Hand in hand with this is the fact that the key decision makers, staff section leaders and senior commanders, are tucked away and enjoying the most restful and deepest sleep of the night. Though junior officers are left with a certain degree of authority and often disgustingly long lists that prescribe what they are to do in the event of an emergency, serious decisions cannot be made until the principals are back at the helm. This takes time. The officer in charge has to come to the conclusion that the situation warrants disturbing his superior. Then the call must be made or someone dispatched to awaken the poor old sod. Most people need a bit of time to collect their wits after being awakened from a sound sleep. Add to this is the act of dressing, since few senior commanders look good in boxer shorts and they know it.

All of this is repeated at each level of command that news must travel through before decisions can be made and sent back down. The result is a lag in response time, something that Scott Dixon understood and used to his advantage.

The military is not the only organization that suffers from these sorts of problems at night. National news agencies, whether they be the print media or broadcast journalism, also have similar staffing and response problems. Word of an operation that started at midnight in Idaho would not begin to make its way into the news cycle for an hour, maybe two. That meant that the ground offensive against Idaho by the United States Army would not hit the eastern news centers until three or four A.M. at the earliest. Even then the shreds of information coming in would be fragmented snippets that were all but meaningless. It was a factor that no modern commander can easily ignore.

Jan had been witness to some of her time’s grimmest and most disturbing events. She had enjoyed the dubious pleasure of attending an execution that was staged especially for her. In Africa she had suffered the misfortune of being the first to stumble upon the scene of a massacre that had taken place days before. And when covering one of America’s own wars, she had once found herself holding the hand of a young soldier who pleaded with her to stay by his side so that he wouldn’t die alone. All of these things were kept locked away in her memory where they were not permitted to intrude upon her work.