Hazardous Duty

[ONE]

“Well,” Truman Ellsworth said to Natalie Cohen as they and General Naylor and DCI Lammelle waited for their various vehicles to pull up, “on balance, I’d say that went well.”

“I’m not so sure,” she replied.

“And what do you think, General?” Ellsworth inquired of Naylor.

“I am very uncomfortable with the entire situation,” Naylor replied. “I suspect that what Mr. Ellsworth means—”

“You can call me Truman,” Ellsworth interrupted. “We are all in this together. Succeeding together, I would suggest.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Ellsworth,” Naylor said, “for not sharing your pleasure in our successfully deceiving the President.”

“What would you have us do?” Lammelle asked. “Go to the Vice President and the Cabinet and ask them to bring on the men in the white coats and the straitjacket?”

“This is going to end badly,” General Naylor said.

“Possibly,” Lammelle said. “Everybody knows that. But the operative word is ‘possibly.’ It is also possible that we’ll get away with it.”

“Possible, but unlikely,” Secretary Cohen said. “He told you and Truman to come up with a plan to shut down that Mexican airfield. What are you going to do about that?”

“Take a long time coming up with a plan,” Lammelle said. “Hoping that he’ll forget he told me that.”

“And if he doesn’t forget?” General Naylor asked.

“Then I will stall him, using Castillo, for as long as I can.”

“And what if that doesn’t work?” Naylor asked. “What if he says, ‘Shut down that Mexican airfield now’?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, General,” Truman Ellsworth said, “but wasn’t General Patton quoted as saying… something along this line—‘Don’t take counsel of your fears’?”

“That’s your recommended course of action?” Naylor demanded tartly. “‘Don’t worry about it!’”

Just as tartly, Ellsworth replied, “General, our course of action, repeat, our course of action, mutually agreed between the four of us, is to indulge the President as long as we can do that without putting the country at serious risk. I don’t see any greater risk to the country coming out of that meeting than I did going in. If you do, please share what you saw with us.”

“The President told you and Lammelle to prepare a plan to shut down that airfield,” Naylor said.

“And I just told you, General,” Lammelle said, “that we will do so very, very slowly. If he persists in this notion to the point where I think it’s necessary — let me rephrase, to the point where the four of us, repeat, the four of us, think it’s necessary — we will have Natalie explain to him that shutting down that airfield would be an act of war. If he still insists, then, presuming we four are then in agreement, the four of us will go to the Cabinet and tell them he’s out of control. Do you agree with that, or not?”

Naylor did not reply directly. Instead, he said, “I don’t think any of us should forget that the President, under the War Powers Act, has the authority to order troops into action for thirty days wherever and whenever he thinks that’s necessary. During those thirty days, if he tells me to shut down that airfield, I’ll have to shut down that airfield.”

“I think, General, that each of us is aware of the War Powers Act,” Secretary Cohen said. “We’ll have to deal with that if it comes up.”

“Relax, Allan,” Lammelle said. “Three will get you five that the Sage of Biloxi has already forgotten that notion and is now devoting all of his attention to getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”

Ellsworth chuckled. Secretary Cohen smiled.

“And there’s one more thing, General,” Ellsworth said. “Have you noticed that Hackensack—”

“I think you mean Hoboken, Truman,” the secretary of State corrected him gently.

“Right. Hoboken. Have you noticed what a splendid job Hoboken does with what are known, I believe, as ‘Presidential Photo-Ops’?”

Cohen, Lammelle, and Naylor all shrugged, suggesting, in the cases of Cohen and Naylor, that they were not aware of the splendid job Presidential Spokesperson Hoboken was doing with Presidential Photo-Ops. Lammelle’s shrug asked, so to speak, “So what?”

“Every time a dozen Rotarians,” Ellsworth clarified, “or for that matter eight Boy Scouts, come to Washington, they can count on getting their picture taken with the President.”

“And Special Agent Mulligan,” the secretary of State said. “He’s usually in the picture.”

“At the risk of repeating my shrug,” Lammelle said, “so what?”

“When they are recording themselves for posterity, Frank,” Ellsworth explained, “they won’t have time to worry about seizing a Mexican airfield. It’s a matter of priority. Getting your picture in the paper with the Rotarians or the Boy Scouts helps your reelection chances. Thanks to Mulligan and Hoboken, I don’t think we really have to worry about getting ordered to seize the Mexican airfield.”

“You may have something there, Truman,” Lammelle said.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of their vehicles. Following the protocol of rank, Secretary Cohen’s Yukon arrived first. Charlene Stevens jumped out and opened the right rear door for her, and Cohen got in without saying anything else and drove off. Then Ellsworth’s Jaguar Vanden Plas pulled up and he got in it, and it drove off. Lammelle’s Yukon was next, and he got in and drove off. Finally General Naylor’s Suburban pulled up, a sergeant jumped out of the front seat and removed the covers from the four-star plates, and then held the right rear door open for the general.

[TWO]

“Mr. President,” Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken had asked the moment the door closed on Secretary Cohen and the others, “did you mean what you said about wanting to shut down that Mexican airfield, the one Castillo calls ‘Drug Cartel International’?”

“By now, Robin, you should know that — unlike some other politicians I can name — I always mean what I say.”

“Mr. President, I have an idea—”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Hackensack,” Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan said, “not again! Every time you have one of your ideas, you get the Commander in Chief in trouble.”

“What did you say?” the presidential spokesman demanded angrily.

“I said, Hoboken, that every time you get one of your ideas, you get the President in trouble.”

“No, you didn’t. You called me Hackensack and you know you did.”

“You’ll have to admit, Hackensack, that Mulligan is right,” the President said. “Sometimes your ideas, while well intentioned, are really off the wall.”

“Now you’ve got the Commander in Chief doing it!” Robin fumed.

“Doing what?” Clendennen asked.

“Calling me Hackensack!”

“Why would I call you Hackensack, Hoboken?” the President asked.

“Probably because Mulligan did, Mr. President,” Robin replied.

“If I called you Hackensack, Hoboken, it was a slip of the tongue,” Mulligan said.

“Hah!” Robin snorted.

“What’s the big difference?” the President asked.

“I would say population, Mr. President,” Robin said. “Hoboken is right at fifty thousand and Hackensack right at forty.”

“There’s only forty people in Hackensack?” Mulligan asked. “I would have thought there were more than that.”

“Forty thousand people, you cretin!” Robin flared.

“Are you going to let him call me that, Mr. President?” Mulligan asked.

“You called him Hackensack, which he doesn’t like, so he called you cretin. I’m not sure what that is, but what’s grease for the goose, so to speak. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” both said in unison.

“Well, Robin, let’s hear this nutty idea of yours and get it out of the way.”

“Mr. President, I’m sure you share my confidence that Operation Out of the Box will be successful; after all, it is your idea.”

“That’s true,” President Clendennen admitted. “It’s obviously one of my better ideas.”

“And it would be a genuine shame if when Operation Out of the Box is successful that you didn’t get all the credit you so richly deserve for it.”

“Well, as my predecessor, Harry S Truman, said, ‘You can get a lot done if you don’t look for credit.’”

“President Truman didn’t say that, Mr. President,” Mulligan said. “President Truman said, ‘The buck stops here.’ That movie-star president… What’s his name?”

“Ronald Something,” Robin Hoboken said.

“Not ‘Something,’ Robin,” the President said. “His name was President Reagan.”

“His name was Ronald Reagan,” Mulligan said. “He was the President. He was the one who said you can get a lot done on credit.”

“Belinda-Sue says too much credit is what’s ruining the country,” the President said. “And, for once, she may be right.”

“I’m not talking about that kind of credit, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said.

“I wasn’t aware there was more than one kind,” the President said. “The kind I know is where you charge something, pay for it, and then can buy something else because your credit is good.”

“The kind I’m talking about, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said, “is where people recognize that you’ve done something good.”

“Like what, for example?”

“For example, coming up with an idea like Operation Out of the Box.”

“And how could I make that happen?” the President asked.

“What I was going to suggest, Mr. President, is that we take a photographer down to Fort Bragg and have him shoot you planning the operation to seize Drug Cartel International Airfield.”

“Try saying ‘take your picture,’ Robin,” the President said. “Having a photographer ‘shoot me’ makes me uncomfortable.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

“Why would I do that?”

“So that after Castillo and his Merry Outlaws seize Drug Cartel International, your political enemies — C. Harry Whelan, Junior, of Wolf News, for example — couldn’t say you were taking credit for something you had very little, if anything, to do with.”

“Stop calling them ‘Merry Outlaws,’ Robin,” the President said, then cleared his throat dramatically. “Start calling them ‘Clendennen’s Commandos.’”

“Sir?”

“You heard me. Clendennen’s Commandos!”

“Yes, sir.”

“That has a nice ring to it, Mr. President,” Mulligan said.

“Yes, it does,” the President agreed. And then his face clouded.

“I see a couple of problems with this, Hoboken,” he said. “Like, for example, if I go to Fort Bragg, everybody will know.”

“Not if we sneak down there, Mr. President,” Hoboken replied. “Use a little-bitty airplane, a Gulfstream Five, instead of that great big 747.”

“That’d work,” the President said, after a moment’s thought.

“And it wouldn’t really be a secret that we’re going there, Mr. President. What you’d be doing there would be the secret. C. Harry Whelan would know you’re going down there, have been there, et cetera, but he wouldn’t know why—”

“Until Clendennen’s Commandos have seized Drug Cartel International?”

“Yes, Mr. President. That’s the idea.”

“How would C. Harry Whelan know I’m going to Fort Bragg?”

“We’d leak it to him. We leak things all the time.”

“Just one more itsy-bitsy problem, Robin. What if Castillo gets his ass kicked when he tries to seize Drug Cartel International?”

“Then we deny knowing anything about him or any of this.”

“Can we get away with that?”

“Not a problem, Mr. President. I lie successfully to the press on a daily basis.”

“Set it up, Robin. I want to leave first thing in the morning.”

“Mr. President,” Mulligan said, “if you’d like, we could stop in Biloxi and see about getting the First Mother-in-Law out of jail.”

“Screw her,” the President said. “I can’t let the old bag keep me from carrying out my duties as President.”

[THREE]

C. Harry Whelan, who had not seen Roscoe J. Danton around town for several days and thus wondered what the miserable sonofabitch was now up to in his perpetual quest to upstage him on Wolf News, telephoned Danton’s unlisted number.

Danton had an automated telephone system. Ordinarily it worked like most of them. In other words, Roscoe J. Danton’s recorded voice would announce that he was sorry he couldn’t take the call right now, but if the caller would kindly leave his name and number after hearing the beep, he would get back to them as soon as he possibly could.

But that was before Mr. Edgar Delchamps reasoned that Roscoe’s callers would be curious if, after leaving their names and numbers, Roscoe didn’t get back to them at all. And he didn’t want to change the message to “I’ll be out of town for a few days and will get back to you just as soon as I return,” as that would make people even more curious. So he explained the problem to Dr. Aloysius Casey, and they came up with a solution.

The result of this was that when C. Harry dialed Roscoe’s number, he got a recorded voice that said with a heavy Slavic accent, “Embassy of the Bulgarian People’s Republic. Press one for Bulgarian, two for Russian, or three…”

C. Harry, concluding he had misdialed, broke the connection and carefully punched in Roscoe’s number again.

And got the same Bulgarian message. This time he listened to the message all the way through. When he’d heard it all, he pressed five, which the Bulgarian said was for English.

This time he got a crisp American voice: “FBI Embassy surveillance, Agent Jasper speaking. Be advised this call will be recorded under the Provisions of the Patriot Act as amended. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”

C. Harry broke the connection with such force that he knocked his BlackBerry out of his hand.

Jesus Christ, he thought, if they trace that call, I’ll be on the FBI’s list of known Bulgarian sympathizers!

Determined to find Roscoe J. Danton and learn what the sonofabitch was up to, C. Harry entered the Old Ebbitt, where he knew Roscoe habitually went for a pre-luncheon Bloody Mary.

Roscoe was not at his usual place at the bar. But five stools down the bar was a familiar face, that of Sean O’Grogarty, a large redheaded young man of Irish heritage wearing an almost black suit of the kind favored by Secret Service agents.

Roscoe happily thought: O’Grogarty just might know where Roscoe is!

C. Harry took the empty stool beside O’Grogarty but did not speak to him at first. Neither did O’Grogarty acknowledge C. Harry. C. Harry thought of Sean as his “mole in the motor pool,” and neither wished to have people know they knew one another.

Mr. O’Grogarty was a member of the uniformed division of the Secret Service, but he didn’t wear a uniform on duty. He was out of uniform, so to speak, because he was a driver of one of the White House’s fleet of two-year-old Yukons, in which members of President Clendennen’s lesser staff were chauffeured hither and yon.

A delegation of lesser staff personnel had gone to Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan — who was in charge of everything the Secret Service did in and around the White House — and complained that having uniformed officers drive the vehicles and usher them into the backseats thereof gave the impression they were being arrested.

Mrs. Florence Horter had been chosen as the delegation’s spokesperson not only because she looked like Whistler’s mother but also because she suffered from an ocular malady that caused her eyes to water copiously whenever she squinted.

She borrowed a wheelchair, had herself wheeled into Mulligan’s office, and, squinting, asked, “Please, Mr. Mulligan, sir, could the drivers be put into civilian clothing? I don’t want to have my grandchildren think I’m being busted.”

Mulligan knew the real reason the lesser staff people wanted the drivers in mufti was because they wanted people to think they were upper-level staff people. Upper-level members of the President’s staff had, of course, their own brand-new Yukons, which were driven by Secret Service agents.

Mulligan granted the request, however, as he knew doing so would place the lower-level staff people in his debt. One day, inevitably, he would need a favor from them, and they would owe him one.

Mulligan had not come to this plan of action on his own, but rather had learned it from Mr. Francis Ford Coppola’s three-part masterpiece titled The Godfather. Every time he watched it — and he watched at least one of the three parts once a week, usually on Sunday, when he came home from Mass — Mulligan was deeply impressed by how easily the moral lessons of the Mafia saga could be applied to the White House and to official Washington in general.

For a long time now, whenever he had a problem, he had asked himself how Marlon Brando would deal with it.

At the bar, C. Harry Whelan ordered a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. When it was served, he picked it up and took a long look down the bar toward the Fifteenth Street entrance, and with the glass still at his mouth, he softly inquired, “Got something for me?”

When he saw in the mirrors behind the rows of whisky bottles that O’Grogarty had nodded, C. Harry laid a fifty-dollar bill on the bar.

“It better be good, O’Grogarty.”

“So good it’s worth two of these bills,” O’Grogarty replied.

C. Harry considered that for a long moment before adding two twenties and a ten on the bar.

“He whose name we dare not speak is going to Fort Bragg,” O’Grogarty said sotto voce.

C. Harry’s hand slammed down on the money.

“That’s not worth a hundred bucks,” C. Harry declared.

“He’s going there secretly,” O’Grogarty amplified. “First thing tomorrow morning. And not in Air Force One.”

“What do you mean, not in Air Force One?”

“They laid on a Gulfstream. You know, that little airplane?”

“I know what a Gulfstream is. No limousine?”

“Just him and Robin Hoboken, Mulligan, a photographer, and a couple of Protection Detail guys.”

“What are they going to do at Fort Bragg?”

“If I knew that, C. Harry, it would cost you a lot more than a hundred bucks.”

“If you can find out, it would be worth more — a little more — than a hundred.”

C. Harry lifted his hand off the bills on the bar. O’Grogarty pocketed them, and then pushed away from the bar and walked quickly out of the Old Ebbitt.

[FOUR]

Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken looked at the caller ID window of his desk telephone, and then picked up the receiver.

“How may I be of assistance to the preeminent journalist of Wolf News?” he inquired of C. Harry Whelan.

“By telling me why I’ve been dropped from the pool.”

The pool to which Mr. Whelan referred was the small group of journalists who accompanied the President when he went anywhere and then made their reporting of presidential activities available to those members of the White House Press Corps who were not privileged to accompany the President.

The journalists who received the “pool” matériel then wrote their reports of the President’s travel and activities in a manner that suggested — but did not say so directly — that they had been along on the trip. This was known as “journalistic license.”

“C. Harry, old buddy, you have not been dropped from the pool. Trust me, the next time President Clendennen goes anywhere, you’ll be among the first to be invited to go along.”

“Like when he goes to Fort Bragg, for example?”

“When he goes anywhere, Harry.”

“There’s a story going around that he’s going to Fort Bragg tomorrow morning.”

“Where did you hear something like that?”

“Telling you where and from whom I learned this would betray my source. And I never do that. Suffice it to say that he is close to the center of things in the White House.”

“I think this fellow is pulling your chain, Harry.”

“I think you’re being less than honest with me, Robin Redbreast, my fine-feathered friend.”

“Harry, you know I don’t like it when you call me that.”

“I know. That’s why I do it. You leave me no choice but to go on the air tonight — probably on Wolf News at Five O’clock with J. Pastor Jones, or on Andy McClarren’s As the World Spins at seven, or maybe, probably both, with the story that President Clendennen is about to make a secret trip that Presidential Spokesman—”

“That’s Spokesperson, Harry,” Presidential Spokesman Hoboken interrupted. “Spokesperson. There is absolutely no sexism in the Clendennen White House.”

“… refuses to talk about.”

“Can we go off the record here, Harry?” Hoboken asked.

“What would be in that for me?”

“The gratitude of the President.”

“Gratitude for what?”

“Are we off the record?”

“Momentarily.”

“Gratitude for understanding a certain problem he and the First Lady are having.”

“That wouldn’t have anything to do with the First Mother-in-Law being a world-class boozer, would it?”

“Hypothetically speaking, Harry—”

“We’re back on the record, Robin Redbreast,” C. Harry said. “The last time you sucker punched me with that hypothetical business, I swore I’d never let you do it again.”

“Very well. Then hypothetically speaking on the record: What if a member of the President’s family was in the hospital in Mississippi and the President wanted to visit her without attracting the attention of the White House Press Corps—”

“And having it come out she’s a boozer, you mean?”

“If an allegation was made that that fine old lady had a drinking problem—”

“The voters may not like it?”

“… that the President and the First Lady were doing their best to cope with—”

“With a remarkable lack of success—”

“… and that, despite being fully aware of the pain it would cause to not only that poor, sick old lady, but to the First Lady and the President himself, a certain journalist wrote the story anyway—”

“News is news, Robin,” C. Harry said.

“… because he believes news is news, and to hell with compassion—”

“Nice try, Robin,” C. Harry said.

“… and this story would get out — about this hypothetical journalist, I mean — because other members of the White House Press Corps, jealous of our hypothetical journalist’s scoop, would fall all over themselves to paint our hypothetical journalist as cold-hearted and unfeeling. They might even go so far as to suggest that it wasn’t really a scoop.”

“Meaning what?” C. Harry demanded.

“That our hypothetical journalist had paid for his information, bribed some underpaid White House staffer for it. If that hypothetical happened, of course, the Secret Service would have to investigate. Paying government employees to give you information they’re not supposed to give you, as I’m sure you know, Harry, is a Class A felony.”

C. Harry considered everything for a long moment, and then asked, “Is that what it is, he’s going to Mississippi to see the First Mother-in-Law?”

“I regret,” Hoboken said formally, “that there is nothing vis-à-vis the President’s travel plans that I can tell you at this time, Mr. Whelan.”

“Screw you, Robin Redbreast,” Mr. Whelan said, and hung up.

[FIVE]

When he walked back to the White House from the Old Ebbitt, Sean O’Grogarty was quickly passed onto the White House grounds by the uniformed Secret Service guards. Not only did they know him but he had the proper identification tag hanging around his neck.

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]

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 & Country 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]

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.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m really disappointed in you, General,” the President said. “I came all the way down here to see Clendennen’s Commandos getting ready to seize Drug Cartel International, and here you are telling me you don’t even know where it is.”

“Sir, what we really came down here for was to record for history you and Clendennen’s Commandos preparing to seize Drug Cartel International.”

“That’s what I just said,” the President said unpleasantly.

“Mr. President, I’m sure General Naylor here—”

“This isn’t General Naylor, for God’s sake,” the President snapped. “Naylor’s the big general with four stars. General O’Nab is the little general with three stars. Maybe you’d better write that down.”

“My name is McNab, sir.”

“Whatever.”

“What I was going to suggest, Mr. President,” Hoboken said, “is that General McNab probably has some of his people preparing to seize something as we speak. That’s what they do, seize things. Either that, or blow them up. Anyway, you could have your picture taken with them. Nobody would know the difference.”

“That’s true, but would that be honest?”

“Trust me, Mr. President, I do things like that all the time.”

The President considered that option for a moment, and then said, “Okay, we’ll do it. But let’s make it quick. Before we go back to Washington, I’ve got to go to Biloxi and get Belinda-Sue’s mother out of ja… where she is and back in the Baptist assisted living place.”

[EIGHT]

“Get a couple more shots of General Whatsisname saluting the President farewell, and then we can get out of here,” Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken ordered the photographers.

General McNab saluted the President farewell for the third time and then asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. President?”

“You’re really a slow learner, aren’t you, General?” President Clendennen replied. “We’ve already been down that street twice.”

“Excuse me, sir,” McNab said. “Is there anything else the President can do for the general?”

“The President — presuming the general can get Clendennen’s Commandos up and running and seizing Drug Cartel International smoothly — can get the general another star. How does that sound?”

“Just as soon as I can get the precise locality of the airfield, sir, I’ll get right on it.”

“And that process would be speeded up if you could get a little more enthusiasm for getting Clendennen’s Commandos into Clan Clendennen kilts, General.”

“I’ll do what I can, Mr. President,” General McNab said.

“Get Colonel Whatsisname, the Heraldry guy, to give your people a little historical background on kilts in warfare.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”

“As far as I’m concerned, those green berets you people wear make me think of wimpy Frenchmen. Who else wears a beret? Kilts, on the other hand, make me think of great big muscular, redheaded Scotchmen — like my ancestors in Clan Clendennen — waving great big swords.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. President,” General McNab said, evenly.

The President went up the stair door. Robin Hoboken and then the photographers and Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan followed him.

Sean O’Grogarty remained on the tarmac.

“Excuse me, sir,” General McNab said, “I think you’re about to get left behind.”

“That’s the idea,” Sean replied. “Special Agent Mulligan said I was to stick around and let him know how you’re doing.”

“Wonderful!” General McNab said, sharply sarcastic. “This just gets better by the moment.”

The stair door closed as the engines started. Sixty seconds later, the C-37A, call sign “Air Force One,” lifted off.

General McNab watched until the departing aircraft had vanished from sight, and then he walked away from the base operations building down a taxiway. When he was halfway to the runway and had looked around to make sure he was out of earshot, he took his CaseyBerry from his pocket and punched an autodial button.

“Good morning, Bruce,” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen said thirty seconds later.

“Madam Secretary, I believe it would be best if no one but you was in a position to hear any part of this conversation.”

“All right,” she said, and he heard her announce to someone, somewhat curtly, “You’ll have to excuse me while I take this call.”

Thirty seconds after that, she said, “I get the feeling this call is important.”

“The President just took off from here, back to Washington, via Biloxi.”

“What in the world was he doing at Fort Bragg?”

“He wanted to have his picture taken with Clendennen’s Commandos before they go to Mexico to seize Drug Cartel International Airport.”

“‘Clendennen’s Commandos’?”

“He has renamed Delta Force and Black Fox.”

“My God!”

“And he wants them to start wearing the kilts of Clan Clendennen.”

“Unbelievable!”

“I respectfully suggest, Madam Secretary, that you convene a conference of the senior officials aware of the problem to discuss bringing the matter to the Vice President and the Cabinet.”

“It looks as if we’re going to have to do that. Is that what you’re saying, Bruce?”

“Yes, Madam Secretary, it is.”

“Your formality is making me nervous, frankly.”

“I beg your pardon, if that is the case.”

“There’s a problem with convening something like that. Who are you thinking of?”

“Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Lammelle, General Naylor, Attorney General Palmer, and FBI Director Schmidt, Madam Secretary.”

“Not the Vice President?”

“Vice President Montvale, Madam Secretary, came to me privately and said that if the situation ever came to this, he wished not to be involved, so that later there could be no accusations that he had led a coup.”

“He came to me saying the same thing. And he’s right. But if the President learns, as I am very afraid he will, that I have convened these people, he’s going to cry coup. What are we going to do about that?”

“Hold the meeting in secret, Madam Secretary.”

“That would be just about impossible, Bruce, and you know it.”

“Madam Secretary, I suggest we could hold the meeting in secret if we went to Greek Island.”

It took her a moment to reply.

“If we’re talking about the same Greek Island, Bruce, that was shut down shortly after the Berlin Wall came down.”

“It’s still there, Madam Secretary. No longer controlled by the government, but still there.”

“Are you suggesting we go to West Virginia, to the Greenbrier Hotel, and reopen Greek Island? For one thing, how could we get in? If they haven’t bricked up the opening, then they have gutted it.”

“No, ma’am,” McNab said. “When there was no longer a need for a place for Congress to go in case of a nuclear attack, the government stripped the place and turned it back over to its owner.”

“So?”

“The owner is one of Those People in Las Vegas.”

“And?”

“Frank, who was then working in Covert Operations at the Company, and had already started a relationship with Those People, went to them and told Hotelier he could put the place to good use, but it had to be kept quiet.”

“I think I know where you’re going,” Secretary Cohen said.

“It’s an ideal place to conduct interrogations of people we don’t want anybody to know we’re talking to. And to store things the Agency needs.”

“The Agency and Special Operations Command, you mean?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And by people you don’t want anyone to know you’re talking to, you mean people who didn’t want to talk to you in the first place, right? People who didn’t volunteer to come to the United States?”

McNab didn’t answer.

“Sometimes, Bruce, I think that you and Frank Lammelle are as dangerous as President Clendennen.”

“Well, just forget… please… that I even mentioned the hotel.”

“Is that what you call it, ‘the hotel’? Well, that sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it?”

Again McNab didn’t reply.

“The Lindbergh Act doesn’t give either you or Frank an exemption from anti-kidnapping laws. I presume both of you loose cannons know that.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re aware of that.”

“Well, let’s hear your plan, Bruce.”

“Excuse me?”

“How are we going to get all these people to the hotel without letting anyone — especially the President — know?”

“May I infer, Madam Secretary…”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. You may want to write that down.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Damn it, Bruce, now that we’re — at least so far — unindicted co-conspirators, the least you can do is stop calling me ‘ma’am.’”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said automatically.

They laughed.

“One more uncomfortable question, Bruce. What are you going to do about the others? If they go to your hotel, they will know about your hotel.”

“They don’t want to know about the hotel. General Naylor’s the only problem I see about that.”

“In other words, everybody knows — or at least suspects — about the hotel except General Naylor, right?”

“Now that you know, he’s the only one who doesn’t.”

“So, what are you going to do about him?”

“Pray that he doesn’t want to see the rest of us go to jail. As you just said, desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“Let’s hear the plan.”

“Frank brings the attorney general, the secretary of Defense, and the FBI director with him from Washington in his Gulfstream. You pick up General Naylor in yours, and then stop here and pick me up.”

After a moment, the secretary of State said, “Okay, General, I’ll see you soon. Should I bring my golf clubs to the Greenbrier?”