CHAPTER 9: The Hearing in Washington
At nine-twenty, I entered the Hart Senate Office Building through the secure staff entrance. The corridor outside the Armed Services hearing room was crowded with congressional aides carrying heavy three-ring binders, television technicians checking cables along the carpeted wainscoting, and uniform escorts waiting by the wooden double doors. When I took my seat at the witness table, the microphones were already live, their small red indicator diodes glowing beside the nameplate that read: Brigadier General Sarah Hayes, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff, Logistics. A junior legislative assistant leaned down from the dais to place a fresh glass of ice water beside my papers. Her eyes dipped for a fraction of a second to my right wrist, where the navy wool of my sleeve pulled back slightly when I reached for my pen, exposing the narrow dark line of broken capillary vessels against my skin. She did not ask about it, and I did not pull the cuff down to hide it.
At nine-thirty precise, the committee chairman tapped his gavel against the wooden block. "The committee will come to order," the senator announced, his voice reverberating through the high-ceilinged room. "This morning we receive testimony from the Department of the Army regarding strategic distribution networks and material readiness across the eastern transit corridor. General Hayes, the committee welcomes you. You may proceed with your opening statement whenever you are prepared."
I adjusted the gooseneck microphone with my left hand. I did not look at the cameras, and I did not look at the gallery behind me. I opened the binder, placed my thumbs along the margins of the typed text, and began to speak in the clear, measured cadence my father had taught me forty years earlier when we sat together at the kitchen table in Prince George's County, going over the rules of a world that was never designed to give us the benefit of the doubt. "Mr. Chairman, members of the committee," I said into the silence of the room. "Thank you for the opportunity to report on the state of the supply lines that connect our facilities to the communities they are sworn to defend."
CHAPTER 10: The Road Through Oak Haven