The Shooters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “No, sir, I would not,” Castillo replied.

  “There you go, Tom. Nobody’s fault but mine. Subject closed.”

  [-IV-]

  2002 Red Cloud Road

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  0755 6 February 1992

  Captain Tom Prentiss walked to the kitchen door of Quarters Two and lightly tapped one of the panes with his ring. Brigadier General Harry Wilson, who was sitting at the kitchen table in his bathrobe, gestured for him to come in. He entered.

  “Did you have to knock so loudly?” General Wilson inquired.

  Prentiss exchanged smiles with Mrs. Bethany Wilson, who stood at the stove.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Good morning, Tom,” she replied, her tone teeming with an exaggerated cheeriness.

  General Wilson glared at her over his coffee mug. Miss Beth Wilson, who was sitting across the table from her father, rolled her eyes.

  “The general is not his chipper self this morning?” Prentiss said to him. “We are not going to have our morning trot up and down Red Cloud?”

  “For one thing, it’s Saturday. For another, in my condition, I could not trot down the drive to Red Cloud, much less up and down Red Cloud itself.”

  “Well, Harry,” Mrs. Wilson said, turning from the stove, “you know what they say about the wages of sin.” She looked at Prentiss. “Your timing is perfect. You want fried or scrambled?”

  “I was hoping you’d make the offer,” Prentiss said. “Scrambled, please.”

  “You know where the coffee is,” she said.

  “Bring the pot, please, Tom,” General Wilson said. “Unless you have an oxygen flask in your pocket.”

  “I can have one here in five minutes, sir,” Prentiss said.

  He took the decanter from the coffee machine and carried it to the table.

  “And how are you this morning, Miss Beth?” Prentiss said.

  Beth Wilson flashed him an icy look, but didn’t reply.

  “Does oxygen really work, Tom?” Mrs. Wilson asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, it does.”

  “You heard that? Or you know from personal experience?”

  “I respectfully claim my privilege against self-incrimination under the fifth amendment to the constitution,” Prentiss said.

  “Seriously, Tom,” General Wilson said, “how much trouble would it be to get your hands on an oxygen flask before we go to meet the Castillos?”

  “You want it right now, sir?”

  “You heard what she said about the wages of sin,” General Wilson said. “I’m about to die.”

  “Let me make a call,” Prentiss said, and started to get up.

  “Eat your breakfast first,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Let him suffer a little.”

  “Oh, God!” General Wilson said. “Is there no pity in the world for a suffering man?”

  His wife and his aide-de-camp chuckled.

  His daughter said, “You all make me sick!”

  “I beg your pardon?” General Wilson said.

  “You’re all acting as if it’s all very funny.”

  “There are elements of humor mingled with the gloom,” General Wilson said.

  “Randy said he did it on purpose,” Beth said.

  “Randy did what on purpose?” her mother asked.

  “Castillo did it on purpose. Castillo got Daddy drunk on purpose, hoping he would make an ass of himself.”

  General Wilson said, “Well, Daddy did in fact make sort of an ass of himself, but Charley Castillo wasn’t responsible. Daddy was.”

  “Actually, I thought you careening down the drive on my bike was hilarious,” his wife said.

  General Wilson raised his eyebrows at that, then said, “It’s not the sort of behavior general officers should display before a group of young officers, and I’m well aware of that. But the sky is not falling, and I am being punished, as your mother points out, for my sins.”

  “Randy says he was always doing that, trying to humiliate his betters,” Beth said.

  “You knew him at the Point, Tom,” General Wilson said. “Was he?”

  “Well, he was one of the prime suspects, the other being Dick Miller, in ‘The Case of Who Put Miracle Glue on the Regimental Commander’s Saber.’”

  “Really?” Mrs. Wilson asked, as she laid a plate of scrambled eggs before him.

  Prentiss nodded. “He couldn’t get it out of the scabbard on the Friday retreat parade. Talk about humiliation!”

  “And then he lied about it!” Beth said. “Randy told me all about that.”

  “What they did was claim their right against self-incrimination, Beth,” Prentiss said. “That’s not the same thing as lying.”

  “Randy said he lied,” she insisted.

  “I was there. Randy wasn’t,” Prentiss said. “I was the tactical officer supervising the Court of Honor. The court knew they did it, but they couldn’t prove it. Nobody actually saw them.”

  “So they let him—them—go?” Beth said.

  “They had no choice. Nobody saw them do it.”

  “Was that the real reason?” she challenged. “It wasn’t because his father won that medal?”

  “You get that from Randy, too?” General Wilson asked softly.

  “Randy said that the only reason they weren’t thrown out of West Point was because Castillo’s father had that medal…that the only reason he was in West Point to begin with was because his father had that medal.”

  “Sons of Medal of Honor recipients are granted entrance to West Point,” General Wilson said. “Staying in the Corps of Cadets is not covered.”

  “And he said that no one had the courage to expel the son of a black general,” Beth went on, “no matter what he’d done.”

  “And what does Randy have to say about Lieutenant Castillo’s Distinguished Flying Cross?” General Wilson asked, softly.

  “He said it’s impossible to believe that someone could graduate in ninety and be through flight school and flying an Apache in the Desert War when Castillo says he was unless a lot of strings were pulled.”

  “I am in no condition to debate this with you now, Beth,” General Wilson said. “But just as soon as the Castillos leave, you, Randy, and I are going to have to talk. While the Castillos are here, I don’t think it would be a good idea if you were around them.”

  “You’re throwing me out?” Beth said somewhat indignantly.

  “I’m suggesting that you spend the day, and tonight, with a friend. Patricia, maybe?”

  “I’ve got a date with Randy tonight. Where am I supposed to get dressed?”

  “Doesn’t Patricia have a bedroom? Take what clothing you need with you. I don’t want you around here when the Castillos are here.”

  “Yes, sir,” she snapped, and jumped up from the table.

  “Tom, would you take her to the Gremmiers’?”

  “Yes, sir,” Prentiss said, then added a little hesitantly, “General, I was sort of hoping I could get Beth to help me at the VIP house; make sure everything’s right. And I know Mrs. Wilson is…”

  “Get her to help you at the VIP house, then take her to the Gremmiers’,” Mrs. Wilson ordered.

  “I’m perfectly capable of driving myself,” Beth said.

  “We’re probably going to need both cars,” General Wilson said. “End of discussion.”

  [-V-]

  Magnolia Cottage

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  0845 6 February 1992

  Camp Rucker had been built on a vast area of sandy, worn-out-from-cotton-farming land in southern Alabama in the opening months of World War II. It was intended for use first as a division training area, and then for the confinement of prisoners of war. An army of workmen had erected thousands of two-story frame barracks, concrete-block mess halls, theaters, chapels, headquarters, warehouses, officers’ clubs, and all the other facilities needed to accomplish this purpose, including a half-dozen small frame buildings intended to house general officers and colonels.

/>   After the war and the repatriation of the POWs, the camp was closed, only to be reopened briefly for the Korean War, where it again served as a division training base. Then it was closed for good.

  Several years after the Korean War, with Camp Rucker placed on the list of bases to be wiped from the books, the decision was made to greatly expand Army Aviation. United States Senator John Sparkman (Democrat, Alabama)—to whom a large number of fellow senators owed many favors—suggested that Camp Rucker would be a fine place to have an Army Aviation Center. His fellow senators voted in agreement with their esteemed colleague.

  Thus, the facility was then reopened and declared a fort, a permanent base. Another army of workmen swarmed over it, building airfields and classrooms and whatever else was needed for a flying army. They also tore down most of the old frame buildings—most, not all.

  Chapels and theaters remained, and the warehouses, and the officer’s clubs, and the post headquarters building, and four of the cottages originally built in the early 1940s to last only five to ten years for the housing of general officers and senior colonels. Two of these four—including Building T-1104, which had been renamed “Magnolia Cottage”—were near the main gate, outside of which was Daleville.

  They were fixed up as nicely as possible, air-conditioned, furnished with the most elegant furniture to be found in Army warehouses, provided with a kitchen, and became VIP quarters in which distinguished visitors to the post were housed.

  When Captain Tom Prentiss pushed open the door of Magnolia House and waved Beth Wilson into the living room, they found the place was immaculate. There were even fresh flowers in a vase in the center of the dining table.

  “Looks fine to me,” Beth Wilson said.

  Prentiss didn’t reply directly. Instead, he said, “I’ve got to make a telephone call. Have a seat.”

  “That sounds like an order,” she snapped.

  “Not at all. If you’d rather, stand.”

  He used the telephone in the small kitchen and, not really curious, she nevertheless managed to hear Prentiss’s side of the conversation:

  “Tom Prentiss. I’m glad I caught you at home. I need a big favor.

  “Could you come to Magnolia House right now? It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

  “No, don’t worry about that. He’s not here.

  “I stand in your debt, sir.”

  Beth Wilson wondered what that was all about, but was not going to ask.

  When Prentiss hung up the phone, she said, “Will you tell me what you want me to do, so I can do it and get out of here?”

  “There doesn’t seem to be anything that needs doing,” Prentiss said. “But we’re going to have to wait until somebody comes here.”

  She locked eyes with him.

  He went on: “You upset your dad with that recitation of what your boyfriend had to think about just about everything. I suppose you know that?”

  “Is that really any of your business?”

  “Let me explain where I’m coming from,” Prentiss said coldly. “I admire your father more than I do anyone else I’ve ever met. If you were to look in a dictionary, there would be a picture of your dad in the definition of officer and gentleman.”

  “Maybe you should have thought of that when you let Castillo get him drunk and make a fool of himself.”

  “You’re right. I should have,” Prentiss said. “But your question, Beth, was ‘Is it any of my business’ that you upset your father by quoting your boyfriend to him and making him damned uncomfortable. And the answer is, ‘Yeah, it is my business.’ It’s my duty to do something to straighten you out.”

  “Straighten me out?”

  “Yeah, and your boyfriend, too. He’s next on my list.”

  “I can’t believe this conversation,” Beth said. “And I don’t think my parents are going to like it a bit when I tell them about it.”

  “I’ll have to take my chances about that,” Prentiss said.

  “I’m leaving,” she said. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

  “I can’t stop you, of course, but if you leave, you’ll walk. And it’s a long way from here to Colonel Gremmier’s quarters.”

  He walked out of the living room and went through the dining room into the kitchen.

  Beth started for the door, then stopped.

  That arrogant bastard is right about one thing. I can’t walk from here to the Gremmiers’.

  So what do I do?

  She was still staring at the door three minutes later when it opened and a middle-aged man wearing a woolen shirt, a zipper jacket, and blue jeans came through it.

  He looked at her and said, “I’m looking for Tom Prentiss.”

  “I’m in the kitchen, Pete,” Prentiss called. “Be right there.”

  When he came into the living room, Prentiss said, “Jesus, that was quick.”

  “Well, you said you needed a favor,” the man said.

  “Do you know Miss Wilson?” Prentiss asked.

  “I know who she is.”

  “Beth, this is Mr. Kowalski. He was my instructor pilot when I went through Blue Flight. He was with Lieutenant Castillo in the desert.”

  Beth nodded coldly at Kowalski.

  Kowalski looked at Prentiss.

  “How’d you hear about that?” Kowalski said.

  “From him,” Prentiss said. “What he told the general was something like ‘There we were, the best Apache pilot in the Army and the worst one, flying an Apache over the Iraqi desert at oh dark hundred with people shooting at us.’”

  Kowalski chuckled.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s a pretty good description. Except, as he shortly proved, he was a much better Apache pilot than he or I thought he was.”

  “Would you please tell Miss Wilson about that?”

  Kowalski glanced at her, then looked back at Prentiss and said, “What’s this all about, Tom? Did somebody tell the general what Charley’s really doing here?”

  “I don’t know what he’s really doing here,” Prentiss said, “but I’ll take my chances about learning that, too. Start with the desert, please, Pete.”

  “It would help if I knew what this is all about, Tom.”

  “Okay. A source in whom Miss Wilson places a good deal of faith has implied that the only reason Castillo was in an Apache in the desert was because his father had the Medal of Honor.”

  “Absolutely true,” Kowalski said. He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, I’d pretty much forgotten that!”

  Beth flashed Prentiss a triumphant glance.

  Then Kowalski went on: “What happened was a week, maybe ten days before we went over the berm, the old man, Colonel Stevens? He was then a light colonel”—Prentiss nodded—“Stevens called me in and said I wasn’t going to believe what he was going to tell me.”

  “Which was?” Prentiss said.

  “That I was about to have a new copilot. That said new copilot had a little over three hundred hours’ total time, forty of which were in the Apache, and had been in the Army since last June, when he’d graduated from West Point. And the explanation for this insanity was that this kid’s father had won the Medal of Honor, and they thought it would make a nice story for the newspapers that the son of a Medal of Honor guy had been involved in the first action…etcetera. Get the point?”

  “Now, Tom, isn’t that very much what Randy said?” Beth asked in an artificially sweet tone.

  “I’m not finished,” Kowalski said. “Tom said I was to tell you what happened.”

  “Oh, please do,” Beth said.

  “Well, I shortly afterward met Second Lieutenant Charley Castillo,” Kowalski continued. “And he was your typical bushy-tailed West Point second john. He was going to win the war all by himself. But I also picked up that he was so dumb that he had no idea what they were doing to him.

  “And I sort of liked him, right off. He was like a puppy, wagging his tail and trying to please. So because of that, and because I was deeply interested in pres
erving my own skin, I spent a lot of time in the next week or whatever it was, giving him a cram course in the Kowalski Method of Apache Flying. He wasn’t a bad pilot; he just didn’t have the Apache time, the experience.

  “And then we went over the berm and—what did Castillo say?—‘There we were flying over the Iraqi desert at oh dark hundred with people shooting at us.’

  “What we were doing was taking out Iraqi air defense radar. If the radar didn’t work, they not only couldn’t shoot at the Air Force but they wouldn’t even know where it was.

  “I was flying, and Charley was shooting. He was good at that, and like he said, he wasn’t the world’s best Apache pilot.

  “And then some raghead got lucky. I don’t think they were shooting at us; what I think happened was they were shooting in the air and we ran into it. Anyway, I think it was probably an explosive-headed 30mm that hit us. It came through my windshield, and all of a sudden I was blind….

  “And I figured, ‘Oh, fuck’”—he glanced at Beth Wilson—“sorry. I figured, ‘We’re going in. The kid’ll be so shook up he’ll freeze and never even think of grabbing the controls’—did I mention, we lost intercom?—‘and we’re going to fly into the sandpile about as fast as an Apache will fly.’

  “And then, all of a sudden, I sense that he is flying the sonofabitch, that what he’s trying to do is gain a little altitude so that he can set it down someplace where the ragheads aren’t.

  “And then I sense—like I said, I can’t see a goddamned thing—that he’s flying the bird. That he’s trying to go home.”

  “When he really should have been trying to land?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, when he really should have been trying to land,” Kowalski said. “When most pilots would have tried to land.”

  “Then why didn’t he?” Beth asked.

  “Because when he had to wipe my blood from his helmet visor, he figured—damned rightly—that if he set it down, even if there no were ragheads waiting to shoot us—which there were—it would be a long time before anybody found us, and I would die.

  “From the way the bird was shaking, from the noise it was making, I thought that we were going to die anyway; the bird was either going to come apart or blow up.”

  “So he should have landed, then?” Beth asked.