(Mac on the rebound. Photo Socotra.)
Sunday was not as awful as it could have been. No great progress on the continuing budget crisis, or so it seems, and the wet soaking blanket of humidity continued to drape over the capital. It is enervating weather, sucking the energy out of my pores and causing me to puddle up where I sit.
They say that it may break today, with thunder-bumpers sweeping across the region in the afternoon. Mac missed the whole thing. He has been over at Arlington Hospital since his temperature spiked last week along with the weather, in a private room on the 8th floor of the tower.
He sounded pretty good when we talked on Saturday, and I made arrangements to visit him Sunday afternoon with our mutual pal Kimo, who is packing out his house to go take Mac’s old job in Hawaii.
Hospitals are funny these days. I asked when visiting hours might be, and Mac said there weren’t any. Confused, I asked if that meant we could not come, and he laughed and said, “No, it just means you can come any time you feel like. This is OK- I can order my meals any time I am awake, too, and you should see the macaroni and cheese they have. Much better than the mac at The Madison. Theirs is too dry.”
“We all just want to see the Real Mac back home where you belong,” I said with concern.
“They may release me on Monday,” he said. “The Quacks will evaluate then, but I feel a lot better.”
“That is encouraging, Sir,” I said, and wished him good sleeping in the cool while the rest of the city sweltered.
I filled Kimo in on the situation as we buzzed up George Mason from Route 50. I had the top down, and regretted it as sweat rolled down my neck and into the collar of my polo shirt. It being Sunday, there was parking at the curb on George Mason, and I slid the Hubrismobile in behind a hulking Escalade SUV and raised the top.
“Nineteen precision German motors involved in this evolution,” I said as the soft-top emerged from the trunk and the hard glass of the rear window did its little pirouette to dodge the hard deck and latch itself securely. We walked up to the hospital lobby, passing the sign advising us that no cell phones were permitted, and took the World’s Slowest Elevator to the eighth floor.
Mac had told me he was in room 815, near the nursing station, and he told us to come right in when I rapped on the doorframe.
“Well, look who is here! Kimo, when do you leave for Hawaii?”
They chatted up the details of the coming move. Kimo had worked with Mac on a historical display in the basement of the CINCPACFLT Headquarters building- I still call it that, though Uncle Don Rumsfeld’s imperious change to the names of the Combatant Commands and the Pacific and Atlantic Fleet.
“There is only one Commander in Chief,” his SECDEF decision memo announced primly, “and that is the President. Accordingly, there will be a PACOM COMMANDER, and a ComPacFleet. No more CINCS.”
Kimo had a large picture of Mac when he was still on active duty, and he made a little ceremony of presenting it to him, and I managed to snap a picture with my iPad. “You have a heck of view here,” I said, as a couple buddies from The Madison entered the room and we all clustered around the bed.
“Admiral, let me ask you, did you know Noel Gayler?”
“Oh, yes,” he said firmly. “I remember the last time I talked to him. It was in the Pentagon. He was down from Fort Meade where he was DIRNSA. There was a regular Friday breakfast between the Director of DIA and NSA and SECDEF Mel Laird.”
“You were DIA’s Chief of Staff then, right?”
Mac nodded and adjusted the clear oxygen tube under his nose. “Yes. I had to prep General Bennett for the meetings with the status of current issues. He and Noel were both three stars, and he became convinced that I was setting him up. Nothing further from the truth, and whatever was going on was coming from General Bennett. But that one day Noel saw me and he came steaming up full-throttle and said he was really pissed at me.”
“I heard from Jinny that he was pretty full of himself when she and Barney met him in London when he was the ALUSNA. He had dumped his wife Caroline and was looking around for someone new.”
“I think I met Kay one time. But three stars and command of an independent Agency can do that to you,” smiled Mac. “And he is one of the few officers to get a promotion out of NSA to be CINCPAC. I never talked to him again after that scene in the E Ring of the Pentagon.”
“Well,” I said, “Even if General Bennett tore him up in front of Secretary Laird’s intelligence chief, he did OK. You know Keith Alexander got his fourth star and he is still at NSA. He is the new CYBERCOM Commander in addition to being DIRNSA.”
“These things run in cycles, just like the wars. Laird trusted him, for whatever reason, and there was a lot going on: the end of the draft, the winding down of Vietnam and all the rest. Interesting times.”
“There is a saying about that,” I said.
“What is that?” asked Mac.
“May you live in interesting times is supposed to be a Chinese curse.”
Mac smiled. “Then I guess that is exactly where we are.”
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com