CHAPTER 14

Brussels, Belgium

December

GENERAL CURTIS ALEXANDER FINISHED his breakfast of poached eggs and a side of American bacon, a delicacy hard to come by in Brussels, but being the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO came with a couple of perks. Putting down the local paper and taking a sip of espresso, he shifted his gaze across the table to his wife.

Even closing in on forty years of marriage, he still marveled at how beautiful she was. He couldn’t help looking at her like it was their first date back when he was a junior at West Point and she was what was referred to as “the Supe’s Daughter. ” Back then, some cadets looked to the daughters of senior generals as a good career choice, a practice that often led to failed expectations and even more failed marriages. Cadet Alexander could not have cared less about Sara’s military lineage. She captured his heart the second he saw her and he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life making her the happiest woman on earth. Today, thirty-seven years later, she would still blush when she caught his loving glance.

“What? ” she said with a knowing smile.

“Oh, nothing, ” the four-star general replied, “just admiring. ”

“Stop it, Curtis, ” said Sara Alexander, playfully tossing a dish towel across the table at one of the most senior officers in the U. S. military.

She was the only person who still called him Curtis. To everyone else he was General or Sir. His close friends called him Curt. Their kids called him Dad. Curtis was reserved for Sara.

At sixty-one years old, the old man was at the end of a very long and distinguished Army career. His change of command and follow-on retirement ceremony were two weeks away. Technically he was still turning over his duties as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, but for all practical purposes he was done. His replacement was already in the seat, and it was time for General Alexander to step aside; the incoming commander needed to build rapport and set his priorities for his new command.

Supreme Allied Commander, Curt thought with a sigh. Who would have thought? Well, probably a few people, he admitted to himself.

His father had been a lieutenant colonel in Vietnam, shot down in a helicopter while leading an air assault on a VC-controlled hamlet in Tay Ninh Province. Having never shown any interest in following in his father’s footsteps, Curtis Alexander surprised everyone when he turned down his acceptance to Yale and instead used his stellar grades and promising football skills to attain an appointment to West Point. That his father’s side of the family could trace their military history to a captain who served in Washington’s Continental Army played more than a small role in Curtis’s decision. He found it slightly humorous now that, even with his family’s military tradition, he had never intended to spend more than a few years in the Army before moving on.

Curtis never quite understood why he made the decision to attend the United States Military Academy, stumbling along blindly through his first two years until he met Sara. Then it all became clear. He was meant to go to the college with the cold, gray, imposing architecture that defines the Army post overlooking the Hudson. He was meant to be there to meet Sara.

Their first duty stations were a test of their marriage even back when the deployments mostly revolved around alliances and treaties born out of the ashes of World War II. Cramped housing, foreign cultures, long absences, and uncertainty with the added stresses of raising young children with a father bound by duty to another family, the U. S. Army, forged their marriage the way a fire hardens steel. Through it all, they persevered and became a team, defying the odds and becoming a rock for other families to lean against. Looking back, General Alexander felt more than a little guilt that he had never been in actual combat. The late 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s were marked by violent flashpoints rather than sustained combat operations, and Curt had missed them all, until September 11, 2001. He had just made colonel, which in the modern Army means not leading troops from the front as in centuries past. As with everything else in life, the newly minted full bird accepted his assignments in Afghanistan and Iraq with grace and distinction.

Sending young men off to fight from the security of a Forward Operating Base had always made him uncomfortable. Without any past special operations assignments or ground combat experience, Curtis Alexander felt he might not be able to measure up to the demands of a new war. He made up for that lack of experience through a personal devotion to servant leadership. The way he looked at things, he was serving the men under his command, rather than the other way around. He also made it a personal policy to never let anyone in or out of the military think he had accomplished tactical feats of brilliance on the battlefield. He preferred to shift that honor and those accolades toward the enlisted and junior officers out there at the tip of the spear doing the fighting and the dying. Curtis Alexander was a different kind of officer, something that did not go unnoticed by those he chose to serve.

General Alexander had been shaped by the Army of the 1980s, one still recovering from the wounds of Vietnam. He had entered a military focused on the Soviet threat so masterfully met and countered by the policies and relationships of the Reagan administration. He often wondered which world he would have rather passed on to his children and now two grandchildren: a world with an easily identifiable enemy with victories won at the negotiating table, or today’s asymmetrical threat, where nonstate actors and terrorists focused their ideology of hate and violence on the weakest among us—women, children, citizens going about their daily lives? He almost longed for the days when their biggest concern was that the Soviets were going to invade West Germany by marching through the Fulda Gap.

Every time he thought he was ready to retire, the Army would promote him. Having grown up in a military family, Sara was well acquainted with Army life. She also knew the hold the Army could have on some. Curtis was different from every other officer she had known. The career just happened to him. He didn’t pursue it; it was quite the opposite: the career seemed to pursue him. She had never met an officer who cared less about his rank than Curtis Alexander. By nature, he saw his job as taking care of his men and he took genuine pleasure in seeing them succeed. He always told Sara that they would get out after this “next assignment” and now joked that, after thirty-nine years, he was going to finally keep his promise.

It was a different world today, and the general was ready to turn over defense of the nation to a new generation, one that included their only son. He had just completed the Army’s Ranger Assessment and Selection Program on his first attempt and was excited about his assignment to lead a company in the 75th Ranger Regiment. Curt and Sara’s two daughters wanted a different life. One had married a doctor and the other an attorney. By happenstance, both had settled in Northern Virginia. Curt and Sara planned to reoccupy the home they had purchased and subsequently rented out in Alexandria during one of the general’s Pentagon tours. They loved the Washington, D. C., area, and having their daughters and grandchildren living there made the decision to retire close by a relatively easy one.

The soon-to-be-retired general had accepted a position as president general of the Society of Cincinnati, the oldest patriotic group in the United States. The society had been founded in 1783 and was headquartered in Washington, D. C. Its namesake came from George Washington’s admiration for the ancient Roman hero Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who resigned his commission, returned power to the Senate, and retired to his farm after leading the Roman Army to victory defending the republic from foreign invasion. Often referred to as the American Cincinnatus, General Washington followed in the Roman leader’s footsteps, in no small measure giving Americans the freedoms most take for granted today. The society is now dedicated to preserving the memory of those who sacrificed their lives in the War for Independence, standing up to the world’s greatest superpower and creating a republic based upon freedom and liberty. Much like the Army he thought would hold him for only a few years, the Society of Cincinnati was a natural home for Curt and Sara. That posting, along with a few board positions, would see them into their retirement years as they enjoyed the perks of living just minutes from their grandkids.

“I have to make an appearance today, ” said Curtis, “sign a few papers, and say a few early good-byes. At 1400, er, uh, I mean, two o’clock this afternoon for us almost civilian types, I get to present a kid from the 82nd Airborne with a Purple Heart and Silver Star. He’s been on the staff for a year due to a shrapnel injury he sustained in Afghanistan. Great kid. His award finally came in and he asked me to present it to him. I could hardly keep my eyes from watering up when he asked me. ”

“Oh, sweetie, you ol’ softie. ”

“Well, I’m honored to do it and I’m certainly looking much more forward to that than to my change of command and retirement ceremony. ”

“I know you’ve never liked those things. ”

“I despise those things. Regardless of the job you did, they always make it seem like you single-handedly turned the tide of evil and saved the planet. It’s ridiculous. They never tell the truth. It’s all military pomp-and-circumstance bullshit. ”

“Curtis! The language, ” Sara joked.

“We are almost there. Just a couple more weeks and then home. ”

“That soldier will never forget receiving his medals from you, ” Sara remarked proudly.

“Nor I presenting them to him. So humbling. These kids today, they are something else, honey. They are the most well-educated, capable soldiers our country has ever produced. I just wish we could make better strategic decisions worthy of their sacrifice. ”

Sara nodded. She had heard those words from him more times than she could count throughout their married life. It was one of the reasons she loved him. He couldn’t hide how much he cared for his troops. He could make hard decisions, but they were always tempered by his practice of never forgetting the human ramifications.

“I have to go, sweetie. I want to get this admin handled before the award ceremony. ”

Standing, he made an attempt to straighten the tie on his Army service uniform.

“Let me help you, ” his wife said, rising from her chair.

“Thank you, my dear, ” Curtis said, leaning down to kiss her good-bye. “See you later this afternoon. Let’s grab a nice dinner and talk about the D. C. house. I think it might need an upgrade or two. ”

They still called it “the D. C. house” even though it was technically in Virginia.

“Perfect. See you tonight. ”

Sara watched as Curtis descended the steps of the quarters they had made their home for the past three years. It was a far cry from the junior officer housing they had endured in the late 1970s, though she knew theirs had been a large step up from what the junior enlisted families were provided.

Major Paul Reed met General Alexander at the door to the white Suburban parked in front of the general’s home.

“Morning, General, ” he said, opening the rear passenger door.

“Morning, Paul. Don’t get used to this sleeping-in business. You still have a career ahead. ”

“I won’t, sir. Don’t worry. What’s on our agenda today? ”

Paul had been the general’s aide for the better part of two years and usually met him at the office well before sunup, sending a new officer or midlevel enlisted soldier to pick him up. When the general arrived, Paul would be ready with an agenda and schedule prepared for a full day leading NATO. Now it was all about helping the general through the administrative hurdles of a change of command, and Paul was enjoying a more relaxed schedule as well as some of the last days he would spend with a man he looked up to both personally and professionally.

“Let’s sign those supply papers and the rest of those evaluation reports so we can get that off our plate. Then I want to prep for the award ceremony. You will be back to your wife and kids by four o’clock at the latest. ”

“You mean 1600, sir? ” Paul smiled.

“However you best remember it, son, ” the general replied, smiling back.

Sara waved from the doorway and turned away to close the door. What was that? Stopping suddenly, she sensed rather than heard an unfamiliar buzzing that brought her attention back outside. Instinct based on the primal need to protect the one you love caused her to throw open the door and sprint for the Suburban, screaming Curtis’s name at the top of her lungs.

She wasn’t fast enough.

The buzzing came from a small drone. It dropped almost as quickly as it appeared onto the roof of the parked SUV, settling above the right rear passenger seat.

The small charge it carried was tamped to focus the blast downward, sending a molten copper slug through the armored roof and through the devoted husband, father, and Army officer inside, removing the left side of his brain, then carving its way through his lungs, heart, and bowels, and finally cutting his upper body in two before cratering into the pavement below.

Sara was thrown to the ground by the blast, her ears and nose dripping blood as she crawled toward the now-burning wreck. The passenger-side door had been blown off by the overpressure, half of Curtis Alexander’s body slipping from the remarkably still-secured seat belt and sliding to the ground.

By the time Major Reed had regained consciousness, Sara had locked herself in an embrace of what was left of her husband, her screams echoing around the nearby buildings long after the reverberations of the explosion had dissipated.

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