Duty and Dishonor: Author's Preferred Edition

by Dale A. Dye

  “It’s OK, Mrs. Fielding. Thanks anyway.”

  Justin Bates Halley stabbed the long-distance line dead and punched another button on his phone console. “Two things in a hurry, Eileen: Get Mike Ludlow at DIA on the line for me and book me on something out of New York to St. Louis, either tonight or early tomorrow morning.”

  While he waited for the Washington call, Halley strolled into his private bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. He liked what he saw in the mirror as he mopped at his face with a towel. The old warrior, the clandestine operator, was back in the saddle. If Cleve Emory wanted loose ends tied up, he was just the man who knew how to do it. His plan was risky, but what wasn’t when you played for high stakes…no balls, no blue chips. And he had the money, the pull, the clout, and the contacts to get it done like so many other covert military operations he’d run in the past. His phone buzzed and Halley grabbed at the handset.

  “Mike, how the hell are you?”

  “Good, Justin. You OK?”

  “Couldn’t be better…and thanks for taking the call. I need to know what you turned up on those guys I’m looking for. You know? The list I sent earlier in the week? The Special Operations Association is making my life miserable. I’m on the membership committee and they’re insisting on finding Recon Marines.”

  “I found all five on your list, Justin, but…well, it’s a sad story for the most part. Hampton and Wyatt were KIA. Goodman and Purdy made it out of Vietnam but they’re both dead. One died in prison and the other ODed on drugs. War’s over but it just keeps killing people, doesn’t it? I can fax you details.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Mike. How about the other one?”

  “William R. Ledsome…found him also.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “He is as far as I know.”

  “Got a location or address?”

  “Sort of…”

  “Let me have it, Mike. I’ll get somebody to track him down.”

  “Well, you better have your someone start looking in Corsica.”

  ST. LOUIS

  “You assholes can cheer up now.” Eddie Miller dropped a case of cold Budweiser on top of Spike Benjamin’s cluttered coffee table. “I found Ledsome.”·

  “No shit?” Willy Pud bounced up off the couch. “It’s about time we got some good news.”

  “Well, there’s good news…” Miller said. “And there’s bad news. The good news is that he’s alive.”

  “Can’t wait to hear the bad news…” Spike collapsed on the couch. “Don’t tell me Booger Ledsome is in a Trappist monastery under a vow of silence.”

  “Not quite. My FBI contact finally found him after she shot off an inquiry with Interpol. Your man former Marine William R. Ledsome is now serving in the French Foreign Legion. Can you believe that?”

  “Yeah, I can believe it.” Willy Pud smiled and reached for another beer. “Booger always said he was gonna give civilian life one shot. If it pissed him off, he was gonna find another war to fight.”

  “How do we get to him?” Spike was scribbling notes on a pad.

  “Beats me, Spike, but the FBI tells me he’s with the Legion’s 2nd Parachute Regiment at Calvi, Corsica. I heard that the Legion protects the identity of their guys. We might have a tough time even verifying it with them.”

  “I knew a guy who did five years in the Legion,” Willy said. “A lot of that stuff is bullshit. A Legionnaire can talk to anybody he wants. The problem will be getting to him.”

  “We’ll work that out,” Spike said. “We need to get a sworn deposition from him about what he saw when he was out in the bush with us. Let me get hold of a guy I know…a French reporter…works for Agence France Presse…maybe we can get a message to Ledsome and let him know we’re looking for him. He’d talk to you, Willy Pud.”

  “Yeah, I bet he would. Me and Booger were pretty tight.”

  j

  Justin Halley stared out the window of his penthouse suite, admiring a panoramic view of the muddy Mississippi River and the Gateway Arch. He’d had a magnificent dinner and just enough scotch to bolster both his commitment and his confidence. His phone warbled politely and he picked up the handset.

  “We have your call to Paris, Mr. Halley.” The hotel operator asked him to wait and Halley slipped into the tall leather chair behind a well-appointed desk. In a few moments, the line clicked and hissed, then cleared and he heard a familiar voice speaking accented English.

  “Bonjour, Justin. Can you hear me all right?” Alexandre Fontagne was a reliable business associate in Paris, well connected throughout the French government, and the kind of man who would do whatever was necessary to secure a lucrative design contract with Emory Technology that had been hanging in limbo for the past six months. Halley had dangled that bait when he made the first international call and his unusual request earlier in the day.

  “I can hear you quite well, Alexandre…and I’m hoping you’re going to tell me what I want to hear.”

  “The matter in Corsica is taken care of, Justin. I saw to it personally.”

  “And you are dealing with reliable people, Alexandre?”

  “Everyone in La Legion Etrangere is reliable, mon ami…as long as the price is right.”

  “You’ll tell me if you need more. There can be no screw ups on this.”

  “What you sent was entirely adequate, Justin. I will call you in a few days with an after-action report.”

  “Do that, Alexandre. I’ll be here in St. Louis for the rest of the week.”

  “And the guidance system contract?”

  “It’s yours when I get confirmation that our other business has been successfully concluded, Alexandre. Let me hear from you soonest.”

  Halley hung up the phone and flipped a page in his phone file. He ran his finger down a list of names, cradled the receiver and punched the buttons for an outside line. The phone rang just twice.

  “SatCo Security. Carver.”

  “Freddy? It’s me. Can you talk?”

  “This is my private line, Colonel. You in town?”

  “Yes; I’m in Suite 1412 at the Hyatt down by the riverfront. Did you do the recon I requested?”

  “I did…and no problems there, sir. He’s got a private office suite downtown near the newspaper offices. I know the area.”

  “Can you come by and see me tonight?”

  “Roger that, Colonel. You want me to bring some hands?”

  “Let’s keep it solo, Freddy. You can handle this one on your own…unless you’ve lost your touch.”

  “That’ll be the day, Colonel. It’s like they say, you know? You can take the boy out of the projects…”

  “But you can’t take the projects out of the boy,” Halley finished for him. “Make it 2000 hours, Freddy. I’ll see you then.”

  Justin Bates Halley was an organized man and important elements of his plan were falling neatly into place. He smiled and poured himself a congratulatory drink of straight scotch. He jotted a note or two in his ledger, making little boxes beside the things he needed to do and drawing a diagonal across the box for the things he’d already set in motion. When the task was complete, he’d cross the diagonal and make it an X for complete. It was an old and comforting habit. There were three names on the task list: Wilhelm Pudarski, Spike Benjamin and William Ledsome.

  Below his list was the address of Spike Benjamin’s private office suite near the downtown headquarters of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He drew the first diagonal in the box beside that note and then sat back to review his progress. It was all coming together nicely, very fluid and in just the proper order.

  By the end of the week, he’d have the business in Corsica taken care of and probably before then he’d know what Spike Benjamin had in his files. Former Special Forces Master Sergeant Freddy Carver would see to that. The man had the kind of chops that had made him the top crypto expert in MACV SOG.

  Halley sat silently wondering just how deep he need
ed to get into this thing personally. Probably best to keep my distance as much as possible, he thought. And Master Sergeant Freddy Carver was no stranger to clandestine operations. He’d run some risky, often violent stuff in the past, working as a hired consultant when Emory Technology needed credible deniability. And he was unlikely to balk no matter what the task. Justin Halley had a complete file on black market activities that would put Freddy Carver, once the king-pin of the Khaki Mafia in Vietnam, behind bars for a long time.

  CALVI, CORSICA

  Sergeant Chef Leon Wolfinger ran the pre-jump equipment check for a 12-man right door stick with practiced precision. He’d been a Legionnaire for 15 years and a certified Deuxieme REP Jump Master for four of those. He had an outstanding record, including citations for service in Chad, Djibouti, and Kolwezi.

  More importantly, he told himself, as he watched Caporal Chef Ledsome assume the hands-on-head position for the jump master’s inspection. He had a perfect parachuting record from all aircraft types. Never a major malfunction nor a Legionnaire killed or injured on one of Wolfinger’s jumps. The accident investigation would be cursory and routine.

  “Bonjour, Ledsome. Comment allez vous?”

  “Bien, et vous, Sergent Chef?”

  Wolfinger grinned and nodded, running his hands over the front of Ledsome’s harness. Helmet…canopy release assemblies…chest straps…harness quick-release assembly…belly-band…reserve parachute…

  Ledsome and the others wore the chest-mounted reserve pack for this jump mainly because regulations called for it. They all knew there would be no time or altitude to deploy a secondary chute on a Low Altitude Low Opening jump. It was window dressing at best. Wolfinger smiled reassuringly at the American Legionnaire and spun him in place to continue the checks. Helmet…suspension line assemblies…diagonal back-straps…horizontal back-straps and saddle…and the static line. Wolfinger unsnapped the hook from the pack-closing ties of Ledsome’s main and routed it over the jumper’s right shoulder. He traced the static line with his fingers, looking for frays or cuts, and found none.

  It was just a drill. The 15-foot length of Type XIII nylon webbing would never accomplish its purpose of deploying Ledsome’s main parachute after he left the aircraft at low attitude over the drop-zone. Sergeant Chef Leon Wolfinger bad seen to that last night in the rigger’s loft.

  He tapped Ledsome on the helmet and reached around to clip the static line’s snap-hook on the top carrying handle of the reserve parachute. “Bon chance, mon ami.” Wolfinger smiled at the jumper he’d just cleared for the exercise but he felt a twinge of regret. Ledsome was a solid Legionnaire, a combat veteran who had brought some interesting field skills with him into Legion service. What was about to happen was a shame but viewed in another way, it was inevitable. It was the destiny of all Legionnaires to die, one way or another, sooner or later, and it was always preferable to end with something like this than to die toothless and drooling in a retirement home.

  Wolfinger sidestepped to the next paratrooper and began his inspection routine. His sharp eyes and practiced hands didn’t miss a thing but his mind was elsewhere. He was contemplating the 10,000 francs recently deposited in the private account he maintained in a Brussels bank. It would be enough to buy the little house on the eastern shore of Papeete that he spotted while serving in French Polynesia.

  j

  Booger Ledsome struggled to his feet and executed a left face on the Jumpmaster’s hand signal. The aircraft doors were open and his heart was banging against his chest. He loved this part of it, loved the numbing vibration of the aircraft engines through the thick soles of his boots and the stinging rush of cold air that washed over the jumpers waiting to go. He loved the jangling jolt of adrenaline when his heart told him to put his knees in the breeze and his brain told him he was a fool to leave a perfectly good aircraft in midflight. It wasn’t quite as stimulating as a firefight, but it was as close as he could get until the next war came along.

  He snapped his static line onto the overhead anchor cable, took a six-inch bight in the line with his right hand, and focused on the red light gleaming beside yawning maw of the C-130’s paratroop door. Sergeant Chef Wolfinger caught his eye, standing in the center section of the aircraft with his arms extended, pointing at both doors. Stand in the door. They’d get the green light in seconds. Ledsome caught glimpses of the ground and noted their ultra-low altitude compared to normal jumps. They should be at no more than 600 feet over DZ Camerone and Ledsome wished they had more altitude so he could spend more time under canopy, floating free and easy.

  Aller! Aller!” Ledsome felt a slap on his thigh and executed a vigorous exit from the aircraft. He was driven down and back by the combined forces of gravity and the prop-blast from the C-130’s powerful engines. He immediately began his count: one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four…Oh, God!

  Booger Ledsome was unintentionally free-falling on his 34th static-line jump. He knew death was imminent when he missed the familiar rip of pack closing ties and the stomach-churning lurch of the initial opening shock. Why now? Jesus God, why now...after all I’ve been through? There was no one to hear it. Ledsome was alone in the final moments of his life, dropping toward the rocky soil of Corsica like concrete block at a speed of 32 feet per second per second. In desperation he pulled the ripcord of his reserve but it was futile.

  His death took exactly 18 seconds. At the end of that time, Booger Ledsome’s 186-pound body had reached terminal velocity of more than 18,000 feet per second. He felt only a sharp stab of pain before his spine snapped and a thigh-bone driven upward by the impact penetrated his skull and smashed his brain.

  ST. LOUIS

  Security in this fern-shrouded hothouse is about as tight as Aunt Polly’s pussy, former Master Sergeant Freddy Carver chuckled softly, climbing carefully up the back staircase of the high-rent downtown office building, wondering about the genius who convinced American businesses they were safe with rent-acops. Those flakes were worse than the fucking ARVN and just as predictable. He reached the 11th floor and peaked out to spot the video security camera at the end of the hall. Right where I thought it would be.

  Carver extended his arm and beamed an electronic signal from his hand transmitter at the video camera. The jolt would fuzz the camera’s signal for about 30 seconds which is all he needed to reach Benjamin’s office suite undetected. The boob down in the lobby probably wouldn’t even notice. You want to get by a St. Louis rent-a-cop in summertime? Carver thought as he walked toward the office near the end of the corridor. Just pick a night when the Cardinals are on TV. You could haul a fucking nuke through the front door anytime before the seventh inning.

  Slipping on a pair of surgical gloves, Carver quickly examined the door to Benjamin’s office suite. It was just a primary entrance and unlocked. Why spend money on locks when you’ve got a rent-a-cop down in the lobby to deal with riff-raff? Carver entered and spent a minute looking around for tripwires or boobytraps, an old habit that had paid dividends in the past. It was quiet and dark in the suite except for the soft murmur of conditioned air blowing through several vents. He ignored what was clearly a receptionist’s desk and moved directed for the door that was labeled Spike Benjamin, United Features Syndicated.

  It was locked, but Carver had expected that. He knelt by the polished aluminum door handle and examined it with a small penlight. He pulled a small leather case out of his coat, selected three tools, and went to work. It was easy. Practiced hands plus a shim, pick and tumbler wrench had him inside the private office in minutes. He shut the door behind him and stood letting his eyes adjust to the gloom. The office had big glass windows on two walls and he didn’t want to use his flashlight more than necessary.

  a

  a

  Carver sat at Benjamin’s cluttered desk and examined the computer. It was a not the latest or overly sophisticated. What did a reporter need besides a better typewriter? He booted the machine and tapped the keyboard thro
ugh a series of start-up demands. At the password page, Carver noted a line of asterisks in the little lighted box and shot a victorious fist in the air. He’d been prepared to run through a special sequence to bypass the security locks, but Benjamin had kindly told the machine to remember his password. If you worked for me, he thought as he began to scroll through files, I’d have your sorry ass fired for something like that.

  There were a lot of files, but Carver had time and motivation in the form of a five grand bonus, so he forced himself to be patient. He ran through a lengthy menu looking for clues. Arson, Aviation, Beat Cops, Blizzard…C rations? Carver selected that one and scanned a bunch of bush-beast recipes that Benjamin had saved for some reason. He scrolled further down the alphabet expecting to find the name Emory, but there was nothing like that. And he could find no slug line for Salt and Pepper either. If the guy had something…and Emory was sure he did…it would be on this machine, Carver thought…but where? He went back to the top of the file listing and scrolled down more slowly.

  He hit paydirt at the N’s. Benjamin had a file slugged NaCl. And that is the chemical formula for Salt. A neat little trick, my man….

  Carver twisted his penlight into a soft glow and found the power switch for a nearby printer. It should be set up to work directly from the machine as he didn’t see any other printers in the room. He tapped the keyboard and heard the printer hum. In seconds paper was churning out into a collection tray. It took nearly ten minutes and Carver was left with a hefty pile of paper when the printer signaled the job was complete. He bundled it all into a sack he had tucked in his belt and then slowly back-tracked himself to shut everything down. Then he titled the main frame on its side and went to work with a small Phillips screwdriver. He held his penlight in his teeth and opened the guts of the machine to reveal the hard drive.

  Carver found an outlet nearby and plugged in a small but very powerful degaussing machine. He ran it all over the insides of Benjamin’s machine, did it again for insurance, and then reassembled everything. He walked to the office door and looked around to see if he’d left any clues, any tell-tales that would alert Benjamin before he fired up his computer in the morning and discovered it had become an expensive paperweight.