“Boss, this is bullshit. The Iraqis are on the border, and we’re fencing words about using one stupid command center. We need to get off our asses, and, with all due respect, sir, I’m going to see what can be done.”

He then threw his notepad onto the table and charged out of the conference-room door. The room grew quiet, and for a while everyone talked about more mundane matters. But everyone around the table, including Horner, was more than a little dumbfounded by the force of his departure. Saudi Arabia is a most polite society, and the Arabs are extremely deferential toward officers of senior rank. In a second, Khaled went from a three-star general to a prince. And it took some time for everyone else to note the title change. When he reappeared and sat down, he was a subordinate general once more, but the prince had obviously made a phone call to put the train back on the track.

Next, as if by magic, General Hamad’s phone rang. The conversation that followed took some time, and it was, at least on this end, very respectful. When Hamad hung up, he smiled and turned to Horner.

“Why don’t we adjourn and go down and look at the command center?” he said.

Within minutes, the group was headed down the elevator to the two-story underground complex Horner would soon set up for General Schwarzkopf and his staff. Though he had no way of knowing it then, he would visit this command center every night he was in Riyadh, for the next very long nine months.

★ It goes without saying that this meeting was important. It set the stage for Horner’s own relations with the Saudis as Commander before General Schwarzkopf ’s arrival and as CENTAF Commander; and of course it had a large effect on the dynamic of U.S.-Saudi relations throughout the Gulf crisis. Even though the themes touched on that afternoon were few—women soldiers and use of the MODA Command Center—the consequences were large.

These themes, in fact, by metonymy, spoke for much, much more. They were focal points for a thousand other themes—telephones, rental cars, hotel rooms, basing, training ranges, port facility access, ramp space, airspace, storage areas, sharing of ammunition, on and on. Not the least of these issues was what military people call status of forces34—something never explicitly discussed but always in the back of everyone’s minds. Fortunately, the USAF had been in the Kingdom for the past ten years, and the Air Force people had behaved themselves in an admirable manner. This trust built up over a decade made it possible for both parties to start the relationship without formal agreements, just the verbal agreements reached in Jeddah.