​Sarah read the story of the meteor striking a home somewhere in the Australian outback a second time.  
 
“Is there a problem Sarah?” her producer, Charlie Martin, the WNN News Producer for the early morning shift, asked when he noted her sour expression just  before her nine a.m. segment in the anchor test of the WNN morning straight news show.  
 
“It’s just that,” she paused collecting her thoughts, “I always thought a meteor striking a house was a one in ten million event.”  
 
“That story from Australia?” Martin asked.
 
“Yes” Sarah answered thinking about the story that her college roommate had told her.   “My college roommate’s parents and sister were killed when a meteor struck their house.”  She tried to remember more details.  
 
Martin shook his head and pointed towards the empty seat in front of the cameras.  The early morning news shows were mainly a rehash of last nights news, edited, and Sarah’s job was primarily to introduce the stories without much input to the content.  It was a far cry from what she had done when she joined WNN nearly ten years before.  Once the Markson Brothers gained control seven years back, the focus changed from straight news and investigative journalism to news slanted to a single point of view that Sarah found offensive.  Early in her time there she had been given assignments that needed her investigative skills, but once the change-over happened, her known left of center leanings had been channeled into more human interest stories and now, near the end of her run there, to reading the headlines and introducing canned reports.   
 
 
“We sugar coat the news Charlie or actually lie to our audience if it makes the point of the right wing owners of this company,” Sarah said walking over to his desk after her hour was finished 
 
“Why is that Sarah,” Ross answered knowing all of her arguments. 
 
“Compare how we treated President King, a man of few morals and who told far more lies than truths, and who even Randall, our chameleon of a New Director, agreed was dangerous to our democratic values,  with how we treated President Toure, his predecessor who could, according to commentators and guests on this network do nothing right.”
 
He waited for Sarah to stop her monologue, then asked, “what is your point?”
 
 “Take the story on General Helmut Reinhardt, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
 
“A hero by any objective measure,” Martin added, “so what?”
 
“The great man gave a speech yesterday to a bunch of right wing extremists two days back on the risks we face now that Kirsten Anderson will be our next President.    General Reinhardt asserted that Kirsten Anderson didn’t have the ‘ball’ that President King had when it comes to dealing with terrorists, that she’d be more worried about collateral damage for civilians rather than the risk that failure to bomb might have for American troops on the ground, that, Charlie, you know is not true, at least not from what she’s stated many times he saw as the failures of the Toure administration in Syria.”  
 
“Sarah, they were business executives and interested in what happens to the Defense budget with someone like Judith Wilson, Professor of Peace Studies at Cornell now, and rumored to be her nominee for Secretary of Defense gets her way and makes the cuts she’s hinted at . And,”  Martin paused, “he said things I think I agree with.” 
 
“Well, in any case, we ignored the most dangerous and inflammatory parts of his speech, letting him seem quite reasonable in his critique of what’s wrong with the foreign policy she laid out last year when she ran for office.  Someone like Helmut Reinhardt sounds reasonable, but the underlying message is – we can’t let our guard down, we have to protect the nation from the extremists in the Democratic Party who will now be in charge of keeping us safe.”
    
”So?”
 
“He called,” she paused for effect, “and not in so many words,  the incoming administration a bunch of far left progressives without any idea of how to govern or protect the country.”   
 
“I watched a good twenty minutes of the speech this morning.  The General pointed out the obvious Sarah; we live in a damn dangerous neighborhood and that simply assuming good intentions are not enough to insure security.”  
 
“You trust that man?”
 
“I trust that General Reinhardt has our nation’s best interests at heart, yes.”
 
“General Reinhardt is, at best, well-meaning and patriotic.  At worse, he’d like to create a fascist state offering security at the price of basic freedom.  It leads to Big Brother, and you know it Charlie!  He wasn’t talking about some crazy teenager with nuclear weapons like that nut in North Korea, he was talking about snakes in our midst and how best to weed them out. We have to let the NSA do it’s damn job, not hamstring it.” She stopped.  The argument with Charlie Ross was an old one and she knew she was skating on thin ice.
 
“What if this guy’s a fascist?” Charlie laughed. “They’re all fascists’ honey, spend most of your life saying yes sir, no sir, and you kind of get used to giving orders or taking them, but I’ll tell you what, we’re a few minutes short in the next hour, take a look at the speech, work with one of the editors to add a bit more ‘color’, about another minute okay?.” He smiled.  “ 
 
“Thanks Charlie.”  She touched him gently knowing he was one of her few allies in the news department.
 
As he was leaving her desk,  Ross remembered what he had  wanted to tell her.  “Sarah, make sure you drop by Randall’s office before you leave, he needs to see you about a story idea he has.”  
 
“What’s it about?”
 
 “Don’t know,” he said then remembered, “something about meteors.”
 
 
 
The message from Ed Randall, the WNN News Director, had been curt, to the point. Charlie Martin had handed it to her after she’d finished without a word, but he was obviously upset.  The note, while reminding her of the issue of a special story for the Christmas-New Year’s news drought on meteors, also suggested something more.  Perhaps, she thought,  as she walked to his office in one corner of the WNN building in mid-town Manhattan, she’d gone too far in adding to the clip on the Reinhardt speech with the few words of opinion she’d added at the end. 
 
“What were you thinking about when you changed that segment on General Reinhardt?” Randall shouted when she walked into his office after the 11 a.m. segment was finished.   “They’re going to give me hell about that upstairs.  The suits on the 20th floor love General Reinhardt and you made it look like he was going to round up everyone with a grudge against the government and put them in camps.  Your comments at the end didn’t improve the picture.”
 
“Quit fussing Ed.  I just highlighted the parts of his speech that made him sound a bit more strident and dangerous then the utter dribble that our editors had selected to show the people who happen to watch in the morning.”
 
“He’s also our most decorated war hero.   Two Medals of Honor, a Gold and Silver Star, that makes him one of a kind especially for a General officer Sarah.  He’s a national treasure and likely the next President after the Kirsten Anderson leaves office.”   
 
“And he walks on water too Ed.  Cut the infomercial.  General Reinhardt is far too political for a general officer.”     
 
 “We made him sound like Attila the Hun.  I saw it in person.   We stood and cheered at the end.   And Sarah, he’s pointing out the obvious.   We can’t let our guard down, not now, not ever.” 
 
What she’d done to the speech wasn’t anything more or less than what WNN did daily to the words of men and women more liberal than the General. Randall cooled off and sat back in his chair.  He’d hired her because she had independence in her journalism rather than simply being a beautiful face with a good voice.   It was trait he had searched for when he ran a news desk twenty years before, but which was less in demand in this age of sound bites and top-down ideologically correct journalism.    He’d have to ease her out next year to make room for a new face.   
 
“You read that short clip on that family in Australia, the one about that meteor striking their home?”  Randall asked.  
 
“Yes,” Sarah felt a cold chill.  “Why?”
 
“I’d like to do a half hour special on meteors and the danger posed to life on earth” Randall said, something to run during the Christmas – New Years week.  You’re just too good an investigative reporter to leave reading scripts” he added watching her face for approval.  “I need a solid half hour on the dangers of catastrophic events destroying this rat hole.  Get me a budget and storyboards. Split it into short segments so we can use it as filler too in the late night time slots when new news is scarce.” 
 
“Something to frighten the children before Santa comes to give out treats?”
 
“No! Stop being so damn cynical Sarah.  I want a story that’s positive and that shows how the government’s working to protect us from disaster.  There was a close fly-by a few years ago and then the Russian meteor that struck somewhere in Siberia not too long ago.”
 
Sarah took the subway home with her eyes barely open.  The early morning schedule was exhausting.   To reach the studio by 5 a.m., she had to get up by 3:30.  To do that she needed to be in bed by seven in the evening, not the usual time to go to sleep and not in synch with any of her friend’s schedule.  Too tired to even put the few groceries she’d picked up at the corner convenience store, away; Sarah collapsed on the couch, and dozed until the phone rang.  
 
“I caught your 11 a.m. show.  You’re taking some chances aren’t you Sarah?”  
 
“Teddy” she said pleased to hear his voice.  Their affair had been on and off again over the past sixteen years with neither one able to commit, and yet they were still the best of friends.  
 
“Sarah, Reinhardt bites.”
 
“I thought the General was your hero.  You made him into a national treasure.”  Rothstein had written two best sellers that had glorified General Reinhardt in the minds of the public and highlighted his unique brand of leadership and skills.
 
 “He made himself into a hero, I only reported the story” and Ted added, he saved my life more than once.       “Make no mistake Sarah, Reinhardt is dangerous when he’s pissed off.  So darling, be careful!”  
 
“Let me tell you, Teddy, that at WNN, and in corporate offices everywhere, the General is like a God.”  
 
“Not surprising, quit, I’ll help you get another job, one that uses your talents better than this one.”   
 
She knew what was coming and she wasn’t in the mood.  “I don’t want to hear it today Teddy.  I’m a third rate journalist, and you’re a star.” 
 
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
 
“News anchors are well-paid jokes.”
 
Sarah let the receiver drop.  She looked out at the New York skyline, barely visible through her picture window.   The people below looked small, inconsequential.   For the first time since coming here, she felt small and inconsequential.  Rothstein was right, it was time to change careers, it was time to leave WNN before she was ushered out the door by Randall. 
 

 

​General Helmut Reinhardt smiled, pointed to friends in the audience, and waited until the applause died down.  The ballroom at the Mayflower was filled with defense lobbyists and Congressional staffers.   They were his natural allies and future supporters.  He’d been giving this speech now for the past few months, carefully choosing his audiences, mindful too that he was skating close to the wind with respect to what a General can say without fully retiring.  By January, before the next administration took power, he’d be gone.  He waited until the room was nearly silent before beginning.  
 
 “I know terror,” Reinhardt paused waiting for complete silence before starting again.  “I know terror first hand.  I know terror from the ground and from the air, and I know that we must never let this madness take root here.     We must forever guard our future against those who wish, fervently, to destroy everything that is good and great about this nation, be they home grown anarchists or foreign agents, be they right-wing sunshine patriots unwilling to accept this great country is changing its hues and colors, or from the left bent on redistributing wealth and property underlying our economy through their charity with the money and sweat of others.   I will never let that happen, not on my watch, not ever!”     
 
 Next he carefully laid out the timeline of terror from the first bombings of our embassies in Africa to that fateful day when the Pentagon and the World Trade towers were bombed.  He didn’t mince words laying blame on both parties for failing to act or for making the problem worse.  No one could say that Helmut Reinhardt, the highest-ranking military officer and also the most decorated soldier in the history of the American Republic, waffled.  He explained how even taking down Omar Ibrahim, the founder of Al Qaeda,  did not stop others from seeking our blood and treasure.  He knew firsthand how our actions over the past twenty years in the Middle East had sown the seeds of terror not just in that region but in every part of the developed and developing world.    As he spoke, he thought of Ali Hassan, his old comrade from his days in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, was likely the secret face of Al Qaeda, far more dangerous than Omar Ibrahim had ever been because he blended in, he was accepted, a rich man using terrorism like play dough to enrich him and make him more powerful. 
 
“Broad oceans no longer protect us from home grown terrorists or foreign saboteurs bent on the destruction of our very way of life.  So, my friends, this old soldier will soon retire from the uniform, but not from the fight.   I will not stop working to protect the American people from politicians who willingly open our doors by letting down our guard.”  Reinhardt paused, looked squarely at the huge American flag hanging at the back of the Mayflower ballroom, placed his hand over his heart, and added.  “God bless you all, and God bless the United States of America.”
 
He watched as the room erupted into applause.  Once the cheering subsided, the General saluted the American flag that hung from the second floor balcony on the far side of the large room, turned crisply, and marched off the stage. 
 
“How do you think it went?” He asked his aide, a full colonel, who carried the portable computer that tied directly into the National Military Command Center computers and served as a secure communications device from nearly anywhere in the world. 
 
“You’re a natural politician General,” he said, then showed him the text message that had come while he was speaking.    
 
          
“Seems,” he said with a kind of ironic smile, “I’m making even Winthrop nervous, and that takes something to do.” 
 
“Some people, General, believe you’re planning a coup.”  
 
They both laughed.
 
          
 
 Hollis Winthrop’s secretary waved Reinhardt through to the Secretary’s office.     Compared to Reinhardt’s office, buried deep in the JCS area, the office of the Secretary of Defense was huge.  Winthrop was a caretaker.  He’s moved up from Deputy when the Secretary of Defense had departed three months before the end of President Kings tumultuous term in office.
 
“You’re making quite a name for yourself General,” the Acting Secretary of Defense said with a chuckle.       
 
 “I’ll be gone soon enough Hollis.”    
 
“If their campaign promises can be believed, this building will be turned into the VA hospital it was designed to be after the last Great War to end all wars.  Appointing Judith Wilson has a lot of people looking for jobs.”  Winthrop, a nominal Republican appointed by King at the recommendation of one of his donors said with a smile.  He’d heard only complaints from anyone with a stake in the overpriced weapons systems from the F-35 to the ill-fated Army Fast Deployment flying carpet the M13 Ground Hugger.
 
“No doubt” Reinhardt had seen the look of fear on the faces of even senior military officers who were close to retirement.  If Wilson could be believed she would enforce the conflict of interest rules that were mostly ignored, making it hard for these old warriors to get rich on consulting contracts once they retired.
 
“You have plans for when you retire?”
 
“Consulting, lecturing, and speaking out.  It’s not money that I want,” Reinhardt left the rest unsaid knowing that Winthrop was well aware of his Presidential ambitions, “besides my mother left me a rather obscene amount of money  when she died.”   
 
“The Senate?” Winthrop asked.
 
“Takes too long to get ahead there, I’m thinking of something a bit higher.”  
 
“You think the Party would turn to you Helmut?”  
 
“Unlike some of the people they have turned to project “strength” I at least know when it can and when it shouldn’t be used.”  He had lived through the years of the King administration working hard to stop him from doing anything stupid, crazy, and in his own mind, preparing to remove him from office before he started a nuclear war that would have left millions dead from Korea to Japan to the United States mainland. “Still,” he mused, “ if there were a crisis, say a terrorist attack with a suitcase nuke, then I think I’d win in a heartbeat.  Also Kirsten Anderson will have her hands full just trying to get this country moving again after the October collapse given that the cookie jar has been cleaned out by the last Republican tax bill.  So there’s a real chance and God knows I’m no racist, but the far right wackos love me anyway despite my known belief that we need to close the racial and economic divide on this country.”   
 
Hollis Winthrop had known Helmut Reinhardt for more than twenty years. The General could be charming, and yet, there was something else about the man that made him uneasy too.     Reinhardt’s route to the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been quite unconventional for an Air Force officer.  He’d gone from the Academy where he graduated near first in the class, to flight school before the end of the Vietnam War, and then taken the special operations course in the jungles of Panama and a dangerous forward air controller job during the last year’s of the war flying missions deep into enemy held territory as a forward air controller.  He’d been dropped behind the fast changing lines during the last days of the war and called in air strikes to give the retreat from Saigon more time, and for that work he’d earned a Silver Star for bravery, the first of so many medals and commendations that many were left out of the numerous biographies and stories printed about him.    Within thirty years of leaving the Academy, he’d reached the rank of Major General when most officers were lucky to have made Colonel.  The rest of his career, Hollis knew, was the stuff of legends.     
 
That was the official story.   There was also a classified biography involving his four years running guns to the Afghan mujahedeen fighting the Soviets.  He’d have to bury that deep if he wished to become President given the tendency of the American public to see conspiracies everywhere.    
 
“Do you still see that reporter,” Winthrop asked thinking about the two best sellers that had made Reinhardt into a household name.  The two deep penetration missions, one along the Pakistani-Afghan border in 2006 and the other about two years later near the end of the Iraqi war where he’d rescued a company of support troops that had strayed across the Iranian border, had earned him two Medals of Honor, a unique accomplishment especially as he was by then already a General officer and Generals rarely were placed in the kind of dangerous situations that Helmut Reinhardt craved.   
 
“Teddy Rothstein?  We had a falling out over that last article he wrote.   He’s become a bit too critical of me for my taste.”
 
“After you made his career?”
 
“Yes, but that’s the nature of this business, isn’t it Hollis?  Can’t always trust your friends, but you sure as hell can know your enemies will be coming after you.”
 
Winthrop was about to dismiss Reinhardt when he remembered the rings.  It was one more loose end he wanted to clean up before the new team took office.   
 
“NorthStar” Hollis asked. “Mean anything to you General?”
 
“NorthStar was my Waterloo, Hollis, a failure through and through,” Reinhardt explained with a sigh, “wasted about $ 13 billion in taxpayers’ dollars, all black money from over budgeting on purpose some of the new equipment.”
 
“What was it intended to do?” Winthrop asked, surprised by the answer.  He’d earlier tried to find references to it in highly classified project files on “black program”, but without success.  It was like it had completely disappeared.  He’d had the search go back all the way to 2001 without finding any reference to it, and yet there were the rings and the note saying these were part of NorthStar command and control.
 
“It was a blue sky project to develop a satellite system to intercept cell phone transmissions.  We tested the concept with one satellite in Polar orbit.  If that worked, then others would be launched to supplement the system.  Aside from the orbit being flawed, the equipment failed to perform as promised.  When the satellite’s orbit proved unstable, we blew it up.  We also blew up the paper trail on the project.”  
 
“You spent thirteen billion dollars without Congressional oversight?” Hollis asked incredulously.
 
“Don’t look so damn surprised,” Reinhardt answered angrily.  “You’ve worked here long enough to know how easy it is to spend that kind of money.  Secretary Forrestal, you know Forest’s obsession with using near space orbit to our advantage, you know the guy who added the phrase ‘there are known knowns and unknown unknowns’ to our military vocabulary, well,” Reinhardt paused remembering the conversation well, “set me the tasking first day he took office. He and his Deputy Secretary Kramer had been thinking about how hard it was to get a good fix on cell phones in remote areas for intercepts by NSA, then after 9/11, they decided to make it happen.   We had the first bird launched by 2004.  We tried to use off the shelf technology, but it didn’t do the job.   We killed everything once the orbit became unstable and electronic intercepts without a precise known orbit turned out to be worthless to the NSA. Before Toure took office, the lone NorthStar satellite’s orbit degraded so much it burned up in the atmosphere.    So we buried the record deep so no ninny from the Congress could find know what the project was about.     Honestly Hollis,” Reinhardt said with a chuckle, “its best forgotten.” 
     
 
“What’s this?”  Winthrop slid a small box across the desk.  Across the top there was a picture of a star hanging over a globe and printed underneath the words ‘NorthStar’ in gold letters.  
 
Reinhardt opened it carefully.   Inside were two rings that looked like simple gold wedding bands.  
 
“Souvenirs of the project,” Reinhardt said closing the box. “Mind if I keep this Hollis?  I lost mine a few years back.”
 
“Sure, keep them.  We were going to throw them out, but I had a hunch that you knew what Project NorthStar was all about.”
 
Reinhardt slipped the case into his jacket pocket.     
 
 He left Winthrop’s office feeling pleased.  Getting the rings back had been high on his agenda before he left, he’d suspected that they had been somewhere in the Secretary’s office.  Having them given to him so easily made him believe more strongly in the wisdom of his plan.  Added to his own ring from the project and the one that the prior Chairman of the JCS had given him on retirement meant that he had four of the nine rings needed to make NorthStar operational.
 
It was a short walk to the JCS area that filled nearly one fifth of the building, starting on the second floor and going down through three or more sub-basements.  At the very bottom, the National Military Command Center was located.   It was hardened to, in theory; withstand all but a direct hit on the building.  Deep inside the NMCC was the Tank, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff often met to discuss strategy and budgets.  It was a small, tiered room, in which the four service branch chiefs and the Chairman could sit facing one another and hammer out policy.   
 
Reinhardt opened the door to his office.   His personal assistant, a young Lieutenant, fresh out of the Academy, had been fielding questions for the past hour from angry four stars waiting for Reinhardt in the JCS conference room, six floors below deep inside the National Military Command Center.       
 
“You know how General Franks gets when you fail to show up for an Army briefing?”
 
“Who cares how General Franks gets, Mira?  I was with Winthrop.  Not surprisingly, he had a problem with my speech two days ago.  Wait until he reads the transcript of this morning’s speech.”  
 
“They’re waiting for you downstairs, General” Mira reminded him gently.
 
 
“Let them stew.  Franks will argue for more money in the January budget.  But it won’t make a difference, since the budgets dead on arrival. Twelve months of wasted effort.   Judith Wilson will cut the goodies, including that stupid, rapid-mobility hovercraft that Franks has been pushing.”  He paused and offered her one of his million dollar smiles. 
 
“Okay, General, what should I tell them?” Mira asked. “Are you going down or not?”
 
“What, Mira love,” Reinhardt kicked the door shut, “if we simply went to lunch, and after lunch we retreated to my place and screwed?”
 
Mira blushed, and then opened the communications channel to the JCS meeting five stories under the Chairman’s office in the command post.    The flat panel closed circuit TV along one wall showed General Franks, the Army Chief of Staff, standing ramrod straight in front of a podium.
 
“Helmut here, Bob,” Reinhardt said into the camera on his desk.  He studied the on the other screen in his office.  It showed the equipment levels projected for major commands by type for the next five years.     As he did so, he motioned for Mira to come closer, pointing to his lap, while turning off the video feed from his office to the conference room.  She chose a part of his large desk empty of papers and leaned back against it so she could see the  the huge  television monitor on the far wall of the office.  She’d made that mistake with Reinhardt once too often.      
 
“I think you’ll have to cut the M13 Ground Hugger program again.”
 
“Helmut if we don’t get that mobility platform then what the hell was the point of adding two divisions of light infantry to the active forces?  How are they going to deploy without the Ground Hugger?”
 
“The way you used to deploy, Robert.  March or ride in those fifty thousand plus Humvees or ten thousand plus Bradley’s, Styker’s, tucked away, safe and sound, in,” he hesitated as he tried to recall the exact number, “God only knows how many of those super-armored personnel carriers you just had to have for Iraq and Afghanistan.    Who says soldiers need to ride into battle on a cushion of air Bob?  And,” Reinhardt paused for effect knowing how it would infuriate Franks, “if you’d spent any time in combat, you’d know that a few grunts spread out is less of a target than twenty in one of those poorly armored Bradley’s or Humvees.  You agree Bull?”
 
The Marine General, a fireplug of a man with a head that rested squarely on his shoulders, without seemingly the benefit of a neck, stood up as the camera turned to focus on his face.    His nickname was ‘Bull’, because he never wavered in battle, always charging ahead at the front of the troops.  It was a wonder that he’d never been shot badly.
 
“A’hh agree with the General, Bob,” his Tennessee drawl making him hard to understand. “You know, and I know, the Hugger never will get you the kind of mobility you’ll need, besides the fucker costs too much; and unless it’s going across a parking lot, it’s slower than molasses.   We tested one, Helmut; damn thing only did about seven miles an hour across flat, open terrain, but then stopped dead when it came to trees.  Heck, it just barely made it over shrubs and underbrush barely four feet tall,” he laughed.  Then he added the final negative “the fucker uses fuel like an M-1 tank.  Unless you have flying fuel trucks in the mix, Bob, then you’d run out of gas before you reached the battle.”   There was just one final insult to be added to leave Franks fuming.  “Course it sure looks great going over shrubs.” 
 
 This was a standing joke within the senior brass, guaranteed to royally piss the Chief of Staff of the Army.    The Hugger had been previewed using a computer-generated simulation produced by the contractor when the system was in Phase I development. It showed the Hugger speeding across a field of low-lying bushes.  Explosions were going off all around it without hitting a single one of the 100 thousand dollar Huggers.        
 
The Army Chief of Staff, Bob Franks, knew the Hugger had problems.  Yet, if the Hugger were cut from the force table, then he’d be living on only his pension when he retired at the end of the year. With the Hugger in the budget, General Defense would hire Franks as a consultant, at a six-figure salary to keep the program on track for more funding, and he could retire to the golf course and fund his grandchildren’s college to boot.   
 
 Until Reinhardt had interrupted, the briefing was going well, but now the entire force mobility strategy, on which next year’s budget was based, would need to be reworked.  Franks glared at the Marine General, only to be met by an equally formidable stare in return.  He didn’t need to be told the best way to lead his million men by a Marine Corp General, whose force consisted of just two amphibious divisions of barely forty thousand soldiers.
 
“Sorry to rain on your parade Bob, but I think you need to see how things look without the Hugger in there.  Look for other transportation options that we can afford without sacrificing too much in the way of firepower to get them.  I think I’ve heard enough.  Anything more, Bob?”
 
 
Franks found it difficult to go on.  Still, Reinhardt would be gone in less than a month.   “I guess I’ll go back and see what we can do with what we already have in the pipeline, but the Hugger is still needed.”
 
Reinhardt threw him a bone.    “Send me a report on what it will take to solve the technical problems.  Price out a 1000 unit-buy assuming the technical fix is in and it can clear eight feet at 20 miles per hour.”    Reinhardt knew that  these were program goals that it was unlikely to meet no matter how much was spent.  They were the original, pre-contract, minimums for the program.  GenD ignored these goals after it won the contract.  Trying to meet these had added at least a billion dollars to the development budget with no end in sight.           
 
“Sounds good,” Franks saw a glimmer of hope for his post-retirement lifestyle. 
 
 
Mira switched off the monitor.  She watched Reinhardt pace the room.  The man was an inspired liar.   He lied to her all the time.  He told her that he’d make her a proper offer someday when he was out of uniform, but she doubted it. She was caught between her ambition to move up quickly and being an attractive young woman. 
 
“What do you think about the Hugger,” Reinhardt came close to Mira who was still leaning against the desk trying to push down her skirt.  “Turn you on, Mira?”  He reached and took her in both arms from behind, his hands pressing against each breast.  “Now this, Mira, is a hugger that you can count on.”
 
She pushed him off, but he continued to caress her buttocks.  She hoped that there wasn’t anyone in the outer office waiting.  Reinhardt often became quite vocal and crude when they made love.  So much for sexual harassment training of senior officers in the military she thought, still there was something almost hypnotic about the General that allowed her to maintain just enough self-respect to keep quiet.
 

 

​“Hell of a mess Donny?”  General Reinhardt said observing the burning ranch house.  
 
“Yes, General, hell of a mess.” Colonel Donney Porchelli agreed looking around at the crash scene.  The fire that had consumed the ranch house was almost extinguished now.  Huge, portable lamps lighted what was left of the house and the grounds.    The warhead had missed by more than two hundred miles.   It had flattened an old ranch house deep in the Jemez Mountains setting it on fire and killing the two occupants. 
 
“The couple died instantly,” Porchelli answered before the General could ask.      
 
“The warhead, anything left of it?”
 
“What we found is over here.” He pointed to the small tarp that lay on the ground near the ruined ranch house.  
 
The General pushed the scraps apart with his gloved hand.  He wasn’t happy.  Someone, probably at Drapper, had screwed up what should have been a simple calculation of trajectory.     
 
The barn, however, was not damaged.   The General noticed one of the men lift something into his arms  just outside the barn.  .
 
“What’s that?” the General asked pointing.
 
Porchelli met the airman halfway.  He returned a minute later out of breath holding a small child in his arms.  
 
“She was in the barn,” he said.
 
The General looked closely.  The child, probably no more than three year old, was crying, clutching a worn brown Teddy bear.          
 
 “I guess we have a problem General?”
 
“I guess we do Colonel, any ideas?”
 
“None sir”, he answered. “It’s above my pay grade.”
 
 “As you said Donny, that’s above your pay grade.  Burn the place.  Make sure you get the animals out of the barn; I don’t want any PETA types investigating and getting nosy.  Fewer the questions,  the better, accidents happen.  Right?”  Reinhardt said thinking about the consequences of the system failure to meeting the deadline that Secretary had set.    
 
 “I don’t like it” the Colonel said worried.  He didn’t entirely trust General Reinhardt.
 
 The General knelt down to be on the child’s level.  With a light hand, he brushed her hair back, away from her eyes. “Honey, it’s going to be okay,” he removed his glove so he could caress her face, drying her tears as he did so.  “Come, I’ve a real treat for you.”  He pointed towards where a small helicopter at one end of the well-lit field.    
 
Taking his hand, she followed him towards the sound of beating eggs on hard ground.    

​Hassan gritted his teeth in the bone numbing cold.  It had been a long, slow ride up from Peshawar.  He was exhausted from the jostling as the truck bounced over the rock strewn road not much wider than a goat trail.  It was far removed from his native Qatar with its flat, dusty, desert or the towers of Doha.   Opposite him sat the American officer who seemed impervious to the biting cold or the rough ride.  His coming, a month ago had shaken his world more than had the Imam who dared him to come to this God forsaken land in a mission of holy Jihad.   Before the American had come with his attitude and his airs, he and Omar Ibrahim had led a comfortable life in a heavily guarded villa in Peshawar handing out funds to the many Mujahedeen groups fighting the Soviets for control of Afghanistan.  
 
The American officer had just recently arrived to coordinate supplies, but a comfortable life in Peshawar wasn’t for him, and he had challenged both Ibrahim and him to do more than opening religious schools throughout the Northwest Territories or handing out Saudi funds to the warring groups of Afghan freedom fighters based in Peshawar.  In the end Ibrahim had given in and now Hassan was cold, hungry, and angry at both the American and the Saudi for forcing him to risk his life in a tour of the multiple Afghan battlefields from the North where the Tajik’s were fighting and through to the southern lands where the Pashtun tribes were fighting both the Soviets, the puppet government in Kabul, and each other.   
 
The truck stopped suddenly sending him pitching forward.  He listened while the driver spoke to the American in Pashto, a language he barely understood.  The American stood up and reaching down helped him to stand.     
 
“Come,” he said in Arabic, “we’re here.” 
 
The driver helped them down from the truck and pointed to the mud brick building with a dirt-encrusted sign in English with the word Café barely visible in the moonlight. The American now took the two packs and rifles from the truck.  Without waiting, he lifted one on each shoulder and walked towards the light, leaving the Arab standing in the cold.  Reluctantly, the Qatari followed.  He was enough of a mystic, despite his Western education, to realize that from this point on their lives would be intertwined, like vines on a tree, so that even if they went in different directions, at some point their lives would intertwine again.                  
    
Once inside, the driver pointed towards the back of a smoky room smelling of stale tobacco smoke and fumes from the open fireplace.  The table was set back, away from the others, and there was one man seated, the face hidden by a hood so that only the eyes could be seen in the shadows.  The building was old, the thick adobe brick walls holding in the heat from the open fire at one end providing what little there was.   On one wall was a torn poster for an Indian movie complete with a half clothed young woman.
        
The face was hidden under the patu, the warm blanket that Afghan men used to keep warm in the mountains.  The voice that greeted them, however, was that of a young woman.   The Arab startled.  The American pushed the hood back to see the face more clearly in the dim light of the kerosene lamps.  Her eyes were gray-green, deeply set, and penetrating.     
 
“A girl?” the Arab said surprised.
 
“I’m mujahedeen!”  She corrected.  
 
 Before any more could be said, three grizzled men walked to where they were seated.  The girl rose, motioning them to sit, but the men continued to stand speaking quickly in Pashto.      They left and then she sat down again watching as they withdrew to a table closer to the door.  
 
“They’re to take us into the Khost region tomorrow, just over the mountain from here.”
 
“How long to the first village?” the American asked in English.  
 
“Depending on the Russians, a few hours, or days, or never,” she said in English, her accent lilting, but her words clear.  She was thinking about the road ahead.  She stared at the American.  He was ruggedly built; there was the look of a man who could not be stopped by high arid mountains and cold winds.   Then she stared at the other man, the Qatari.  He looked too frail to survive the mountains and the Russians.  
        
 
“Will he make it?” she asked in Pashto, looking directly at the American officer.  
 
The American looked at the Arab.   There was something in his eyes that told him the truth.  He translated the girl’s words into Arabic and the answer was quick in coming.
 
“He says if a girl can make it, then he can too.” 
 
A thick stew of lamb, with warm Afghan bread, and richly brewed black tea laced with cardamom, was brought to the table.    The woman ate sparingly; with wary eyes she watched the two men, wondering which would crack under the strain.     It would be a long journey through a dangerous land from the Panjahir valley, where the Tajik’s fought the Soviets in the north to the plains of Kandahar in the south.       
 
They finished their meal and were about to follow their Pashtun guides out to into the night when an old Sufi hobbled over to their table.  He spoke in a whisper in a dialect neither man could understand.  The girl listened carefully, and then she smiled.  She translated into English.
 
“He’s Iranian, a Sufi holy man.  He reads fortunes. He asks if you would like to have your fortune told?”  
 
“Why not?” the American answered intrigued.  So far his life had been charmed, but what might come now was more of a gamble, risking his career as well as his life, in these high, dry mountains.  Far more dangerous even  than when he had flown deep into Vietcong territory as a forward air controller during the last years of the Vietnam War. 
 
 “Only Allah knows the future,” the Arab answered looking towards the door. 
 
 
The old man sat down at the table as the girl laid a few coins in his cup.                 
 
 
With his gnarled, arthritic hand, he took  her palm first.  He studied it for a long time and then closed his eyes; his face turned dark, as he let go of her hand.  As the old man spoke, the girl’s smile disappeared
 
“What did he say?” the Saudi asked anxiously.
 
“Some futures are best not told,” was all she could say through tears. 
 
Next, he reached for the American’s hand, studying it.     When he finished, he motioned to the Arab.    The Qatari pulled away, but the American reached for his wrist and pulled it forward placing it in the old man’s hand.  The old man gripped it tightly and for a long time he stood very still mumbling words that only he understood.   Finally, he spoke, his voice almost a whisper.  The girl listened carefully, and then translated from Farsi.
 
 “Brothers in blood, owing a life, separate paths to the same end at the place where it all began.  Death will find both in a blinding flash of fire as bright as the noon-day sun.”