True Allegiance

First, a report appeared in Beat magazine, with anonymous quotes describing Hawthorne as a young gunner, a career military man interested only in bulling his way through china shops and making rank. Prescott himself did an interview defending Hawthorne from such charges, although he admitted—grudgingly, of course—that he hadn’t always seen eye to eye with his new boy, but appreciated Brett’s willingness to speak his mind. After all, hadn’t Lincoln had a team of rivals?

Then, a week later, the real bomb: a report appeared in The New York Times, filled with anonymous accusations of a sexual liaison between Brett and a young reporter, Dianna Kelly. Kelly had requested an interview with Brett a few months before; she’d been studying at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and wanted to write her thesis on counterinsurgency. She was thirty, sexy, and extremely sharp. She’d taken to running with Brett on his morning jogs, quizzing him, questioning him. They spent long nights huddling over maps of the country, with Brett explaining in minute detail how the insurgents would plot their counterattacks.

Brett couldn’t honestly say he was surprised when he saw Kelly’s face on the cover of the New York Daily News, tears in her eyes. In the article by muckraker Jack Blatch, she said Brett had slept with her, that he’d promised to leave his wife for her. She said she’d been in love with him, had made love to him in his office.

Ellen didn’t even ask him about it.

The next day, Prescott called him to the White House. “General,” he said, a sad smile on his face, “I think it would be best if you resigned. We’ll give you a big send-off. You’ll go out a hero.”

Brett looked at the president incredulously. “What do you take me for, Mr. President?” he said.

Prescott’s eyes narrowed. “A smart man.”

“Then I’m a damn fool,” Brett said. “I’ve got men in the field, and I’m not going to abandon them just because some floozy is telling purple stories.”

Prescott laughed. It sounded tinny in the carpeted room. “That’s what I like to hear, General. A fighter. That’s what you’ve always been, right?”

Brett didn’t answer.

“Good,” the president continued. “You’re dismissed.”

At 1:00 a.m. the next morning, the phone rang.

“General Hawthorne,” the president said, “you have been reassigned, back to Afghanistan. Thank you for your service.”

That was last January.

Prescott played the situation beautifully, at least politically. He acknowledged that more troops would be needed, but slashed Hawthorne’s recommendation from eighty thousand to twenty thousand. He placed a six-month timeline on the surge, and pledged openly that Americans would be out of the country totally by the end of the year.

By June, the president accelerated his timetable and began withdrawing troops. Some had served just a few weeks on the ground before being pulled back to bases in Europe. The pace escalated. Week after week, more troops came out. By the end of the month, Prescott’s redeployment was nearly complete, with just a couple thousand troops scattered around the capital city itself.

The result was predictable—the Taliban assumed that they had the US on the run.

They were right.

Safe areas shrunk in Helmand Province and Kandahar. Afghan troops went AWOL, melting into the Taliban ranks, recognizing that once the US was gone, they’d have no protection. If there was one thing Brett had learned about the Afghan population, it was that they could shift their political allegiances on a dime. It was how they had survived so long.

They stationed Brett in Kabul, told him to make nice with the locals, smile for the cameras. They told him to follow the lead of Ambassador Beauregard Feldkauf—a major donor to the president, who for some reason had requested Afghanistan as a post. He then proceeded to bungle the job so badly that none of the local Afghan warlords would even talk to each other. Hoping that he’d be able to influence local policy on behalf of the troops, Brett complied.

Meanwhile, the Taliban moved.

Then, yesterday, everything went to hell all at once.

At 9:13 a.m., the Taliban launched three simultaneous raids on the outskirts of Kabul. The raid kept US troops and their sparse allies occupied for just a few precious minutes—long enough for a fuel truck to drive into the center of the city. The driver approached the crowded Kabul furushgah, parked the vehicle, and then whispered to himself, “Allahu akhbar!”