Clear and Present Danger

  At Fort Ord, he’d also learned the real art of soldiering, for infantry tactics are precisely that for the light-fighters-an art form. Assigned to Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment, whose somewhat ambitious motto was “Ninja! We Own the Night!” Chavez went into the field with his face coated in camouflage paint—in the 7th LID even the helicopter pilots wear camouflage paint—and learned his profession in full even while he taught his men. Most of all, he came to love the night. Chavez learned to move himself and his squad through cover as quietly as a whispering breeze. The objective of such missions was generally the same. Unable to match a heavy formation force-on-force, Chavez trained to do the close, nasty work that has always characterized light infantrymen: raids and ambushes, infiltration and intelligence gathering. Stealth was their means, and surprise was their tool, to appear where least expected, to strike with close-quarter ferocity, then to escape into the darkness before the other side could react. Such things had been tried on Americans once, and it was only fair that Americans should learn to return the favor. All in all, SSG Domingo Chavez was a man whom the Apaches or the Viet Cong would have recognized as one of their own—or one of their most dangerous enemies.

  “Hey, Ding!” the platoon sergeant called. “The ell-tee wants you.”

  It had been a long one at Hunter-Liggett, ending at the dawn now two hours old. The exercise had lasted nearly nine days, and even Chavez was feeling it. He wasn’t seventeen anymore, his legs were telling him with some amusement. At least it was his last such job with the Ninjas. He was rotating out, and his next assignment was to be a drill sergeant with the Army’s basic-training school at Fort Benning, Georgia. Chavez was immensely proud of that. The Army thought enough of him that he would now be an example to young recruits. The sergeant got to his feet, but before walking over to where the lieutenant was, he reached into his pocket and took out a throwing star. Ever since the colonel had taken to calling his men Ninjas, the nasty little steel projectiles had become de rigueur to the men—somewhat to the concern of the powers-that-were. But there was always a little slack cut for the good ones, and Chavez was one of these. He flipped the star with a deceptively powerful flick of the wrist and buried it an inch deep in a tree fifteen feet away. He collected it on the way to see the boss.

  “Yes, sir!” Chavez said, standing at attention.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Jackson said. He was sitting against a tree to take the strain off his blistered feet. A West Point graduate and only twenty-three, he was learning how hard it could be to keep up with the soldiers he was supposed to lead. “Got a call. They need you back at headquarters. Something to do with the paperwork on your transfer. You can go in on a resupply flight out of battalion trains. The chopper’ll be down there in an hour. Nice work last night, by the way. I’m going to be sorry to lose you, Ding.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Jackson wasn’t bad for a young officer, Chavez thought. Green, of course, but he tried pretty hard and learned fast. He saluted the younger man snappily.

  “You take care of yourself, Sergeant.” Jackson rose to return it properly.

  “We own the night, sir!” Chavez replied in the manner of the Ninjas, 3rd Battalion, 17th Infantry. Twenty-five minutes later he climbed aboard a Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk helicopter for the fifty-minute ride back to Ord. The battalion sergeant-major handed him a message as he got aboard. Chavez had an hour to get cleaned up before appearing at the divisional G-1 or personnel office. It took a long shower to erase the salt and “war paint,” but he managed to arrive early in his best set of BDU camouflage fatigues.

  “Hey, Ding,” said another staff sergeant, who was working in G-1 while his broken leg healed. “The man’s waiting for you in the conference room, end of the hall on the second floor.”

  “What’s it all about, Charlie?”

  “Damned if I know. Some colonel asked to see you is all.”

  “Damn—I need a haircut, too,” Chavez muttered as he trotted up the wooden stairs. His boots could have used a little more work also. Hell of a way to appear before some friggin’ colonel, but then Chavez was entitled to a little more warning than he’d been given. That was one of the nice things about the Army, the sergeant thought. The rules applied to everyone. He knocked on the proper door, too tired to be worried. He wouldn’t be around much longer, after all. His orders for Fort Benning were already cut, and he was wondering what the loose womenfolk in Georgia were like. He’d just broken up with a steady girlfriend. Maybe the more stable life-style that went with a drill sergeant would allow him to—

  “Come!” a voice boomed in reply to his knock.

  The colonel was sitting behind a cheap wooden desk. He was dressed in a black sweater over a lime-green shirt, and had a name tag that said SMITH. Ding came to attention.

  “Staff Sergeant Domingo Chavez reporting as ordered, sir.”

  “Okay, relax and sit down, Sergeant. I know you’ve been on the go for a while. There’s coffee in the corner if you want.”

  “No, thank you, sir.” Chavez sat down and almost relaxed a bit until he saw his personnel jacket lying on the desk. Colonel Smith picked it up and flipped it open. Having someone rip through your personnel file was usually worrisome, but the colonel looked up with a relaxed smile. Chavez noticed that Colonel Smith had no unit crest above his name tag, not even the hourglass-bayonet symbol of the 7th LID. Where did he come from? Who was this guy?

  “This looks pretty damned good, Sergeant. I’d say you’re a good bet for E-7 in two or three years. You’ve been down south, too, I see. Three times, is it?”

  “Yes, sir. We been to Honduras twice and Panama once.”

  “Did well all three times. It says here your Spanish is excellent.”

  “It’s what I was raised with, sir.” As his accent told everyone he met. He wanted to know what this was all about, but staff sergeants do not ask such questions of bird-colonels. He got his wish in any case.

  “Sergeant, we’re putting a special group together, and we want you to be part of it.”

  “Sir, I got new orders, and—”

  “I know that. We’re looking for people with a combination of good language skills and—hell, we’re looking for the best light-fighters we can find. Everything I see about you says you’re one of the best in the division.” There were other criteria that “Colonel Smith” did not go into. Chavez was unmarried. His parents were both dead. He had no close family members, or at least was not known to write or call anyone with great frequency. He didn’t fit the profile perfectly—there were some other things that they wished he had—but everything they saw looked good. “It’s a special job. It might be a little dangerous, but probably not. We’re not sure yet. It’ll last a couple of months, six at the most. At the end, you make E-7 and have your choice of assignments.”

  “What’s this special job all about, sir?” Chavez asked brightly. The chance of making E-7 a year or two early got his full and immediate attention.

  “That I can’t say, Sergeant. I don’t like recruiting people blind,” “Colonel Smith” lied, “but I have my orders, too. I can say that you’ll be sent somewhere east of here for intensive training. Maybe it’ll stop there, maybe not. If it does stop there, the deal holds on the promotion and the assignment. If it goes farther, you will probably be sent somewhere to exercise your special kind of skills. Okay, I can say that we’re talking some covert intelligence-gathering. We’re not sending you to Nicaragua or anything like that. You’re not being sent off to fight a secret war.” That statement was technically not a lie. “Smith” didn’t know exactly what the job was all about, and he wasn’t being encouraged to speculate. He’d been given the mission requirements, and his nearly completed job was to find people who could do it—whatever the hell it was.

  “Anyway, that’s all I can say. What we have discussed to this point does not leave the room—meaning that you do not discuss it with anybody without my authorization, understood?” the man said forceful
ly.

  “Understood, sir!”

  “Sergeant, we’ve invested a lot of time and money in you. It’s payback time. The country needs you. We need what you know. We need what you know how to do.”

  Put that way, Chavez knew he had little choice. “Smith” knew that, too. The young man waited about five seconds before answering, which was less than expected.

  “When do I leave, sir?”

  Smith was all business now. He pulled a large manila envelope from the desk’s center drawer. CHAVEZ was scrawled on it in Magic Marker. “Sergeant, I’ve taken the liberty of doing a few things for you. In here are your medical and finance records. I’ve already arranged to clear you through most of the post agencies. I’ve also scratched in a limited power of attorney form so that you can have somebody ship your personal effects—where ‘to’ shows on the form.”

  Chavez nodded, though his head swam slightly. Whoever this Colonel Smith was, he had some serious horsepower to run paperwork through the Army’s legendary bureaucracy so quickly. Clearing post ordinarily took five days of sitting and waiting. He took the envelope from the colonel’s hand.

  “Pack your gear and be back here at eighteen hundred. Don’t bother getting a haircut or anything. You’re going to let it grow for a while. I’ll handle things with the people downstairs. And remember: you do not discuss this with anybody. If someone asks, you got orders to report to Fort Benning a little early. That’s your story, and I expect you to stick to it.” “Colonel Smith” stood and extended his hand while he told another lie, mixed with some truth. “You did the right thing. I knew we could count on you, Chavez.”

  “We own the night, sir!”

  “Dismissed.”

  “Colonel Smith” replaced the personnel folder in his briefcase. That was that. Most of the men were already on their way to Colorado. Chavez was one of the last. “Smith” wondered how things would work out. His real name was Edgar Jeffries, and he had once been an Army officer, long since seconded to, then hired by, the Central Intelligence Agency. He found himself hoping that things would go as planned, but he’d been with the Agency too long to place much store in that train of thought. This wasn’t his first recruiting job. Not all of them had gone well, and fewer still had gone as planned. On the other hand, Chavez and all the rest had volunteered to join the country’s military service, had voluntarily re-enlisted, and had voluntarily decided to accept his invitation to do something new and different. The world was a dangerous place, and these forty men had made an informed decision to join one of its more dangerous professions. It was some consolation to him, and because Edgar Jeffries still had a conscience, he needed the consolation.

  “Good luck, Sarge,” he said quietly to himself.

  Chavez had a busy day. First changing into civilian clothes, he washed his field uniform and gear, then assembled all of the equipment which he’d be leaving behind. He had to clean the equipment also, because you were supposed to give it back better than you got it, as Sergeant First Class Mitchell expected. By the time the rest of the platoon arrived from Hunter-Liggett at 1300, his tasks were well underway. The activity was noted by the returning NCOs, and soon the platoon sergeant appeared.

  “Why you packed up, Ding?” Mitchell asked.

  “They need me at Benning early—that’s, uh, that’s why they flew me back this morning.”

  “The lieutenant know?”

  “They musta told him—well, they musta told the company clerk, right?” Chavez was a little embarrassed. Lying to his platoon sergeant bothered him. Bob Mitchell had been a friend and a teacher for his nearly four years at Fort Ord. But his orders came from a colonel.

  “Ding, one thing you still have to learn about is paperwork. Come on, son. The ell-tee’s in his office.”

  Lieutenant Timothy Washington Jackson, Infantry, hadn’t cleaned up yet, but was almost ready to leave for his place in the bachelor officers’ quarters, called the BOQ, or merely The Q. He looked up to see two of his senior NCOs.

  “Lieutenant, Chavez here’s got orders to skip off to Fort Benning PDQ. They’re picking him up this evening.”

  “So I hear. I just got a call from the battalion sergeant major. What the hell gives? We don’t do things this way,” Jackson growled. “How long?”

  “Eighteen hundred, sir.”

  “Super. I gotta go and get cleaned up before I see the S-3. Sergeant Mitchell, can you handle the equipment records?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back at seventeen hundred to finish things up. Chavez, don’t leave before I get back.”

  The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. Mitchell was willing to handle shipping—there wasn’t that much to ship—and squared the younger man away, with a few lessons tossed in on the better ways to expedite paperwork. Lieutenant Jackson was back on time, and brought both men into his office. It was quiet. Most of the platoon was already gone for a well-deserved night on the town.

  “Ding, I ain’t ready to lose you yet. We haven’t decided who takes the squad over. You were talking about Ozkanian, Sergeant Mitchell?”

  “That’s right, sir. What d’you think, Chavez?”

  “He’s about ready,” Ding judged.

  “Okay, we’ll give Corporal Ozkanian a shot at it. You’re lucky, Chavez,” Lieutenant Jackson said next. “I got caught up on all my paperwork right before we went into the field. You want me to go over your evaluation with you?”

  “Just the high spots’ll be fine, sir.” Chavez grinned. The lieutenant liked him, and Chavez knew it.

  “Okay, I say you’re damned good, which you are. Sorry to lose you this quick. You going to need a lift?” Jackson asked.

  “No problem, sir. I was planning to walk over.”

  “Crap. We all did enough walking last night. Load your stuff into my car.” The lieutenant tossed him the keys. “Anything else, Sergeant Mitchell?”

  “Nothin’ that can’t wait until Monday, sir. I figure we earned ourselves a nice restful weekend.”

  “As always, your judgment is impeccable. My brother’s in town, and I’m gone till 0600 Monday morning.”

  “Roger that. Have a good one, sir.”

  Chavez didn’t have much in the way of personal gear, and, unusually, didn’t even have a car. In fact he was saving his money to buy a Chevy Corvette, the car that had fascinated him since boyhood, and was within five thousand dollars of being able to pay cash for one. His baggage was already loaded into the back of Jackson’s Honda CVCC when the lieutenant emerged from the barracks. Chavez tossed him the keys back.

  “Where they picking you up?”

  “Division G-1 is what the man said, sir.”

  “Why there? Why not Martinez Hall?” Jackson asked as he started up. Martinez was the customary processing facility.

  “Lieutenant, I just go where they tell me.”

  Jackson laughed at that. “Don’t we all?”

  It only took a couple of minutes. Jackson dropped Chavez off with a handshake. There were five other soldiers there, the lieutenant noted briefly. All sergeants, which was something of a surprise. All looked Hispanic, too. He knew two of them. León was in Ben Tucker’s platoon, 4th of the 17th, and Muñoz was with divisional recon. Those were two good ones, too. Lieutenant Jackson shrugged it off as he drove away.

  3.

  The Panache

  Procedure

  WEGENER’S INSPECTION CAME before lunch instead of after. There wasn’t much to complain about. Chief Riley had been there first. Except for some paint cans and brushes that were actually in use—painting a ship is something that never begins or ends; it just is—there was no loose gear in view. The ship’s gun was properly trained in and secured, as were the anchor chains. Lifelines were taut, and hatches dogged down tight in anticipation of the evening storm. A few off-duty sailors lounged here and there, reading or sunning themselves. These leapt to their feet at Riley’s rumbling “Attention on deck!” One third-class was reading a Playboy. Wegener informed
him good-naturedly that he’d have to watch out for that on the next cruise, as three female crewmen were scheduled to join the ship in less than two weeks’ time, and it wouldn’t do to offend their sensibilities. That Panache had none aboard at the moment was a statistical anomaly, and the change didn’t trouble the captain greatly, though his senior chiefs were skeptical to say the least. There was also the problem of who got to use the plumbing when, since female crewmen had not been anticipated by the cutter’s designers. It was the first time today that Red Wegener had had something to smile about. The problems of taking women to sea ... and the smile died again as the images from the videotape came back to him. Those two women—no, a woman and a little girl—had gone to sea, too, hadn’t they ... ?

  It just wouldn’t go away.

  Wegener looked around and saw the questions forming on the faces of the men around him. The skipper was pissed about something. They didn’t know what it was, but knew that you don’t want to be around the captain when he was mad about something. Then they saw his face change. The captain had just asked himself a question, they thought.