Montana said. “You’ll find more colonels and sergeants major. So we’ve learned their putative ‘help’ is a myth. People who have long-term careers in training commands tend to be of limited utility in actual operations. There are options: Exile Downing somewhere like the Indian Ocean. Bust him to private and hand him a rifle. Make him something unimportant in an unimportant spot. I suppose we could send him to stand up the base on Greenland, again. Since there are options, my suggestion is to table it and figure it out while he steams to Mayport.“As to Faith, once we get her back I’d be more than happy to have her as my junior aide. Being a commodore’s aide carries with it an automatic cachet. People won’t tend to look down their noses at her. As much. And when our only remaining SEAL and a former astronaut says ‘She scares me. And I’m not joking . . . ’ people will tend to pay attention. And it will give me an opportunity to train her, and from me she’ll take the training.”“Thank you, sir,”
