no ifs, ands, buts, gray areas or room for interpretation in the military. There is only the strict chain-of-command. This is a chain that can never be broken or circumvented, a chain that is the backbone on which the brass in the military relies upon and has complete and utter trust in. It is a foundation so solidly built upon for hundreds of years that no one man is above it. Not a four-star general or an infantryman, and certainly not Sergeant Kaley.
Colonel Fizer likes Jonathan Kaley because he is a dedicated soldier and believes in the righteousness of the United States military. On the other hand, Kaley is also unafraid to speak his mind to his superior officers or second-guess their judgment. It has certainly put him in hot water on more than one occasion, which explains his current assignment at Evans.
Kaley was in the Army intelligence business for years, first as an analyst and then, after receiving reconnaissance and combat training and being schooled in stealth warfare, as an operative in the field. He earned high marks from his superiors in all areas of these missions: planning and organization, execution, objectives attained. There was only one aspect that seemed to rankle the top brass more than anything about Kaley: his constant questioning of orders. Regardless of what the orders dictated, Kaley always seemed to believe there was a better way of doing it. Namely, his way. Despite the fact that he was often right, this still did not justify Kaley's actions in the eyes of his superiors.
Although the brass viewed Kaley's hesitancy in carrying out certain orders to be bordering on insubordination, they put up with him because he was one of the best and he always seemed to achieve his mission objectives. Nevertheless, his superiors did not take too kindly to Kaley's brashness, and their tolerance of him was rapidly coming to an end. By that time, they were simply looking for an excuse to kick his ass to the curb.
Then, they found their opportunity. Kaley and several of his colleagues were conducting training exercises with a Special Forces squad based out of Georgia, a group that made Kaley and his team look like a bunch of librarians. The Special Forces squad was showing Kaley and his men new stealth techniques, as well as the latest in military gadgets and hardware.
On the third day of these training maneuvers, the Special Forces squad brought Kaley and his team to a small island off the coast for what they believed to be a P.O.W. rescue operation exercise. Instead, Kaley's team arrived to find a group of enemy combatants, real enemy combatants, who had been in the custody of the military since shortly after 9/11.
The patriotic fervor that gripped the nation after that fateful day had a different effect on the men in this Special Forces squad. Their patriotic zeal had turned jingoistic, which happened to a number of Americans during this time, although they may be reluctant to admit it. Every man with dark, Middle Eastern features and every woman who wears a hijab is instantly an enemy, real or imagined. The men in this squad saw only red when it came to these people, and they were determined to extract confessions, terror plots, or more names from them, whether the prisoners knew anything or not.
By the time Kaley's team arrived, it appeared that many of the enemy combatants had already been worked over. What was worse, however, was that the Special Forces squad seemed to take a truly perverse pleasure in these “interrogations.” This was not a good cop, bad cop routine - this was strictly bad cop. After one of the soldiers broke a prisoner's nose, another soldier tried to break it back the way it was, to no avail. Questions were asked sparingly, as an afterthought to the actual beatings, as if they needed an excuse to use the prisoners as human piñatas. No matter what the answers, it seemed inevitable that they would be greeted with a violent response.
Then, the Special Forces’ men started berating Kaley's team for their hesitancy, their shock and awe at the brutal beatings, and even questioned his team's patriotism. They called Kaley and his men candyasses and pussies, and lectured them that this is the way the world works now: everyone is a terrorist until proven otherwise. And to find each and every terrorist, you have to beat it out of them.
Finally, Kaley was ordered by the squad's commander to obtain the coordinates of a terrorist camp operating in the mountains of Afghanistan. If the man was not forthcoming with the information, force was necessary and authorized. Kaley refused, arguing that he was unfamiliar with the intelligence they were referring to and he could not be ordered to interrogate a prisoner on matters he had not been briefed. Furthermore, Kaley asserted that he would not use force on an unarmed man unless absolutely necessary. This provoked the ire of the commander, and he began echoing his soldiers’ sentiments about what the real world is like now and how all Americans need to take off the kid gloves. He gave Kaley one last chance to interrogate the man or risk the prospect of a court martial. Again, Kaley refused.
The commander stared at him, his face a mask of red and his blood boiling from Kaley's refusal to follow an order from a superior officer. The commander nodded at one of his men, who approached the prisoner and loomed menacingly over the man. The soldier looked back at Kaley and smiled. He grabbed the prisoner's arm and without asking a single question, broke the man's arm over his knee, causing a horrible cracking sound, followed by the prisoner's agonizing scream. Out of pure instinct, Kaley roared towards the soldier who broke the prisoner's arm and knocked him nearly unconscious with one punch.
The commander attempted to court martial Kaley for his “unprovoked” and “unwarranted” attack, as it was described, but a member within the top brass knew Kaley's value as a soldier and thus, a court martial was prevented. However, Kaley was removed from Army intelligence and any further missions, and he was demoted from Sergeant Major to First Sergeant with the understanding that he would likely never rise above this rank. An additional indignity was heaped upon him when he was given a supervisory role at Evans, a position typically occupied by a Staff Sergeant, a full three ranks behind a First Sergeant.
Kaley, however, has never questioned this or complained. He loves the military and it, in turn, still loves him. Colonel Fizer certainly can respect Sergeant Kaley's sense of duty and purpose, but Kaley disobeyed a direct order from a superior officer and this cannot be tolerated, especially not again. He has placed his life and the life of Private Rushmore in more danger than he could possibly imagine. They witnessed something that was not supposed to have been witnessed by anyone.
Fizer partially blames himself for the untenable situation he has put the Foundation in. Upon ordering Kaley to stand down regarding the signal discovered in Lake Michigan, Fizer assumed with good reason that the order would be followed and that would be the end of the matter. Fizer should have known better.
Sergeant Kaley is a bulldog, tenacious in pursuit of answers to his questions. Indeed, the man craves information and he is not one to drop something at the first sign of an obstacle. He does not like to be stonewalled or bullied, a trait that has already had disastrous effects on his military career.
The signal should not have been discovered in the first place, a fact that continues to baffle Fizer. Nevertheless, he does not believe he is to blame. He has more important things on his mind than monitoring what his subordinates are doing. It was only after a substantial amount of time elapsed before he thought to review Sergeant Kaley's and Private Rushmore's keystroke log.
The keystroke-logging program was developed several years ago and today nearly every computer under military ownership contains the program. Essentially, a computer equipped with the program can detail each keystroke entered by the user during a specified time period and produce a readable report for a supervisor to review. The report serves a two-fold purpose: first, it informs the supervisor if the appropriate steps and guidelines were followed in the event of an emergency situation; and second, for security reasons, it lists everything that the soldier looked at, printed, copied, downloaded, recorded, or otherwise reviewed during the shift.
Nearly an hour after Kaley and Rushmore's shift ended, Fizer finally thought to review the logs and discovered that something appeared to have been downloaded from a non-military satellite to a disc on Rushmore's computer, which
