Hazardous Duty - PA 8

by W. E. B Griffin

  As he was walking up the curving drive to the portico, intending to go to “the shed”—where Yukon drivers on call waited—a Secret Service agent of the presidential security detail intercepted him.

  He signaled with an index finger for O’Grogarty to follow him, and led him to a men’s room just inside the building.

  “Wait here,” he said. “Someone wants to see you.”

  Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan appeared five minutes later, checked to see that they were alone in the room, and then leaned his considerable bulk against the door to ensure they were left that way.

  “How did it go, Sean?” Mulligan asked.

  “I was in the Old Ebbitt about twenty minutes,” O’Grogarty replied. “C. Harry came in, asked if I had anything—”

  “Nobody saw the two of you together, right? I told you that was important.”

  O’Grogarty shrugged. “I don’t think so, but we were at the bar. He asked if I had anything—”

  “Anybody hear him ask?”

  O’Grogarty shook his head.

  “When I nodded, he put a fifty on the bar. Nobody saw him do it. Then I told him what I had was worth more than fifty bucks, and he put another fifty on the bar. Two twenties and a ten. Then I told him about the President going to Fort Bragg tomorrow. And that nobody was to know.”

  “He believed you?”

  O’Grogarty nodded.

  “He said if I could find out why, there’d be more money in it for me.”

  “Good man!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Speaking of money…” Mulligan said.

  “Yes, sir,” O’Grogarty replied, and took the one hundred dollars C. Harry had given him from his pocket. He gave the fifty-dollar bill to Mulligan.

  “The President calls this ‘redistribution of the wealth,’” Mulligan said. “It’s something he really believes in.”

  “You mean he gets the fifty dollars?”

  “No, of course not. The President says he’s worked too hard for his money to redistribute any of it. What it means is you had to give me half of what C. Harry gave you, and I’ll have to give half of that to Mr. Hoboken. That’s fair. You wouldn’t have C. Harry’s fifty unless he bribed you, and the leak to C. Harry was Hoboken’s idea.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, Sean, but I see a good future for you in the Secret Service. Keep up the good work!”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  Mulligan patted O’Grogarty on the shoulder, pushed himself off the men’s room door, and left.

  [SIX]

  Quarters #3

  Yadkin and Reilly Road

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  0605 15 June 2007

  Colonel Max Caruthers, who was six feet three and weighed 225 pounds, and Captain Albert H. Walsh, who was even larger, were in the foyer of Quarters #3. The cordless telephone on the sideboard rang. Caruthers was closer to it, and answered it.

  “General McNab’s quarters.”

  “Who is this?” the caller demanded sharply.

  There was an implication in the question that the telephone had been answered incorrectly. As, indeed, it had. What the protocol called for was for Colonel Caruthers to have answered the telephone by saying, “Sir, General McNab’s quarters. Colonel Caruthers speaking, sir.”

  He had not done so for several reasons. Among them were that he was not only a colonel, but a colonel/brigadier general designate, which meant that when the chair warmers in the Pentagon finally finished doing their bureaucratic thing, he would swap the silver eagles of a colonel for the star of a brigadier general. That, in turn, meant that there were very few people around Fort Bragg in a position to remonstrate with him for answering the telephone in an incorrect manner.

  But the primary reason he had failed to follow the protocol properly was that his ass was dragging. He had three minutes before he was finished accompanying General McNab on his ritual five-mile morning run around Smoke Bomb Hill and other Fort Bragg scenic attractions. This was understandably somewhat more difficult for someone weighing 225 pounds than it was for someone weighing 135 pounds, as did Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.

  When they arrived at Quarters #3, and General McNab had announced his intention to grab a quick shower, Colonel Caruthers had collapsed into the chair in the foyer before the general had made it to the second floor.

  “Who’s calling?” Colonel Caruthers demanded, not very pleasantly.

  “This is Colonel J. Charles DuBois, the Pope FOD.”

  FOD stood for field officer of the day, in other words the senior officer representing the commanding general that day. “Pope” made reference to the Air Force base abutting Fort Bragg, not to the head of the Roman Catholic Church.

  “Charley, this is Max,” Colonel Caruthers said. “What the hell does the Air Force want this time of the morning?”

  “I have to speak to General McNab.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s the senior officer present on either Bragg or Pope. The other general officers are off somewhere.”

  “I meant about what, Charley,” Caruthers said, impatiently.

  “We have a Level One Situation, Max. The protocol states that the senior general officer present will be informed without delay.”

  “What kind of a Level One Situation?”

  “The protocol states the senior general officer present gets informed, Max, not his senior aide-de-camp.”

  There were five Situation Levels, ranging in importance up from One—in layman’s terms, Peace & Tranquillity—to Five, which implied something like The War Is About to Begin.

  Colonel Caruthers erupted from his chair with an agility remarkable for someone of his bulk and, cordless phone in hand, took the stairs to the second floor three at a time. He bounded down the corridor and—knowing that Mrs. McNab was in the kitchen preparing coffee—burst into the master bedroom.

  The commanding general, United States Special Operation Command, was sitting, in his birthday suit, at his wife’s mirrored vanity, which reflected his face in three views as he trimmed and waxed his mustache.

  He turned to Colonel Caruthers and calmly inquired, “Something on your mind, Max?”

  “A Level One Situation, General,” Caruthers said, as he thrust the telephone at him.

  General McNab rose to his feet as he took it.

  Naked, holding the telephone in one hand and his mustache comb in the other, he did not look much like a recruiting poster for Special Forces.

  “McNab,” he said calmly.

  He listened to what Colonel J. Charles DuBois had to say.

  “I’m on my way, Colonel,” he said. “If this is an example of Air Force humor, I suggest that you and anyone else involved in this commit hara-kiri before I get there.”

  He handed back the telephone to Caruthers.

  “Tell Bobby to have the engine running and the door open when I get there. I will be down directly.”

  Bobby was Staff Sergeant Robert Nellis, the driver of General McNab’s Chrysler Town & Country minivan.

  Colonel Caruthers said, “Yes, sir,” and bounded down the hall and stairs as quickly as he had come up them.

  Three minutes and some seconds after he had ordered Colonel Caruthers to tell his driver to have the engine running and the door open, Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab came out the front door of his quarters.

  He now looked like a recruiting poster for Special Forces—for that matter, like a recruiting poster for the entire United States Army. He was wearing his dress blue uniform. It was said, more or less accurately, that he had more medals than General Patton, and today he was wearing them all.

  General McNab jumped in the front seat of the Town & Cou
ntry and ordered, “Pope! We need to be there yesterday!”

  Sergeant Bobby Nellis started off with smoking tires.

  “Sir, are you going to tell me what the Situation Five is?” Colonel Caruthers inquired.

  “Would you believe me, Colonel, if I were to tell you the President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its armed forces is about to land at Pope?”

  “Sir, I would have difficulty believing that.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s been here before, sir. The Secret Service and the press always start arriving three days before him. And there has been no ‘heads-up’ that I’ve heard.”

  “My thinking exactly. Have you ever heard, Max, that great minds follow the same path?”

  “No, sir. But I will write that down so that I won’t forget it.”

  [SEVEN]

  Base Operations

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

  0625 15 June 2007

  Sergeant Nellis slammed on the brakes, threw the gearshift in park, then erupted from the Town & Country and raced around the front of it to open the door for General McNab.

  He didn’t make it. McNab was already out of the van.

  “A little slow, weren’t you, Bobby?” General McNab inquired.

  Colonel J. Charles DuBois, USAF, rushed to the van, saluted, and said, “You just made it, General. There it is!”

  He pointed to an aircraft just about to touch down.

  “That’s not Air Force One,” General McNab replied. “That’s a C-37A.”

  “Sir,” Sergeant Nellis said, “any aircraft with the President aboard is designated Air Force One.”

  McNab turned and glowered at him.

  “Sorry, sir,” Nellis said, deeply chagrined.

  “Sorry won’t cut it, Sergeant. I’ve told you and told you and told you: Sergeants don’t correct generals even when generals say something stupid!”

  “Sir, it just slipped out!”

  “You’ve got to learn not to let corrections of general officers just slip out. Colonel Caruthers, just as soon as we get to the bottom of what’s going on here, cut the orders! It’s Officer Candidate School for the loudmouth here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Caruthers said.

  “And just to cut off the Avenue of Escape and Evasion Sergeant Loudmouth is thinking of—flunking out of OCS and going back to an A-Team—call Fort Benning and tell them if he flunks out, he’s to be sent to the Adjutant General’s Corps!”

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Caruthers said.

  “Not the Adjutant General’s Corps, sir, please!” Sergeant Nellis begged.

  “Why not? They’re always trying to correct honest soldiers. You’d be right at home with those paper pushers. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Nellis said. He seemed on the brink of tears.

  The C-37A turned off the runway and taxied to the base operations building, where it stopped.

  The stair door unfolded.

  Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan came down the stairs, followed by Sean O’Grogarty, who Mulligan at the last minute had decided to bring along, thinking he might be useful. Technically, O’Grogarty was undergoing “on-the-job training.”

  Next to come down the stairs was an Army officer, a full colonel in Battle Dress Uniform that also bore insignia identifying him as a member of the Adjutant General’s Corps.

  Colonel Caruthers, at the sight of the apparition, momentarily lost control and blurted, “Who the fuck are you?”

  The AGC colonel answered the question by marching up to General McNab, saluting crisply, and announcing, “Sir, Colonel R. James Scott, deputy chief, Office of Heraldry, Office of the Adjutant General, reporting VOPOTUS to the C in C Special Operations Command for indefinite temporary duty, sir!”

  McNab returned the salute in a Pavlovian reaction and was about to ask several questions when three more men came down the stair door and forestalled this intention. Two of the men were festooned with an assortment of still and motion picture cameras. The third was Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken.

  “Quick,” Mr. Hoboken ordered the photographers, “before the President gets in the doorway of Air Force One, get a shot of General Whatshisname, the one in the fancy uniform, welcoming Colonel Whatsisname to Fort Bragg.”

  The photographers rushed to comply. As they did so, they trotted past Sergeant Nellis. Somehow, one of Sergeant Nellis’s highly polished “jump boots”—the left one—became entangled with the ankle of the still photographer. Sergeant Nellis of course reached out to catch him as he stumbled. He not only failed to do so, but his right jump boot became simultaneously entangled with the ankle of the motion picture photographer, who then fell on top of the still photographer.

  Sergeant Nellis rushed to help them to their feet, and Colonel Caruthers rushed to assist Sergeant Nellis.

  By the time both photographers had been pulled to their feet and brushed off, Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen, President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its armed forces, was standing in the door of the Gulfstream.

  But it was too late. The opportunity to record General McNab welcoming Colonel R. James Scott to Fort Bragg for posterity was lost forever.

  The photographers rushed to record for posterity President Clendennen waving from the door and then as he descended the stair door.

  General McNab was waiting for him there, and this time he got the protocol perfect.

  He popped to rigid attention, saluted, and barked, “Sir, Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab reports to the Commander in Chief!”

  President Clendennen returned the salute, which annoyed General McNab more than a little, since he believed a salute was something warriors exchanged, and he knew the President had never worn a uniform and that the closest he had come to combat was dodging Mason jars of white lightning thrown at him by the First Mother-in-Law.

  But General McNab said nothing through the entire five minutes Robin Hoboken spent posing him and the President for more photographs.

  But finally his opportunity came. He came to attention again.

  “Sir, how may the general be of service to the President?”

  President Clendennen considered the question a moment, and then replied, “General, ask not what you can do for your President, but what your President can do for you.”

  “Yes, sir,” General McNab said.

  “Make sure you get this,” Robin Hoboken said to the photographers. “It’s important.”

  The photographers aimed their cameras.

  “Okay, General,” Robin said. “Ask.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ask the President what he can do for you. He’s waiting.”

  “Mr. President, what can you do for me?” General McNab inquired.

  “I am here, General, to help you plan the assault on Drug Cartel International Airfield,” President Clendennen said.

  “Shit, that sounds bad,” Robin Hoboken said. “We’re going to have to do that again.”

  Hoboken waited until the motion picture photographer signaled he was ready to proceed, then called, “Quiet on the set! Rolling! Action! Go ahead, General, ask.”

  “Mr. President,” General McNab asked again, “what can you do for me?”

  “I am here, General, to help you plan the assault by Clendennen’s Commandos on Drug Cartel International Airfield. I want to be on that Out of the Box Operation from the get-go.”

  The President paused, then turned to Robin Hoboken.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Much better, Mr. President,” Hoboken said. “I’m glad you remembered Clendennen’s Commandos.”

  “Robin, how could I forget my boys?” the President asked chidingly. “They’re like family to
me.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. President, sir,” General McNab said. “Who are Clendennen’s Commandos?”

  “You used to call them Delta Force and Black Coyote,” the President replied. “Robin, who’s really good at this sort of thing, suggested we needed something with more zing to it.”

  “No offense, General,” Hoboken said, “but you military people really dropped the ball naming these people—”

  “Actually, it’s Black Fox, not Black Coyote,” General McNab said.

  “Fox, coyote, what’s the difference?” the President asked.

  “Coyotes and foxes are both members of the Canis latrans order of Mammalia, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken explained. “Coyotes are larger—”

  “I meant,” the President said, “that ‘fox’ and ‘coyote’ are really lousy names—not as bad as what they call those sailor boys, of course. Calling them ‘Seals’ make it sound as if they go into battle making funny noises and with fishes in their mouths—but bad enough.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Hoboken said. “That’s why you wisely decided to rename them.”

  “Well, where are my boys, General?” the President asked. “Hard at work preparing things to seize Drug Cartel International as the first operation of Operation Out of the Box?”

  “Sir, I only learned of your plans to seize Drug Cartel International yesterday. I don’t even know where it is.”

  “It’s in Mexico,” the President said.

  “Permit me to rephrase, sir. I don’t even know precisely where in Mexico it is. We can’t plan an operation until we have an exact location.”

  “Ask Colonel Castillo. He must know where it is.”

  “Sir, I don’t know where Colonel Castillo is, except in the most general terms.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The last I heard, sir, he was in Europe, planning the infiltration of his intelligence people into Somalia.”

  “Well, tell him to put those goddamn pirates on the back burner; that’ll have to wait.”