The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  Sitting on the patio behind his quarters, Jack idly paged through Aviation Week, Hawaiian Sling near to hand, his next objective the spearing of a couple of ripe-looking cocoanuts. The mottled-green pods hung just out of reach from the lone palm tree in the quarters’ scant back yard, which ended abruptly in a precipice overlooking Roosevelt Roads’ administration area some 200 feet below. It looked even quieter to Jack than a regular Sunday morning, doubtless due to the glut of Naval personnel who sat waiting to make their Mother’s Day calls on the base’s limited long-distance access. He’d gotten lucky, taking the chance that Serena would be up early, as was her habit.

  Maybe what he heard in her voice was just a reflection of the early hour; even she can’t read minds over a phone line, he thought. Whatever put it there, her tone, wistful, attenuated, but underlain with the gritty intransigence of our Watkins forebears, mirrored my own psyche today. I’m a far different lad then I was six months ago, more than she, or maybe even I, can imagine. Maybe she was hearing that.

  If there were a single soul I’d dare talk to about where I’ve been, and who I am, it’d be different. But there isn’t; hell, if I put myself in anyone else’s shoes and were told a tale as fantastic as this one, I’d put major distance between him and me ASAP. UFOs? Traveling in time? Raising the dead, including, no shit, Jesus? Living forever, no body necessary? I’m sure I’ve forgotten something. Who’s going to buy that shit, from me or anybody else? My own mother’d have me put away, “...just for your own safety, son.” So my lot in life’s simply to live with what’s happened and see if I can find a way to enjoy it. It’s not like I’m going to die from it.

  The main question is when, and if, Pete and Linda can get off the Scow and back to a normal life. Given what’s happened, I doubt that a normal life’s in the cards for any of us. But what I can do to move in that direction is to put FlxAir back on its feet. What I just read about this new Lear Jet in Aviation Week’s got me as cranked up as I’ve been in a long time. Flying air charters at damn near Mach 1, with a faster rate of climb than an A4D attack jet? Guess who’s calling Wichita, Kansas tomorrow morning?

  “Hey Jack!” Larry Bernstein shouted from inside the quarters.

  “Yeah.”

  “Phone for you.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, sailor.”

  “Rick! Where are you, buddy?”

  “Bragg. But I was thinking about coming to see you, if you can take a couple of days off.”

  “Really? Well, shit, sure, hurricane season won’t crank up until the first of the month, and I’ve still got some leave on the books. When were you thinking about coming?”

  “How ’bout this weekend?”

  “That’ll do; I’ve still got leave on the books; I’ll put in for a week first thing in the morning. Okay with you to stay at Naval Station, San Juan’s BOQ?”

  “Um, why don’t I just check in at the Hilton down there? The Caribe Hilton, right? Little more private than your average BOQ. Truth be told, buddy, I have something I want to bounce off you, and I wouldn’t want it to go beyond your ears.”

  After a second’s pause, Jack said, “Sure. We’ll kick it around for however long it takes, and maybe there’ll still be time to cut a couple of them laidover stewardii out of the pack. I’ll call you back when I get the leave signed off. Matter of fact, just call me with a flight number. We’ll get together whether I get leave approved or not. Sounds to me like whatever’s on your mind won’t wait.”

  The Caribe Hilton’s fifth floor hallway was deserted and cryptlike as eight o’clock approached on Saturday morning, making Jack’s rap on the door of Room 512 louder then he’d meant it to be. Don’t know why I think I need to sneak in here, he thought. A rush of cooler air from inside the room preceded Rick’s face as the door opened, his expression suggesting that stealthiness might indeed be advised.

  Far from its customary near-gaunt wolfishness, the face that greeted Jack was noticeably fuller, the late-breaking broad smile intensifying the effect. Then the ritual question, the smile morphing to the buckteeth of a stand-up comedian, “Do you still frink Yapan will ruse the wauw, Rutenant?” drew the expected explosive laugh from Jack. Rick extended his arms, pushing the door wide open. Abrazo done, still gripping the opposite pair of shoulders at arm’s length, the two old friends took visual stock of each other. Each struggled to find his voice, Rick doing so first. “Long time, Swabby,” he said with residual huskiness.

  “Too damn long, Dogface. Where’d we get that ‘rutenant’ line, anyway?”

  “Somebody on Ed Sullivan, wasn’t it? Jack E. Leonard?

  “Or Corbett Monica. Not sure, but I’ll never forget the line.”

  “No way. Well, sorry there’s any business atall in this getogether. If I had my way, it’d be exclusively for laughs.”

  “Bet your ass. Sorry I couldn’t pick you up at Isla Verde last night, but I was scheduled for the duty next Friday, so I worked out a switch with an accommodating squadronmate. This way, we can go right through next weekend once we take care of your business. Oh. Wait a minute.” Opening the door to the hall again, Jack stooped to pick up a corrugated box, brought it inside and set it on the room’s writing desk. The box held four half-gallons of Bacardi Light Rum and some stemmed glassware. “Just a little JP-5 to get us through the week. Ever had a Rum Martini?”

  “Nope, but I did anticipate the need for a Breakfast of Champions or two to get us through replaying the little adventure I’m about to lay on you. There’s three full ice buckets and some other stuff in the reefer; take your choice and proceed.”

  “OK. It’ll take a couple minutes to chill the glasses down. I’ll ice two of these little rascals down and get the others into the freezer,” Jack said, his hands full of six-ounce Martini glasses.

  At Rick’s request, they skipped the balcony’s striking view of the main pool and the Caribbean, making themselves comfortable in two reclining chairs, feet-up on one of the room’s two double beds. Raising his brimming Martini, Jack grinned at his old friend and said, “Confusion to our enemies.”

  Looking considerably more relaxed now, Rick replied, “What? No ‘Bienvenidos a Puerto Rico!’?”

  “Dom, you do dot berry whell. So yeah, that too, Caballero. But on to the main event; to what do I know the unexpected pleasure of your company, young man?”

  “I’m seriously thinking of resigning my commission and getting out of the Army.”

  “Hell, I’m seriously thinking of getting out of the Navy, and soon. I thought we had ‘getting out’ as a common goal.”

  “Until last month, I’d pretty well decided to stay. One of the things I haven’t gotten around to telling you is that I was selected early for Captain.”

  Jack raised his glass, toasting the occasion in silence, and took a healthy swig before he spoke. “Goddam. When?”

  “April of last year. Sorry I didn’t let you know. To tell the truth, it sort of set me back, in the sense of what my place in the Army could be, or ought to be, as opposed to getting out and getting a ‘real job.’ Because somewhere along the way going back to the Colts, or elsewhere in the NFL, seemed kind of unrealistic. Put the cliché down to Martinis in the morning, but I’d like to think that I can make a real difference, somewhere in the world.”

  Jack’s smile betrayed just a hint of the irony that he felt. “Well, you were senior to me anyway, but you damn sure pulled away in the stretch. I don’t put the railroad tracks on until next month. Seems like you are sittin’ pretty, Army-wise. Why’re you thinking about getting out, then? Rather be your own boss? Because that’s damn sure what I’ve decided.”

  Rick returned the smile, irony-free. “Unless I’m bad wrong, you’ve never had anything else in mind. Which is absolutely fine. I say this as the best friend that I hope you consider me to be, old buddy. You and the Navy would probably butt serious heads over something sooner or later, so it really isn’t the place for you. But until last month, I thought that 20 years- who knows, m
aybe 30- in Special Forces might be a lot like an NFL career, just longer and for higher stakes.”

  “Point taken. So what in the hell’s happened? When?”

  “First, be clear on this. Pretty much everything I’m about to tell you is classified, most of it well above Top Secret. That’s why my hotel registration and my credentials identify me as one Raymond Briggs, industrial engineer. You never saw me or heard from me. Agreed?”

  “Absolutely. Are you Ray or Raimondo?”

  Rick didn’t smile. “Ray. Some quick background, since I can’t remember exactly what I’ve told you about the last couple of years. Well, maybe a little farther back than that. I remember writing you back in ’61 that I was going to be away for a while; I was on one of the White Star teams that went into Laos under deep cover. I’d requested assignment to the Special Warfare School before going, and figured I’d get orders there fairly soon after we got back. The ‘needs of the service,’ however, dictated otherwise. Since my Group, the 7th, is primarily charged to conduct operations in Latin America, command considered me an ideal subject for in-depth Spanish-language training. Eight months of it, and it seemed like a lot longer. Anyway, I didn’t make it to Special Warfare School until this year. It’s only six weeks long, and I’m still not sure if I got the ‘regular’ syllabus or something a little more special, because there were only eight of us, all junior Captains, in the class. Although the instructors paid some lip service to each item on the ‘regular’ syllabus, at least two-thirds of the actual instruction concentrated on assassinations. And we got it from experts; three out of four of the instructors were, so they said, civilians. For that last word, substitute CIA.

  “The course’s real in-depth exercise was a replay of the JFK assassination. It covered the whole last week of the course. They didn’t go quite so far as to celebrate it, just saying that it was the most important political assassination in recent memory. As such, they pointed out, it should be studied in detail for its techniques. Not, as one of them said, ‘to try to do any detective work’ to assign responsibility or motivation for it. And there was plenty of detail, beginning with a scale model of Dealey Plaza and its surroundings, where they laid out the shooters’ layout for triangulation of fire. Hell, they came right out and said that Oswald had no role in the shooting, that he was as he himself had said, ‘just a patsy.’”

  Jack sat up straight in his chair, feet hitting the floor. “That’s the god-damnedest thing I ever heard of. Those guys ought to be in front of a grand jury. What else did they say?”

  “Hell, where to begin? Oh, for one thing; not only did Oswald not shoot from there, neither did anyone else. The real shooters weren’t in the School Book Depository Building at all. One team shot from the next building over, the Dal-Tex Building; another behind the picket fence that closed off the railroad yard; two others were in the storm drains on either side of the overpass that took overflow from the street crossing the overpass and channeled it down through large cross-section pipes to the Trinity River. The teams also used those pipes to get out of Dealey Plaza. Those locations gave them pretty good triangulation of fire, and eliminating the likelihood of the teams shooting each other.”

  “What do you mean by ‘teams’? I thought that being an assassin was a one-man job.”

  “No. Not in this case, anyway. There were two-man teams that were assigned to each location, a shooter and a backup who handled radio transmissions. The entire operation was centrally controlled; if all the teams missed, there were other teams at the Dallas Trade Mart and at Love Field, and a remote-controlled van loaded with C4 on the other side of the Triple Underpass. Bottom line, Kennedy would positively not leave Dallas alive.”

  “And these- instructors- were talking freely about this to you! That is fucking amazing, considering that any one of you in the class might blow the whistle.”

  “They weren’t a bit worried. In the first place, the entire class content, and comments made by the instructors, are all classified- well, above Top Secret. Even how far above top secret it’s classified is above Top Secret. Anybody who talks about anything he hears there’s going get a trip to Leavenworth. Or worse. Which brings me to the reason I’m here.”

  “And that is...”

  “A few days after we finished the course, the Group Exec sent for me. I reported the next day at 1600 hours, as instructed. After the minimum of small talk, he told me that a high-powered DOD civilian had asked to meet me. Couldn’t tell me what it was all about, he said, because he didn’t know. This guy, he said, was far enough up the ladder that ‘...few questions are asked, and fewer answered.’ He said that the guy would meet me tomorrow, 1300 outside the O Club bar. ‘Name’s Brannan.’”

  “So you went,” Jack interjected.

  With a mild grimace, Rick finished his drink before he spoke. “Yeah, and so would you have. That was an order dressed up to look like a request. Besides, I was curious, so I was there, 1300 hours en punto, but the guy that I figured had to be Brannan had gotten there first. Slim, dark-haired guy, 40, maybe 45. Looked like he was ready for the first tee, sturdy briar pipe and all, but the look in his eye said business.

  “‘Captain Terrell,’ he said, his tone suggesting that he knew me by sight.

  “As I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ we shook hands. ‘Ed Brannan.’ He gave a slight head-wag in the direction of the bar. ‘Would you grab us that corner table over there while I go to the bar? What’re you drinking?’”

  “He brought a couple of Heinekens back to the table, took the chair on my right, and got immediately to the point. ‘You’re pretty highly thought of around here,’ he said with a knowing smile.

  “‘Glad to hear it,’ I said. ‘I doubt I’d be wrong if I said the same thing about you.’”

  “‘We live in hope,’ he said. The smile stayed in place as he put the ball back in my court. He was here today, he said, to offer me the opportunity of serving my country in a rather urgent and immediate way. ‘We have a fox in the henhouse,’ was the way he put it. What it boiled down to was that ‘a certain intelligence officer, Underhill by name, is giving the opposition classified information, and that must be terminated. As must he. That sort of activity,’ he said, ‘is what you’re trained for.’”

  “I asked him where the guy was, and his reply was, ‘Just up the road, in Washington.’ That hit me like a ton of bricks. Our instructors continuously stressed that assassinations would take place only on foreign soil. If a requirement came up that involved a killing in the US, they said that ‘underworld’ personnel would handle it. When I pointed this out to Brannan, he chuckled. ‘Things change,’ he said. Then his face darkened. ‘It’s impossible for me to conceive that you, a highly decorated officer in an elite force, can refuse an assignment that’s central to your country’s security. Please don’t pick nits with me on this.’”

  “That pissed me off, maybe more than it should’ve, but it did, and in spades. ‘I don’t call obeying orders nit-picking, Ed,’ I told him, doing my best not to get too hot. ‘If I understood you correctly, you want me to volunteer to do something that’s against my express orders. I took an oath that says I won’t do that, and I don’t want any part of an assignment that would involve my doing it. With all due respect, what made you think that I would?’”

  “‘We have a situation here, Captain,’ he said, ‘that’s immediate. I have neither the time nor the inclination to bandy words with you. Your refusal of the assignment’s noted. Please remember that everything that’s been said here is classified. Now I must ask you to excuse me; please keep your seat and finish your beer.’ Shaking my hand, and already looking toward the door, he said, ‘Nice to have met you.’ Then, goddam if he didn’t go right back to his spot outside the bar, and a couple of minutes later in he comes again, with a guy whom I’d seen a time or two on the Hill. Never knew his name, and never saw him again.”

  “You think he took the job?” Jack asked.

  “Can’t say for sure, but there are a couple of th
ings I can say. One, Underhill’s a pretty uncommon name. After Brannan said it, another word started bouncing around in the back of my head along with it, while Brannan went on with his spiel: ‘Underhill; undertaker. Underhill; undertaker.’ Not all that funny in retrospect, but I wasn’t likely to forget the name right away. Two, the day before I called you I was reading an article on the Vietnam student protest marches in New York and San Francisco in The Washington Post, and when I turned to the page that the article was continued on, I saw this.” Getting out of his chair, he went to his briefcase that lay open on the other bed and took out a page of newsprint. Handing it to Jack, he indicated a small article that had been circled with a red ballpoint pen.

  The page was from the May 9th issue of the Post. Under the headline Post Staffer Succumbs, the article continued: “May 9, 1964- Post Assistant Editor John Garrett (Gary) Underhill, 48, was found dead yesterday in his Washington apartment. Prior to joining the Post, Mr. Underhill was an Associate at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies; he was Military Editor at Life magazine before serving in Military Intelligence during World War II. Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.”

  Looking up from the paper, Jack said, “If this isn’t the guy your CIA friend described to you, it’s one hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “Damn right it is; too much of one, for my money. And that article says absolutely nothing about how he died; you can bet if it was the work of anyone trained at Bragg, it could easily have been made to look like suicide. And one other thing’s for sure; the CIA’s got the assassin’s balls in its pocket. If they want that guy to do someone else, or a series of someone elses, what’s he gonna say? No? In a pig’s eye he is; they own his ass.”