By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Do I get kissed again?”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Okay. I had to give it a shot,” Charley said. “I won’t bother you again.”

  He got out of the Crown Victoria and was halfway to the Lear when she called, “Charley!”

  He turned.

  “You forgot your phone.”

  “Shit,” he said and trotted toward the car.

  I must have missed my goddamned pocket when I put it away.

  He patted his shirt pocket. The phone was in it.

  Betty hadn’t gotten out of the Crown Victoria but she had pushed the passenger door open.

  He slid onto the seat.

  She touched his face with her hand and then kissed him as she had the first time. Not passionately, not coldly: tenderly.

  Then she put her hand on his chest and pushed.

  “Now get on the goddamned airplane,” she said, “and, for Christ’s sake, be careful!”

  Miller was standing by the door of the Lear.

  “Can I go back to the car now? Your private tête-à-tête with the lady over?”

  “Not one more fucking word, Dick!” Castillo said and then went up the steps of the Lear.

  XVI

  [ONE]

  Aboard Lear 45X N5075L Over Cambridge, Maryland 0420 10 June 2005

  “Washington Center,” Castillo said into his microphone, the glow from the instrument panel gently lighting him in the early morning light, “Lear Five-Zero-Seven-Five at flight level three-one-zero, on a heading two-zero-nine true, airspeed five hundred.”

  “Roger, Lear Seven-Five.”

  “Request approach and landing Pope Air Force Base. We have approach and landing clearance.”

  “Maintain present heading and flight level. Washington Center turns Lear Seven-Five over to Atlanta Center at this time.”

  “Roger, Washington. Thank you—

  “Atlanta Center. Lear Five-Zero-Seven-Five at flight level three-one-zero, on a heading of two-zero-nine true, airspeed five hundred. Estimate Pope in three-zero minutes. Pope special approach and landing permission, USAF six, this date. Request approach and landing.”

  “Lear Seven-Five, Atlanta Center. I don’t have you on radar. Is your transponder operating?”

  “Oh, fuck!” Castillo said, and turned to Fernando. “Where do they hide the transponder indicator on this thing?”

  Fernando pointed to the lower right of Castillo’s control panel as he pressed his microphone button.

  “Atlanta Center, Lear Seven-Five, our transponder is operating. ”

  “Oh, there you are. Okay. Atlanta Center clears Lear Five-Zero-Seven-Five to descend, and maintain 10,000 feet, and contact Pope approach control on 123.5.”

  “Lear Seven-Five descending from flight level three-one-zero to 10,000 feet. Thank you.”

  Castillo changed the radio frequency to 123.5, depressed the PUSH TO TALK key.

  “Pope approach control, Lear Five-Zero-Seven-Five.”

  “Seven-Five, Pope.”

  “Please contact Captain Brewster at Seventeenth Airborne Corps, advise him of our ETA, and inform him we will require ground transportation.”

  “Sure thing, Seven-Five.”

  “Thank you, Pope.”

  “So tell me about you and the lady cop, Gringo,” Fernando said. “Very nice!”

  There was no response.

  “Hey, Gringo, I thought you were going to tell me everything. ”

  He looked over at Castillo. In the glow of the panel lights, he could see Castillo’s head was slumped forward. Charley was sound asleep.

  Fernando reached toward him to shake his shoulder, but changed his mind.

  [TWO]

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina 0455 10 June 2005

  Fernando Lopez reached over in the cockpit and pushed Charley’s shoulder.

  “Hey, Sleeping Beauty! Wake up!”

  Castillo almost snapped his head back, then looked out the windshield. They were moving down a taxiway, past a long line of Air Force C-130s.

  “We’re down,” Castillo said, sounding surprised.

  “With no help from you.”

  “Sorry, Fernando.”

  “Come on, Gringo, when was the last time you had any sleep?”

  “I dunno,” Castillo said after a moment. Then, “Where we going?”

  “Ground control said take this until a FOLLOW ME meets us,” Fernando said.

  Castillo looked out the window again.

  There was no FOLLOW ME vehicle in sight, but there was a ground handler waving his wands in the “keep coming” signal. As Castillo watched, the ground handler—now walking backward toward the opening doors of a hangar—made a “turn right” signal with his wands. When Fernando turned the Lear toward the hangar, he immediately got the “stop” and “shut down” signals.

  “This is probably where Delta keeps its 727,” Castillo said.

  Confirmation of that came almost immediately. A tug backed out of the hangar. Two soldiers, wearing green berets and slinging their sidearms in shoulder holsters, hooked up the Lear to the tug, which then pulled it into the hangar. The doors immediately began to close.

  Castillo saw Captain Harry Brewster and Vic D’Alessandro standing by the door of an interior office in the hangar.

  “I’m impressed with your airplane, Charley,” D’Alessandro said, greeting him with a handshake and a pat on the shoulder. “Where the hell did you get it?”

  “Alamo Rent-A-Plane,” Castillo responded. “Why are we in the hangar?”

  “We got an en route call from General McNab, Charley—he’s somewhere over the Atlantic, about three hours out—saying he wants to see you ASAP when he gets here. I figured it would be quicker here than to go to the stockade. The Globemaster will come here as soon as it lands to off-load the backup guys.”

  "He say why?”

  D’Alessandro shook his head.

  Fernando and Sergeant Sherman got out of the Lear and walked up to them.

  “This is my cousin, Fernando Lopez,” Castillo said.

  “He’s driving the airplane?” D’Alessandro asked.

  “It’s his airplane.”

  “How much did you have to tell him?”

  “Just about everything.”

  “Pity,” D’Alessandro said, straight-faced. “Now I’ll have to kill him.”

  Then he smiled and put out his hand.

  “Charley and I go back a long way,” D’Alessandro said.

  “I know,” Fernando said. “He told me if you even looked as if you might give me trouble, I was to shoot you—twice— in the nuts.”

  D’Alessandro smiled, broadly.

  “I like him, Charley,” he said. “But I’ll probably kill him anyway.”

  “You have anything else for me, Vic?” Castillo asked.

  D’Alessandro shook his head. Captain Brewster said, “No, sir.”

  “I need some sack time,” Castillo said. “I passed out in the airplane. And I have to change out of the uniform. Any problem taking Fernando to the VIP quarters?”

  “No, sir,” Brewster said.

  “You live on the post, Sergeant Sherman?” Castillo asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t see any problem with you going home for a couple of hours. Give me your quarters number, and be prepared to be back here on thirty minutes’ notice. Leave the radio on the airplane.”

  “Sir, if it’s all right with you—you know how the wives are—I’d rather go out to the stockade with Mr. D’Alessandro. ”

  “Your call, Sergeant,” Castillo said.

  “Okay,” D’Alessandro said, “Brewster will take you to your quarters. I’ll take Sherman to the stockade. And when I get a good—say, forty-five-minute—ETA on McNab, I’ll call Brewster and he’ll bring you out here. Okay with everybody? ”

  Everybody nodded. Captain Brewster and Sergeant Sherman said, “Yes, sir.”

  In Brewster’s van, on the way to the VIP quarters, Fernando
said, “That was sad, what the sergeant said.”

  “What?” Charley asked.

  “He said he didn’t want to go home because of his wife,” Fernando said. “He’s going off, God knows where, on something like this and he’s having a scrap with his wife.”

  “That’s not what he said, Fernando,” Castillo explained. “What happened was that he went home earlier—when D’Alessandro picked him as one of the communicators. He told his wife he was going operational. She knew what that meant. He’s going somewhere to do something he can’t tell her about. He’s Delta Force, so she knows that means he’s going someplace probably unpleasant and he doesn’t know when—or if—he’ll be coming back. Special ops wives learn to deal with that. It’s not easy, but they deal with it. He didn’t want to go home, wake her up, get her all excited that he was back, and then have to put her—and himself—through the same thing again a couple of hours later.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Fernando said, softly.

  “I don’t remember the last time I had something to eat,” Castillo said.

  “Sir,” Brewster replied, “there’s probably ham and Swiss cheese in the fridge in your quarters. And bread. But I don’t know where else you’ll be able to find something to eat tonight. Unless you want to go home with me.”

  “Thanks but no thanks. What I was thinking was breakfast. Can you get that sergeant to come by, say, at quarter to seven, with stuff to make breakfast? I’d go find a mess hall but I’ll be in civvies, and we’ve got Fernando.”

  “Done. He’ll be there.”

  When they went into the VIP quarters bedroom, Charley went to his luggage, took out clean linen, a tweed jacket, light brown trousers, a knit shirt, and loafers and laid everything carefully on the floor next to one of the beds.

  “What the hell are you doing, Gringo?” Fernando asked.

  “I would have liked to use the other bed for my nice clothes, but I took pity on a homeless wetback and told him he could use it. I don’t want to waste any time when we get the call in the morning.”

  “It’s already morning,” Fernando said.

  “With all possible tenderness and affection, Fernando, go fuck yourself. I can tell the big hand from the little hand.”

  Fernando chuckled, smiled, and went to his suitcase and started to lay out clean clothes on the floor next to his bed.

  Charley took off his uniform and, trying to ignore the body odor that the miracle fabric now gave off, folded it and put it in his luggage. His feet and legs felt strangely light when he walked into the kitchen without his jump boots.

  He made ham and Swiss cheese sandwiches. There was neither butter for the bread nor mustard for the ham and cheese. He carried one to Fernando in the bedroom. Fernando wolfed it down, commented, “That’s a really lousy sandwich,” and then asked if there was any more.

  Charley made two more sandwiches and gave one to Fernando. As he ate the other, he stripped and put his T-shirt and shorts in one of the suitcases. He took his toilet kit into the bathroom, showered, shaved, and then crawled naked into bed.

  He saw that Fernando was already in the other bed, lying on his side and probably asleep.

  Charley turned off the lamp on the bedside table, rolled onto his side, and went to sleep remembering the touch of Betty’s hand on his face and the soft warmth of her lips.

  [THREE]

  Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina 0735 10 June 2005

  Major General H. V. Gonzalez was at the wheel of the Dodge Caravan outside the VIP guest quarters when Charley Castillo and Fernando Lopez walked out of the building. Captain Brewster had called ten minutes before—as Charley and Fernando were finishing their breakfast—to tell Castillo he had a firm 0745 ETA on General McNab’s C-17 III Globemaster.

  “Good morning, General,” Charley said after he had loaded their luggage and gotten inside. “This is my cousin, Fernando Lopez.”

  Gonzalez put his hand over the back of the front seat and said, “Bienvenida a Fort Bragg, Señor Lopez.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Fernando replied, in Spanish.

  “I assume, Castillo,” General Gonzalez said, switching to English, “that you have considered the question of giving Mr. Lopez access to classified material.”

  Well, fuck you, General!

  “I have the authority, General,” Castillo said, coldly, “to tell my cousin, or anyone else, what I think they have to know about this situation.”

  He spoke not only in Spanish but in the Texican patois peculiar to the San Antonio area.

  Fernando picked up on his tone of voice, gave Charley a surprised look, and said to Gonzalez, in Spanish, “I don’t know if this is pertinent or not, sir, but I’m a captain in the reserve and hold a top secret clearance.”

  Gonzalez grunted but did not reply.

  When they got to the hangar at the airfield, Vic D’Alessandro was there, and so was another general officer, a major general, and his aide-de-camp, a captain. Both wore desert pattern BDUs and green berets.

  “You’re Castillo, I presume?” the two-star said, offering his hand to Fernando. “I’m General Chancey. I command the Special Warfare Center.”

  “No, sir,” Fernando said and pointed at Charley. “He is.”

  “Sorry,” General Chancey said, now offering his hand to Castillo.

  “That’s Fernando Lopez, General,” Castillo said. “He’s working with me on this.”

  General Chancey nodded and came up with a very faint smile.

  Not another word was exchanged until D’Alessandro, after answering a wall-mounted telephone, announced, “The Globemaster’s on the ground.”

  As Castillo watched from inside the hangar, the huge C-17 rolled slowly down the taxiway. The driver of the tug sitting just inside the hangar door started his engine.

  The ground handler on the taxiway waved his wands for the aircraft to stop and cut its engines. The airplane stopped, but the two engines the pilot had not turned off continued to run. A door in the side of the fuselage opened and two men got out.

  One was Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, wearing a desert camouflage battle dress uniform—and a green beret, Castillo noticed. The second man was wearing an Air Force flight suit. He went to the ground handler with the wands and spoke briefly to him. The man with the wands tucked them under his arm and gestured to the driver of the tug, who revved his engine and drove out of the hangar.

  When the tug reached the ground handler, the ground handler climbed onto the tug, sat down on the back of it— facing the Globemaster—took out his wands, and made the prescribed “come ahead” gesture with them. The tug started to move down the taxiway, with the enormous Globemaster following it.

  The Air Force officer trotted after General McNab and caught up with him just as he reached the hangar.

  Castillo saluted. McNab returned it.

  “Forgive me for mentioning this,” McNab said, “but you’re not supposed to do that, you know. I’ve just finished telling Colonel Torine how honored we are to have such a high-ranking civilian, the personal representative of the president, here to guide us in the accomplishment of our assigned tasks.”

  Castillo felt like a fool for saluting—it had been a Pavlovian reaction—but, on the other hand, sensed there was something in McNab’s tone of voice that gave meaning —other than sarcasm—to what he’d said.

  “Welcome home, sir,” Castillo said.

  “Goddamn, two senior civilians here to meet us,” McNab said, spotting Vic D’Alessandro. “I didn’t know you got out of bed this early these days, Mister D’Alessandro.”

  “Good morning, General.”

  “You got a secure place for us, Vic?” McNab asked.

  D’Alessandro pointed to the door of the hangar’s interior office.

  “Last swept half an hour ago, General.”

  “Okay, let’s go swap war stories,” McNab said. “D’ALESSANDRO, Torine, the generals, and, of course, Mr. Castillo.”

  Fernando looked at Charley, wordlessly.<
br />
  Fernando gets left out here with the aides? No fucking way!

  “Unless there’s some reason he shouldn’t, I’d like Mr. Lopez with me,” Charley said.

  “Yes, sir, of course,” McNab said, putting out his hand. “My name is McNab, Mr. Lopez.”

  “Yes, sir”? What the hell is that all about?

  “How do you do, sir?” Fernando said.

  “I may have to kill him, General,” D’Alessandro said as they walked across the hangar. “Charley’s told him everything. ”

  “Hold off on that until we don’t need him anymore,” McNab said.

  The Air Force officer—the leather patch on his flight suit was silver-stamped with command pilot wings and the legend COL J.D. TORINE, USAF—smiled and shook his head.

  When they were inside the office, McNab sat down at a desk as D’Alessandro closed the door.

  “For the benefit of Mr. Castillo and Mr. Lopez,” McNab began, “Colonel Torine commands the Seventeenth Airlift Squadron at Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina. Before the Air Force—scraping the bottom of the barrel—promoted him, he was in charge of our C-22 here. When General Naylor laid this requirement on the 117th, Torine couldn’t find enough sober Air Force types to drive the C-17 and had to do it himself.”

  Torine put out his hand to Castillo. “Were you really the worst aide-de-camp in the Army?” he said with a smile.

  “If General McNab said so, it must be true, sir,” Castillo said.

  Torine and Fernando shook hands.

  “I like your airplane, Mr. Lopez,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Fernando said.

  “If you would, Mr. Castillo,” McNab said, “fill us in. General Naylor being General Naylor, we’re all still pretty much in the dark.”

  What’s with the “Mr. Castillo”? Everybody knows I’m a major.

  “The airplane you were looking for in Abéché, sir, was— we’re pretty sure—stolen by a Somalian terrorist group called the ‘Holy Legion of Muhammad’ . . .”

  “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” McNab interjected. He looked at the others, all of whom shook their heads.