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All this seemed fine for tactical or war-fighting strategy meetings, but JCS chairman General Rod Barczynski also favored the room for administrative meetings. Thirty-five years of living and fighting in tanks had made the general uncomfortable with rooms with windows and curtains and wood tables. Donchez could understand but still felt odd discussing, say, the latest uniform change in the war-fighting environment of the joint-briefing facility. Except, of course, this morning’s briefing was no administrative function.

Barczynski wanted answers. Dick Donchez’s career had been filled with sessions like these. To Donchez, success was not a matter of avoiding failure but of making the right decisions and taking the correct action when staring failure in the face.

Behind Donchez were his commanders-in chief — John Traeps, the CINC naval forces Mediterranean, and Kenny Mckeigh, the CINC naval forces Atlantic — as well as his aide Fred Rummel. Vice C.N.O Watson was minding the store in Flag Plot. Donchez sat at the table across from the general and his staff, Donchez’s CINCS seating themselves beside him. He looked up at Barczynski.

“Afternoon, General,” Donchez said. “Having a good vacation?”

Donchez referred to Barczynski’s penchant for getting outdoors away from D.C. on weekends and holidays.

Being at work on the Christmas holidays, war or no war, was not his style.

“I’ve had a lot better, Dick,” the general said.

The general’s physical appearance made him seem an unlikely character to be in command of the nation’s military.

He was a large man, his barrel chest presiding over an equally broad paunch, but somehow Barczynski didn’t seem fat, just big. Someone seeing him at the grocery store would think him a boilermaker or a longshoreman. He had a habit of taking off his uniform jacket and rolling up his shirtsleeves, and when he did his thick forearms bulged from the shirt. Barczynski had a way of looking a man in the eyes with disarming directness, especially when asking — rarely ordering — that an action be taken, his eyes smiling, the laugh lines coming, as if to say I know you can do this, will you help me out? Those eyes also had the ability to get the truth from subordinates trying to cover their trails, and tails. They could also mesmerize bosses, disarming opponents.

And they worked wonders with the press, who loved him. There were rumors that when he retired he could win a presidential nomination. He was one of few officers able to weld a caring attitude for his men with a relentless commitment to the mission at hand. Officers and enlisted men alike would do things for Barczynski that they would never agree to do for anyone else, taking the unglamorous missions, hardship tours, the army’s dirty jobs. As a way to reward the men who worked hard for him, he was fond of building esprit de corps by throwing keg parties; wherever he had been assigned in his career he could always be found after hours in the officers’ club, usually with a Heineken in each giant fist, surrounded by younger officers. But his physical appearance and beer diplomacy masked a penetrating insight and a tactician’s mind unrivaled by most military academicians.

Donchez himself had enormous professional and personal respect for Barczynski as well as liking him as a friend and fellow officer, the two senior officers friends for the past several years. But even so, Donchez was wary of the army officer because he felt he was short on understanding of navy operations. Barczynski’s working knowledge of the fleet had come from joint-command operations during which he’d come back with a distaste for carrier battle groups, the navy’s starting offense. Over the last few years Donchez had convinced Barczynski of the utility of submarines, the usefulness of seal team commandos, the gunboat diplomacy of Aegis cruisers, the punch of an amphibious assault by a bat talion of Marines, and the value of sea-launched Javelin cruise missiles, but the general still balked at Donchez’s insistence that carrier air wings were worth their price tag, the general more comfortable with land-based air force fighters and bombers, which he’d been familiar with since his West Point graduation. Donchez had continued to press, and Barczynski had grudgingly gone along with the navy chief’s tactical recommendations, but as far as carrier battle groups were concerned, they were something that Barczynski tolerated rather than supported.

Barczynski looked at Donchez now and started in abruptly. “Dick, what’s this I hear about Sihoud getting away? I thought your seals were there to stop that. Do you know how tough it was to get Dawson to buy in on this assassination thing? We promised him results. So far we’ve got nothing.”