Mission of Honor Read Online Free Page A

regretted a day of the life he had chosen.
    Until four months ago.
    Rodgers finished his coffee. He looked at his watch. There was plenty of time before he had to be at OpCenter. He went to the counter to order another ultra tall cup.
    As Rodgers waited patiently in the short line, he looked around at the young faces. They were mostly college faces with journalists and members of Congress here and there. He could tell them all at a glance. The politicians were the ones lost in newspapers, looking for their names. The reporters were the ones watching the politicians to see who they sat with or who they ignored. The students were the ones who were actually discussing world events.
    Rodgers did not see any future soldiers among the many students. Their eyes were too lively, too full of questions or answers. A soldier needed to be committed to just one thing: following orders. The way Striker had done.
    Striker was the elite rapid response military arm of the National Crisis Management Center. Rodgers was the deputy director of the NCMC, familiarly known as OpCenter. Upon joining OpCenter shortly after its inception, Rodgers had formed and trained the unit.
    A little over four months ago, while parachuting into the Himalayan mountains, General Rodgers and Colonel August had watched as all but one other member of Striker was shot from the sky. In Vietnam, Rodgers had lost close friends and fellow soldiers. On Striker’s first foreign mission, he had helped them through the death of Private Bass Moore. Shortly after that, he had seen them through the loss of their original field commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Squires. But Rodgers had never experienced anything like this.
    Even worse than the scope of the slaughter was the helplessness Rodgers felt watching it happen. These young soldiers had trusted his judgment and his leadership. They had followed him without hesitation out the hatch of the Indian Air Force AN-12. And he had led them into an ambush. Rodgers was seasoned enough to know that nothing was guaranteed in life and war. But that did not stop him from feeling as if he had let the Strikers down.
    OpCenter’s staff psychologist Liz Gordon told Rodgers that he was suffering from trauma survivors’ syndrome, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder. The condition manifested itself as lethargy and depression resulting from escaping death that took others.
    Clinically, that might be true. What Rodgers really suffered from was a crisis of faith. He had screwed up. Being a soldier was about risking your life. But Rodgers had gone into a situation without being aware of an obvious potential danger. In so doing, he had disgraced the qualities his uniform meant to him.
    But Liz Gordon had told him one thing that was certainly true. If Rodgers continued to dwell on what had gone wrong, he would be no good to OpCenter or its director, Paul Hood. And both needed him now. Striker had to be rebuilt, and Hood had to deal with ongoing budget cuts.
    Enough, thought the general. It was time to get out of the past.
    Mike Rodgers turned from the back wall. He sat down, unfolded the newspaper, and scanned the front page. Rodgers was one of the few people at OpCenter who still read a printed newspaper. Paul Hood, intelligence chief Bob Herbert, FBI liaison Darrell McCaskey, and attorney Lowell Coffey III all got their news on-line. To Rodgers, that was like engaging in cybersex. It was a result without an interactive process. He would rather have the real thing.
    Ironically, the New York Yankees were mentioned in an article below the fold. The piece described some mega trade with the Baltimore Orioles. It sounded to Rodgers as if the Birds were getting the better end of the deal. Even the Yankees were not as sharp as they used to be.
    Of course, no one dies when the Yankees make a bad call, Rodgers reflected. He looked at the other headlines.
    The one that caught his attention was beside the baseball article. It was about an apparent