Special Ops Read online

  Hanni saw Jack.

  “Oh, my God! It is you! I thought I was losing my mind!”

  “Hanni!” Jack croaked.

  The bedroom door opened. Jeanine appeared.

  “Jacques!” she screamed.

  And there was somebody with her. Black. Wearing an animal skin.

  “Don’t shoot!” Hanni screamed. “He’s a friend!”

  “Jacques, don’t!” Jeanine said when Jack trained what was left of the FN at him.

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “Captain George Washington Lunsford,” the man in the animal skin said, “United States Army, at your service, sir.”

  He walked into the room with his hands above his shoulders.

  “Jacques, for God’s sake,” Hanni said, “he saved our lives. Put the gun down.”

  Jack saw Ursula Craig holding her baby in her arms in the bedroom. Beside her, a large knife in each hand, was an enormous, very black woman.

  “Mon Dieu,” the black woman said. "C’est Jacques!”

  Jack went to the bedroom. Mary Magdalene dropped the knives and enveloped him in massive black arms. As her huge body heaved with sobs and tears ran down her cheeks, she repeated over and over, “Mon petit Jacques, mon petit Jacques.”

  “I hate to break that up,” Lunsford said, “but there are savages all over the building, and I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I had my rifle.”

  Jack freed himself.

  “You okay, Ursula?”

  “I am now,” she said.

  Jack turned to Lunsford.

  “Captain, I heard there were Green Beanies here, but I didn’t expect to find one dressed like that.”

  “He knew what the Simbas would do once they saw the paratroopers, ” Hanni said. “He came to protect us.”

  “I was undercover. If I go get my rifle,” Lunsford said, nodding at the Belgian paratrooper, “does he know what’s going on, or . . .”

  “Je suis à votre service, mon capitain,” the Belgian paratrooper said, coming to attention, and then added, almost as if he was embarrassed, “I speak good the English.”

  Lunsford went into the bedroom and came back with his rifle.

  “That radio work?” he asked.

  “Oui, mon capitain,” the Belgian said.

  “Then you get on it, and tell somebody important where we are, and to come fetch us,” Lunsford ordered.

  “Oui, mon capitain,” the Belgian paratrooper said.

  “You close the door,” Lunsford ordered Jack. “We’ll put the ladies back in the bedroom until the cavalry gets here.”

  “Yes, sir,” Jack said.

  [ FOUR ]

  Quarters #1

  Fort Myer, Virginia

  0605 25 November 1964

  The door to Quarters #1 was opened by one of the chief’s orderlies, a pleasant-looking young man wearing a crisp white jacket.

  “Good morning, General. The general is expecting you, sir. The general is in the kitchen, sir. Straight ahead to the rear of the house.”

  The chief of staff of the United States Army was wearing a white apron, in the act of slicing a steak from a baked ham with all the precision of a surgeon.

  He looked up when he saw Bellmon, and smiled.

  “Just a couple of us for breakfast, Bob,” he said. “There’s coffee. Help yourself.”

  He pointed to the coffeemaker on a countertop.

  “Thank you, sir,” Bellmon said.

  Bellmon, a stocky, ruddy-faced forty-six-year-old, had been surprised, and just a little worried, when his aide-de-camp, Captain Richard Hornsby, the previous afternoon had told him that the aide-de-camp of the chief of staff of the United States Army had told him that it was the desire of the chief that General Bellmon present himself at Quarters #1 at 0600 for breakfast.

  Bellmon knew the chief of staff—both were from Army families, both were West Pointers, and both of their fathers had also worn the stars of general officers—but this was Washington, the Pentagon, and there were a large number of major generals around, very few of whom were ever invited to take breakfast with the chief of staff at his quarters.

  Bellmon, who commanded the Army Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, had flown to Washington early the previous morning to confer with the deputy chief of staff for operations (known as Dee Cee Ess Ops.). DCSOPS was a three-star, and also a West Pointer, the son of a general officer, and an old acquaintance, but he had not invited Bellmon to his quarters.

  “I wonder what the hell that’s all about?” Bellmon had asked, not expecting an answer. “Okay, call Rucker, and tell them we’ll be back as soon as we can tomorrow.”

  He had things to do at Rucker, but it had never entered his mind to decline the invitation.

  “There’s something about ham and eggs,” the chief of staff said. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but if you take a slice of baked ham, fry it a little in ham fat, and then fry eggs in the same fat and the same pan . . .”

  “Yes, sir,” General Bellmon said.

  The chief carefully sliced another ham steak from the baked ham and laid it on a plate beside the first.

  Bellmon poured a cup of coffee for himself, and was idly stirring it when another man entered the kitchen. Without thinking about it, Bellmon came almost to attention. The senior uniformed member of the Armed Forces of the United States had just walked into the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

  Jesus, Bellmon thought, did the Chairman forget to shave, or has he been up all night?

  “You two know each other, right?” the chief said.

  “We’ve met,” the Chairman said, putting out his hand. “Good to see you again, Bellmon.”

  “Good morning, Admiral,” Bellmon said.

  “I can use some of that,” the Chairman said, indicating Bellmon’s mug of coffee, “although God knows I’ve used up my month’s allocation of caffeine in the last eight hours.”

  The Chairman took a sip and then raised the mug to Bellmon.

  “Thank you,” he said. He met Bellmon’s eyes. “I spent the night with the President,” he said. “Would you be surprised, Bellmon, to hear that at midnight, Washington time, a battalion of Belgian paratroops was dropped by USAF C-130s on Stanleyville? ”

  “How did it go?” the chief asked as he put ham fat in a large cast-iron frying pan.

  “The Simbas made good on their promise to start executing the Europeans the moment they saw a parachute,” the Chairman said. “But the Belgian paras lived up to their reputation: They took the city in less than two hours, and the Europeans that are left are already either in Léopoldville, or on their way.”

  He looked at Bellmon again.

  “You don’t seem overwhelmed by surprise, General,” he said.

  “I expected that some action would be taken, sir.”

  “You’re telling me you never heard of Operation Dragon Rouge, is that it?”

  “No, sir. I’ve heard of it.”

  “Your name is not on the list of those cleared for Top Secret-Dragon Rouge,” the Chairman said. “Who brought you into the picture, your friend Colonel Sanford T. Felter?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you think that Colonel Felter would be surprised if he heard that you heard about Dragon Rouge?”

  “No, sir, I don’t think he would be.”

  “May I infer that the Colonel arranged for you to be brought in on Dragon Rouge?”

  “Hey, Charley,” the chief said. “You promised this was supposed to be friendly.”

  “So I did. I apologize to both of you.”

  “How do you like your eggs, Charley?” the chief asked. “Your choices are up, over, or scrambled.”

  “Up, but no slime, please,” the Chairman said.

  The chief took two fried eggs from the cast-iron flying pan and laid them atop a ham steak and handed the plate to the Chairman.

  “Bob?” the chief asked.

  Inasmuch as I suspect
my ass is in a crack, I don’t really want any eggs, thank you very much. But I can’t say that, can I?

  “Up is fine with me, General,” he said.

  The chief, a moment later, laid two more eggs on a ham slice and handed it to Bellmon, who, seeing no other possible action on his part, sat down at the kitchen table beside the Chairman.

  “This isn’t half bad, Bob,” the Chairman said.

  “Not bad, my ass,” the chief said as he splashed ham fat on eggs in the pan. “This is one of God’s Good Meals.”

  The Chairman looked at General Bellmon.

  “So tell me, Bellmon, out of school, of course, who told you about Dragon Rouge?”

  When Bellmon did not immediately reply, the chief called, “You can trust him, Bob. For a sailor, you can really trust him pretty far.”

  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the chief of staff of the U.S. Army the finger.

  “I was always taught, Admiral,” Bellmon said, “that a good officer protects juniors.”

  “A lieutenant colonel, in other words, with a big mouth?” the Chairman said, not seeming either surprised or angry. “It is hard to keep a secret, isn’t it?”

  The chief sat down beside them.

  “Actually, sir, it was my daughter’s boyfriend,” Bellmon said.

  “A lieutenant, then? Maybe a captain?” the chief said.

  “Actually, sir, he’s a sergeant,” Bellmon said.

  “A sergeant?” the chief parroted incredulously.

  “A sergeant,” Bellmon repeated. “I should have shut him up, but I didn’t. He simply presumed that as a general officer, I knew all about it. I didn’t, but I was curious, and let him talk.”

  “Marjorie’s boyfriend is a sergeant?” the chief asked. “And how does that go with Barbara?”

  “He’s a very fine young man,” Bellmon said testily. “Barbara likes him, I like him. Before he was drafted, he was an airline pilot.”

  “A sergeant who knew about Dragon Rouge because he was involved in it, right? Does this sergeant work for Colonel Felter, by any chance?”

  “Yes, sir, he does.”

  “Tell me about him,” the Chairman said.

  “His name is Jacques Portet, and—”

  “I meant Colonel Felter,” the Chairman interrupted. “I understand you’re acquainted with him.”

  “Colonel Felter is a friend of mine, sir.”

  “Some people define ‘friend’ as anyone they call by his first name. I define a friend as someone you’d go to the mat for, and vice versa. Which is it with you and Colonel Felter?”

  “Colonel Felter is a close personal friend, sir.”

  “Then you know what he does for a living?”

  “I know he works for the President, sir. I think his job title is ‘Counselor to the President.’ ”

  “He’s President Johnson’s personal spook,” the Chairman said. “As he was for Kennedy, and before that, for Eisenhower.” He paused, and looked directly at Bellmon. “He has been described as ‘one ruthless sonofabitch who runs over anybody who gets in his way.’ ”

  “Sir,” Bellmon said coldly, “I would not categorize Colonel Felter as either ruthless or a sonofabitch.”

  “Then you’re out of sync with the Commander-in-Chief, General. The President used—sometime around oh three hundred this morning, and admiringly, I thought—precisely those words.”

  The Chairman chuckled, then went on: “How’d you get involved with someone like Felter, General?”

  “I’m not sure what the admiral means by ‘involved,’ sir,” Bellmon said.

  “Well, for example, where did you first meet him?”

  Bellmon paused thoughtfully, then shrugged.

  “At 1330, 8 April 1945,” he said. “Outside a stable, in Zwenkau, Saxony, in what is now East Germany.”

  Both the Chairman and the chief looked at him curiously.

  “You tend to remember precisely where and when you’re liberated, ” Bellmon said. “Maybe especially if, sixty seconds before, you were convinced you were on your way to Siberia.”

  “I’m not tracking you, General,” the Chairman said.

  “I was captured in North Africa, Admiral,” Bellmon said. “On 17 February 1943. I was a POW for two years, one month, and eighteen days, most of it in Stalag XVII-B, near Szczecin—Stettin—Poland. As the Russians advanced through Poland, the camp commandant was ordered to move us westward, toward Berlin. We didn’t make it. We were overrun by the Russians—”

  “Lucky for you,” the Chairman interrupted.

  “No, sir,” Bellmon said. “Our Russian allies almost immediately made it clear they had no intention of turning us loose. Quite the contrary, we were informed that transportation was being arranged to take us to ‘safety’ in the Soviet Union.”

  “I’ve heard the stories, but—”

  “I’m afraid they’re all true, Admiral. In some cases, we have no idea why, they held on to our men. In this case, there’s good reason to believe that they were trying to shove their murder of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest under the rug. Russian intelligence officers asked each of us if we had any knowledge of American officers being taken from Stalag XVII-B by German officers to visit the Katyn Forest.”

  “And had there been?”

  “Yes, sir, there had. I had. I was taken to the Katyn Forest by a German officer who had been a friend of my father’s. He wanted to make sure, when the war was over, that the Germans weren’t held responsible for that particular atrocity.”

  “You were at Katyn?” the chief asked, surprised.

  "Yes, sir. I was there. None of my officers, my fellow POWs, told the Russians I’d not only been taken from the Stalag but had in my possession photographs and other material which implicated the Russians in the murder of five thousand Polish officers, including two hundred and fifty cadets, none of them older than fifteen.”

  “Christ, you hear these stories, but . . .”

  “Well, there I was,” Bellmon went on, as if eager to relate the story, “at 1330, 8 April 1945, in a stone stable in Zwenkau—in the dark; the Russians had closed all the doors, and there were no windows—with two hundred thirty-eight other American officers, all prisoners of the Russians, with what I had seen at Katyn running through my mind, when I thought I was losing my mind. . . .”

  “I can understand that,” the Chairman said.

  “First I heard a trumpet,” Bellmon went on. “Playing ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’—and then the enormous door of the stable came crashing down, and a half-track with a multiple .50-caliber machine-gun mount backed into the barn, and I thought the decision had been made to eliminate us all. Then I saw who the gunner was. He was about six feet three, weighed a good 250 pounds, and was as black as the ace of spades. And standing beside him was another enormous black trooper, blowing ‘The Saints’ on his trumpet.”

  “Elements of Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker’s 393rd tank destroyer regiment,” the chief said. “I’d heard that story, of course, Bob. But I had no idea until just now you were one of those he liberated.”

  Bellmon nodded.

  “The half-track moved out of the barn,” he went on, “and I staggered outside into the sunlight. My eyes grew accustomed to the light, and I saw another half-dozen tracks, and a sea of black faces, and in the middle of them, standing next to Colonel Parker, carrying a Thompson submachine gun, one skinny little white first lieutenant, who stood about five feet five.”

  He paused and looked at the Chairman.

  “That was the first time I ever saw Sandy Felter, Admiral.”

  “What was he doing there?” the Chairman asked softly.

  “He was a POW interrogator, and he’d found out about us. He’d taken the information to his division commander, General Waterford, together with a plan to send a flying column in to get us. General Waterford thought it would smack of favoritism—”

  “What?” the Chairman asked.

  “Charley,” the chief said, �
��General Waterford was Bob’s father-in-law.”

  The Chairman’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.

  “And—my father-in-law—nixed Felter’s plan,” Bellmon went on. “So Felter took it to Colonel Parker, who put it into execution, which almost certainly cost him the star—or stars—to which he was so certainly entitled.”

  He met the Chairman’s eyes.

  “Colonel Felter, Admiral, has been my friend since that time.”

  “Let me tell you, General, what this is all about,” the Chairman said. “When Colonel Felter was named action officer for Dragon Rouge, I was curious about him. That’s not the sort of responsibility normally given to a colonel. So I told my aide to get me his records. And then I forgot about it, since we were all up to our asses in alligators. But then, the day before yesterday, when Dragon Rouge was put in execution, I remembered about the records, and asked my aide about them.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Ordinarily,” the Chairman went on, “when an officer is detailed to the CIA, or another intelligence agency, his records are maintained there, and available to people on a need-to-know basis. Colonel Felter’s records are maintained in the White House. When my aide asked for them, he was told he didn’t have the need-to-know. When he explained that he was asking for me, he was told that my need-to-know would have to be approved by the President. Under the circumstances, I didn’t pursue the issue.”

  “But you’re the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,” Bellmon blurted.

  “Yes,” the Chairman said. “Anyway, I mentioned this to Bob, here, and he told me he thought you and Felter were friends. So I thought I could get a picture of him from you, out of school, without having to go to the President to ask for a look at his records.”

  “I understand, sir. But there’s not much I can tell you.”

  “You said you’ve been friends for years,” the Chairman countered. “How did he wind up as counsel to Presidents?”

  “I have an idea, sir, but it’s a rather long story.”

  “We have all the time we need. They know where to find me if they need me,” the Chairman said. “Start at the beginning, please.”

  [FIVE]

  Office of the Deputy Director