Special Ops Page 4

  The Central Intelligence Agency

  Langley, Virginia

  26 November 1964

  “Come on in, Howard,” the deputy director said to Howard W. O’Connor, the assistant director for administration of the Central Intelligence Agency. “What have you got?”

  The deputy director was a slight man in his early fifties who wore his still-blond hair very short. O’Connor was a stocky, ruddy-faced man with a full mane of white curly hair.

  O’Connor waved a long sheet of teletypewriter paper.

  “The manifest of the Americans rescued from Stanleyville, being flown via Frankfurt to the States,” he said. “It just came in from Léopoldville.”

  “Something, someone, on it is interesting?”

  “A woman named Hanni Portet and her daughter, Jeanine,” O’Connor said. “Mrs. Portet is a German national, married to a chap named Jean-Phillipe Portet. He’s an American—he was Belgian, but served in our Army Air Corps in World War II and got his citizenship that way. The little girl—she’s eleven—got her citizenship via the father. There is also a son, Jacques, also an American citizen whom the long arm of the draft caught in Léopoldville, and when last heard of was at Camp Polk, Louisiana, taking basic training.”

  “Why are the Portets of interest?”

  “We’ve been looking around for someone to bankroll in setting up Air America II,” O’Connor said.

  “Don’t call it that, Howard. Air America is a painful subject. No one was supposed to know of our interest in it. We need an airline that doesn’t have parenthesis CIA close parenthesis painted on the tail of its airplanes.”

  “There have been several suggestions,” O’Connor said. “The one I like best is ‘Intercontinental Air Cargo.’ We can set it up in Miami; there’s half a hundred one- and two-airplane ‘airlines’ operating out of Miami.”

  “What about just ‘Intercontinental Air’?”

  “There is already an Intercontinental Air,” O’Connor said. “That was one of the reasons I like ‘Intercontinental Air Cargo.’ We can even hide behind their logo and color scheme.”

  “Why don’t we just buy into Intercontinental Air?”

  “The people that own it aren’t interested in partners,” O’Con-nor said. “They’re willing to sell, but we need somebody to buy it who can’t be tied to us.”

  “This guy Portet?”

  “Yeah. Right now he’s chief pilot for Air Congo, but he also has his own two-bit airline, Air Simba, flying mostly World War II Boeing C-46s around Southern Africa.”

  “You think he’d be interested?”

  “Things are not good in the Congo,” O’Connor said. “And they’re unlikely to get better, whether or not Che Guevara goes over there and starts causing trouble.”

  “That’s not funny, Howard,” the deputy director said. “We told the President that’s not going to happen.”

  “I think Portet would be very interested,” O’Connor said. “I wanted your permission to approach him.”

  “You want to go over there?”

  “No. He’s coming here with his family. I want J. Richard Leonard of the Gresham Investment Corporation to approach him.”

  “Do it. Do you know when and where he’s going to be in the United States?”

  “We’re the CIA, Paul. We can find out.”

  “Do it, and let me know what happens,” the deputy director said.

  [SIX]

  Office of the Commanding General

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

  1520 1 December 1964

  Brigadier General Matthew Hollostone, USAF, the forty-two-year -old general officer commanding Pope AF Base, was at his desk reading with fascination a rather detailed report by the Fort Bragg provost marshal.

  On the one hand, it was encouraging to be reassured that the fighting spirit was as present in this generation of junior officers as it had been in his, when he had been a twenty-two-year-old captain. The detailed list the provost marshal furnished of the damage done to a Fayetteville night spot when a local beauty had aroused the mating instinct simultaneously in one of Pope’s pilots and one of Bragg’s parachutists was clear proof of that.

  On the other hand, there was no question that the behavior chronicled by the provost marshal was conduct unbecoming officers and gentlemen, and he would have to come to some understanding with the commanding general of Fort Bragg vis-à-vis a suitable punishment for both miscreants.

  Sitting on the credenza behind General Hollostone’s desk was a small Air Force blue box containing a speaker. It brought to General Hollostone the radio traffic of the Pope control tower. It was on all the time, but very rarely did anything being said come to General Hollostone’s conscious attention.

  He was a command pilot with more than five thousand hours in the air, and over the years had learned to listen subconsciously to radio traffic. In other words, he heard only those things that had an effect on him. It was not an uncommon characteristic, or ability, of pilots, but the only other people he had ever seen do something similar were experienced radio telegraph operators, who could carry on a conversation with one part of their brain while transcribing the dots and dashes of Morse code at forty words a minute.

  What the speaker transmitted now—

  “Pope, Air Force Three Eleven, a Learjet, at flight level two five thousand sixty miles north of your station. Estimate ten minutes. Approach and landing, please.”

  —caused him to stop thinking about suitable punishments for the battling junior officers and consciously await the reply of the Pope control tower operator.

  There were very few Learjets in the U.S. Air Force, and as far as General Hollostone knew, all but two of the small, fast little airplanes were assigned to the special missions squadron in Washington. The other two were assigned to the four-star generals commanding the U.S. Air Force, Pacific, and the U.S. Air Force, Europe.

  It was illogical to think that the commanding generals of the Air Force in the Pacific or Europe were about to drop in unannounced at Pope Air Force Base, but that left open the logical probability that the Learjet was carrying someone of the upper echelon of the military establishment, ranging downward from the Secretary of Defense to a lowly lieutenant general representing a four-star general.

  No one with fewer than three stars would be aboard the Learjet. Riding in a Learjet was a symbol of power.

  Hollostone waited until the Pope tower had told Air Force Three Eleven how to get on the ground at Pope, then stood up. He walked into his outer office, which was occupied by his secretary, his sergeant major, and his aide-de-camp.

  “Steve,” General Hollostone ordered, “get on the horn and tell Bragg there’s a Learjet nine minutes out, and we don’t know who is aboard.”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant major said, and reached for the telephone. He understood that Bragg meant the Office of the Commanding General XVIII Airborne Corps and Fort Bragg, who would also be interested to hear that a Learjet was about to touch down at Pope.

  “You and I will just be walking out of Base Ops when the mysterious stranger arrives,” General Hollostone said to his aide-de-camp. “Make sure the car is available.”

  “Yes, sir,” the aide-de-camp said.

  Seven and a half minutes later, General Hollostone marched through the door of Base Operations onto the tarmac in front of it. He looked first skyward, and picked out a tiny shining object that had to be the Learjet.

  Then he looked around him, to see if there was anything in front of Base Ops that shouldn’t be there.

  There was.

  There was a soldier—a soldier, not an airman—in fatigue uniform, green beret, and parachutist’s jump boots leaning against the concrete blocks of the Base Ops building.

  And he didn’t even come to attention when he saw a general officer. That’s unusual. Usually the Army—especially the paratroops at Bragg—carries that sort of thing too far.

  Then General Hollostone understood why the Green Beret in fatigue
s hadn’t popped to attention when he saw a general officer. He was not required to do so, because he was senior by three months to Brigadier General Hollostone.

  Salutes were exchanged.

  “It’s cold out here, Red,” General Hollostone said. “Why didn’t you go inside?”

  Inside Base Ops was a VIP lounge for colonels and up.

  “I didn’t want to get your carpet muddy,” Brigadier General Paul “Red” Hanrahan, the slight, wiry forty-three-year-old who was commandant of the Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg, said as they shook hands.

  “What brings you here?” Hollostone asked.

  Hanrahan pointed skyward.

  The tiny shining object had grown into a recognizable Learjet making its approach to Pope AF Base.

  “Anyone I know aboard?” Hollostone asked.

  “I don’t think so, Matt,” Hanrahan said, chuckling. “Several of my people.”

  “Nobody important, in other words?”

  “Probably not to you, Matt,” Hanrahan replied. There was reproof, perhaps even contempt, in his voice.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Red,” Hollostone said.

  “Good,” Hanrahan replied.

  “Anything you need, Red? Anything I can do for you?”

  “No. But thanks anyway, Matt.”

  “Come see us,” General Hollostone said.

  “You, too,” General Hanrahan said.

  Salutes were exchanged, and then General Hollostone marched back inside the Base Ops building trailed by his aide-de -camp.

  He returned to his office and got there in time to see—through the mostly closed venetian blinds of his window—the Learjet taxi up to the tarmac in front of Base Ops and stop.

  The fuselage door opened and two people got out. One of them was a skinny black man in a white linen suit that looked five sizes too big for him. The other man was white, and wearing a strange, none-too-clean parachutist’s uniform. After a moment, General Hollostone recognized it to be that of the Belgian Paracommando Regiment. The Belgian paratrooper had a bandaged nose.

  The door of the Learjet closed and the plane immediately began to taxi off. General Hanrahan made a signal with his hand, and a Chevrolet staff car appeared around the corner of the Base Ops building.

  It was not flying the checked flag required of all vehicles driving on the flight line.

  It’s a clear violation of safety regulations. And that goddamned Hanrahan, who knows better, should have his ass burned.

  But if I personally report him, he will think I’m chickenshit. And who do I report him to? He’s not under the command of the commanding general of Fort Bragg. He gets his orders directly from the chief of staff of the Army.

  I am not about to call the chief of staff of the U.S. Army and announce that I am an Air Force brigadier onto whose tarmac Red goddamn Hanrahan drove his staff car without flying a checkered flag.

  And who was the black guy in the white suit? Probably the same Congolese, with something to do with Operation Dragon Rouge.

  It has to be something like that.

  The black guy in the white suit meets the chief of staff of the Army at a cocktail party, says he’d like to see Green Beret training, and the chief says, “My pleasure, Mr. Prime Minister/Your Excellency/Mr. Secretary./Whatever the hell. I will call the Special Missions Squadron of the Air Force and see if they won’t give you a Learjet to fly you down there.”

  It has to be something like that. You don’t get to ride in a Learjet unless you are unquestionably a VIP. Or a four-star.

  Brigadier General Hanrahan turned from the front passenger seat of the Chevrolet staff car to the black gentleman in the far-too -large-for-him white suit.

  “Father,” he said. “You look like death warmed over.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, mon général,” Captain George Washington Lunsford said. Only close friends and commanding generals got to call him by his nickname, a shorthand for “Father of His Country,” derived from the obvious source.

  “Have you been drinking, Father?” Hanrahan asked.

  “I cannot, mon général, in the noble tradition of my namesake, tell a lie. Yes, I have. And, if this could be arranged, I would be ever so grateful for a little belt right now.”

  “Not right now, I don’t think, Captain Lunsford,” Hanrahan said. “I think what you need right now is a cup of black coffee.”

  In the interests of good military order and discipline, General Hanrahan decided it would be far better if, when the word got around that Father Lunsford had returned alive from a really hairy assignment, it was not gleefully bandied about that he had returned in a white suit that didn’t fit, and as drunk as an owl.

  He touched his driver, a nice-looking young Green Beret sergeant, on his sleeve.

  “You better take us to the house, Tony.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “First things first,” General Hanrahan said as he walked into the sun porch of Quarters 107, a two-story brick home that had been built in 1938 as quarters suitable for a captain. “Your coffee, Captain Lunsford.”

  Lunsford, who was slumped in a wicker armchair, reached for it.

  My God, he really looks awful.

  “Merci, mon général.”

  “Where’d you get the suit?”

  “It belongs to Jack’s father. It was in his apartment in the Immoquateur—that’s the apartment building in Stanleyville?”

  Hanrahan nodded his understanding.

  “When the C130s started dropping the Belgians, I was wearing my Simba uniform, and I knew that the first Belgian to see me would take a shot at me, so I borrowed it from Jack’s stepmother, ” Lunsford explained.

  “Tony,” Hanrahan said to his driver. “Go find the sergeant major. Tell him Captain Lunsford needs a clean uniform. There’s a duplicate key to the captain’s locker in my safe.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Sergeant, on your way back, stop by Class VI and pick up a bottle of scotch, will you?” Captain Lunsford said.

  Hanrahan looked closely at Lunsford.

  “You need a drink that bad, do you?”

  “I really would like a little taste, General.”

  “I’ll give you a drink,” Hanrahan said. “Tony, get him his uniform. ”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

  Hanrahan poured scotch into three glasses, handed one to Lunsford and the other to Jack Portet, and then raised his own.

  “Welcome home, the both of you,” he said.

  Portet took a sip of the straight scotch. Lunsford downed all of his at once.

  When he sensed Hanrahan’s eyes on him, Lunsford said: “It tranquilizes my worm, sir.”

  “What?”

  “My tapeworm, sir. I have a world-class tapeworm.”

  I will deal with that later.

  “What happened to your nose, Portet?” General Hanrahan asked. “And what’s with the Belgian uniform?”

  “Mon général,” Captain Lunsford said. “Sergeant Portet has asked that I serve as his legal counsel. As such, Sergeant Portet, I advise you to claim your rights under the 31st Article of War and respectfully decline to answer the general’s question—at least until you get your medals—on the grounds it may tend to incriminate you.”

  “What medals?”

  “I have it on the best authority, mon général, that this splendid young noncommissioned officer is to be decorated by both the Belgian and Congolese governments for his heroic participation in Operation Dragon Rouge.”

  “ ‘Heroic’?” Hanrahan parroted. “What he was supposed to do was brief the Air Force about the airfield, and see if he knew anything about Stanleyville the Belgians didn’t already know.”

  “Actually, sir, Sergeant Portet’s contribution to Operation Dragon Rouge went a little beyond that.”

  “For example?”

  “He jumped on Stanleyville with the Belgians, sir,” Lunsford said. “That’s where he got that uniform. And the busted nose. H
e fell out of a truck in Stanleyville.”

  “He was not supposed to jump anywhere,” Hanrahan said. “And I specifically ordered Foster to make sure he didn’t.”

  He looked at Portet, who looked very uncomfortable.

  “Sir, Lieutenant Foster made it very clear that I was not to go with the Belgians.”

  “And you figured, fuck you, and jumped anyway?”

  Hanrahan heard the angry tone in his voice and vowed to keep his temper.

  “General, his family was in Stanleyville,” Lunsford said.

  “I know that,” Hanrahan snapped, and then asked, more kindly, “Are they all right, Portet?”

  “When I got to the Immoquateur, sir, Captain Lunsford was there. He protected them. They’re fine. They’re on their way to the States, via Germany.”

  “Geoff Craig’s wife and baby, too?”

  “Yes, sir. Thanks to Captain Lunsford.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” Hanrahan said.

  “How’d you come back?” Hanrahan asked.

  “With Fath . . . Captain Lunsford, on the Special Missions jet.”

  If my family had been in Stanleyville, I would have jumped on, too.

  “The shit’s going to hit the fan, you understand, when it gets out that you jumped with the Belgians,” Hanrahan said.

  “That’s why I got him the medals, sir,” Lunsford said. “I figured, what the hell, with the Belgians and the Congolese calling him a hero . . .”

  “You got him the medals?”

  “Colonel Van de Waele, the Belgian leading—”

  “I know who he is,” Hanrahan interrupted.

  “Came to Kamina just before we left. I explained the situation—”

  “The military situation, or Portet’s?” Hanrahan interrupted again.

  “Both, actually,” Lunsford said.

  “Sir, what Colonel Van de Waele really came to Kamina to do—”

  “I don’t recall having given you permission to speak, Sergeant,” Lunsford said. “Shut your mouth.”

  “You were saying, Sergeant?” Hanrahan said.

  “The King sent him,” Portet said. “With orders to give Captain Lunsford the Grand Order of Leopold, First Class,” Portet said.

  Whatever medal the King of the Belgians gave him, he deserved.