The Berets Read online

  “Yes, sir,” Felter said.

  “Tomorrow will be time enough,” the President said. “First thing in the morning. Go home now, Sandy. You’ve been here all day.”

  “Yes, sir,” Felter said.

  “That is not a suggestion, Felter,” the President said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good night, Colonel Felter,” the President said. “I really don’t want to hear myself saying that again.”

  Felter nodded at the President, turned around, and walked out of the room.

  When the door had closed after him, the Attorney General said, “I don’t know what you see in that creep, why you put up with him.”

  “He’s bright—brighter than you, Bobby.” The President chuckled. “You never like people who are brighter than you and who let you know it.”

  (Three)

  Headquarters

  The U.S. Army Special Warfare School

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  1000 Hours, 29 November 1961

  The sergeant major of the Special Warfare School was a tall, crew-cutted, muscular master sergeant named E. B. Taylor. The office phone was ringing.

  His chief clerk, a younger version of Taylor, a staff sergeant, took the call, then rapped his desk with his knuckles twice, the signal the call was for the sergeant major.

  “Sergeant Major,” Taylor said.

  “I have a collect call for anyone from Lieutenant Thomas Ellis,” the operator said. “Will you accept the charges?”

  “Put him through, Operator,” Taylor said with a smile and a gesture that the clerk should listen in. When Ellis came on the line, Taylor’s voice became oily with mock humility: “Yes, sir, Lieutenant Ellis, sir. How may I be of service to the lieutenant this morning, sir?”

  “I’m in Philadelphia,” Ellis said.

  “Good for you, sir!” Taylor said. “I’m sure the colonel will be thrilled to hear that, sir! How nice of you to call and tell us, sir!”

  “You better ask the colonel if he’ll talk to me,” Ellis said.

  “Oh, I’m sure the colonel will be delighted to talk to you, Lieutenant, sir,” Taylor said. “Just one moment, please, sir.”

  He took the telephone from his ear with his right hand, covering the mouthpiece as he did so. He pushed the intercom switch with his left.

  “Colonel, Ellis is on the horn, collect. He sounds like a lost soul.”

  “From Philadelphia?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ellis,” Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan demanded, falling easily into Taylor’s game, “who told you you could go to Philadelphia?”

  There was no reply, and disappointing Sergeant Major Taylor, Colonel Hanrahan took pity on his young lieutenant. “It’s okay, Ellis,” Hanrahan said, changing his tone. “Colonel Felter called last night and explained the situation. Everything going all right so far?”

  “The navy’s taken over,” Ellis said. “They put him in a casket on the sub, and then they had a little ceremony when they took him off. His father and his sister were on the dock. That was a little rough. Anyway, they’re going to bury him tomorrow. I’d really like to stick around for that, and the sister asked me if I could, but I don’t have any clothes or uniforms, and—”

  “If someone—Sergeant Major Taylor, for example—were to go to your room in the BOQ, do you think he could find enough clothes for you to wear? Or is it the garbage dump rumor has it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said. “There’s greens and blues in the closet. But how would you get it here, sir?”

  “We’re coming up there this afternoon. Colonel MacMillan, Major MacMillan, Major Parker, Mr. Wojinski, and me. We’ll bring it with us. You go get us hotel rooms.”

  “What hotel, sir?” Ellis asked.

  Good question, Colonel Hanrahan thought. One he hadn’t thought of. He needed an answer right now too.

  “The Bellevue Stratford,” he said. It was the only Philadelphia hotel whose name he could call to mind. It was famous and therefore probably expensive as hell, but it was an answer. “If you can’t get us put up there, leave word there where you are. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said. “The Bellevue Stratford.”

  “We’ll see you later today,” Hanrahan said. “Try to stay out of poker games.” He hung up and pursed his mouth as if to whistle. He didn’t have to. Sergeant Major Taylor was standing in the office door.

  “You were on the horn?” Hanrahan asked.

  “The lieutenant’s luggage, containing a green uniform and a dress blue uniform, complete to his medal, the Good Conduct Medal, is in my office, Colonel.”

  (Four)

  Skeet and Trap Range

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  1130 Hours, 29 November 1961

  Colonel Jack Martinelli was a good shot, and he took his skeet shooting seriously. He had a matched set of Diana Grade Browning over-and-under shotguns, the stocks of which had been fitted for him at the Fabrique Nationale des Armes de la Guerre at Liege, Belgium. The set consisted of two actions and stocks, and four barrels and forearms. The 12-and 20-bores fitted one action and stock, and the 28-bore and .410 gauge the second.

  Today, Colonel Martinelli was shooting the 28-bore against an opponent worthy of the effort. He would have preferred to be shooting the .410 gauge, the expert’s weapon, but his opponent, Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell, did not own a .410. Lowell was firing a side-by-side 28-bore Hans Schroeder shotgun, which had been made for him in the small Austrian village of Ferlach.

  Colonel Martinelli, who knew about guns, was aware that the Schroeder was worth more than his entire matched set of Diana Grade Brownings. He was also aware that it was not really a skeet gun. In his skilled judgment, not only were side-by-sides less suitable for skeet shooting than over-and-unders, but Lowell had had the gun bored modified and improved modified, because it was a hunting gun. A skeet gun is supposed to be bored skeet and skeet.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lowell was thus firing the wrong type of shotgun with inappropriate tubes, a double handicap. Despite that, he was beating Colonel Martinelli, and rather badly. Colonel Martinelli was a large, stocky man with dark hair and a somewhat swarthy complexion, which darkened even more every time he missed. Lieutenant Colonel Lowell was a large man, lithe, blond, and mustachioed. His friends called him the Duke.

  Over their civilian clothing, brightly colored slacks and knit sports shirts (the sort of clothing normally worn on golf courses), both officers wore sleeveless skeet vests. Colonel Martinelli’s was festooned with insignia testifying to his membership in the National Skeet Shooting Association, his life membership in the National Rifle Association, his certification as a shotgun instructor, as a Distinguished Shotgun Marksman, and as someone who had broken without a miss 25, 50, 75, 100, 150, and 200 clay targets in a row.

  Lowell’s vest bore only his NRA Life Member Patch and a small embroidered Combat Infantry Badge.

  It was technically against regulations to wear an issue qualification badge like that, and as he stepped to Station 1, beneath the High House, Colonel Martinelli remembered with some annoyance that Lowell had once said that the Combat Infantry Badge was the only marksmanship badge that meant anything, marksmanship against targets that were shooting back being inarguably more difficult than shooting at defenseless clay pigeons.

  Colonel Martinelli was Artillery, and he had heard more than his fair share of rounds fired in anger, but unlike Infantry, Armor, and the Medics, artillerymen had no badge that announced that fact to the world. Colonel Martinelli did not know exactly why that was, but it bothered him.

  “Concentrate, Jack,” Lieutenant Colonel Lowell offered helpfully. “Keep your cheek on the stock.”

  The sonofabitch is doing that to psych me, Colonel Martinelli decided with absolute accuracy. He glowered at Lowell.

  “Your shooting is a little off,” Lieutenant Colonel Lowell said understandingly, sympathetically. “Maybe you’re trying too hard, Jack. Think of flowing water or something.”


  “Thank you,” Colonel Martinelli said, forcing a smile onto his face.

  He pretended to examine the action of the Browning, to give his temper a moment or so to cool down.

  “Something wrong with the gun?” Lieutenant Colonel Lowell asked with concern.

  “I think there’s a pellet in there somewhere,” Martinelli said.

  “Need some help?” Lowell asked.

  “I think it’s all right now, thank you,” Martinelli said. You’re a wise-ass, Lowell. You antagonize people. Your fucking everything in a skirt isn’t the only reason you were a major so long.

  Lieutenant Colonel Lowell had been both one of the youngest majors in the army and, until he had finally been promoted, one of the most senior. He was, Martinelli thought, one of the brightest officers he had ever known, and—if Major General Paul Jiggs, the post commander, was to be believed—an absolutely superb combat commander. But his career had alternated periods of outstanding service with episodes of outstanding stupidity. Perhaps he was so rich that consistency did not matter to him. At any rate, he had been teetering at the edge of involuntary separation, having been twice passed over for promotion, when his promotion to light bird came through. And it was the White House, not the Pentagon, that sent that promotion to the Senate for confirmation, the Pentagon then being more than indifferent to the continuation of then Major Lowell’s army career.

  After Lowell’s admittedly gallant and courageous rescue of Felter and a number of others during the Bay of Pigs catastrophe, General E. Z. Black, Commander in Chief, Pacific, had written the President, personally urging that Lowell be promoted and retained. The President, who had a soft spot in his heart for brave and brilliant eccentrics, complied, and Lowell’s career was saved yet one more time. Lowell had his defenders, such as generals Black and Jiggs and even Jack Martinelli, as well as his detractors.

  But at times like this, Craig Lowell, Jack Martinelli fumed, was a flaming pain in the ass.

  Martinelli seated two shells in his Browning, snapped the action shut, and checked to see the safety was off. He loaded his own ammunition, since he was convinced that he made better shot shells than he could buy; but today that was doing him no good. And yet, why everything was going wrong was beyond him. Maybe he had gotten oil on the primers, or the powder had absorbed moisture, or some other disaster, like the safety being on, had caused him to miss. Breaking these targets, with Lowell on his back, was very important, but they just were not breaking.

  He touched the butt of his shotgun to his hip.

  “Pull!”

  Behind him the referee, the master sergeant in charge of the range, pressed a button on a handheld control. An electrical impulse was sent to both houses, and solenoids on the target throwers in the high house and low house were simultaneously activated, releasing powerful springs that threw the targets into the air.

  Martinelli snapped the Browning to his shoulder and aimed at the target thrown from the high house. He aimed just under it and fired.

  The circular target wobbled—he had come that close—but continued on its path.

  Martinelli heard Lowell making a tsk-tsk sound of sympathy while he aimed at the target approaching from the low house. Of all the targets in a round of skeet, this was probably the easiest shot. You could practically reach up and hit it with the muzzle. He fired again, and again the target seemed to wobble, to hesitate, and then went on its path.

  “Tough, Jack,” Lowell said with absolutely transparent false sympathy. “You dropped both of them. What did the flight surgeon have to say about your eyes last time around?”

  Martinelli did not trust himself to speak.

  Lowell stepped under the high house and almost immediately called “Pull.” The action of his shotgun closed as he brought it to his shoulder.

  There were two barks, and both targets dissolved into small gray-black clouds of dust right over the center marker.

  Lowell turned to Martinelli and smiled benignly at him. “Maybe you’re getting a little too old for this game, Jack,” he said.

  Martinelli glared at Lowell and then glanced at the grassy field beyond the low house where the unbroken targets from the high house had landed. And then he stared in that direction. He could see half a dozen unbroken clay targets, nearly vertical in the tall grass. They were glistening, reflecting the bright fall sun. Clay pigeons are made of stamped pitch.

  They normally break on impact, and they damned well don’t glisten in the sunlight!

  Martinelli thrust his shotgun into Lowell’s hand.

  “Don’t go anywhere, Lowell!” he said, and then he ran across the range toward the unbroken targets.

  “Sergeant,” he heard Lowell ask, “do you get the feeling the colonel suspects that something is amiss?”

  The range sergeant chuckled.

  Martinelli picked up an unbroken target. It was painted white, and stamped WINCHESTER-WESTERN, but it wasn’t a clay target. It was an ashtray—an advertising giveaway stamped out of aluminum, made in the shape of a target.

  “You sonofabitch!” Martinelli shouted, looking back at the line. Lowell was laughing. The master sergeant was trying very hard not to. Martinelli looked around for, and picked up, seven aluminum ashtrays.

  And then, his anger vanishing as the humor of what had been done to him by Lowell and the trap boys came to him (this had taken some preparation; it wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment funny idea), he began to chuckle. Shaking his head, balancing the stack of ashtrays in his hand, trying very hard to appear angry, he walked back to the high house.

  A staff car pulled into the parking lot and stopped beside Martinelli’s Buick station wagon. When the passenger got out of the front seat, he saw the solid gold cord on the overseas hat, and the two silver stars of a major general pinned to the front of it.

  Did that sonofabitch actually invite Paul Jiggs out here to watch him make an ass of me? Anger returned.

  Martinelli saluted when he walked up to Jiggs, who was standing with Lowell. Technically you weren’t supposed to salute in civilian clothing, but a general officer was a general officer.

  “Did he actually invite you out here to witness this?” Martinelli asked.

  “Witness what, Jack?” Jiggs asked.

  “The bastard’s had me shooting at aluminum targets,” Martinelli said.

  “Claiming the protection of the thirty-first Article of War,” Lowell said, “I decline to comment on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.”

  “Well, you got me good,” Martinelli said. “But from now on, you will never be able to sleep soundly, and you’re going to spend a lot of time looking over your shoulder.”

  “I called out to the board,” General Jiggs said, “and your secretary told me—reluctantly, I might add—that you two were doing your required exercise. I knew what that meant, so I came here.”

  “Is something up?” Martinelli asked.

  “Primarily it gave me an excuse to get out of the office. I thought maybe there’d be a spare gun.”

  “Sure,” Lowell said. “I’ve got a 12-bore in the car.”

  “Get the business out of the way first,” General Jiggs said. “Lowell has been asked to be a pallbearer at a funeral. If there’s no reason he can’t—and it would have to be a pretty solid reason—I’d like to see him go.”

  “I can’t think of anything, can you, Craig?” Martinelli asked.

  “No, sir,” Lowell said.

  “That’s good, because the request came from Felter,” Jiggs said. “Which is the same thing as saying the White House.”

  “Who died?”

  “A naval officer, a Commander Edward B. Eaglebury,” General Jiggs said.

  “Friend of yours, Lowell?” Martinelli asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said simply.

  There was more to this than he was being told, Martinelli realized, and he also realized that he had probably been told all he was going to be told.

  “It looks like duty to me,” Jiggs s
aid. “Maybe administrative leave. Lowell’s being told to go. Not that he wouldn’t want to, but this came pretty close to being an order.”

  “I’ll have orders cut putting him on TDY,*” Martinelli said. “Where’s he have to go?”

  “Philadelphia,” Jiggs said. “The funeral’s tomorrow.”

  “Felter say how he got the body?” Lowell asked.

  Jiggs gave him a cold look. He was talking about something that should not be talked about.

  “Come on, Paul,” Lowell said. “The Cubans know he’s dead. They shot him.”

  “Felter didn’t say. Probably through the Swiss.”

  “He was a good guy,” Lowell said, and then: “I’ll get you a gun.”

  II

  (One)

  Philadelphia International Airport

  1800 Hours, 29 November 1961

  When Northeast Airlines Flight 208 discharged its Philadelphia passengers at gate three, Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell and First Lieutenant Thomas J. Ellis were waiting in the concourse. Lieutenant Ellis was wearing khaki trousers, an open-collared khaki shirt, and a zippered powder-blue quilted nylon ski jacket purchased an hour before in the men’s shop in the lobby of the Bellevue Stratford hotel. He looked like a boy en route home from college. Colonel Lowell looked like an army officer. He looked, Ellis had thought, like the drawings hung on the wall of the uniform concessionaire’s place of business in the PX at Bragg: “The Well Dressed Army Officer.”

  The uniform was of the highest quality material and superbly tailored. It had come from London, from an establishment that had been clothing British officers since before the American Revolution, and American officers—those few who could afford it—since World War I.

  The orange-and-black embroidered insignia of the Army Aviation Center was sewn to the left sleeve of the tunic. The only other insignia were the silver oak leaves of his rank; the cavalry-sabers-superimposed-on-a-tank insignia of Armor; Army Aviator’s wings with a star identifying a senior aviator; and above them a miniature (and unauthorized) Combat Infantry Badge with a star on its silver wreathed musket signifying the second award.