Special Ops Read online

  Second Lieutenant Robert F. Bellmon looked at the photograph after his mother, then informed his sister that he had been shown a film at West Point demonstrating what miracles of reconstructive surgery were now possible.

  Marjorie, her mother saw, was about to respond when the telephone rang.

  “Bobby, answer that,” Barbara Bellmon ordered, very quickly.

  “Your brother gets his tact from his father,” Barbara said to Marjorie. “But Bobby’s right, honey, they can work miracles.”

  “Hey, Marj!” Second Lieutenant Bellmon called.

  “Now what?” Marjorie snapped.

  “We got a collect call from Sergeant Jack Portet at Fort Bragg. You want to pay for it?”

  [ TWO ]

  Quarters #9

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  0215 2 December 1964

  In a failed attempt to get out of bed to answer the goddamned doorbell without waking his wife, Brigadier General Paul Hanrahan painfully stubbed his toe on the leg of the bed.

  He swore.

  “My God, what are you doing?” Patricia inquired, sitting up in bed and turning on a light.

  “I was trying not to wake you. There’s somebody at the door.”

  “Well, get your bathrobe on. Don’t go down there in your underwear. ”

  She turned the light off and dropped back into the bed.

  General Hanrahan found his bathrobe in the dark, left the bedroom, turned on the hall lights, and made his way gingerly down the stairs.

  This better be important, he vowed, or I will burn whoever is at the goddamned door at this goddamned hour a new anal orifice.

  He snapped on the porch light and pushed the curtain away from the small triangular window in the center of the door.

  “Shit,” he said softly, and unlocked and opened the door.

  “What can I do for you, Marjorie?” he asked, as kindly as he could manage under the circumstances.

  “Where is he, Uncle Red?” Miss Marjorie Bellmon asked. “I know he’s here, he called me from here, but the duty officer wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  He turned and wordlessly waved her into the house.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed a number.

  Miss Marjorie Bellmon and Patricia Hanrahan—who, her husband became aware, was now coming down the stairs—heard only the following:

  (Politely): “Let me speak to the duty officer, please.”

  (Less politely): “Then wake him up, goddamn it!”

  (Impatiently): “General Hanrahan.”

  (Apologetically) “I should have told you who I was, Sergeant. No problem.”

  (Politely): “Sorry to wake you up, Captain. I don’t suppose Sergeant Portet is readily available?”

  (Long silence during which the duty officer reports, somewhat uneasily, that there had been sort of a little “Welcome Home, Jack” party sponsored by the staff, which had ended when the beer ran out about oh-one-thirty, and that so far as he knew Sergeant Portet was asleep. Soundly asleep.)

  (Politely): “Hold one, please, Captain.”

  “Marjorie, Jack’s in bed at Camp Mackall. He was all worn out from the flight. Do you want me to have them wake him up?”

  “Can I see him in the morning?”

  (Normal tone of voice): “Captain, first thing in the morning, put him in an ambulance and deliver him to my quarters. Tell him his girl is here.”

  (Somewhat impatiently): “Yes, an ambulance. You weren’t told we’re keeping him under a rock?”

  (More politely): “Oh-six-thirty would be fine, Captain. Thank you. Good night.”

  “ ‘Under a rock’?” Patricia Hanrahan quoted, quizzically.

  “Why does he need an ambulance?” Marjorie Bellmon inquired.

  “Jack will be here at half past six,” General Hanrahan said.

  “I’ll go to the guest house and be back then,” Marjorie replied.

  “Don’t be silly, Marjorie, you’ll do no such thing,” Patricia Hanrahan said.

  “What did you do, Marjorie? Drive all night to get here?” General Hanrahan inquired.

  Stupid goddamn question. Unless she flew here on the wings of young love, how else would she get here?

  “Are you hungry, honey?” Mrs. Hanrahan inquired.

  “A little. I didn’t stop except for gas.”

  “Red, why don’t you make her an egg sandwich or something while I get her bed made?”

  (Somewhat strained enthusiasm): “Sure.”

  [ THREE ]

  Quarters #9

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  0530 3 December 1964

  General Red Hanrahan came suddenly out of a deep sleep with the realization—Christ, why didn’t I think of this last night?— that if he had Jack Portet delivered to his quarters in an ambulance at 0630, it would be all over Colonel’s Row in ten minutes—and all over the Special Warfare Center ten minutes after that—that there had been some sort of before-reveille emergency at his quarters.

  The Army, he thought, could give How To Gossip lessons to a dozen Italian widows gathered around the village water pump.

  The concerned and the curious would descend on his quarters like flies onto a corpse, and he couldn’t have that. For one thing, he had been told to keep Jack out of sight, and for another, tongues would really start to wag if it became known that he was playing Cupid’s helper to a fellow general officer’s daughter and her sergeant boyfriend.

  He very carefully got out of bed so as not to wake Patricia again, found his bathrobe without trouble, and made it almost to the bedroom door before stumbling into a footstool that was where it shouldn’t have been.

  “Shit!”

  “For God’s sake, Red, what are you trying to do, wake Marjorie? ”

  “Go back to sleep, baby. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  “Hah!”

  When he walked into his kitchen, he saw that Miss Marjorie Bellmon was already wide awake, fully dressed, and had made a pot of coffee.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you, Uncle Red. Sorry.”

  “No problem, honey.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Well, let’s see when Jack will be here,” Hanrahan said, and picked up the handset of the wall telephone.

  "U.S. Army Special Warfare Center, Staff Sergeant Abraham speaking, sir.”

  “This is General Hanrahan, Sergeant. Sometime in the next few minutes, someone from Mackall is going to bring a sergeant named Portet—”

  “They’re here, sir, waiting for 0615 to bring him by your quarters, ” Sergeant Abraham interrupted.

  “The original idea was to bring him in an ambulance,” Hanrahan said. “I don’t want to give my neighbors something to talk about.”

  “I’ll run him over there in the duty jeep when it’s time, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Hanrahan said. “You might as well bring him now. I’m up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks, Sergeant.”

  Marjorie kissed him.

  “Thank you, Uncle Red.”

  He smiled at her and looked at his watch.

  0537. He’s already on the post. Which means he left Mackall at, say, 0445. Which means they woke him up at 0400. Good. I hope he was really hungover when they woke him up.

  “I’m going to go back to bed for a while, honey. Make yourself at home.”

  Marjorie heard the jeep drive up, and peered around the drapes of the living-room window.

  Her heart jumped when she saw him get out of the jeep.

  Oh, my God, his nose is bandaged!

  My God, I really love that man!

  As she went quickly to the door to open it before he would have a chance to ring the bell and wake up the Hanrahans, she had a second thought:

  My God, he looks like a soldier! He looks like one of them!

  The last time she had seen him in uniform, he looked like what he was, a draftee fresh from Basic Training, a buck private in combat boots and a baseball cap and il
l-fitting mussed fatigues bearing only the legend US ARMY over the left breast pocket and PORTET over the right.

  She opened the door and he trotted quickly up to her.

  He is one of them!

  There was a green beret on his head, and sergeant’s stripes and the insignia of Special Forces on the sleeves of his starched and form-fitting fatigues. There were U.S. Army parachutist’s wings pinned above the US ARMY patch, and what she correctly guessed were Belgian paratrooper’s wings over his name on the right. And he was wearing glistening paratrooper’s jump boots.

  “You’re a long way from home, Marjorie,” he said.

  “How’s your nose?” she asked.

  And then she was in his arms, his face buried in her neck.

  She felt him grow and stiffen against her abdomen.

  “Oh, baby, I’m so glad to see you,” he said.

  She freed herself.

  “So I noticed,” she said.

  He smiled.

  “That’s what they call an ‘involuntary vascular reaction to a stimulus,’ ” he said.

  She felt herself blush.

  He leaned down to her and kissed her, very chastely, on the lips. The innocence of the kiss lasted perhaps three seconds, and then she was aware that she was pressing herself against him with a hunger that matched his.

  She freed herself again.

  “The Hanrahans,” she said, nodding toward the stairs.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “You were supposed to teach them about the airport,” she challenged. “Nothing else.”

  “It didn’t work out that way,” he said.

  “You could have been killed, damn you!”

  “I wasn’t,” he said simply.

  “Good morning, Jack,” Patricia Hanrahan said from the staircase.

  Last night’s carousing obviously hasn’t hurt his appetite, General Hanrahan thought. When I was a young buck and drank beer all night until there was no more, the last thing I wanted to see— even think about—the next morning was a fried egg.

  Sergeant Jack Portet was seated at the kitchen table, eating ham and eggs under the adoring gaze of Miss Marjorie Bellmon. Mrs. Patricia Hanrahan, wearing an apron over her negligee, was leaning against a kitchen counter wearing a look that Red Hanrahan thought was either maternal or Ain’t They Sweet!

  The telephone on the wall rang, and Hanrahan answered it on the second ring.

  “General Hanrahan.”

  “Colonel Swenson, sir. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “Good morning, Swede. No problem. I’ve been up for some time. What’s up?”

  “General, there’s a lieutenant here asking for Sergeant Portet. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

  “Very simple, Swede. We never heard of him.”

  “I tried that, General,” Swenson said. “He says he knows Portet’s here.” He added: “He’s one of ours, sir. I think he just came from where Portet came.”

  “Has ‘one of ours’ got a name, Swede?”

  “Craig, sir. Lieutenant Geoffrey Craig.”

  “Damn!” Hanrahan said. He hesitated just perceptibly. “Okay, Swede. Send him over here.”

  He put the handset into its cradle and turned to look at Sergeant Jack Portet.

  “Geoff Craig is here, Jack. Looking for you. Do you have any idea what that’s all about?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No idea at all?”

  “Well, sir, it probably means that everybody’s back. They came back via the Army Hospital in Frankfurt.”

  “Is there some kind of problem, honey?” Patricia asked.

  “My orders are to keep Jack under a rock,” Hanrahan said. “With a lot of people knowing he’s here, that’s getting to be difficult. ”

  “Do you think he has Ursula and the baby with him?” Marjorie asked.

  “That’s why I think everybody’s here,” Jack replied. “I can’t imagine Geoff being here without them.”

  “He was with them in the Congo?” Hanrahan asked.

  “They were flown to Léopoldville in the C-130s,” Jack answered. “And then on Air Congo to Frankfurt. My stepmother and sister, too, and probably my father went along.”

  Hanrahan nodded, as if he agreed with Portet’s thinking.

  The telephone rang again, and Hanrahan snatched it almost angrily from its cradle, muttering, “Now what?”

  “General Hanrahan,” he snarled into the instrument.

  His wife shook her head.

  His caller chuckled.

  “Should I call back later when you just haven’t rolled out of the wrong side of the bed?”

  He recognized the voice as that of Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell.

  “I was actually in a very good mood until I heard your voice.”

  “Honest to God, Red, I waited until I thought you would be up before I called.”

  “I’m touched by your concern,” Hanrahan said. “What’s on your mind, Craig?”

  “Where did you hide Portet? At Camp Mackall?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How’s his nose?”

  “It’s broken, but, aside from a bandage, there’s nothing that can be done to it or for it.”

  “How long will it take to get him to Bragg from Mackall?”

  “As a matter of fact, he’s sitting here in my kitchen. Marjorie’s here.”

  That caught the attention of Mrs. Hanrahan, Miss Bellmon, and Sergeant Portet, who looked at him.

  Hanrahan covered the mouthpiece with his hand.

  “Craig Lowell,” he explained.

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Lowell said, chuckling. “Listen, Red, Geoff Craig’s on his way there. He should be there within the hour.”

  “He’s here,” Hanrahan interrupted.

  “Pappy Hodges is with him,” Lowell said. “They’re in my Cessna.”

  “And?”

  “Geoff’s going to drop Pappy at Rucker, and then bring Portet here.”

  “Where’s here?”

  “Florida.”

  “Where in Florida? McDill?”

  Lowell was the army aviation officer on the staff of the commanding general, U.S. Army Strike Command at McDill Air Force Base, Florida. Strike was an in-place headquarters organization commanded by a four-star general. When needed, tactical forces of all the armed services were placed under its command for operations around the world. It had been the headquarters for Operation Dragon Rouge.

  “No. Actually, Miami. And actually a little south of Miami, near Key Largo. For a little well-deserved R and R.”

  “Craig, my orders are to keep him under a rock.”

  “Obviously, this has the blessing of His Holiness, Moses I,” Lowell said. “He’s here. You want me to put him on the horn, even if that means waking him from a sound sleep?”

  Colonel Sanford T. Felter, Counselor to the President of the United States, had a staff of two. They were a bishop and nun, which he had to admit sounded a little funny, although he deeply regretted telling Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell where he had got them. Lowell thought it was hilarious, and had taken to calling Felter “His Holiness, Moses I, the First Jewish Pope.”

  The bishop was really a bishop, not of the Roman Catholic Church, but of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. James L. Finton was a career soldier who had risen to chief warrant officer, W-4, in twenty-three years. He was a cryptographer by training. Felter had found him in the Army Security Agency and arranged for his transfer to the White House Signal Detachment. He was a devout Mormon, and had told Felter that the church had saved his sanity after his wife had died of cancer. He spent his free time in one Mormon church function or another in the District. He had come to Felter with a Top Secret clearance, and a number of endorsements to that. He had a cryptographic endorsement, a nuclear endorsement, and several others.

  The nun was really a nun, and of the Roman Catholic Church. Mary Margaret Dunne had been temporarily relieved of her vows to provide for her aged and seni
le father. When he died, she would return to the cloistered life as Sister Matthew. She spent her life in one of three places: with her father in a small apartment; on her knees in Saint Mary’s church; or in Felter’s small but ornate and high-ceilinged office in the old State, War and Navy Building.

  Mary Margaret Dunne had been taken on by the Kennedy White House following a quiet word from the bishop. She needed a job, and could type. She had gone to work for Felter the same morning President Kennedy had introduced Felter at a briefing as the only man in the White House who didn’t answer his phone.

  They were fiercely devoted to Felter, and, about as important, were both quietly convinced that the Communists were the Antichrist, and that what Felter was doing, what they were helping him do, was as much the Lord’s work as it was the government’s.

  “Sandy’s in Miami, with you?”

  “We’re at McDill. The R and R will be in Miami. Portet’s mother and father are there. My cousin Porter and his wife— Geoff’s parents—are there. Geoff’s wife and baby are there. Okay?”

  “How long will he be gone?”

  “Sandy hasn’t made up his mind where to assign him.”

  “I thought he was here on TDY only until Dragon Rouge was over.”

  “Sandy hasn’t made up his mind where to assign him,” Lowell repeated, and Hanrahan understood there was something going on that Lowell was unwilling to talk about on the telephone.

  “Okay.”

  “So he’ll probably be coming back there,” Lowell said. “In a week, ten days, something like that.”

  “Okay. I don’t know how he’s fixed for uniforms. Can he travel in fatigues?”

  “No problem. We can get him something to wear here.”

  “Okay. He’ll be ready when Craig gets here, which should be any minute. Anything else?”

  “Is Patricia handy?”

  “Hang on,” Hanrahan said, and handed the telephone to his wife, who beamed when he handed her the phone, and whose affection for Craig Lowell was evident in her voice and visible on her face.

  He had no idea what Lowell said to his wife, although it produced peals of laughter, and when he had finished speaking with her, she handed the telephone to Marjorie.

  He had no idea what Uncle Craig said to Marjorie, but at one point she blushed attractively and stole a look at Jack Portet, and when she was finished she handed the telephone to Jack.