"Yes, Sir, I'm afraid that would be necessary if anything happens in the next six months or a year."
"Do you know what that means politically? White soldiers in use against black Africans?"
"I also know what the fall of the 'Congo,' or a renewed civil war, would mean politically, Sir."
"Jesus Christ! Damn it, ten minutes, ago I was feeling, pretty good. Now you come in here and tell me the CIA and State have it all wrong, that Mobutu is the real power in the Congo, not Kasavubu, and that the Congolese Army is not prepared to put down another rebellion. And that I'm going to have. to use mercenaries, which will piss off every country in Africa except Israel and South Africa. And," he added, "it will do me no damn good with the black voters here, either."
"That, Sir, is the situation as I see it."
"If I had McCone and Rusk in here, and they beard you say that you have just said, you know what they would say? Politely, of course, because they're gentlemen, but what they would say would mean you're full of shit, Colonel."
"Yes, Sir, I think that's probably true." The President drained his-drink.
"OK," he said, obviously having come to a decision. "I hope you're wrong, Felter, but I can't take that chance. Do what you think you have to do. Keep me advised. I'll keep the heat off you."
"Thank you, Sir."
(Three)
Cairns Army Airfield 22 April 1964 1015 hours:
"Cairns, Air Force Three Eleven."
"Three Eleven, Cairns, go ahead."
"Cairns, Air Force Three Eleven, a Learjet at flight level two five thousand sixty miles north of your station. Estimate ten minutes. Approach and landing, please."
"Roger, Three Eleven, we have you on radar. Maintain your present course, begin descent to flight level five thousand now.
Report five minutes out. Ceiling and visibility unlimited. The winds are negligible. The altimeter is two niner niner three."
"Understand five thousand five minutes. We have a code six aboard. No honors. But please advise General Bellmon, 1 spell Baker Easy Love Love Mike Oscar Nan, that Colonel Felter, 1 spell Fox Easy Love Tare Easy Roger, is aboard."
"Roger on your Colonel Felter, and we know how to spell Bellmon, thank you, Three Eleven." 1018 hours:
"Air Force Three Eleven, Cairns."
"Three Eleven."
"Three Eleven, we have you at one six thousand feet due north indicating four two zero knots. Please advise Colonel Felter that General Bellmon will meet him."
"Cairns, Three Eleven. Passing through one five thousand.
Roger on the message." 1020 hours:
"Cairns, Air Force Three Eleven. Passing through ten thousand. Estimate Cairns five minutes."
"Three Eleven Cairns, understand ten thousand and five-minutes. Maintain present course and rate of descent. You are cleared to two thousand five hundred. Use runway two eight. Look out for local fixed- and rotary-wing traffic." 1024 hours: "Cairns, Three Eleven at twenty-five hundred. We have the field in sight."
"Three Eleven, Cairns, you are cleared as number one to land on runway two eight. The winds are negligible, the altimeter is two niner niner three. Report on final. Army Four Four Two, you are number two after the Air Force Lear on approach. Beware of jet turbulence."
"Four Four Two understands number two after the Learjet. 1 have him in sight."
"Three Eleven turning on final to two eight." 1025 hours:
"Cairns Approach Control, Air Force Three Eleven on the ground at two five past the hour. You want to close us out with Atlanta, please?"
"Air Force Three Eleven, affirmative. We will close out your flight plan. Three Eleven, take the next convenient taxiway and proceed to Base Operations. Ground control personnel will direct you to parking. Will you require fuel or other service?"
"Need some go juice, thank you." At 1028 hours Major General Robert F. Bellmon, trailed by Captain John Oliver, walked out of the Base Operations building across the concrete parking ramp to the glistening Learjet. The fuselage door opened and a young black woman wearing the chevrons of an Air Force staff sergeant climbed down.
She saw Bellmon and saluted. Crisply, but not in awe. Lear jets of the Air Force's Special Missions Squadron got to see a lot of brass. The day before, Air Force Three Eleven had carried two four-stars, an admiral, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command.
"I don't believe Colonel Felter is quite ready to deplane, Sir," she said to Bellmon.
"May 1 go aboard, Sergeant?" Bellmon asked.
"Yes, Sir." Colonel Sanford T. Felter was not quite ready to deplane because he was in the process of changing into a uniform.
"I am suitably awed, Sandy," Bellmon said.
"I asked my boss if 1 could come down here for a couple of days," Felter said as he tied his necktie in a mirror," and he asked why, and 1 told him, and he said, 'Take a jet and be back tomorrow.'" He shrugged into his jacket.
"I will admit I have learned to like traveling like this," he said.
"The memorial service is at eleven," Bellmon said.
"I know," Felter said. "That's one of the reasons I'm here."
"And the other?"
"I need replacement pilots," Felter said. "One of Dick Fulbright's people will deliver another airplane later today."
(Four)
Quarters #1 Fort Rucker, Alabama 1345 Hours 22 April 1964
General Robert F. Bellmon was surprised when Colonel Sanford T. Felter accepted Barbara's offer of a drink.
"Please, Barbara," he said. "Scotch, no ice. As much water as ice. " Felter sensed Bellmon's surprised eyes on him.
"I learned that from Craig," he said. "He said "it makes no sense to kill the taste of expensive whiskey by making it cold."
"Well, certainly I won't question the argument that Craig Lowell knows more about whiskey than most people, but why are you so sure that's going to be expensive whiskey?" Bellmon replied.
"Because he knows I 'love him," Barbara said, handing Felter a glass. "Isn't that right, Sandy?"
"Thank you," Felter said.
Bellmon raised his glass. "Absent companions," he said.
"Absent companions," Felter said. "Including those two we just buried."
"Now don't you start it," Barbara said sharply.
"Start what?" Felter asked.
"What Bob started this morning when he was putting on his, dress" uniform," Barbara said, and quoted her husband: "If I hadn't given Felter their names."
"I picked them,": Felter said. "If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have been in that airplane."
"No, they probably would have been run over by a truck," Barbara said. "Now the both of you stop it-and I mean it." Bellmon put up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"Bob," Felter said, "we have to talk about replacements."
"We do?" Bellmon replied suspiciously.
"The names you gave me are not satisfactory," Felter said.
"So I had to look elsewhere."
"I may be able to help," Bellmon said. "How would you like to have, as a replacement pilot, a young man with several thousand hours of multiengine time-"
"That's not funny, Bob!" Barbara interrupted furiously.
"-who not only speaks French and German but-"
"Now damn it, Bob, you stop!"
"is also very familiar with the Congo," Bellmon concluded.
"There is no Army aviator with those qualifications," Felter said. "Or at least none known to DCS Pers."
"There is that little problem," Bellmon said. "He is not a rated aviator, or for that matter an officer, but I've been around you a long time, Sandy, and know that you can cause administrative miracles to happen. . . . "
"Oh, you mean Portet," Felter said, and chuckled. "'He's not available for this, Bob."
"You know about him?" Bellmon asked, visibly surprised.
"I'm surprised that you do," Felter said. "I'll have to ask you how he came to your attention."
"That sounded official, Sandy," Bellmon said though
tfully.
"He's Marjorie's new boyfriend," Barbara said.
"Is that it, Bob?" Felter pursued. "That's how he came to your attention?"
"Marjorie has a bad case of puppy love for him," Bellmon said. "I should have guessed that there was more of a, reason for the sonofabitch being here than his unwillingness to take a "Commission."
"Bob!" Barbara said in mingled anger and concern, and then she turned to Felter. "I think you had better explain 'not available,' Sandy. If you can, that is. Otherwise Bob will turn that into the worst possible scenario."
"'Nothing derogatory,'" Felter quoted after a just perceptible hesitation. "As a matter of fact, Bob, if it puts your mind to rest, everything I have suggests he's a really nice young man. Bright, levelheaded. His family in Leopoldville are nice people, 'highly regarded.'"
"I really hope that ruins your day, Bob," Barbara said. "Sometimes you can really be-a louse!"
"What is he doing here that I don't know about?" Bellmon asked, smiling. The smile was clearly forced.
"So he and Marjorie have hit it off, have they?" Felter said, as if the question had not been asked.
"Oh, it's old home week," Barbara said. "He met Marjorie at the bank and she took him over to the Craigs', and he and Geoff hit it off."
"He's been giving Geoff Craig illegal instruction to get him through the FAA twin-engine instrument check," Bellmon said.
"I know," Felter said. "Why illegal?"
"How do you know?"
"Because Portet asked Pappy Hodges if it would be all right, and Pappy Hodges asked me," Felter explained.
"Well, it's illegal, with" your permission or not," Bellmon said. "I don't know about that officially, of course. If I did, being the-louse Barbara thinks I am, I'd have to rack the both of them."
"For what?" Felter asked. "I don't understand."
"We, the Aviation School somewhat immodestly believe that we give student aviators all the instruction they can handle at one time," Bellmon said sarcastically. "They're forbidden-to take any off-post instruction."
"Well, then, I'm glad this came up," Felter said. "Because we are going to have to figure out some way to get twin-engined fixed wing qualification on Geoff's records."
"I just told you it's illegal," Bellmon said. "I can't do that."
"The replacements for the pilots who went down," Felter said, "are Major Hodges and Lieutenant Craig. That's what I started to tell you before we went off at a tangent. And that means he has to be rated in the aircraft. Haven't you got some sort of board you can run him past?"
"Sure," Bellmon said. "And the-next thing you. know, every other rotary-wing pilot on the post will be taking out a second mortgage to get the money to take off-post fixed-wing flying lessons. Christ, they're told and told it's expressly forbidden! And then some lieutenant, whose wife just happens to be my daughter's best friend, not only does it, but winds up with a plush embassy flying assignment because he did. You realize what that looks like, what it makes me look like?"
"Is there one of these boards at Bragg?" Felter asked. "Could I work this through Hanrahan?"
Brigadier General Paul Hanrahan was Commandant of the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In effect, the head Green Beret.
"There used to be," Bellmon said. "At the expense of a lot of effort, I had it put out of business. The only board authorized to rate people on civilian experience is here."
"Then it will have to be here," Felter said.
"That sounded suspiciously like an order," Bellmon flared.
"Come on, Bob," Felter said. "Put things in perspective. It's not that important."
"As opposed to what you're doing?"
Felter nodded but didn't respond directly.
"It is also common knowledge among the troops that Geoff is rich," Felter said, "and that he is related to the legendary Colonel Craig W Lowell."
"What about Lowell?" Bellmon interrupted. "He meets all your requirements and then some. Why don't you send him?"
"I'll tell you what I told him," Felter said. "He was on the phone to me to volunteer his" services five' minutes'" after you called him to tell him the plane went in. If you're trying to, be inconspicuous, you don't send a lieutenant colonel, especially a flamboyant one like Lowell, to drive an airplane."
Bellmon smiled. "Just a suggestion," he said.
"I'm sorry if giving young Craig an embassy flying assignment makes things awkward for you. . . for the Army, if you like.
Actually, from my standpoint there are several things against him. He is a Green Beret, and that will come out inevitably, and so far as the Congolese are concerned, they read 'mercenary' whenever they hear 'Green Beret.' Additionally, I sent Lieutenant Karl-Heinz Wagner to Durban as a recently escaped from East Germany refugee working for Hessische Schwere Konstrucktion.
His orders were to infiltrate himself into the good graces of Major Michael Hoare-"
"Major who? Hoare, you said? Who's he?" Bellmon asked.
"An Irishman, a former Chindit, who commanded the mercenaries in Katanga," Felter said. "And who will probably get himself involved again. . . ."
"I remember the name now," Barbara said.
"And I don't like the idea of having Wagner's sister right next door, so to speak," Felter said, "for the obvious reasons. And I can't tell Geoff I'm sorry, but there are no funds for dependent travel to the Congo. Ursula would arrive in the first-class compartment of the UTA flight from Brussels the day after Geoff gets there. There she would be greeted by the upper echelons or the Congo business community paying their respects to the daughter-in-law of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, investment bankers."
"Sandy," Barbara said, getting to her feet, "wouldn't you rather that I went and polished pots or something while you talk to Bob?"
"No. I want you to hear this, so maybe you can convince him I wouldn't be about to ask Geoff Craig to go over there if there was anyone I could send instead."
"Oh, hell, Sandy," Bellmon said, sounding contrite. "I know that. "
"Well, since I have not been asked to leave," Barbara Bellmon said, "let me throw this into the equation. You know, Sandy, that Ursula's seven months pregnant? Can she go? Isn't there some kind of a regulation?"
"Not in the last six weeks of a pregnancy," Bellmon said.
"Barbara," Sandy said, "you don't really think that a little thing like a regulation would stop her? Didn't you ever hear that the rich are different from you and me?"
"I don't think it would stop her if she didn't have a dime," Barbara Bellmon said. "But I thought I should mention it."
"Did I just hear you say you 'were about to ask' young Craig if he wants to go?" Bellmon asked.
"Yeah, that's what I said. I called Pappy Hodges and told him to buy a new toothbrush, but I couldn't talk to Geoff." He paused. "Ursula told me that he and Portet went right from the chapel to the airport."
"You seem pretty sure he'll go," Bellmon said.
"Of course he will," Barbara said. "They will."
"I'm about to call Ursula again and ask her to have a few people in," Felter said. "Me Major and Mrs. Hodges and Major General and Mrs. Bellmon." Bellmon looked at him curiously.
"My thinking, Bob," Felter said, "is that if, as you say, people are going to talk about Geoff getting special treatment, for my purposes that's not all bad. I would much rather have the Congolese-and everybody else-think that Geoff is getting special privilege than to suspect what he and Pappy will really be doing over there. If you were there for a party, that would come out.
They call that disinformation. But if you'd really be that uncomfortable . . ."
"I know what they call it," Bellmon said sharply.
"Of course we'll be there," Barbara said. "But, Sandy, have you thought that Marjorie's friend will probably be there? Where she is, he normally can be found."
"Goddammit," Bellmon said.
"I've thought of it," Felter said. "I've been looking forward to meeting him. Now, since Marjorie appr
oves, more than ever."
"You little bastard, you!" Bellmon said.
Felter smiled. If Bellmon swore at him, he was no longer angry. And if he was no longer angry, that meant he had accepted the necessity of what he had been told had to be done.
II
The New Breed Page 4