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Boyd had wanted Bill to stay on the Peleliu in the command center, but he’d refused. The only way he’d kept the ship’s commander from ordering him to remain aboard was by insisting that he’d be more effective communicating and reacting if he was on site.
That had been one of the hard-won lessons from the Battle of Mogadishu—the communication lines had been too long. It had gone from the general to command control to air mission commander, then—on wholly separate radios with different encryptions and a spread of frequencies—from the AMC to SOAR. The ground convoys had been on yet another frequency. Worse, Delta and Rangers had been split off yet further, with individual team members dangling out in the wind. When a group leader was hit, that whole section had been cut off and coordinat
