara swiped the windshield with a paper towel, but it fogged again quickly, so she tore off another towel and kept wiping, a pile of wadded-up paper towels growing at her feet.

  Mace squinted into the gloom. “This stuff is going to play hell with training tomorrow. We’re supposed to run the confidence course at 0800. There ain’t a chance it’s going to let up.”

  “Don’t worry. Your battalion commander will call it off.”

  “Not a chance. They’ve got some new policy, came down last month, that no training was to be canceled due to weather. A friend of mine told me they had him practicing river crossings last week. It was forty-five outside. The water was fifty degrees, and they had them in there all day.”

  Kara peered into the rain. “I think this is the turnoff for the bridge. Can you see the sign?”

  He squinted out the side window. “Yeah, this is it.”

  He made a right, and the Cherokee started up the long ramp leading to the bridge. Below them the Chattahoochee was swollen, surging over its banks, filling the sloughs and low spots along the river.

  “Christ, you see that?” Mace pointed out the window. “Half the damn north end of the state is dumping runoff down that channel. I’ve never seen the river this high.”

  “Me either.”

  “Let’s turn on the weather.” He fiddled with the radio until he came up with an all-news station out of Atlanta. The radio announcer’s voice was edgy, tinged with excitement.

  “. . . power is out to twelve thousand homes in the Atlanta area . . . six inches have fallen in the last two hours, and rain is not expected to let up until Monday afternoon . . . Georgia Electric has crews on the move all over the northwest side . . .”

  They listened for a minute, then he turned off the radio. “I’ve seen storms like this before come boiling out of the Gulf. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  “I wonder how things look out at the post.”

  “They probably called an alert, got everybody in full field gear, waiting for orders to fill sandbags.”

  He slowed the car at a light. The intersection was flooded, water flowing over the curbs. He turned left. The Cherokee plowed through, found clear pavement, and accelerated.

  “Which way are you going?”

  “South gate. It’s quicker. Artillery Drive comes up right behind my barracks.”

  He turned left, drove a half mile, made another left. They were on a two-lane blacktop out near the edge of Columbus. The headlights of the Cherokee found a small sign: FT. BENNING SOUTH GATE. He made the turn onto the military reservation, driving down a narrow road lined on either side with thick pine forests.

  “Aaahhh. No place like home,” said Mace.

  “How’d you manage to get yourself stationed here at Benning for so long?”

  Smiling: “They do stuff like that for sergeants.”

  “The longest duty I ever had was two years. I’ve done my share of one-year tours.”

  “That’s what you get for not being married. They’ll ship you anywhere anytime, they know you haven’t got a family to lug around.”

  “So? You’re not married, and I don’t see them bouncing you between Army posts like a damn ping-pong ball.”

  “Like I said. You get good deals when you’re an NCO.”

  She laughed. “I see. God made you a sergeant first and a man second. I call that the luck of the draw.”

  “I don’t know you’d call five years at Benning luck.” He took a swipe at the windshield and sat forward, straining to see out. “Jesus. Look at the rifle range.”

  He slowed the Cherokee to a stop. They could make out the corrugated steel sheds and control tower of the rifle range standing in the middle of a lake covering several acres.

  “Incredible.”

  “I’ve never seen rain this bad at Benning,” said Mace. “I mean, this is really something. And it’s starting to come down harder.”

  The wind shifted, and rain pelted the Cherokee like a shower of BB’s. The ditches on either side of them were flooded, water rushing beside them in wide brown streams. They crossed an old concrete bridge that usually stood a good thirty feet above the creek bed. Water flowed less than a yard below the roadway.

  As they started up a hill on the other side of the bridge, he reached down to drop the Cherokee into a lower gear, and Kara touched his hand. “Maybe we’d better turn around, head back, and go through the main gate. We’re going to get stuck out here.”

  “Nah, we’ll do okay. We’ve only got another couple of miles to go.”

  “I mean it, Mace. I want you to turn around.”

  He pulled to a stop at the crest of a hill, staring straight ahead. His voice was icy. “You pulling rank on me?”

  “Don’t start, Mace. All I’m saying is—”

  “It’s your car, huh? You’re the major, you’re the one gets to decide where we go? You wanna drive? Here.” He opened the door. Needles of rain stung her face.

  “Mace, don’t be ridiculous . . .”

  He slammed the door. He was walking around the front of the car when he started running down the hill. She lost sight of him, and then suddenly he opened the door and climbed behind the wheel.

  “Look down there! You see it?”

  Kara squinted into the darkness. “Where?”

  He put the Cherokee in first and eased down the hill. The river had overflowed its banks, flooding the road. The Cherokee was axle deep when he shouted:

  “There!”

  Water rushed by in a violent torrent, nearly covering a car stalled about twenty yards ahead of them. A woman was hanging out of the window of the car, her dark hair blowing wildly in the wind. Mace stepped into the rushing water. Kara knew he was yelling, but she couldn’t hear him.

  Captain Taylor’s fingers found the levers on the control panel in the dark control booth. Below him a woman with truly huge hair was finishing her introduction. The applause was deafening as General Beckwith stood up and approached the podium.

  Slowly Randy pressed two of the levers up their slides a notch. Down on the stage of the officers club ballroom, the effect was subtle but real. General Beckwith’s face took on a healthy glow in the spots thrown through red and blue gels. Randy turned to the man sitting next to him.

  “He’ll start moving around in a minute, Weyrich. Follow him with the white spot. Widen it out from waist up. Take him head-to-toe when he moves. You’ll wash him out if it’s too intense.”

  “Got you, Captain.”

  Randy opened the door and walked down a set of narrow stairs, open
ed another door into a back corridor in the officers club. He passed through the kitchen, stopped and poured himself a cup of coffee, and gnawed on a dinner roll for a few moments. Then he checked his watch and went out the back door to a loading dock. He dropped a quarter in a pay phone and dialed.

  “Major, it’s Captain Taylor. I need to talk to the General. It’s an emergency. This storm is getting worse. There’s flooding out near Lawson Army Air Field. They’re afraid the Chattahoochee is going to . . .” He waited a moment. “Right, sir. I understand. Tell the General I’ll have the staff car outside the front entrance.”

  He hung up the phone and walked down the steps to a waiting staff car. He drove around to the front of the officers club. The front door burst open. General Beckwith strode purposefully toward the car, surrounded by several officers in their dress blues. One of them opened the back door. Beckwith got in. Randy pulled away.

  “What’d you tell them?” asked Beckwith, leaning forward.

  “The truth. The whole damn post is underwater.”

  Beckwith settled back. “Fine job. Damn fine job, Randy.”

  Randy turned a corner, cut the lights, pulling up behind a car parked behind the movie theater. He got out, holding the door for the General, who walked around and slipped easily behind the wheel. Randy saluted smartly.

  “Sir, the radio is tuned to your command frequency.”

  Beckwith saluted. “See you tomorrow morning, son.” Beckwith’s staff car disappeared down the alley behind the theater.

  Mace was back inside the Cherokee, trembling from the cold. He picked up the cell phone, dialed 911. The phone beeped twice and turned itself off. “Out of range.” He threw the Cherokee into reverse and started backing up. “We’ve got to go for help.” He reached the crest of the hill and whipped the wheel, turning the car around. He shifted gears, and the car lurched down the hill. They were at speed, approaching the low concrete bridge, when she screamed: