Look, you don't get on the short list for promotion to lieutenant colonel after a year and a half as a major. You don't. It doesn't matter if you walk on clouds and suck every general in the Pentagon. You don't.
Suddenly, I was up before a promotion board. And on the promotion list for lieutenant colonel.
You don't go to boards, by the way. Officers sit on the board and consider a whole bunch of personnel packets. Based on the personnel packets they pick a group of officers and give them a score. Depending on the number of officers the Army needs for that rank, if your score is high enough they promote you.
(When I got "selected" for major, that is the promotion board said I was a possible, the "promotion" rate was 93%. So all but the absolute lamest captains got major that board.)
I'd been on the short list each time. Okay, I'm pretty good at what I do. And I'm a handsome devil and charming. (And, yes, unfortunately that matters.)
But promotion boards are supposed to be "lacking in influence." A general isn't supposed to stop by, toss a packet on the table and go, "We really like this guy and if he doesn't get promoted you all might as well figure on staying at your current rank for the rest of your lives."
Promotion boards are supposed to consider only what is presented in front of them. It's like a jury. Even if they've seen TV stuff about the guy they're judging, they aren't supposed to consider it. And they're also not supposed to consider if somebody calls them at home and says "he walks or your child goes through life blind."
I didn't like the way it got handled from all appearances. If they'd said "you're a light bird" and given me the oak leaves, that would be one thing. There's paperwork and precedent for that. But it appeared that someone had fucked with the promotion board in my favor. That sort of thing, down the road, can really bite you in the ass. Besides . . . it's dishonorable.
(So later I went digging. There is "standard minimum time in grade" for all positions. There is also "nonstandard minimum time in grade" for all positions. When promotion boards sit, they can, at their discretion, consider "nonstandard minimum time in grade" officers. The promotion board had looked over the list of all majors in "standard minimum time in grade" and found some that deserved the next rank. Then, since they'd done their jobs efficiently, they had some extra time and considered "nonstandard minimum time in grade officers" for light bird. And ran across Bandit Six in the bunch. And, well . . . People who are on the board are not supposed to talk about the board. What happens on the board, stays on the board. But a guy told me about when they ran across the "Centurion" packet as they put it. And passed it around. And talked about shit they're not supposed to talk about like "I fucking die every time I watch 'CAM(P)ing'!" And moved it to the top of the stack and recommended the packet be "selected under waiver of time in grade." Still kind of pisses me off. There was some guy my grandstanding fucked for that go-round. To whoever it is, I apologize.)
So I was now a major promotable. Big whoop. I was still in the Pentagon and still shoveling horse-shit. Nice bump in pay, though, when the promotion finally came through.
So one day I get word I need to report to a different department for "consultation on Emergency Methodology." I've got an office. And the name of a major.
I go to said office and meet a nice major. The major is wearing the tabs for aide to a full general. The nice major asks me questions. I answer them politely. Some of them are on the borderline of "wrong." They were a touch . . . political.
The Army has to play politics all the time. That is, they have to find the Congresscritters who will support funding and all that. But within the Army, it's a written rule that you don't discuss or argue politics. You don't ask someone what their politics are. Yes, it gets done all the time, but not in an official setting. It was the equivalent of asking me "Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?" It's Just Not Done.
At the end of the "interview" I was told "thank you very much, we may be talking again."
And I got orders. To my old unit. As Battalion Commander.
Wait. WRONG!
First of all, I can't think of a time when a guy who has been a commander in a unit has been brought back as a BC. There are too many battalions in the Army. Just luck of the draw says you're not going to get your old unit. At the level of major, you've scooted off somewhere else. If you spend the normal time as a major, you've done staff time at various levels and some in a battalion to get the feel. You probably have been an XO. But not of your old unit. Doesn't work that way.
Second, it was like taking over the Company. Normally, the "career progression" was that I'd get promoted to light bird and take a staff position for my rank. If I was a very good boy I might get a battalion. But not until I've gotten some experience under colonel's silver.
And I still wasn't on the books as a light bird. Majors hadn't commanded battalions since WWII.
Oh, wow, look. I'm a light bird. Fancy that.
Promotion came in the day after my orders.
My skids were being greased. And greased hard. "Selected" way out of zone. Command time when I should have still been shuffling papers. And now promotion out of zone.
Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
Note, this sounds crazy. But there are two things about promotion in the Army. If you get promoted at one rank too fast, you're bound to get fucked over later. I, eventually, wanted to be a general. Despite the number of generals around, getting to general is very hard. Having my skids greased now would probably fuck that up then. (Absent, like, a World War.) The other is, if someone is hand-selecting you, and that is pretty much verboten in the Army, it's rarely for something you're going to enjoy. It means somebody wants you to do something fucked up.
I didn't know at the time how fucked up.
I drove down to Stewart, which I hadn't seen in a while but it hadn't changed much either, and found quarters. I reported in to the Division. I got the usual smoke blown up my ass but not as much as usual. I was an old Division hand. The Army's "Third Herd." (The actual motto is "Nous Resterons Là" "We Shall Remain." Don't ask.) I got the standard incoming battalion commander "in-brief."
With FEMA actually starting to be left to do its job, the Army was coming more and more off of "disaster relief" duties and getting trained back in on "kill people and break things." The Brigades (which were the actual deployment units) weren't by any stretch back to their glory days of being able to break your hearts and your armies any where, any time, but they were getting back in shape.
My battalion was the next one slotted up for "combat retraining." I got some frowns but they weren't explained even when I asked. But I did notice that my Brigade wasn't up for combat retrain, yet. We were getting bumped up the cue.
Combat retrain means starting from the ground up. Soldiers train on individual tasks while officers try to remember how to conduct operations. The latter is mostly "TEWTs," Tactical Exercises Without Troops, and can range from sitting at a table working over a problem to sand table exercises to going out in the field and considering how to take terrain to full up computerized battle with independent scorers.
Later on the officers and troops are "mated up" for field exercises and then finally go through a test to see if it's taken. Generally, after the test (called an ARTEP) there's a stand-down for maintenance to fix all the shit that broke in training then the unit, if it passes the test and the inspection of its equipment, is considered "combat certified." It's ready to go to war.
Normally, "combat retraining" is a six-month process.
We were scheduled for three.
I looked at the, very tight, schedule, kissed sleep goodbye then looked again.
We were scheduled, if everything went well, to be "combat certified" one month before the end of Carson's requested "six months."
We weren't going to be the first "combat certified" battalion available while Carson still had "Emergency Powers" authority, suspending habeas corpus and posse comitatus (the law that said you couldn't use federal troops in United States territory for police forces) but we were going to be one of the first.
Okay, once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. What is four?
It's a puckering feeling in the rectum.
I still didn't have the word "Detroit" in my head. But I did have the word "pacification actions." Okay, it's a phrase.
I also didn't have the word, phrase, whatever, "Centurions" in my head.
We started training. Part of the training was learning to be a battalion commander without:
I'd had experience with "large force" command. Don't get me wrong. Hell, by Istanbul I was commanding the forces of a light brigade. Or a heavy battalion "team."
But that was there under make-it-up-as-you-go-along rules. Now I had to learn to play by Army rules and there were a lot of them.
But I had very good help. All the staff officers were excellent. They'd been trained in by my previous commander and for the first month or so I just let them keep doing what they were doing. Hell, I never really made a lot of changes.
And my company commanders were also "hold-overs." They'd all been doing their jobs a bit over time for when they should have rotated out. They knew them well.
The only fly in the ointment, at first, was me. But I'm a quick learner. I didn't make the mistakes I'd made as a company commander because, among other things, I'd sort of done this job before. I just had to figure out the details.
We trained up, hard. We had a pretty decent budget for it, thank God. And I knew some tricks to get more. Budget was a "use it or lose it" proposition. You had to use up all your budget by the end of the year.
Unfortunately, we weren't near the end of the year but there were still some units that were looking at their projected training and going "I'm not going to use all this budget." Normally, it's the other way around. But there were some. I found them and got more budget for stuff like ammo for live-fire training.
(Hell, there was a lot of ammo sitting around. We hadn't been using much for the last couple of years and we'd stopped very abruptly in the middle of a war. There was plenty of ammo. Less fuel but that just meant the troops learned to walk.)
We were getting ready for ARTEP, not up to that point but close, when I got orders cut for TDY to the Pentagon. What the Fuck? I'm a commander! You don't send battalion commanders TDY (temporary duty) to the Pentagon for fuck's sake! Not when there's an ARTEP scheduled in two weeks!
I got on a plane and flew up to the Puzzle Palace, again, cursing under my breath.
And got "briefed in."
The mission of my battalion, like it or not, was to "pacify" the city of Detroit and return it to "normal order" under the laws and customs of the United States of America and the State of Michigan.
But that wasn't all.
I was asked, not ordered, asked if it would be possible to reactivate the Centurions stories for the mission.
Some of those meetings were totally fucked. The PIO assholes had somehow become involved. They had lots of "recommendations" on ways to improve Centurions.
Look, I'd made it up as I went along but it was still the highest rated show in reruns in the U.S. and maybe the world. A lot of people were just starting to get back TV, especially cable. And they'd heard about Centurions but had never seen it. DVDs were selling like hotcakes. (I swear, Murdoch owes me, big-time. The bastard.) It was about the only thing that was selling, consistently.
I didn't need PIO shit-for-brains giving me recommendations on how to improve Centurions. Especially recommendations that amounted to turn it into a steer. It was a bull. That was its horror and glory. If they couldn't figure that out, they could kiss my ass.
Oh, and they wanted it more "family friendly" and "gender friendly" and "culturally friendly" and . . .
I wasn't just meeting with them, though. I was meeting with serious colonels and generals who were laying out the problem. Detroit had to be taken down while we still had posse comitatus. The President was smart but he hadn't realized how long it was going to take to get units back in shape for combat. And it was going to be combat. The caliph had seized NG military hardware early on, both convoys that were under orders not to defend themselves and stuff that was already in the Detroit area. An entire company had been "suborned" and turned over military grade weapons and hardware. He might have all the shit I'd faced before. Low ammo for most of it, maybe none. But he had the gear and some ammo was very much missing.
And with the caliph being held up as a shining light by the news media, it was going to be a shit-storm. The MSM wasn't going to just take us taking down the caliph. They were going to spin for all they were worth. And they were going to be all over the mission. No way to keep them out, practically. If we did, it would look like "censorship" and that was the last thing we needed.
We had to get the word out about what was really going on in Detroit. And we needed to get the word out fast. And hopefully show what the media was spinning.
And the one thing the generals agreed on, but weren't going to shove down my throat, was that the name needed to change.
Thus was born The New Centurions mini-series.
I started getting balky. I was getting dozens of "briefings" on every conceivable subject. Some of them were useful, much of it was crap (especially any that involved PIO). I was digesting all of it, sure. But I was on short time. My battalion was getting ready for its final exam and I was having to be thinking way past it to a mission that still wasn't clear and was going to be very very complicated. And very secret. That we were going into Detroit was Top Secret. That we were planning a Centurions broadcast about Detroit was Top Secret and compartmentalized.
And, thus far, nobody was asking me anything. I was given information and "suggestions" but nobody was asking me what I thought or how I thought it should be done or, critically, what I was going to need. It was like they thought I could just pull one out of my ass.
I was in a meeting on "potential taskers" that had one of the main generals sitting in it and at one point when they were discussing "communication strategy taskers" I just stood up.
"This is bullshit. And it's got to stop."
"You have a problem with the mission, Bandit Six?" the general asked. He was sort of stern but I could see he was also alarmed. Everyone assumed I was totally going along with "information management." If I wasn't willing to, the whole plan was in the shitter.
"No, sir. I'm up with the mission. My problem is that for the last three critical days I've been getting briefings more or less at random, most of which have been useless and a waste of everyone's time. It's like every department in the Army got a secret message there was going to be a Centurions broadcast and wants to get its two cents in. And, thus far, none of the meetings have been about what I suggest much less what I'm going to need. And those meetings are going to take a long time and there are going to have to be decisions made. And not by committee, General. And may I remind everyone that in less than two weeks my battalion, which is going to be somewhat necessary to this whole jug-fuck, is up for ARTEP. And if it fails said ARTEP, because for example its commander has been sitting in meetings for two weeks, it's not going to be combat certified, rendering all of this moot."
"It's not going to fail the ARTEP," the general said.
"We've been working hard, sir, but . . ."
"No," the general said. "Listen to me. It Will Not Fail The ARTEP. If I have to personally pencil in all the results. Besides, it's a good unit. It will do fine. On that you're just suffering from pre-ARTEP jitters, which is normal. You're a new battalion commander. Had them myself. Your unit is good and will pass ARTEP. If it doesn't, It Will Pass ARTEP. That's been decided at a much higher level than this. Okay, who or what do you need for these meetings?"
"I need . . ." I said then paused. "I'm going to need someone senior from PIO. Someone with a brain and preferably real media experience if that exists. Pretty quickly I'm going to need geeks. Since I don't talk geek, I'm going to need translators from my unit, two sergeants from Bravo. They're still there. I stopped by and said hello already. I'm going to need overhead specialists. I'm going to need Graham and the crew if I can get them. They can come in late. I have an op-plan for this. It's not the op-plan that's been presented. The op-plan presented, especially the 'suggestions' from PIO, will not work. My op-plan will work. Oh, and I need someone senior enough in each of the meetings that require coordination with other departments that when I say 'this is what I need' the person can say 'do it' and it gets done. And eventually I'm going to need a lot of savvy and devoted-to-the-concept eyeballs. Those can't come from my unit and should probably all be geeks. Intel geeks might work. Say an intel battalion. Maybe a DIA unit."
"How short can you make an operational outline?" the general asked.
"Depends on if people are going to joggle my elbow."
"1700. My office. Verbal only. Meeting, and all meetings on this matter for the rest of the day, adjourned."
My op-plan was simple in concept and really complicated in detail. A simple Centurions broadcast would not work. The media was going to be all over the op like shit on stink. We were going to have to not only do a normal Centurions show but on top of it, woven into it, deconstruct most or all incidents of "spin."
Which meant we were going to have to cover the media like stink.
Every photograph from every stringer was going to have to be caught by an Army team who would find the context the stringer was, intentionally or unintentionally, missing. Every broadcast of every news network was going to have to have another camera on it, showing what the cameras were not reporting. When it was impossible to really show that, we were going to have to "craft" imagery that got into the details.
And we were going to have to turn a one-hour show out in nearly real time. Preferably every evening the op was going on. Graphic imagery, script, the thematic elements and step all over the news media's reporting. Since most people still got their news between 5PM and 7PM, and that was when all the really spun news was going to hit the airwaves, we were going to have to do a show while they were spinning. Then show the counter spin. Show the reality they were missing or essentially falsifying.
Waiting until the next day, waiting until the next week, wasn't going to cut it. We had to hit people when they were still gathering their opinions about what they'd seen on the news.
"That's impossible," were the first words out of the mouth of the PIO general in the meeting.
"No, sir," I replied. "Taking Istanbul with a Stryker company was impossible. This will just be very very difficult."
And it was.
So while I was working on all the shit involved in getting combat certified, I was also working on getting that operation ready. And it was a massive fucking exercise. Worse, really, than getting through the ARTEP which, the general was right, was not as hard as I'd expected. I had very good subordinates. Thank God. And the previous commander.
After our inspection by the IG, another hair tearer while I'm simultaneously juggling the "secret" side of what we're going to do, we got our, secret again, orders for our upcoming operation. Finally, I could get the battalion staff working on that op, but I still didn't have them in the loop on the Centurions side.
But it was obvious I was working something else. Most battalion commanders don't go through pre-ARTEP and then ARTEP and ORSE without contributing much but "Uh, huh. Sounds good. Great job. Keep up the good work." Delegation was one thing, this was crazy. They input something. I just didn't have the time.
I finally got the go-ahead to bring the battalion staff in on "Operation New Centurions." And they looked at me like I had two heads. I gave them background. Then I gave them more background. Then I tried to explain what a massive fucking headache it was going to be. And I also explained that while the operation was going on, I was going to be juggling both sides.
We were still waiting for our "combat certification" when the PIO guys started filtering in. They were gathering "background" on people. It quickly became evident that the Centurions thing was starting up again. Sergeants pointed out that talking about it was a bad thing.
The last remaining problem was, we didn't have an outlet. We could release it on the Web but that would only hit a fraction of the available households.
The Army cut a deal with the networks. One broadcast network would get a new Centurions show for free. Each night, 8PM Central, guaranteed broadcast was all that was required. Resale rights would be minimal for cable networks and one cable TV news company could get it for free. But it had to air, guaranteed, without editing. That was the only proviso.
The networks knew they were looking at something radioactive. They also knew that Centurions meant vast numbers of viewers glued to the TV.
In the end the network execs went for the money. They couldn't pass up new Centurions shows.
Fox got the cable news rights. ABC, again, got the broadcast rights. Four or five other minor networks picked it up as well.
The news hit the Internet before we were even starting to move out. Actually, while negotiations were still going on with the networks. From the way it was sounding, it was coming from our side. Hit the conservative blogs first. I figured it was someone in the battalion. I didn't care. It was creating "buzz."
But what the operation was was still secret. When we moved out, we moved out at night and spread out our units so we could be going anywhere.
Three days later, all the units were assembling in a state park near Lansing.