Major General Naylor looked at Colonel Wallace and said, "How badly was this officer wounded? Do we know?"
"He can't be too badly hurt, General, if he flew that shot-up Apache a hundred miles. I think they would have said something if he was seriously injured."
Naylor snorted.
"You see what I mean, sir?" Colonel Wallace asked. "It's a great story! The son of a Medal of Honor winner, and I think we can infer he's a Tex-Mex, with all the implications of that. This will be on the front page of every newspaper in the country tomorrow."
"No, it won't," General Naylor said. Sir?
"Listen to me carefully, Colonel. I am placing an embargo on this story. It is not to be released, leaked, talked about, anything, unless and until General Schwarzkopf overrides my decision. Is that clear?"
"It's clear, sir, but I don't understand:"
"Good. We understand each other. That will be all, Colonel. Thank you."
The office of Major General Oswald L. Young, the J-l (Personnel) of Central Command, in the command bunker was almost identical to that of Major General Naylor, and the two were old friends.
"Got a minute for me, Oz?" Naylor asked.
"Any time, Allan. I was just thinking about you-specifically, of Freddy Lustrous-and wishing I had his ass-chewing ability. I remembered one he gave you and me in 'Nam. I just did my best, but it wasn't in the same league."
"I'm thinking of delivering one of my own," Naylor said. "What was yours about?"
"They had a pool out there. Twenty bucks. Winner take all. The winner was to be the guy who picked the number closest to the actual number of casualties we'll take in the first twenty-four hours."
"Jesus!"
"Actually, there were several such pools. KIA. WIA. MIA. Plus, lost fighters, lost A-10s, lost Apaches. Goddamn, I don't understand people who could do that. It wasn't a bunch of old sergeants, either. A couple of colonels were happy gamblers. What's rubbed you the wrong way?"
"Aviators. Jesus Christ, they're worse than the goddamned Marines! Anything for publicity that makes them look good."
"Going down that road, I just got a recommendation for an impact DFC for an aviator, an Apache pilot who did good."
"Who shouldn't have been anywhere near where he was. Those goddamned sonsofbitches!"
"I thought I was the only one around here who lost his temper," a voice said from the door. It had been opened without first knocking by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.
Neither Major General Naylor nor Major General Young said anything but General Young got out of his chair.
"I'm glad you're here, Allan," Schwarzkopf said. "I was coming to see you next. After I tell you two why I'm pissed off, you can tell me what the goddamned sonsofbitches you were talking about have done. Or haven't done."
"Yes, sir," Major Generals Naylor and Young said, almost simultaneously.
"Have either of you heard about an office pool, or pools, being run around here?"
"Sir, I have dealt with that situation," General Young said.
"You, Allan?"
"I didn't know about it until just a moment ago, sir," Naylor said. He looked at Young. "Were some of my people involved?"
Young nodded.
"Sir, I will deal with that situation immediately," Naylor said.
"Okay. So you weren't talking about that. Who has you so pissed off?"
Naylor did not immediately respond.
"Take your time, Allan," Schwarzkopf said. "I've got nothing else to do but stand here waiting for you to find your tongue."
"Sir: Oz, have you got the message from the 403rd?"
"Right here," General Young said, picked it up from his in-box, and handed it to Naylor who handed it to Schwarzkopf who read it.
"Something wrong with this? You don't believe it, is that what you're saying?"
"Oh, I believe he did it, sir," Naylor said. "With the trumpets of glory ringing in his ears."
"You're losing me, Allan. When I was young and a second lieutenant, I heard those trumpets. Didn't we all?"
"Sir, he graduated from the Point in June."
"I saw that. So?"
"Sir, you don't go from the plain to the cockpit of an Apache in six months."
"Uuuh," General Schwarzkopf grunted. "You know this kid, Allan?"
"Yes, sir. I talked him into going to the Point."
"You're saying he got special treatment?"
"I'm saying: what I said before, General, was that Aviation is worse than the Marines about getting publicity."
"Because of his father, his father's MOH, they rushed him through training and sent him over here?"
"Where he is way over his head," Naylor said.
"He seems to have done pretty well," Schwarzkopf said.
"He's over his head, sir," Naylor argued.
"You don't think he deserves the DFC?"
"Yes, sir, I think he does. And he was wounded. What I want to do is get him out of there before he kills himself trying to do something else he's not capable of doing."
"Jesus, Allan. People get killed," General Young said.
"And some sonsofbitches are willing to bet on how many," Schwarzkopf said. "I think I know what Allan's thinking. The Class of '50, right?"
"That's in my mind, sir. My brother was in the Class of '50."
"And didn't come back from Korea?" Schwarzkopf asked.
"Tom had been an officer six months when he was killed, sir."
"And your son is here, too, right, with Freddy Franks?"
"Allan's Class of '88, sir. He's had two and a half years to learn how to be a tank platoon leader."
"I take your point. I always thought it was insanity to get the Class of '50 nearly wiped out in Korea," Schwarzkopf said. "You can't eat the seeds. If you do, you don't get a crop." He paused. "Okay, Allan, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this. Handle it any way you want."
"Thank you, sir. Sir, I told Colonel Wallace to embargo this story until you gave him permission to release it."
"You think that's important?"
"Yes, sir, I do."
"Okay. It's squashed. There will be other impact awards. So far, Phase I-knock on wood-seems to be going well."
"Thank you, sir."
"I don't want to hear one more goddamned word about a how-many-casualties pool. Understood?"
"Yes, sir," Generals Naylor and Young said, almost in unison.
General Schwarzkopf momentarily locked eyes with each of them and walked out of the office.
"So what do we do with this young officer?" General Young asked.
"You're the personnel officer, Oz. You tell me."
"Okay. There aren't many options. Or at least good ones," General Young said. "If he got out of West Point six months ago, and is an Apache pilot, we can presume two things: one, that he can fly helicopters:"
"If my memory serves, it takes longer than six months to get qualified in an Apache, after you've got X many hundred hours and X many years flying Hueys."
"I think you're right. Can I go on?"
"Sorry."
"We can presume he can fly helicopters-the Huey, at least, since you have doubts that he should be flying the Apache-and is qualified in no other useful skill, like being an Infantry or Armor platoon leader."
"Okay."
"And if he stays in Aviation, and all those terrible things you think Aviation brass is doing to him are true-and I think you're probably right-and is an Apache pilot, they will continue to put him in an Apache cockpit:"
"Where he will get killed, and probably get a lot of people with him killed," Naylor interrupted.
"Allan, by now you should have vented your temper," General Young said. "The problem is a given. Now, let's find a solution."
"Sorry, Oz."
"Schwarzkopf has given you a blank check. At one end of that range of options is a message saying this young man is grounded, by order of H. Normal himself."
This time when Naylor heard "H. Normal" it didn't seem at all funny.
"I don't think we want to do that," General Young went on, "for a number of reasons that should be self-evident. So what's left? We have to get him out of Aviation, but where can we send him? I have a suggestion which I sort of thought you would think of first. You set it up."
"What did I set up?"
"The 2303rd Civil Government Detachment," Young said, "commanded by Colonel Bruce J. McNab. A classmate of ours. Who we can talk to. You, or me, or both of us."
"And I told you when I set it up that I didn't like it; that what it was was Green Beanie McNab playing James Bond. General Schwarzkopf was told to do it by Colin Powell personally, and he told me to do it and not to ask any more questions than I had to. But we both know that whatever Scotty McNab's involved with, it doesn't have very much to do with civil government."
"We don't think it has much to do with civil government," Young said. "Unless you know something I don't?"
Naylor shook his head, and then asked, "What would Castillo do there?"
"There's six, maybe eight Hueys on McNab's TO amp;E," Young said, referencing the Table of Organization amp; Equipment. "He could fly one of those."
"For all I know, Scotty is planning to fly into Baghdad in one or more of those Hueys and try to kidnap, or assassinate, Saddam Hussein."
"I frankly wouldn't be surprised. But, to repeat, you or me, or both of us, could have a word with him, and make sure he understands this young officer is not to be put in harm's way for the benefit of Army Aviation public relations."
"If McNab's doing something covert:" Naylor said, thoughtfully. "I said that about Hussein to be clever, but, now that I think about it, I'm not so sure it's that far off the mark-he's certainly got some cover operation up and running to hide it. A perfectly legitimate military operation, possibly even having something to do with civil governments."
"Probably," Young agreed.
"From which he can detach whatever number of people he needs to conduct whatever, almost certainly illegal, operation he wants to do without attracting much attention."
Young nodded in agreement.
"Oz, how about you transferring Castillo to the 2303rd Civil Government Detachment and I will get on the horn to Colonel Scotty McNab and tell him that whatever he does with Castillo is not to be even remotely connected with what he is doing covertly?"
"Done," Young said. "But I think I'd better talk to Scotty, not you."
"Why?"
"Because it takes you out of the loop," Young said. "Over the years, Allan, you've spoken to me of Lieutenant Castillo. Often."
"Have I?"
"Yeah. And I got the feeling you're really fond of him."
"Guilty."
"This way, I received the impact recommendation and wondered how this young officer could be flying an Apache six months out of West Point, drew the same conclusions you did, went to H. Normal, got his permission to fix it, and am doing so."
"I owe you a big one, Oz," Naylor said.
"Don't worry. I'll get it back," General Young said.
[EIGHT]
Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, J-3
United States Central Command
Ministry of Defense and Aviation Air Force Base
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
1530 1 March 1991
"Sir," Master Sergeant Jack Dunham said, a strange look on his face, "there's an officer out there:"-he gestured toward the closed door-": who said, and I quote, sir, 'Be a good fellow, Sergeant, present the compliments of Colonel Bruce J. McNab to the general and ask the general if I might have a few moments of his valuable time.' "
Major General Allan Naylor replied, "Why do I have the feeling, Jack, that you think Colonel McNab could not melt inconspicuously into a group of, say, a dozen other colonels?"
"I've got twenty-four years' service, General, and I never saw:"
Naylor chuckled and smiled.
"My compliments to Colonel McNab, Sergeant, and inform him that I would be delighted to see him at his convenience."
"Yes, sir," Dunham said, then went to the door and opened it and said, "General Naylor will see you, Colonel."
"Good show!" a voice boomed in an English accent, and through the door came a small, muscular, ruddy-faced man sporting a flowing red mustache. He was wearing aviator sunglasses. His chest, thickly coated with red hair, was visible through a mostly unbuttoned khaki jacket, the sleeves of which were rolled up. General Naylor was sure the khaki "African Hunter's Safari Jacket" had not passed through the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps, and neither had Colonel McNab's khaki shorts, knee-length brown stockings, or hunting boots.
On McNab's head was an Arabian headdress, circled with two gold cords, which Naylor had recently learned indicated the wearer was an Arabian nobleman. The white cape of whatever the headdress was called hung to McNab's shoulders. In the center of it, barely visible between the two gold cords, was the silver eagle of a colonel. An Uzi 9mm submachine gun hung from leather straps around his neck. A spare magazine for the Uzi protruded from an upper pocket of the shooting jacket and the outlines of fragmentation grenades bulged both lower pockets.
He saluted.
"Thank you ever so much, General, for granting me your valuable time."
Naylor returned the salute.
"Close the door, please, Colonel," Naylor said.
"Yes, of course, sir. Forgive me," Colonel McNab said and went and closed the door. Then he turned and smiled at Naylor. "I was hoping that you would not be overwhelmed to see me. But for old times' sake, you may kiss me. Chastely, of course."
Despite himself, Naylor laughed and smiled.
"It's good to see you, Scotty," he said and came around his desk and offered his hand. McNab wrapped his arms around him in a bear hug.
"How the hell did you get into the building dressed like that?"
"Easily. For one, I was on the list of those summoned to the Schwarzkopf throne room. For another-perhaps as important-to whom do you think Stormin' Normal's bodyguards owe their primary allegiance?"
"I wondered where they came from," Naylor admitted.
"Nurtured to greatness by my own capable hands. You've noticed, I'm sure, that he's still walking around? Despite the many people-most of them on his staff-who would love to kill him?"
"What did General Schwarzkopf want? Did someone tell him about your uniform? Using the term loosely."
"To answer that, I have to overcome my well-known modesty," McNab said. "I got another medal, and General Schwarzkopf wanted to tell me himself that, terribly belatedly, the powers that be have recognized my potential and sent it to that collection of clowns on Capitol Hill known as the Senate, seeking their acquiescence in my becoming a brigadier general."
"It's overdue, Scotty," Naylor said.
"There are those, Allan my boy, who are going to beat their breasts and gnash their teeth while shrieking 'the injustice of it all' Infidels are not supposed to get into heaven."
Naylor thought: He's right. A whole hell of a lot of colonels who have spent their careers getting their tickets punched and never making waves are going to shit a brick when they hear Scotty McNab got his star.
"When you pin the star on," Naylor said, "you'll find that it's anything but heaven."
"I told Powell I would just as soon stay where I was, thank you just the same. He talked me into it, saying it was the price I had to pay for being right again."
He means that. I am in the presence of the only colonel in the U.S. Army who would tell the chairman of the Joint Chiefs he didn't want to be a general.
"Right about what?"
"Who do you think won this war, Freddy Franks and his tanks? Chuck Horner and his airplanes?"
"I think they had a lot to do with it."
"I am a profound admirer of Generals Franks and Horner and you know it, but Special Ops won this war. We took out the Iraqi radar and communications. The only airplanes-with a couple of exceptions-Chuck Horner lost were due to pilot error or aircraft failure and he admits it. The greatest loss of life was caused by that one Scud we didn't take out and that hit the barracks in Saudi Arabia. By the time Freddy drove across the berms, the Iraqis had no communications worth mentioning and thus no command and control."
"The one Scud you didn't take out?"
"Or render inoperable. Or bring back with us. I understand the Air Force was really disappointed to learn how primitive those things are."
"What decoration did you get?"
McNab reached in his jacket pocket, rooted down beside the Uzi magazine, came out with a Distinguished Service Medal, and dangled it back and forth for a moment.
I can't imagine Schwarzkopf pinning the DSM on that khaki jacket, but obviously that's exactly what just happened.
"I gather the presentation ceremony was rather informal," Naylor said. Then he asked, "You do have some reason for being dressed like that?"
"Aside from I like it, you mean?"
Naylor nodded. "You want some coffee, Scotty?"
"I've got a footlocker full of booze on my dune buggy outside," McNab said. "Formerly the property of the U.S. embassy in Kuwait City. I thought you might like a drink."
"Against the rules."
"You haven't changed, have you?"
"If I drink, other people will want to and think they can."
"They don't have to know. You don't have to stand in your door and shout, 'Hey, everybody. Fuck the Arabs, I'm going to have a snort.' "
"And you haven't changed, either, I see," Naylor said.
"You wouldn't love me, Allan, if I did," McNab said.
"I wouldn't love you no matter what you did," Naylor said.
"You just want to see me cry," McNab said.
"Now, that's a thought," Naylor said.
McNab smiled at him.
"You know where you're going when you get the star?" Naylor asked.
"Bragg. Deputy commander, or some such, of the Special Warfare Center. What I'm going to be doing is writing up what we did right in this war so we can do it right when we have to do it again."
"You think we're going to have to do it again?"
"Yeah, of course we are. MacArthur was right when he said, 'There is no substitute for victory,' and so was whoever said, 'Those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it.' "
"I guess what the president was worried about was a lengthy occupation with a hell of a lot of guerrilla warfare," Naylor said.
"Freddy Franks told me (a) he could have had his tanks in Baghdad in probably less than forty-eight hours and (b) he was really worried about a lengthy occupation with a hell of a lot of guerrilla warfare. I had the feeling he was more than a little relieved he didn't have to make the decision."
"You really think we're going to have to do this again?"
"The only question is when," McNab said. "Next year. Two years from now. A decade. But we'll be here again. Saddam Hussein is a devout student of Stalin's Keep the People In Line techniques. A real sonofabitch. We're going to have to take him out sooner or later. Christ knows that if I could have found the sonofabitch, I would have taken him out myself."
"I hope you're wrong," Naylor said.
"The cross resting so heavily on my manly shoulders for all these years has been that I rarely am wrong," McNab said.
"Jesus Christ, you're impossible!" Naylor said, laughing.
" 'It is difficult to be modest when you're great,' " McNab said. "Frank Lloyd Wright said that."
"I'll try to remember," Naylor said. "Is there something I can do for you, Scotty? Or is this just a visit?"
"I thought you'd never ask," McNab said. "First, I want to thank you for sending me Second Lieutenant Castillo. Which I just did. He almost restored my respect for Hudson High."
"Let me have that again?"
"You haven't heard my speech? 'What's Wrong with West Point'?"
"I got a copy of Donn Starry's speech. The one he gave to the Association of Graduates? The one that began, 'I have many memories of my four years as an inmate of this institution, none of them favorable'?"
"Ah, yes. But General Starry has always hated to say anything that might in any way offend anyone. Mine wasn't so polite."
"I can't imagine you being anything but polite, Scotty. But that's not what I was asking. You 'just heard' that I sent you Castillo?"
"I went to Oz Young and said, mustering up my best manners, 'Thank you for sending me Castillo. And now I want to keep him.' Whereupon Oz said, 'I can't do it. See Allan Naylor. He's the one who sent you Castillo.' "
"Oz said that, did he?"
"He led me to believe that you are that splendid young officer's mentor, or sort of a de facto loving stepfather, or both."
"I've known him since he was twelve," Naylor said, "at which age he became an orphan. I've sort of kept my eye on him."
"He let me know, just now, that he has the pleasure of your acquaintance-just that, not that you have a personal thing going. He said if there was time, he would like to pay his respects."
"He's here?"
"At the moment, he's my pilot. I don't trust just anyone to haul my dune buggy around."
"You brought your dune buggy here? Slung under a helicopter?"
"Lieutenant Castillo at this very moment is seeing that it is loaded aboard the C-5 which will carry me to the Land of the Big PX later today."
"You're taking your dune buggy to the States with you?"
"I told them it was going to the museum at Bragg."
"My God!" Naylor said, and then without thinking added, "I'd love to see him."
"I told him he had until 1600. I'm sure he'll show up here to see you." McNab paused. "I want to keep him, Allan."
"What for?"
"For openers, my aide-de-camp," McNab said. "While I'm writing up what we did right here, I'll run him through Special Forces training."
"I thought you had to have five years of service to even apply for Special Forces training."
"That's right," McNab said. "And you need three years and I don't know how many hundred hours of pilot time before you can apply for the Apache program. Oz told me about that, too."
"This will probably piss you off, Scotty, but I don't like the idea of him being in Special Forces."
"Because like just about everybody else in the Army, you don't like Special Forces? We don't play by the rules? God only knows what those crazy bastards will do next?"
"I didn't say that," Naylor said.
"But that's what you meant," McNab said. "Allan, you're just going to have to get used to the idea that Special Operations is where the Army is going. Can I say something that will piss you off?"
"I'm surprised that you asked first. Shoot."
"You are, old buddy, behaving like the Cavalry types who told I. D. White that he was making a terrible mistake, pissing his assured career in Cavalry away when he left his horses at Fort Riley in 1941 and went to Fort Knox to play with tanks."
"Possibly," Naylor said, aware that he was annoyed.
"And like the paratroop types who said the same thing to Alan Burdette, Jack Tolson, and the others when they stopped jumping out of airplanes at Benning and Bragg and went to Camp Rucker in the early fifties to learn how to fly. That was supposed to have ended their chances to get a star."
"Okay."
"White wound up with four stars, Burdette and Tolson with three. They did not throw their careers away because they could see the future. I'm not asking this kid to do what I did:"
"What do you mean?"
"When I took the Special Forces route, Bull Simon himself told me he wanted to be sure I understood that I would be lucky to make light bird in Special Forces and that my chances of getting a star were right up there with my chances of being taken bodily into heaven."
"Point taken."
"Charley Castillo is a natural for Special Forces," McNab said.
"Because he slings your dune buggy under a Huey?"
"No. I mean he has a feel for it."
"I don't think I follow you," Naylor said. "What makes you think that?"
"I don't know how much you got to hear about the Russians we grabbed?"
"Not very much," Naylor admitted. The incident had been talked about, but not much, because it had been classified top secret, and he hadn't had any bona fide need to know.
"Okay. Quick after-action. After the air war started, when Chuck Horner had given us air superiority, that gave us more freedom of action with our choppers. The Air Force really wanted a Scud and I was asked if I thought I could get them one. I checked and there was one about eighty klicks into the desert. They were getting ready to shoot it at this place. Anyway, I staged a mission, two Apaches and four Black Hawks. Forty, forty-five minutes in, five minutes to take out the crew, fifteen minutes on the ground to figure out how to pick the sonofabitch up:"
"You didn't know you were going to move it?"
"We figured we would improvise," McNab said, a little sarcastically. "And forty-five minutes out. It should have gone according to schedule, but when my guys got on the ground they found that all the guys with their hands up weren't Iraqis. We had two Iraqi generals, one Russian general, one Russian colonel, and half a dozen other non-Iraqis. The generals were visiting the site; the others were there to make sure the Scud shot straight. They would really have liked to hit this place. We weren't on the ground long enough to really find out for sure, but Charley:"
"You're talking about Castillo? He was on this operation?"
"I tried very hard, Allan, to keep him alive. He wasn't in on the operation. We were sitting in my Huey thirty klicks from the Scud site, in the middle of nowhere. We had to get that close so we could talk to the choppers and I could relay the word that we were coming out to our air defense people. Okay?"
Naylor nodded he understood.
"So they give us a yell, tell us about the Russians and what are we supposed to do with them? Then I had to go to the site, of course. So we went to the site. It took us no more than ten minutes or so, but that added ten minutes to the operation time. The Iraqis were about to figure out that all was not well. And I had to decide what to do with the Russians, which depended on who the Russians were, and do that in a hell of a hurry.
"When I got out of the Huey, I muttered something like, 'I wish I spoke better Russian,' or words to that effect, and Charley says, 'Sir, I speak Russian.' So I took him with me. And found out he speaks Russian like a native. And German.
"So, five minutes after we touched down, thanks to Charley, I knew who was going with us and who we were leaving behind. We brought out one Iraqi general, one Russian general, one Russian colonel, and three of the technicians, who were probably ex-East Germans who moved to Russia. We weren't there long enough to find out for sure."
"And the Scud, of course," Naylor said.
"Yeah, and the Scud. One of the Black Hawks just picked it up and flew off with it."
"Well, a Black Hawk can carry a 105mm howitzer, its crew, and thirty rounds," Naylor began, then paused and added, "The story that went around here was that half a dozen Iraqi helicopters had defected."
"That happened because we came here, because of the prisoners, not where we were supposed to go, and got picked up on radar. And somebody with a big mouth here let the press know six choppers were approaching the border but were not to be shot at. We had to give some explanation."
"If you can't tell me, don't. But what happened to the prisoners?"
"We turned the Iraqi over to the Saudis and then we flew the officers and the technicians to Vienna on Royal Air Arabia and put them on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. Still wearing the clothes they were wearing when we grabbed them. And with copies of the pictures we took of them at the site:"-McNab smiled-": including some of them with my guys' arms around their shoulders, apparently having a hell of a time."
"What was that all about? Sending them to Moscow?"
"That came from either the agency or the State Department. I don't think-at least, I never heard-that anything was ever done officially, a complaint to the UN or something, that Russians were servicing the Scuds. But they couldn't deny the whole thing. We had the pictures, and somehow they lost their identification papers and we found them."
"That's a hell of story," Naylor said.
"Which I will deny ever telling you, of course, should someone ask. The point of me telling you this war story was so I could explain why, before we got back here, I could see a hundred places where Charley would be useful with his languages, and then when we took the Russians to Vienna and I saw him working with them I decided I wanted him. Had to have him."
"What he should be doing is time with troops, now that this war is over," Naylor said. "You did it, and I did it, when we were second lieutenants, and he should, too."
"I thought it was a waste of my time when I did it," McNab said. "I knew I wasn't going to spend thirty years of my life with cannons going off in my ears. And you know as well as I do if Charley goes back to Aviation they'll pull this 'like father, like son' bullshit all over again. He'll spend his time giving speeches to Rotary Clubs and you know it. And I'm not kidding about needing him. If I had to come up with the two most important skills for an aide to a Special Forces general, they would be: fly a helicopter, and speak as many languages other than English as possible."
"And what if I say no, Scotty? What if I say, 'This young officer has done too many unusual things already in his brief career and now it's time that he had a large dose of normal.' "
"I hope you don't, Allan. I would hate to remember this so far heartwarming reunion of ours with rancor."
As if on cue, Master Sergeant Dunham put his head in the door.
"Sir, Second Lieutenant Castillo wonders if you can spare him a moment?"
Naylor made a send-him-in gesture with his hands.
Except that he wasn't wearing an Arabian headdress, Castillo was dressed very much like Colonel McNab. The buttons of his khaki African Hunter's Safari Jacket were closed, but he was wearing shorts and knee-high stockings. A CAR-16, the "carbine" version of the standard M-16 rifle, was slung from his shoulder.
Naylor didn't see any grenade outlines.
But he saw enough to realize that the young lieutenant had fallen under the spell of-as he thought of it, had been corrupted by-Scotty McNab and there was no way he would be happy doing what he really should be doing.
Castillo saluted and then saw Colonel McNab.
"I didn't expect to see you here, sir."
"You can hug that ugly old man, Charley," McNab said. "I did."
"God, it's good to see you, Charley," Naylor said and spread his arms.
"It's good to see you, sir."
They embraced.
"I just told Colonel McNab, feeling like a father selling his daughter to a brothel keeper, that if you're insane enough to want to get involved with Special Forces I will give you my very reluctant blessing."
"I really would like to go, sir."
"It's done, then," Naylor said. "Colonel McNab, why don't you kill, say, thirty minutes-go slit a few throats; blow something up-and give Charley and me a few minutes alone?"