The Generals

by W. E. B Griffin

  (Two)

  OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE

  TOP SECRET PAREN QUINCY SLASH FOX PAREN

  6 JUN 69 1722 ZULU

  FROM THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

  TO COMMANDING GENERALS

  FORT BRAGG NC

  FORT RUCKER ALA

  POPE AF BASE NC

  JOHN F KENNEDY CENTER FOR SPECIAL WARFARE FORT BRAGG

  NC

  HURLBERT FIELD FLA

  INFO COPIES

  CIA MCLEAN VA

  DIA WASH DC

  DIRECTION OF THE PRESIDENT: INITIATE PHASE ONE OPERATION MONTE CRISTO. OFFICER COURIER EN ROUTE HOME BASE.

  FOR THE CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

  WINSLOW, MAJ GEN, USMC

  (Three)

  Many of Sharon Felter’s neighbors knew that Sandy worked in the White House. That sort of secret was hard to keep along Kildar Street, where practically everybody worked for the federal government. And some worked for the CIA in McLean and were likely to see Sandy’s Volkswagen from time to time parked in Area “C” there. So it made no sense denying that Sandy worked in the White House and had a CIA “connection.”

  Those neighbors who had been in the house and seen Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in German and Russian on the bookshelves had been able to put two and two together and conclude that Sandy was some kind of linguist, maybe the guy who was in charge of the Russian-and Chinese-language interpreters. This belief had been subtly encouraged. Sandy let it be known that he was a philologist by training. Once the mystery was solved, no further questions were asked. Everyone knew not to ask too many questions.

  Colonel Sanford T. Felter, in fact, had been, under Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and now Richard Milhous Nixon, a “Special Presidential Assistant.”

  The notice of his appointment was typed on a small sheet of paper under the simple heading THE WHITE HOUSE and signed by the President. This notice resided in the personal safes of the Directors of the CIA, DIA, and FBI, the State Department’s Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Security, the Attorney General, the Chief of Naval Intelligence, and the Army and Air Force Deputy Chiefs of Staff for Intelligence. Its text was brief:

  Colonel Sanford T. Felter, GSC, USA, is announced as the President’s personal liaison officer to the Intelligence Community with Rank of Counselor to the President. No public announcement of this appointment will be made. In the execution of his duties, Colonel Felter will be presumed to have the Need to Know.

  Sharon really wanted to go to Bragg, maybe because that would take her away from Sandy’s high-powered and secret world. And take Sandy, too, for a time back into the world she felt he really belonged in—the Army. And she wanted to go because Fort Bragg was their first post together after they were married. Although she hadn’t wanted to admit it, she had known then that Sandy was never going to be a lawyer or a doctor or a college professor. Sandy, all five feet four and 128 pounds of him, wanted to be a soldier.

  His mother and father, and her mother and father—and to tell the truth, Sharon herself—thought he was crazy. When Sandy had won a competitive examination for an appointment to West Point, they had agreed among themselves that that was a good thing because not only would it provide him with a free quality education, but it would keep him out of the war. He was in the class of 1946; the war would surely be over by then.

  But Sandy had come across an obscure regulation that provided for the direct commissioning of linguists. Sandy spoke fluent Russian, Polish, and German, because the Felters and the Lavinskys spoke their native tongues at home; and he spoke French because he studied it and he soaked up languages like a blotter.

  So, instead of staying at West Point where he could finish his education and be safe, Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter had been discharged from the Corps of Cadets for the purpose of accepting a commission as second lieutenant, Infantry (Detail: Military Intelligence [Linguist]). Which Sharon and both sets of parents thought was an act that was stark raving bonkers. Sharon heard later that he was sworn in at the Breakfast Formation. The Military Academy Band had played “Army Blue” (“We say farewell to Kay-det gray [crash of cymbals] And don the Army blue [crash of cymbals]”) and then “Dixie” (“In Dixieland, I’ll take my stand [crash of cymbals] To live and die in Dixie [crash of cymbals]”) as the Corps of Cadets marched off to ham and eggs.

  He was on a plane two days later for Europe, where he was put in charge of interrogation of Germans taken prisoner by Major General Peterson K. Waterford’s “Hell’s Circus” Armored Division as it raced across Germany in the closing days of the war.

  He was also in Task Force Parker, which had raced into eastern Germany to rescue General Waterford’s son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bellmon, from the “protective custody” of the Russian Army, who “liberated” him from a German POW camp.

  She didn’t find out about that until much later.

  What she expected when Sandy Felter came home with his ribbons and his first lieutenant’s silver bar and his Combat Infantry Badge was that now (for God’s sake) he would get out of the Army, continue his education, and maybe they could get married.

  What happened was that he insisted on marriage right away. And not by their own rabbi (although Sandy politely invited him to the ceremony) but by the Jewish chaplain at West Point. Still, it was a nice ceremony. Outside the chapel, Sandy’s classmates—still cadets—formed a line and held swords over Sandy and Sharon as they came out of the chapel. Then the cadet colonel gave them both Class of 1946 rings. He didn’t know if he was entitled to by regulation, he said, but the class had taken a vote and wanted that, even if Sandy hadn’t actually graduated with his class.

  After that he’d gone off and left her at home so he could go to parachute school at Fort Benning. That took three weeks. And then he went to Fort Bragg for Ranger training, and he called her up and told her to come down.

  Sharon rode to Bragg on the train—through Baltimore and Washington and finally to Fayetteville, North Carolina—where the first thing she saw was a sign on the water fountain in the station that said WHITE ONLY.

  Their first home had been half of the second floor of what had been a barrack at Fort Bragg. Sharon remembered it clearly, and wondered if that old barrack was still there. Maybe some young lieutenant and his wife were starting out together as she and Sandy had started out. It might be fun to look. Sharon realized she was glad Roxy MacMillan had called. She wanted to go back to Bragg.

  They rode from Alexandria to Washington National Airport in the Dodge station wagon. Sharon really hated Sandy’s Volkswagen, and it seemed to hate her. It never failed him; but every time she got near it, pieces fell off. Or the engine died on some superhighway.

  When Sandy saw that she had turned out of the ARRIVING PASSENGER lane into the SHORT-TERM PARKING lane, he looked at her with annoyance on his face.

  “I’ll put you on the plane,” Sharon said.

  What she really had to do was go to the bathroom. She decided that she had to do that even though she knew that Sandy didn’t like to have her waiting around airport terminals, particularly when he was carrying something.

  He didn’t argue with her, though.

  “I’ll meet you in the Admiral’s lounge,” he said, when she stopped the car and he was pulling his suitcase and the Montgomery Ward clothing bag out of the back seat.

  She had been with him at the airport before when he had a case fastened to his body with a plastic-coated steel cable and a pistol stuck in the small of his back. She knew the drill. He would go to the nearest departing gate, catch the eye of the security officer, and show his identification. Sandy had a badge and a plastic card identifying him as a Deputy U.S. Marshal. These insured the cooperation of the security people, and kept them from asking the wrong kinds of questions.

  When Sandy went through Passenger Checkout for his flight, the security officer would be there to pass him through the metal detector without comment.

  Sandy had been made a membe
r of the Admiral’s Club because he flew so much. It was a lot nicer than waiting with the crowd. There was a special lounge with plush furnishings and stewardesses serving drinks. There was also a telephone you could use for local calls free. He thought it was funny, being named an admiral, and he’d framed the certificate the airline sent him and hung it on the wall.

  She parked the Dodge, and went into the Washington National terminal. The heat was something awful, and she was glad for the blast of cold air that struck her when the glass doors slid open.

  She walked quickly to the Admiral’s Club on the second floor of the terminal and entered through a door marked only with a numeral. She had a card but she didn’t need it. “I’m meeting my husband,” she said to the girl at the door. The girl smiled and let her pass, and Sandy rose to meet her.

  The nicest thing about the Admiral’s Club was the ladies’ room, which was not only spotless, but even provided a four-stool vanity where you could brush up.

  Sharon was at the vanity when the door to the ladies’ room opened with such a bang that Sharon actually jumped with fright. It sounded like someone was trying to break in.

  But it turned out to be two women, one of them sick. Sharon quickly closed her purse and stood up, while they made directly for one of the stalls. The sick one dropped her purse, and the contents scattered on the floor. As Sharon knelt to pick up the stuff from the purse, the sound of vomiting came from the booth.

  When she picked up the woman’s leather wallet, she noticed in the plastic window a green plastic card, and—without trying to be nosy—saw that it identified the bearer as the dependent wife of somebody who was a LTCOL USAF. Sharon had a similar card, which said she was a dependent wife of a COL USA. While the sound of vomiting continued, the other woman left the booth and came to Sharon. She looked like a very nice person, Sharon decided, as she offered her the purse.

  “My friend is sick,” the woman said, with a polite shrug.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Sharon asked, but the woman shook her head.

  “I’m an Army wife,” Sharon said. The implication was clear. We are a sorority, and one of our sisters needs help.

  “She’s drunk,” the woman said. “Her husband is a POW in ’Nam.” That explained that.

  “I’m so sorry,” Sharon said.

  “She insisted on putting me on the plane,” the woman said. “And she just sat there in the bar and made an ass of herself, and now this.”

  “I’m sorry for her,” Sharon said. But drinking wasn’t the answer. Sharon had never understood women drinking; oh, a glass of wine, and maybe even once in a while, a martini or something. But not getting sick drunk. Women lost their femininity when they drank too much. “That must be awful.”

  “Maybe she’s got the right idea,” the woman said. “God knows, it might make things a lot easier.”

  “Yours, too?” Sharon asked, but she had known the answer even before the woman nodded.

  After the sound of vomiting stopped, and the woman returned to the cubicle to help her friend, Sharon followed her. They got the woman on her feet, helped her to the stools in front of the vanity, and washed off the stained front of her dress with moistened Kleenex.

  “I’m shorry,” the woman said. “I’m truly shorry.”

  “Oh, damn you, Karen,” the woman said. “Now I’m going to miss my plane.”

  “Catch your plane,” Karen said, gesturing grandly. “I’m perfectly all right.”

  “I’m just seeing my husband off,” Sharon said. “I can take care of her. Or I can try.”

  “I’ve got two kids at home,” the woman said. “The oldest sixteen. If I miss this plane, I won’t be able to get home until tomorrow.”

  “Let’s get some coffee in her,” Sharon said. “And an Alka-Seltzer.”

  “I’m sho shorry,” the woman said, and started to sniffle. Then she saw Sharon. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Just another officer’s lady,” Sharon said, with a little smile.

  “Goddamn right,” the woman said.

  “I can’t leave her like this,” the woman said.

  “Your children are more important,” Sharon said, firmly. “And I can take care of her.”

  “Goddamn it,” the woman said.

  “I’ll see the stewardess and get some coffee and Alka-Seltzer,” Sharon said, and started for the door, but it opened before she got there and the hostess came inside.

  “Mrs. Sand?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Sharon said. Sandy never used his own name in public places.

  “Your husband’s worried,” she said, her eyes running professionally over the drunken woman before the vanity. “The Atlanta flight has just been announced.”

  “That’s mine,” the woman said.

  “And you’re taking it,” Sharon insisted, taking the woman’s arm and pushing her toward the door. “I’ll be back in a moment to take care of her,” Sharon said to the hostess.

  Sandy was standing outside the door, holding his briefcase. If you did not look close, you would not see the stainless steel cable coming out of his shirt cuff and connecting to the briefcase.

  “Are you all right?” Sandy asked.

  “I’m just fine,” Sharon said. “There’s an officer’s wife in there who’s sick to her stomach. This is her friend, and she’s on your plane to Atlanta, so I said I’d stay with her friend.”

  “Your wife is very kind,” the woman said.

  “I have to go, Sharon,” Sandy said.

  “I know,” she said, and leaned on him, and kissed him. “Go on.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Sandy said.

  “Or the day after,” Sharon said. “Now go, the both of you.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” the woman said, and impulsively kissed Sharon on the cheek.

  “You’d do the same for me,” Sharon said.

  “My name is Dorothy Sims,” the woman said.

  “My name is Sharon,” Sharon said. She did not give her last name. She didn’t think Sandy would want her to.

  “We’d better get going, Mrs. Sims,” Sandy Felter said. “Your luggage all checked through?”

  “Through to Fayetteville,” Dorothy Sims said.

  “Well, then, I’ll have the pleasure of your company all the way,” Sandy Felter said, and they headed from the Admiral’s lounge toward gate 13.

  (Four)

  Headquarters, XVIII Airborne Corps & Fort Bragg

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  1430 Hours, 7 June 1969

  Headquarters, Fort Bragg and XVIII Airborne Corps occupied a three-story red brick building, which before World War II had been the post hospital. It was on a semicircular drive off the oak-shaded main street of main post, a pre-War II area of three-story brick barricks, parade ground, officer and NCO quarters, and chapel and post theater that looks far more like the campus of a small North Carolina college than an institution dedicated to the god of war.

  The office of the commanding general, Fort Bragg, and the XVIII Airborne Corps is on the second floor of the old hospital building, in what had been a hospital ward, complete with sundeck at the end. From the windows of the sundeck, the commanding general could see both the barracks to the right and the parade ground, and beyond the parade ground the row of three-story, brick houses that made up Colonel’s Row.

  Lieutenant General Robert F. Bellmon, who commanded Fort Bragg and the XVIII Airborne Corps—but not the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare, although JFK was on his post—waited somewhat impatiently for Major General Paul Hanrahan, the JFK CG, whom he had just summoned to his office by the nearly irresistible means of sending his aide-de-camp to fetch him in a helicopter.

  In the interests of security (the fewer copies around, the less the chance of loss or compromise) JFK and Bragg/XVIII A/BC had been furnished with just one copy of a document called OPERATION MONTE CRISTO. This was classified TOP SECRET QUINCY/FOX, which meant that personnel who wished access to the material must
possess two additional security clearances, QUINCY and FOX, beyond TOP SECRET.

  This did not mean that they had been adjudged more loyal, trustworthy, or free of psychological quirks than those with a mere TOP SECRET clearance. It simply meant that they had been judged worthy to be brought in on WAR PLANS generally (QUINCY) and on this operation particularly (FOX).

  Until ten minutes ago the copy furnished Bragg/XVIII A/BC and JFK had reposed in the Classified Documents Room of the old hospital, three floors below ground level. The two-inch-thick document, sealed with tape—which could not be removed without tearing into a heavy manila envelope—now reposed on General Bellmon’s desk. The envelope had a cover sheet taped to it made of light cardboard with TOP SECRET printed in large red letters at each end. Neatly lettered with a Speedball pen in the middle of the TOP SECRET cover sheet was MONTE CRISTO.

  General Bellmon heard the fluckata-fluckata of approaching rotor blades. He glanced out the window and saw an LOH-6 zipping across the parade ground toward his building. The LOH-6 made a straight-in approach to a circle in which a large H had been whitewashed, then flared and settled to the ground. Ducking under the flashing low rotor blades, one hand holding his green beret on his head, Major General Paul T. Hanrahan ran toward the old hospital.

  Lieutenant General Bellmon (three stars, one more than Hanrahan’s major general’s two) walked to his desk and pushed a button.

  “Coffee, black, mugs, the moment General Hanrahan walks in here,” he ordered.

  Hanrahan was a wiry Irishman, deeply tanned. He wore what were known as jungle ripstops and jungle boots. Jungle ripstops were of open-weave nylon, woven in a way that prevented rips. The jacket, which had four bellows pockets, the top ones angled, was tailored very much like the WWII paratrooper’s tunic, except that the old jump jacket had been made of heavy gabardine. The sleeves of Hanrahan’s jungle ripstops were folded in two two-inch folds above his elbows. The jungle boots had leather toes and heel pieces, but the rest was something like nylon netting so water could escape. There was a sheet of hardened steel between the cleated sole and the insole—for punji sticks—and there were eyelets for drainage on both sides of the arch.