The Last Run: A Novella (2 page)

After all that, Benchley had expected Stop-Loss to be initiated, the program whereby the military suspended all retirements and leaves in order to maximize the number of personnel it could throw at a burgeoning threat. But again, even that small step hadn’t been taken.

Which means I guess I still get to retire,
he thought, as he walked down the narrow corridor that led to the briefing room, mostly unaware of the soldiers and civilians who stepped out of his way as he marched down the passageway.
The world’s going to hell, our major allies stand at the outer boundary of an attacking force, and the Army still thinks my retirement is a good thing. What a bag of dicks.

He knew where his career had gone off the rails. Shortly after getting his second star, he had gone through a severely acrimonious divorce with his wife of twenty-seven years. She’d always hated the Army, hated the structure, hated all the moving around (though if he had been posted to places like France or Hawaii or Italy, she probably wouldn’t have complained all that much), and she literally despised that her husband, despite his rank, could still be ordered around like a second lieutenant fresh out of OCS. In the end, Benchley shouldn’t have been surprised. His wife, Elinore, had come from wealthy, well-heeled San Francisco stock, and her dim view of the military had only been scarcely suppressed. They’d had a son, with whom Benchley’s relations were still good, but he and Elinore had barely managed to make it without one of them winding up dead. The divorce had taken an incredible toll on him, and Benchley had turned to the bottle for solace. While he was never drunk on duty, his fellow officers and staff certainly noticed the change—one couldn’t go on a bender with Johnny Walker Black Label and not suffer from it. His performance was never impaired in a substantial way, but it had taken two talks from superior officers for him to get some help. And that had apparently been one talk too many. Somewhere in Benchley’s personnel file, there was a red flag that stood between him and a third star. Those who reviewed officers in the promotable zone had obviously noticed it, and the Army’s Human Resources Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky had elected to take the opportunity to release him. The Army didn’t need reformed drunks in its ranks of general officers, even though Benchley personally knew four other officers who had track records worse than his. But those individuals had spent their time ingratiating themselves with their superiors, whereas Benchley had focused on the missions he was given and completing them to the best of his ability. And he had completed them, usually under time and budget allocations, despite the personal cost. But at the end of the day, the Army wasn’t interested in results, it was more interested in appearances. Exactly the sort of thing he had been told never mattered. Excellence was rewarded, he had been promised by every commander he’d ever had. Nothing matters, except that you bleed green when you get cut. Choose the Army, and you’ll never be left out in the cold.

Until word got out that you liked to get your drink on because your bitch of a wife was trying to take you to the cleaners.

So fuck the Army.

Benchley entered the briefing room at eleven hundred on the dot. The command sergeant major, ever vigilant, proclaimed, “Room, attention!” and the assemblage there rose to its collective feet and came to attention.

“Have a seat, folks,” Benchley said in response, and the assemblage returned to its original seated position. Except for the chief engineer, Jeremy Andrews; he had thrown out his back a day earlier, and he was still struggling to rise when Benchley released the meeting attendees to their seats. He slowly lowered himself back into his chair with a barely suppressed sigh.

“Jeremy, how’re you feeling?” Benchley asked. Even though Andrews was a civilian, he still had a simulated rank of major and was afforded the usual respect such a position commanded. It was to his credit that he tried to follow protocol by standing when Benchley entered, but the general saw no point in forcing the man’s pain to increase.

“I’m getting along, sir,” Andrews said, smiling beneath his neatly-trimmed dark beard. But his blue eyes showed the real truth, and Benchley shook his head.

“Next time, remain seated until you’re fully able to rise,” Benchley said. “Really, there’s no need for you to blow out a disc on my account. All right?”

“Uh, if you say so, General,” Andrews said, obviously uncomfortable at being singled out for special treatment.

“You threw out your back repairing a water pump in the Core, right? I consider that as being injured on duty, so don’t be embarrassed to remain in your chair during ceremonial greetings and stuff like that. In fact, even if you
are
embarrassed to be the only guy sitting down when a superior walks into the same room as you, don’t get off your butt. Clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Andrews said.

“All right, let’s get started. Colonel, who’s the official scribe?” Benchley turned to Corinne Baxter, a thick-set black woman sitting to his left. Usually, the spot would be occupied by the deputy commander, a brigadier general named Ernsthausen, but Ernie had been called to Washington for budget meetings. That should have been Benchley’s cross to bear, but with his duty period slowly drawing to a close, echelons above reality apparently felt more comfortable dealing with Harmony’s DCG. While it was something of a minor slight, Benchley felt no additional animosity toward the Army for it. Any opportunity to avoid Washington was a gift from the gods of war. As such, Baxter, the base chief of staff, would fill in for Ernsthausen during his absence.

“That would be me, sir,” Baxter told him.

“We don’t have anyone else who can do that?” Benchley asked, looking around the room. There were nine people present aside from himself, and several of them were substantially lower in rank.

“I’m not an active player in the meeting, sir, so I don’t mind,” Baxter said. “Don’t worry, I won’t dot the Is with hearts, or anything.”

Benchley laughed. He liked Baxter immensely, and not only was she was a competent officer, she was a good person. “Very well, then. Okay, on with it. Before we get to the usual business, I want to remind everyone that things are a bit mysterious out there, and this installation could be activated at any moment. Everyone should have their dependants close at hand, and Harmony is to be made as best prepared for any eventuality as it possibly can be. I know we always stand at heightened readiness due to the nature of our mission, but let’s do it with a bit more gusto. I happened to glance at the inventories this morning, and I see that we’re about six weeks from rotating out some long-term food stocks. I want to make sure we keep our eyes on that ball, because even though those stocks are good for another five years, I want to ensure replacement deliveries are on the schedule. I checked the Stock Replenishment System today, and there was no appropriations record for such delivery waiting for my approval. Captain Ellison, can we get that initiated, please?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do it now,” Captain Ellison said, pulling her tablet toward her.

“Much appreciated. I don’t want to sweat the small stuff, but if things start to hit the fan, I don’t want us to get shut out because the logistics trail suddenly gets bogged down. Now, other business: I want to officially recognize Command Sergeant Major Mulligan, who has perhaps outsmarted all of us and submitted his retirement papers. His replacement has already been designated, and I anticipate the change of command to occur in two weeks. During that time, the sergeant major will continue to discharge his duties as normal. Scott, take a bow.”

There was a smattering of applause, along with some genuine disappointment in the room. Mulligan sighed cavernously at the reaction, embarrassed.

“I can see you’re all broken up to see me go,” he said. “You’re even applauding. Thanks a million.” That caused a ripple of laughter to course through the room. Benchley laughed as well. Despite his hulking size and no-nonsense attitude while on the job, Mulligan was fairly well-liked by the base staff, military and civilian alike. But the Special Forces soldier had been the ranking NCO of Harmony Base for almost three years, and his time was up. It was a shame the Army’s special operations community hadn’t seen it fit to retain a trooper of his caliber for another few years at least, and Benchley wondered if he might have stomped on a few toes in his day. But Mulligan had put in a solid twenty-seven years of service. It would have been something if he had been able to make it to thirty years, not to mention add a few more thousand dollars to his retirement benefit, but this is how things sometimes worked out.

You know that from personal experience, old boy.

“And what about your news, sir?” Mulligan asked, visibly eager to divert the attention from himself.

“Yeah, I was getting to that,” Benchley said. “I’ll be following the sergeant major out the door. In three months, I’ll be hitting the open road myself. The slate for commanding general, Harmony Base is now officially open, and I expect it will be boarded within a month or so.” The major general looked around the table. “I’d say anyone interested in the job should apply, but for the moment, it’s still a two-banger billet.”

“When did the two of you decide to separate from the service?” Baxter wanted to know, looking from Benchley to Mulligan. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you planned this.”

“A serendipitous happenstance, ma’am,” Mulligan said.

“He’s right, it just worked out that way,” Benchley said. Of course Baxter knew he had been passed over, otherwise his rank would be adjusted to read Promotable. That he was another major general in his mid-fifties who hadn’t made it to the General Officer Management Office’s promotion list pretty much spelled it out. “Don’t worry, Corrine. Mulligan and I aren’t going to buy a boat and reenact a couple of episodes of
Gilligan’s Island
.”

“Besides, I get seasick,” Mulligan added.

Baxter smiled. “Well, let me be the first to say that Harmony Base won’t be same without its two top dogs. You gentlemen have done a heck of a lot of good during your time here, and you’re both going to be missed.”

There was another round of applause, and Andrews punctuated it with a hearty “Hear, hear!”

Benchley held up a hand. “All right, all right, save some for the new command sergeant major and commanding general when they arrive,” he said, though in truth he was touched by Baxter’s words more than he showed. A sidelong glance at Mulligan told him that the big senior NCO felt the same way, and his eyes were curiously downcast. There were a dozen other units Mulligan could have gone to, but that he chose to leave the service told another story. He had a wife and two young girls; Mulligan had lived for the Army as much as anyone, but he wasn’t willing to put his family through the same stress that Benchley had. Benchley could respect that, and not for the first time, he wished he’d made some different choices earlier in his career.

“So that ends my announcements,” he continued. “Now, let’s get back to business.” He spent the next forty minutes listening to the status reports surrounding the base’s welfare and general condition. There had been a water leak in the base’s lower levels, which had required the replacement of several sewage lines and some repairs to the installation’s insulating liner. While it had been a smelly mess, it had been cleaned up and no one had gotten sick from any of the bacteriological contaminants the sewage might have contained. The post’s small security response team had passed its quarterly training cycle, and Mulligan gave the unit his top recommendation—as he should, since he had had a big hand in its training and upkeep. Modernized battery packs had been installed in the base’s fleet of Self-Contained Exploration Vehicles, pressurized, armored rigs based off the Army’s venerable HEMT-T tactical truck that would convey the military and civilian specialists through whatever fate might ravage the country, should a near extinction level event ever occur. The batteries would serve to power each rig’s systems in the event one or both of its turboshaft engines failed, providing greater mobility and flexibility in the field. A new quartet of global positioning satellites had been orbited, reserved solely for Harmony’s use. The satellites were specially shielded and would presumably survive even the mass electromagnetic pulses of multiple nuclear detonations, providing the SCEVs with real-time navigation should the larger, more conventional GPS satellite network be compromised. Harmony’s population of several hundred military and civilian personnel were all in good health and high spirits, despite being mostly restricted to the subterranean facility, as per its charter. All in all, everything was fine with Harmony Base. Its budget was still vast, and it continued to receive both political and financial support from the US government.

At noon, the meeting ended. As usual, Benchley made his closing remarks.

“Folks, things are getting dicey out there,” he said. “I’ve received no official orders regarding the disposition of the base, and our alert level remains the same today as it was yesterday. But that could change. It’s pretty obvious that the ‘new’ Russia is interested in proving to the rest of the world that it’s here to stay, and it’s not going to go away as peacefully as it did last time. For those of you who have dependents outside the base, I might encourage you to draw them a bit closer. As you know, if the order comes, this base will be sealed, and I’d hate very much for anyone to have to try and get through the next several years without their families close by.” As he said this, he looked directly at Mulligan. The sergeant major’s family lived well off-post, which in normal times was perfectly fine. But the “new normal” was still being established, as Russia and the United States tried to fine-tune their balancing act. “Just some parting words from the old man. Keep them in mind.”

Benchley and Mulligan both endured another round of well-wishing from the command staff, but after that, it was business as usual. Benchley picked up his tablet and paged through his calendar, looking to see if he had enough time to hit the Commons Area for a quick meal, or if he would be eating at his desk in the command center once again. He was surprised to find he had a full hour free, and then after that, he would have to begin preparing for an official Congressional visit scheduled for the following day. He would have to play the role of Chief Entertainer for several congressmen from one of the various oversight committees that felt empowered to pull his strings on occasion, and that was never a fun thing.