“I got it from Johnny Oliver yesterday in Florida. He got it the night before in Buenos Aires from one of Rangio’s men, who got on their Aerolineas plane to tell them they had a free upgrade to first class.” He paused. “And earlier that day, the day they left Argentina, Rangio went with them to Córdoba, showed them where Señor Guevara lived, was an altar boy, where he played soccer, and introduced them not only to Guevara’s next-door neighbor, but to the SIDE guy in Córdoba and the chief of the Policía Federal for Córdoba.”
“Sounds too good to be true. ‘Beware of the Argentines bearing gifts’?” Felter said.
“Both Oliver and Portet believe the affection between Rangio and Zammoro is genuine.”
“As a result of which Rangio will happily arrange a clear shot at Guevara for Zammoro? Or vice versa?”
“According to Oliver, Zammoro takes being an officer seriously. . . .”
“Hang around him, maybe it’ll be contagious,” Felter said. “How did you get up here, anyway?”
“In a T-37,” Lowell said. “I have developed a close relationship with my Air Force peers at Strike. They let me fly their airplanes.”
“I don’t want to know how you’ve developed that close relationship, ” Felter said, and chuckled, and then grew serious. “This Rangio/Zammoro thing really sounds a little too good to be true.”
“Oliver said that when he ‘counseled’ Zammoro about not having told anybody about knowing Rangio, Zammoro said something to the effect that he had taken an oath before God to obey the orders of those appointed over him, and he would obey those orders . . .”
He paused and took a slip of paper and read from it:
“. . . ‘even if those orders are not to kill the Antichrist sonofabitch who has my wife in a cage on starvation rations.’ ”
“You wrote it down?”
“Johnny Oliver did, he wanted to remember it exactly. And he gave it to me.”
“And Oliver was taken in by this melodramatic announcement of loyalty and obedience to orders?”
“Yeah, Sandy, he was. And so was young Portet. And from the way they tell the story, and the way that Rangio came through with the names—which is more than the names, it’s an admission he’s got people close to the top in Havana—so am I.”
“Well, it’s moot,” Felter said. He tapped Rangio’s list of Cubans. “Between you and me, this will help my credibility with the President.”
“Is that getting to be a problem?”
“There’s one of me and—what’s that sailor’s prayer? ‘My ship is so small and your ocean so big’?—and so many CIA people with convincing mannerisms.”
“You’re pretty convincing yourself, Sandy,” Lowell said, very seriously. “You have been right so many times when the Agency has been wrong.”
“I feel like a tightrope walker working without a net,” Felter said. “You only get to make one mistake under those conditions.”
“I’ll buy you lunch to cheer you up,” Lowell said.
“No, but thanks anyway. I’m on my way to Camp David.” He paused. “I’m glad to have this from Rangio.”
“Anything special going on?”
Felter looked at him for a moment, then handed him a radio teletype message. Paper-clipped to it was a small sheet of crisp notepaper:
THE CHIEF OF STAFF
I didn’t know if you would get this in
time for this afternoon’s session.
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE
SECRET
1535 ZULU 7 FEBRUARY 1965
FROM: HQ US MILITARY ASSISTANCE COMMAND
VIETNAM
TO: DEPT OF THE ARMY WASH DC
IMMEDIATE PERSONAL ATTENTION C/S US ARMY CONFIRMATION OF RADIOTELECON THIS HQ AND DUTY OFFICER SITUATION ROOM HQ DEPT OF THE ARMY 1455 THIS DATE.
1. AT 1035 ZULU 7 FEBRUARY 1965 VIETCONG FORCES ATTACKED CAMP HOLLOWAY, A FACILITY FOR US MILITARY ADVISORS TO ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH VIETNAM. CAMP HOLLOWAY IS SITED IN THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS OF THE RVN, NEAR PLEIKU.
2. INITIAL REPORTS INDICATE EIGHT (8) US MILADV PERSONNEL KILLED IN ACTION; ONE HUNDRED (100) US MILADV PERSONNEL WOUNDED IN ACTION; AND 10 (TEN) US AIRCRAFT DESTROYED.
3. THE VC ATTACK ACHIEVED SURPRISE AND THE VC WERE ABLE TO WITHDRAW AFTER THE ATTACK WITH MINIMAL LOSSES.
4. THE KIA, MIA, AND AIRCRAFT LOSSES, GIVEN IN (2) ABOVE, ARE CONFIRMED BUT PRELIMINARY, AND ADDITIONAL LOSSES OF KIA, MIA, AND A/C SHOULD BE ANTICIPATED.
5. AN AFTER ACTION REPORT WILL BE FURNISHED ON COMPLETION.
GREGORY, MAJ GEN, USA
J-3 USMAC VIETNAM
SECRET
“That was delivered by one of the chief’s aides,” Felter said. “I’ve known him for a long time; he was one of my instructors at Beast Barracks at West Point, when I was a plebe.”
Lowell’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t say anything.
“I remember him with his nose against mine,” Felter went on, “his spittle spraying my face. He told me I shouldn’t expect to be around long—there was no room for wiseass New York Hebrews in his army. I don’t think he’s changed his opinion of me over the years; I don’t think he’s among my legion of admirers.”
“Hell, Mouse, you won. He’s the errand boy. And the chief is, otherwise he wouldn’t have sent you that.”
“I’d like to know if the chief sent me that because he thinks I’m a soldier, or because—obviously—the President wants me at the meeting he’s called in response to this.”
“You have the admiration of a lot of good soldiers, Mouse. Bellmon, Hanrahan, many others, and of course me,” Lowell said. “What does this VC attack mean?”
“It means the commitment of more troops is now a certainty, rather than a possibility. The Marines are forming a reinforced regimental-size Expeditionary Force, the Ninth, for ‘possible use’ in Vietnam. Now they’ll go for sure, and more troops—Marine and Army—will follow.”
“Is this going to have any effect on us?”
“It already has. Finton got a call two days ago from the Air Force, saying that the C-130 that was supposed to pick up the black L-19 at Bragg won’t, having been diverted to a mission with a higher priority, and that this unspecified higher-priority mission—obviously Vietnam—will also almost certainly delay indefinitely the airlift I asked for to take the Beaver, the H-13, et cetera et cetera to the Congo.”
“I thought you had all the priority you needed?” Lowell countered.
Felter looked at him almost tolerantly, as if pained to realize that anyone he knew so well could be so dense.
“ ‘You know what we did last week?’ ” he mock-quoted. “ ‘While people are getting killed in Vietnam, while we have to replace the ten airplanes that got blown up in Pleiku, we flew to fucking Africa with a fucking L-19 and half a dozen grunts in the back.’”
He paused and went on.
“How long do you think that secret mission would stay secret? ” he asked. “I may have to do it, but I really don’t want to.”
“Maybe that’s not going to be as much of a problem as you think, Mouse,” Lowell said. “Presuming you can come up with the money to charter a 707 from Intercontinental Air, Ltd.”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Captain Jean-Philippe Portet is now president and chief executive officer of Intercontinental Air, Ltd. That’s the rest of the good news I flew all the way up here to tell you in person,” Lowell said.
“He found the money to buy an airline with a 707?” Felter asked. A smile crossed his face.
“He didn’t find it,” Lowell said. “Our friends from Langley came to Florida, checkbook in hand, practically forcing it on him.”
“This is a done deal?” Felter asked.
“It’s a done deal,” Lowell said. “And Cousin Porter done the deal, which means he really put the screws to the Agency. It may take them a while to figure it out, but Porter really screwed them. They provided the money, and they don’t have any control whatever. ”
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“And you really think this is a good thing?” Felter asked softly.
“You don’t?”
“If you’d asked me, I would have told you under no circumstances to get Captain Portet involved with the Agency.”
“Ah, come on, Mouse. They’re always screwing us, and waiting for their next chance to do it again. Fuck them. For once we had the chance to screw them.”
“They’re not the enemy, goddamn it,” Felter said. “There’s a lot of good people over there.”
“Name one.”
“Stephens, for example. You told me he was helpful as hell in Buenos Aires. And Colby, for example.”
“Who?”
“Bill Colby, the CIA station chief in Saigon.”
“Oh, yeah. But, hell, he’s one of us. He jumped into France in World War II with the OSS. He’s not what you could call a standard Langley candy-ass chair warmer. Name somebody else.”
“I don’t want to debate this with you,” Felter said. “But get this straight, Craig, get out of your ‘Fuck you, CIA’ frame of mind. That’s not a suggestion, that’s an order.”
Lowell just looked at him.
“I gave you an order, Colonel,” Felter said.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll have to go to the Director and try to pour oil on the troubled waters,” Felter said. “He’ll be at Camp David this afternoon. ”
“What do you want me to do about Intercontinental Air, Ltd.?”
“If you took the wings off a Beaver, could you get it in Portet’s 707?”
Lowell considered the question.
“You’d probably have to take the landing gear off, too,” he said. “Put it on some kind of skid, pallet, but yeah, I think so.”
“Have Mr. Finton issue a purchase order,” Felter said. “And for God’s sake, don’t take this as a license to steal from the government. ”
“Yes, sir.”
“And make a real effort to think things through before you jump into something else, will you?”
“If I fucked up, Mouse,” Lowell said. “I’m sorry.”
“You should be,” Felter said. “Whenever I hear the phrase ‘loose cannon,’ I see your face.”
Felter looked at his watch, nodded at Lowell, and walked out of his office without another word.
[ SEVEN ]
Office of the Commanding General
John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
1300 8 February 1965
“Major Lunsford requests a few minutes of your time, General, ” Captain Stefan Zabrewski boomed into Brigadier General Paul R. Hanrahan’s office from the door.
Hanrahan, who was deep into paperwork, made a “let him in” sign with his fingers, but did not raise his eyes from the paperwork for perhaps sixty seconds. When he did, he saw Lunsford standing at rigid attention ten inches from his desk, his right hand holding a stiff-fingered salute.
Hanrahan returned it with a casual wave in the general direction of his forehead.
“The major is grateful the general is willing to give the major some of his valuable time without an appointment,” Father said.
“I’m up to my ass in paper and in no mood for your sophomoric humor,” Hanrahan said.
“May the major take that as permission to assume the position of Parade Rest, sir?”
“The major better have something pretty damned important on his so-called mind when he sits down,” Hanrahan said.
“Thank you, sir,” Father said, and slumped into the chair before Hanrahan’s desk.
“Well?” Hanrahan asked impatiently.
“Sir, the major believes he will not be wasting the general’s time. Sir, the major believes that an incipient rebellion, perhaps even a mutiny, is worthy of the general’s time.”
“Now you’re really not funny, Father,” Hanrahan said.
“What happened is that one of the cadre, a staff sergeant whose name I know but would prefer not to reveal, mistook a couple of the ASA guys for privates on a labor detail, and did the standard ‘you and you come with me’ routine, whereupon the senior of the ASA guys said, “Go fuck yourself, I’m sick of you and your fucking kind,’ or words to that effect.”
“That’s insubordination,” Hanrahan said.
“Not if you’re a Spec7,” Father said, “and the guy you told to go fuck himself is a staff sergeant, E-6. I think that may be conduct unbecoming an NCO, but I don’t really know. In defense of the sergeant, the ASA Spec7 was not wearing stripes.”
“So what happened?” Hanrahan asked.
“The sergeant went looking for the Doubting Thomas, who he correctly believed was in the charge of the legs at Mackall to report the insubordination and the ASA guys went to Aunt Jemima, where he repeated that he and the other ASA guys were sick of being fucked with by every other Green Beanie with a room-temperature IQ, and they were right on the edge of unvolunteering for overseas duty of a classified and hazardous nature.”
The Army Security Agency had provided Operation Earnest with twelve enlisted men, all of African heritage, all of whom were either skilled electronic technicians or high-speed radiotelegraph operators, and in many cases both.
“They’re serious, or just pissed?” Hanrahan asked, now concerned.
“The Spec7 volunteered out of the White House Signal Agency, where he went to work every day in a suit, and had coffee served to him on duty from the presidential kitchen. That was the reason he didn’t have stripes on his fatigues; he hasn’t owned fatigues for years, and the Mackall supply room didn’t have any Spec7 stripes to issue him when they issued the fatigues. There are just over a hundred Spec7’s in the entire U.S. Army, I learned today. He’s pissed and serious.”
“Nobody told your guys who the ASA guys were?” Hanrahan asked.
“My guys know. The Mackall cadre does not. They didn’t have the need-to-know.”
“What’s the root of the problem?”
“The ASA guys—and, Aunt Jemima tells me, the airplane guys as well, including Aunt Jemima and the other two pilots— do not at all like being regarded as a lesser specimen of soldier, for that matter of human being, by every—to quote Aunt Jemima—‘high-level cretin whose claim to fame is having jumped out of a perfectly functioning aircraft while in flight.”
Despite himself, Hanrahan had to smile.
“They sound like Craig Lowell,” he said.
“That’s part of this,” Father said. “They know about Lowell, or think they do, and about Jack Portet. What’s the real skinny on Lowell? Was his first jump really a HALO, as legend has it?”
“Yeah, it was,” Hanrahan said, and then went on: “Special Forces, Special Operations, really got its start in Greece, with the U.S. Military Advisory Group, Greece. A lot of the people there—Felter and me, for openers—were parachutists, Rangers. Lowell was neither. But he was one hell of a Special Operations soldier there. A while back, they grandfathered everybody who had combat service in Greece into Special Forces. Felter and Lowell and me included. Lowell declined the honor, saying he didn’t want anyone to think he was dumb enough to jump out of a perfectly functioning aircraft in flight.”
Father chuckled.
“That sounds like him,” he said.
“For a number of reasons, both Felter and I thought Lowell should be identified with Special Forces. It was ‘suggested’ to him that he apply for Special Forces, and he couldn’t find the time. So one day a couple of years ago, he was here, and we suited him up in high-altitude gear so he could watch a HALO from a C-141 at 30,000 feet. He was standing on the open ramp, watching, when two HALO experts grabbed his arms and walked him over the edge. When he landed, I told him he was now a parachutist whether he liked it or not, and handed him jump wings and a green beret.”
“He wears it now like he likes it,” Father said.
“Afterward, he went to Benning and did a half a dozen other jumps, so he was entitled to wear the wings. I think he has a total of seven
jumps, maybe eight.”
“And these guys know about Portet,” Father said.
“Leading up to what, Father?”
“They want jump wings and shiny jump boots, General,” Lunsford said. “If it takes jumping out of a perfectly functioning aircraft while in flight, so be it.”
“You’re not serious?”
Lunsford nodded.
“Even Aunt Jemima and the other two pilots,” he said.
“That’s simply out of the question.”
“That’s what I told Aunt Jemima,” Lunsford said, “to which he replied, ‘Why? We’ve done everything here we have to. We’re sitting around with our thumbs up our ass waiting for God only knows what to go to Africa.’ Significant line: ‘If Portet did it, why not us’?”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“I didn’t have an answer for him I could give with a straight face,” Lunsford said.
“There’s no way I could get spaces for them at Benning,” Hanrahan said. “And even if I could, there’s no time. Felter tells me by the time Portet and Oliver come off leave, there will be transportation. He’s got some sort of civilian charter set up.”
“I tried that,” Lunsford said. “They’ve seen people jumping from Beavers and Hueys at Mackall, and they reasonably ask, ‘Why not us?’ ”
“Because I don’t have the authority to authorize something like that, and you know it.”
“We’re back to Portet. If Portet did it, why can’t we?”
“This is an absurd conversation, you realize that? These guys are soldiers, and soldiers can’t go on strike.”
“I don’t think they would actually unvolunteer—they’re soldiers, good soldiers, all of them—but unless you can think of something I can’t to tell them, we’re going to be taking to Africa twenty-five people we have just told we don’t think are as good as us. That’s going to shoot the old team spirit in the ass.”
“Just for the sake of conversation—nothing more—if you were sitting in this chair, what would you do?”
“Exigencies of the service,” Lunsford said.
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