"Jesus, this is deep shit," snorted Taylor. He thought for a moment then laughed, "Okay. Mosovich."
"Shit, I knew you'd say that," the other general growled. "The sergeant major'll shit a brick."
"He's your sergeant major, not mine," Taylor laughed again. "You want black reconnaissance in hostile territory, Mosovich is the Man. I notice you don't suggest Bobby-boy," General Taylor continued smugly.
"He hates to be called that," said the VCA, resignedly. It was an old and worn argument. "Okay, okay, put him TDY to my office. Tell 'im to sneak by the sergeant major if he's so damn stealthy." The phone clicked in Taylor's ear.
"You wanted to see me, General?"
At the quietly spoken words the report the Vice Chief of Staff had been reading flew upward in a blizzard of paper. In the three days since his call to the JSOC commander, Trayner had hardly left his office. When Command Sergeant Major Jacob "Jake the Snake" Mosovich had entered his office or how long he had been sitting quietly on the Vice Chief of Staff's couch was a mystery. The startle factor and long hours caused the VCA's temper to snap.
"God damn you, you, you, fucking juvenile delinquent! How long have you been sitting there?" he shouted, slapping his desk. All it did was hurt his hand; the implied reprimand slid off Mosovich like rain off a roof. "And have you ever heard of reporting properly?" the officer snarled. He started to reassemble the file as if it were the shredded remains of his temper.
"I've been here since 0500, sir, about twenty minutes before you got here." Jake's scar-seamed face split in an uncharacteristic grin, "General Taylor told me to avoid Bobby-Boy."
Sergeant Major Mosovich was a thirty-year veteran of covert special operations. Five feet seven inches tall and a hundred fifty pounds soaking wet, his head was almost totally bald, one side of it scar tissue, but his dress green uniform was virtually unadorned. He sported few decorations for valor and his open military record, his 201 file, listed him with limited time in combat: a few actions in Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm and Somalia. For all that, and the total lack of any official Purple Hearts, his face was pockmarked with black pits, indicative of unextracted shrapnel, and his body was covered in the ropy scars made by metal when it violates the human body. His medical file, as opposed to his 201, had so much data on trauma repair and recovery it could be used as a textbook. He had spent his whole career, except a first tour with the 82nd Airborne, in special operations, moving from Special Forces to Delta Force and eventually back. No matter where he was, officially, he always seemed to be somewhere else and he had a permanent tan from tropical suns. Over the years he had amassed quite a retirement fund from temporary duty pay and he never went anywhere, anymore, unless it was at max per diem.
The necessity to avoid the Sergeant Major of the Army stemmed from an unfortunate incident the year before at the Association of the United States Army annual convention at the Washington Sheraton.
Once a senior NCO reaches a certain rank, all the positions are technically equal. Obviously, however, there is a certain prestige to the Command Sergeant Major position of, say, Third Army as opposed to Third Brigade, Fourth Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado. But the higher prestige positions do not necessarily go to the sergeant majors with the most time in grade or combat experience, but rather to the sergeant majors who are willing to expend the political energy or have the patronage and desire.
The current Sergeant Major of the Army was Command Sergeant Major Robert McCarmen. Sergeant Major McCarmen was a contemporary of Sergeant Major Mosovich and they had both come up through Special Forces. But, whereas Sergeant Major Mosovich was always somewhere overseas doing something odd or unmentionable, with few exceptions Sergeant Major McCarmen had been at Fort Bragg, North Carolina (5th and 7th Groups), Fort Lewis, Washington (1st Group) or Fort Carson, Colorado (10th Group) except for training missions. He had, however, deployed for Grenada, Panama and Desert Storm. Somehow, despite the fact that these operations had involved minimal real combat for special operations personnel, with a few glaring exceptions, Sergeant Major McCarmen had amassed an impressive set of medals. Silver Star, Bronze Star with V device for valor in combat, and even the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for courage in the military pantheon. Each medal was fully authorized and if the citations were a little vague, well, what could be expected for a "Black Warrior." The fact that the citations were all written by commanders with whom the sergeant major had a close and warm relationship was beside the point: it had to be your commander who made the commendation and McCarmen always interacted well with his officers.
His many citations and his ability to interact smoothly with senior officers and politicians had garnered him the most coveted position of any Army NCO: Sergeant Major of the Army, Top Dog of the whole Big Green Machine.
At the previous year's convention, Sergeant Major Mosovich, Command Sergeant Major of Fifth Special Forces Group in a virtually unadorned Dress Green Uniform and Sergeant Major McCarmen, Command Sergeant Major of the Army, in a medal-bedecked army-blue Dress Uniform, had happened to enter an empty elevator together, both somewhat in their cups. When it reached the ground floor, the Sergeant Major of the Army, some eighty pounds heavier than Jake Mosovich, was unconscious and bleeding on the floor and Sergeant Major Mosovich was seen to exit the elevator shaking his right hand as if it hurt.
"Yeah, I guess I told him that, Jake," said General Trayner, mollified, "but I told building security to inform me when you arrived."
"Well, General, General Taylor indicated that it was pretty important and the way he said it made it sound like maybe this conversation never happened. So, since building security logs entry and exit . . ." The scarred NCO shrugged.
"You slipped the Pentagon security net?" asked the Vice Chief of Staff, storm clouds building in his eyes.
"Well, you did say it was black," said Mosovich, stretching out the kinks. He had been sitting totally motionless for the last three hours. If he had been a spy, it would have been tedious but fruitful. It was amazing what generals would discuss, assuming their words were not being overheard. Jake was not sure what the bottom line was, the general had not talked about that directly, but the conversations clearly indicated that something large was afoot.
"Not that fucking black," the general growled. "God dammit Jake, this is too fucking much. I covered for you last year, but watch your fucking step."
"Roger, General, sir." The NCO continued to smile slightly, obviously unrepentant.
The general dropped his anger as ill-spent and laughed. "You always were impossible to discipline, you little fuck." He rubbed the tip of his nose and shook his head.
"Yeah, and you were impossible to train, even as a snot-nosed LT." The NCO smiled again and got up to make himself a cup of coffee. The general invariably had the best coffee in the Army, a result of having spent a year doing cross duty with the Navy. Jake poured himself a cup of the excellent concoction and took a deep and satisfying whiff of the aroma. A sip confirmed that it was the general's usual excellent brew.
"So, what's up?" he asked cocking an eyebrow and recapturing his seat on the couch.
"Well, the shit has well and truly hit the fan, Jake. Have you ever gotten wind of the ULF projects? They ever rope you in?" asked the general, taking a sip of his own java.
"Unidentified Life Forms? Yeah, they were nosing around for a special unit back in, what? '93 or '94? Some dumb fuck gave 'em my name and I went through the stupidest series of psychological evals in history. I get paid a hundred fifty bucks a month extra to jump out of airplanes so naturally one of the questions is `would you jump from a high place.' Jesus." He sighed in exasperation. "Shrinks."