by Cosca, Paul
We got sent over to Korea... fighting North Korea, you know? And we all had jobs that were suited to whatever kind of special thing we had
going on. So for me that meant intelligence. They would drop us behind enemy lines to try to get information. They gave me these headphones connected to this big microphone, and I could hear shit that was going on miles and miles away. Man, I felt like a total badass. I got some serious pussy out there, man. No joke.
Anyway, our squad ended up doing recon right before the Battle of Inchon. That’s what they call it now. I think back then they had some kind of weird name for it. Like...Chromon or something. Like one of those Transformer dudes. Anyway, they dropped us in there and we went to work. And man...the wind was wrong. I’ve tried to go over that again and again, and that’s the only thing I can come up with. The wind must have been wrong. That’s all I can figure, man. Because I swear, I never heard that shit coming.
There were eight of us, just sneaking around and trying to kill those squint eyed fuckers, and all of a sudden we come on a camp with like thirty of ‘em all together. And they had a machine gun nest. Goddammit...I should have heard that. They weren’t trying to be quiet or nothin’. Should have heard that shit a mile away.
By the time we got our shit together, they were already firing on us. Two guys went down right away, and the rest of us were trapped up behind some rocks. It was hell out there, man.
We were down there for probably ten minutes when I thought I got my chance. I thought I could pop up and take a couple guys. I got out from cover and had a guy in my sights...man. For all that fancy fuckin’ training...I have this special hearing, but I can’t open my eyes to see some dude just five feet away. I got off a few rounds and then my whole arm felt like it was on fire. I didn’t even think to yell out or anything. I just fell down as that fucker blew my arm apart. I don’t remember too much after that. They found me later on, once the real battle happened. The medic that was with us got me bandaged up before he died. I guess the gooks didn’t kill me because they
thought I was already dead. And I basically was. Fuck, man. It’s been decades and I still feel dead.
So I guess that’s it. They took me back to the states. Tried to save the arm, but there wasn’t anything worth saving. I told ‘em I’d rather have a stump than some deformed piece of shit hanging there. I didn’t figure I was gonna get a lot of ass with a stump, but I sure as fuck wasn’t gonna get any with some half broken monster claw hangin’ off my shoulder. Some chicks dig scars, but no chick digs that kind of shit.
May 6th, 1991
I had originally scheduled this interview for October, but I hit some unexpected snags and had to delay. Now it’s May, and blisteringly hot here in Atlanta. I’m quickly remembering why I originally scheduled this for the fall. I’ve got the air conditioning in my rental car cranked all the way up, but it barely pushes the air around. A few blocks from my destination, the heat and humidity explode into a wonderful downpour. For ten minutes it rains buckets, and I have to resist the urge to run around in it like a kid in a sprinkler. After the rain stops, the breeze and cooler temperatures make the day quite enjoyable.
Athena Brown is sitting on her porch, sipping a glass of iced tea. I’m sure if Norman Rockwell had been southern, he would have painted such a scene. The ground is soaking up the water as Athena soaks up the tempered sunshine. As I walk up the drive, I wonder if there is a pitcher of tea somewhere around. I’m happy to find that indeed there is.
ATHENA: I’ve been makin’ tea like that since I was just a little bitty girl. My momma made it just that same way. Isn’t it good? You drink it like that just once and you won’t never want it no other way. I’ll get you hooked on it!
She laughs. It is loud and charming.
Down here, that’s how it’s done. You don’t never let something go by in life without makin’ it the very best it can be. Even if that thing is just some glass of tea. Don’t let nothin’ pass your lips without making it the best. That’s how I live. That’s how Willy lived too.
Willy was named after his daddy. So really, he was William Brown Jr. But everybody that ever knew him called him Willy. Willy Sr. crashed up in a car accident just a few years after the war, and it tore me right up to pieces. I’d been with Willy Sr. since we was kids, and it killed me not to have him anymore. But after his daddy died, there was no reason to call him Willy Jr. So we all just called him Willy.
I always knew Willy was special. But I s’ppose every momma says
that her baby is special, don’t they?
She laughs again.
Now when Willy was five or six, we moved on up from Alabama here to this house in Atlanta. Willy had an aunt up here, and we moved on in next door. Willy loved it. He’d run all around that backyard, run up and down the sidewalks. Always running. I don’t think I remember that boy not runnin’ someplace. And I couldn’t never keep up! But I didn’t worry. Willy was a good boy. There are some boys around who get into all kinds of trouble. But not Willy.
When Willy was...oh I think thirteen or so, we really started to figure out how special he was. You know, he was down there practicing with the high school track team before he was even old enough to go to the school! He went down there every day after school to run, and he caught the eye of that track coach. He told Willy “You come on down and race my boys,” and he did. And you know what? He beat all of ‘em. No one ever taught him how to do it, and he was already faster than those other boys that had been workin’ with the team. When the coach saw that, he wanted Willy to come down and practice every day with ‘em. Willy came back and told me, and he had a look like I was gonna say “no”. But not me. I knew that this was gonna be the way that he got out of here. There are lots of boys, black boys ‘specially, they don’t never make it out. They born here, then they get in trouble and they stay here. And you know what they do, don’t you? They get some girl in trouble and then we got a whole new generation of black boys and girls who stick around here and the whole place just goes down and down. Breaks my heart every time I see it. But I knew that wasn’t Willy. He was special, and he was gettin’ out.
I didn’t really have a good idea of just how fast he was ‘till I finally got to see him at a meet. It was the last meet of the year, and the high school got permission for Willy to run in what they called an exhibition. It wasn’t for
points or anything. They just wanted to show him off, and he was gonna run the mile. Now, when was the last time you ran the mile? Oh lord, it’s been years and years since I done it. And when I did, I was huffin’ and puffin’ and could only do it in maybe seven or eight minutes. Now there are some fast boys who can run it in six. And some real fast boys who can do it in five minutes. But in that last meet, in front of all those people, Willy ran the mile by himself. And when he came across the finish line, everybody in the whole place started cheering, because he became one of the first people to run the mile in under four minutes. I didn’t even know it was a record! But he done it in his first ever meet, and I knew he was just gonna get better. I knew it.
I don’t know how they found us, but it wasn’t too long before all those newspaper folks were talking to us. By the time my boy turned fourteen, he’d already been on TV. Can you believe it? Oh I was so proud. But I told him that he wasn’t so fancy that he couldn’t keep up on his school work. Even if runnin’ that track was gonna get him into some fancy school, it would be the school work that kept him there. Knees only last so long. You gotta have a brain to back it up, ya know? I never got the chance to go to school, so I wanted to make sure Willy got a better shot.
Now, there’s one thing I want everybody to know about my boy. He was the kind of boy who knew how to be polite. He had manners. A lot of kids today, they ain’t nothin’ but thugs. But Willy wasn’t no thug. He was a good boy. He had respect for me and for adults. He had respect for women. Now I know that after Willy died, there was some girl out there who said that she and Willy had a child out of wedlock. But I’ve t
alked to that girl. I know a liar when I see one, and that girl ain’t nothin’ but a liar. A low down, dirty liar. Ain’t no two ways about it. I just...I don’t like folks talkin’ bad about Willy. Especially not after all he sacrificed for this country. There ain’t no room for that.
Athena lets out a deep sigh, drying her eyes with the back of her hand.
I miss that boy. I miss him with everything I got. Heck, I just miss being able to do things for him. You know, that boy could hardly boil water himself. I loved cooking for him. Loved knowing that I was taking care of someone so very special. That made me special too. And I tell you, that boy could eat! Ooh! He’d sit down and eat a dozen eggs at a time. Five or six sandwiches. A boy like that, with those gifts, you gotta keep him strong.
Now by the time Willy was fifteen, there was already a coach from Auburn University who was coming down to work with him. Willy didn’t make no commitments on where he was gonna go, because he needed to focus on his studies, but it was awful kind of that man to come down and work with Willy. And Willy was doing so well...he was just gettin’ faster and faster. During the track meets he’d always run the mile, and they never put anyone against him. When he ran, everyone was on Willy’s side. Everyone was cheering. They just wanted to see Willy go.
Now when Willy turned eighteen, it was 1960, and he was faster than ever. But he’d also kept his grades up high and done real well, and with just a couple months left in school, it seemed like he was gonna head back down to Alabama the next year to go to Auburn. I hated the thought of him leavin’, but he made me so proud.
They’d kept Willy out of a couple track meets near the end because they wanted to make a big deal out of his last one. All kinds of folks was there. Press from all around the country, people from different colleges. They even had someone from the Guinness Book of records down there to make it official!
I had a whole basket full of sandwiches for him for when he finished, because that’s always what he needed to eat after a big run like that. I was dressed up in my finest, up there in the stands with the rest of the folks. And everyone was there to watch my boy. My heart was as full as it could ever be. And then he was off!
Now if I had to guess, I’d say there were some folks in the stands that day who had barely driven twenty miles an hour. And here was my boy running that fast! He was just like a blur goin’ around that track. It’s the kind of thing you just can’t believe unless you’re there watchin’ it. Everyone was shoutin’ and hollerin’ and in no time at all, he was back across the line. The man from the record books went down and shook his hand and made it official. Willy ran that mile in two minutes, fifty-eight seconds. The fastest person on the whole earth.
I was coming down the stands when I saw a man in a real dark suit come up to Willy. Willy listened to what he had to say, then they walked away together. Everyone was still cheering and telling me I must be so proud, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was just watching this big, serious white man talk to my son. The man handed Willy a business card and shook his hand. Then finally, my boy came on back to me.
I was so happy, but I was nervous too, seeing Willy talkin’ to that white man. Before anyone else could talk to him, I went up and asked “Who was that man, Willy?” and he says “He’s from the government, mama. He wants me to go work for ‘em.” Oh my heart went right up in my throat when he said that. We’d all just got done with that business in Korea not too long before, and I’d heard plenty on the news about some trouble back over in Asia. The thought of Willy as a soldier wasn’t something I could handle. But he said “No, mama. It’s not the army. He was from the secret service. He wants me to help protect the president.”
I can hardly say what I was feeling right then. I was nervous...but I was proud, too. I wanted Willy to go off and get an education, but what do you get an education for? To go off and get a good job! And here was the government wantin’ to give him a good job. And a job with the president! That was just too good a thing to pass up, so he packed up and left for Washington just a couple weeks after school got out.
Those next few years, I didn’t get to see Willy too much. He wrote all the time. Called, too. But he was too busy to come back. He couldn’t tell me about his job, since it was all top secret, but he did tell me about the kinds of folks he got to see in Washington. He told me that he and president Kennedy, that’s JFK of course, they talked a good deal. And I even got to see Willy with the president when they came through in ‘62. But that...that was the last time.
When I heard about it on television...I knew it right away. I knew it even before they said it. Mothers know those kinds of things, you know? When your child dies, a piece of your heart dies right along with him. My soul broke that day…but I was also proud. He died...but he died doin’ what he loved, and being the kind of man I always wanted him to be. He died runnin’. And I guess I can’t ask for too much more than that.
November 14th, 1991
Michael Shunberg is a man who is never out of style, no matter where he goes. Even out here in Akron, Ohio, he is still dressed like this is a TV interview on a major network. The watch he’s wearing is easily worth the value of my rental car. And my regular car. Combined. Shunberg exited Washington because “They have full access to you up there in that shithole they call a capitol,” he says. Though certainly, that was not his only reason for leaving.
Shunberg worked his way up through the ranks of the CIA, then made the jump to director of the FBI. He says he was always built for greatness, but could never stand the idea of running for politics. “You got too many people who pick presidents based on dirty laundry,” he says. And if anyone has a keen awareness of dirty laundry, it’s him. While in his position atop the FBI, he was caught in an affair with a wealthy socialite. Her husband was a senator, and was also on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Before his reputation could be damaged any further, Shunberg bowed out and retreated to his home state of Ohio.
He attempted to revive his career last year by hosting a show on CNN, but this too floundered when he was convicted of a DUI after embedding a mailbox into the windshield of his Porsche. He has since quieted down and, as he tells me often, is writing a book.
SHUNBERG: It’s a book about the Bureau. And hell, who better to write it than a guy who ran the show, right? Of course, there’s a lot of stuff I can’t talk about. Recent stuff, mostly. Classified stuff. But that still leaves a lot of room to write. There’s plenty of history there. I’ve been planning this thing for a long time, even while I was there in the office. Washington is a fascinating, exciting place. But it’s also a nest of vipers. That’s the title, actually. Nest of Vipers. Pretty catchy, huh? I know publishers always want to put subtitles on books like that, but I think it’s crap. Action movies don’t need subtitles, so why would my book need one? Nest of Vipers. Sounds like a Van Damme movie.
Anyway, you wanted to talk about the Enhanced, right? See, I’m the guy to go to. You should have just come to me right from the beginning. Hell, you could make your whole book just conversations we have about this. I’ve been looking at the ins and outs of all this for years. Even before I became chief over there, I was always poking around. Asking questions. That’s what I’m good at.
Frankly, it’s hilarious to me that it became this big reveal that the government was working with and employing Enhanced people. Hilarious. People are so friggin’ stupid. Or blind, maybe. The government finds out that there are these people with amazing, off-the-chart kind of powers...of course they’re gonna be knocking the doors right off the hinges to get those guys in working for ‘em. If you’ve got a guy out there who can lift a car, or a guy who can outrun one, do you want him out on the street where anyone can get their hands on him? Or do you want him sitting in your office, wearing the suit you gave him and cashing the check that you’re signing?
But I guess people were more naive back then. Or more closed minded. I mean, the president back then was bangin’ one of the most well-known actresses in the world, an
d nobody really caught on, ya know? They say the wife didn’t know, but I bet she knew. Affairs...it’s a messy business. Everyone gets involved eventually.
So the big reveal happens in ‘63; that’s when everybody gets a clue. But really, we’re talking quite a few years before that. I mean, obviously you could count all the guys in the war, but that’s not really what I’m talking about. From 1945 onward, there was a big push to get these Enhanced guys back on the government payroll. But honestly, it didn’t go too well at first. Not a lot of takers. I mean, these guys had just been through hell over there. They weren’t too excited about jumping back on the Uncle Sam bandwagon.
The first record I’ve found on one of the Enhanced working for the government was Major Tom Hawkes. After he became plain old Tommy
again, he went to work for the FBI. Tommy had been a cop before he got drafted, and he came back with all his pieces intact, so they figured he’d be a good fit for field work. This was before you had to take psych evals to get in, so nobody knew that good old Tommy Hawkes was nuttier than a goddamn fruitcake.
He’d been on the job about eight months when one day he comes in, goes to his office, gets bare ass naked and goes the rest of the day like that. The Bureau back then was really a boy’s club, so everyone just looked at it like a joke. But it looked a lot less like a joke when they found him in J. Edgar Hoover’s office, eating the goddamn fish out of the aquarium. That right there is one of the big reasons they brought in headshrinkers to check people out. They didn’t need anyone else eating Hoover’s fish.
That was the exception, though. There have been plenty of real stand up guys. The Agency really loves ‘em. See, with a regular C.I.A. operative, you have to make sure he’s got the appropriate gadgets and equipment when you drop him someplace. You know, all that James Bond junk. But if you’ve got a guy who can set a building on fire just by grabbing the drapes, he becomes a lot more versatile.