“So am I, Abuela. Go on, Jack, fess up. Tell Doña Alicia that you talked me into sling-loading a dune buggy under McNab’s Huey so we could ‘reconnoiter the American embassy in Kuwait by air and land before the Marines could get there.’ And that when we got to the embassy, you blew the safe and stole all the diplomats’ whiskey.”
“Really?” Svetlana said. She did not seem disapproving.
“He’s an evil man, Sweaty,” Castillo said. “Rotten to the core.”
“Sweaty?” Doña Alicia repeated.
“Was that before or after you made the Russian colonels sing ‘The Internationale’?” Dmitri Berezovsky asked.
“What?” Doña Alicia asked.
“A couple of days after, Colonel,” Davidson said. “We needed a little something to drink to celebrate the Well Done message we got from Bush One.”
“What Russian colonels singing?” Doña Alicia asked.
Berezovsky and Davidson related the Russian and American versions of the story.
“I should be ashamed of myself,” Doña Alicia then said. “My curiosity always seems to get out of control. We were talking about how bad General Naylor feels about your . . . retirement.”
“He shouldn’t,” Castillo said seriously. “He went along with Montvale because that’s what he thought his duty called for him to do. I did the same thing; I did what I thought was my duty. I’m not angry with Naylor, Abuela. Really. He’s always been one of the good guys.”
“What are you going to do when this is over and . . .”
“When I am ‘Lieutenant Colonel Castillo (Retired)’? Right now what I’m thinking is that I’ll move into Sweaty’s new house in the Pilar Golf and Polo Country Club and maybe even learn how to play golf. Or polo. Or both.”
My post-retirement plans are a little vague, probably because I don’t want to even think about them.
What the hell am I going to do?
I can’t imagine playing golf or polo. . . .
“What about coming back here?” Doña Alicia asked.
Lester came into the kitchen, saving him from having to answer the question.
“Mr. D’Allessando’s got Colonel Hamilton on the AFC for you, Colonel.”
And what happens to you, Lester, when this merry little band folds its tent and steals off into the night?
“Thanks, Lester.”
He motioned for everybody to follow him into the library, where Bradley had the AFC set up.
[FIVE]
0855 8 January 2006
When Castillo walked into the library, he saw that the first steps to convert it into the Command Post for what he was now thinking of as Operation Fish Farm had been taken by Corporal Bradley. The AFC had been set up on a table near a window. A bed for the 24/7 posting had been dragged in from somewhere and there was a coffeemaker on another table against the wall.
Chairs had been arranged around the table, and there were lined pads and several ballpoint pens on each pad. Aside from that, there was nothing on the table but Castillo’s and Davidson’s notebook computers and the AFC handset. The rest of what they were going to need was going to have to wait until Lester or Jack went shopping.
Castillo took the seat at the head of the table, with his back to the fireplace, which held a crackling fire. Dmitri Berezovsky took the seat on the left side of the table. Davidson slipped into the seat across from him. Svetlana and Doña Alicia sat together on the left at the other end of the table, and Bradley sat across from them.
A Winchester lever-action .44-40 rifle was mounted on pegs above the fireplace. Large, accurate-scale models of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and an M1A1 Abrams tank sat on the mantelpiece under it. Castillo had bought the Apache model in the bookstore at Fort Rucker shortly after having been rated in that aircraft and had it shipped home. Fernando had done about the same thing with the Abrams modeclass="underline" bought it at the Fort Knox bookstore and sent it home just before shipping out for the Desert War.
The Winchester was a family treasure, having been used on many dozen occasions to protect the Double-Bar-C and its cattle from marauding Apache Indians.
The M1A1 Abrams was named for one of the Army’s most distinguished Armor generals, Creighton W. Abrams. Among his great achievements, Abrams, as a lieutenant colonel, had broken through the German ring surrounding Bastogne to rescue the 101st Airborne.
The AH-64, an instructor at Rucker had told Castillo before he’d even been allowed to get close to one of them, was named after the Apache Indians in tribute to their characteristics as warriors. Castillo had had trouble believing his ears—and even more keeping his mouth shut.
He had thought of that instructor every time he had climbed into an AH- 64 Apache thereafter, wondering again and again if the Pentagon chair-warmer—or chair-warmers, plural—who had given it that name because of the warrior characteristics of the Apache Indians had done enough research. For example, to learn, as Castillo well knew, that the Apaches had expressed their contempt for settlers against whom they waged war by capturing settlers and hanging them alive upside-down over a small fire and slowly roasting their brains. Or, for example, leaving their captors spread-eagle in the desert sun with eyelids hacked off and enough small bloodletting incisions made in the genital area to attract ants and other desert fauna.
And now Castillo thought of chair-warmer types again as he reached for the SPEAKERPHONE button on the AFC.
“Good morning, sir. Castillo here.”
“So it says on this amazing device,” Colonel Hamilton replied. “I am taking Mr. D’Allessando’s word for it that we are now in Class One encryption.”
“Yes, sir, we are.”
“I have been hoping you would get in contact, Colonel Castillo, inasmuch as General McNab has informed me the press of his other duties forces him to leave this operation in your hands, so to speak.”
“Yes, sir. That is my understanding.”
“Are you alone, Colonel? Mr. D’Allessando suggested you might wish him to be privy to this, and he’s with me.”
“I have my people with me, sir, and we’re on speakerphone.”
“Specifically, our new Russian friends?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Colonel Berezovsky, I regret I didn’t have more time to talk with you and your charming sister when we were in Florida,” Hamilton said. “But if you will continue to be available while we’re doing this, no real harm done.”
“Good morning, Colonel,” Berezovsky said. “We will be here.”
“There are some things that have to be done in the immediate future, Castillo, before Mr. DeWitt and I go into the Congo.”
“Sir, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Castillo said.
“About what?”
“Sir, what I’m thinking is that it would better if you didn’t actually go into the Congo.”
“That’s absurd. Wherever did you come up with that?”
“What I was thinking would make more sense, sir, would be if you remained outside the Congo—say, in Tanzania or Chad. . . .”
“I repeat, that’s absurd.”
“Colonel, you’re too valuable an asset to be put at risk.”
“I will make that judgment, Colonel. I have made that judgment. Now, as I was saying—”
“Sir, with respect, I must insist.”
“Colonel, you are in no position to insist on anything.”
“Sir, as you told me, General McNab has been forced to place this operation in my hands.”
“What General McNab said to me, Colonel, was that in the inevitable event we should find ourselves in disagreement, we could not look to him for resolution; we would have to do that ourselves.”
“Yes, sir, I understand that. Sir, may I say that I regard myself as the operation commander and you, sir, as very likely our most important asset, and that it is therefore my responsibility to protect you to the best of my ability.”