As this was going on, the Special Forces firing detail returned the rifles of the Arlington firing detail to them, then marched to the waiting line of cars on the road lined up with the escort detail. They were joined by the casket detail, but without General McNab and Corporal Bradley, who was standing beside the general. Bradley then followed the general and Sergeant Kranz's sister as the general walked with her past the lined-up Green Berets to her limousine.
When he had seen Sergeant Kranz's sister into the limousine, General McNab stepped back and Corporal Lester Bradley stepped up.
"Ma'am," he said. "I shall treasure for the remainder of my life my privilege of having been with Sergeant Kranz when he fell. Please accept again my profound condolences on your loss."
When she looked at Corporal Bradley's young-boyish-face and saw the tears in his eyes, Sergeant Kranz's sister lost control for the first time.
"Thank you," she said, barely audibly, then turned her face away.
General McNab gently pushed Corporal Bradley out of the way and closed the limousine door. The car then slowly pulled away. At the grave, the officer in charge of the burial detail-who had waited to over-see the one soldier, "the Virgil," whose job it was to remain at the grave until it was closed-saw that the Green Berets had decided to participate in that, too. A Green Beret sergeant first class was standing at parade rest at the head of the casket.
The officer in charge looked at the Arlington Lady, whom he had seen at many another funeral, and the two of them wordlessly agreed to walk together back to the waiting cars.
Halfway there, the lieutenant said, "Well, that was interesting, wasn't it? Different?"
"Lieutenant," the Arlington Lady said, "my husband and I spent thirty-three years on active duty. One of the few things I know for sure about the Army is that Special Forces soldiers are indeed interesting and different." [TWO] Office of Organizational Analysis Department of Homeland Security Nebraska Avenue Complex Washington, D.C. 1745 6 August 2005 Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., his tunic unbuttoned and necktie pulled down, sat at the desk of the chief of the Office of Organizational Analysis with his leg resting on an open drawer of the ornate desk.
There was a glass dark with whiskey on the desk and a capped plastic vial of medicine issued by the pharmacy of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
He knew what the label on the medicine vial warned about taking alcohol after taking "one or two tablets as necessary for pain," but he picked up the vial and read it again anyway.
"When it doubt, do both," he said aloud.
He pried the lid open, shook out two white tablets, and put them in his mouth. Then he picked up the whiskey glass, raised it, and said, "Mud in your eye, Seymour, you little shit. Vaya con Dios, buddy."
Then he drank half of it and set the glass on the desk.
He looked at the whiskey glass for a moment, then picked it up again and drained it.
The instant he set the glass very carefully on the green blotter of the desk pad, a light flashed on one of the telephones on the desk. He looked at it, wondered if he could ignore it, then reached for it.
"Miller," he said.
"Major, there are two gentlemen to see you," Mr. Agnes Forbison said.
"This is a really bad time. Is this important?"
"I think you'd better see them."
"Give me ninety seconds," Miller said.
He put the telephone back in its cradle, then, wincing with the pain, lifted his leg off the open drawer and carefully lowered it onto the floor. He then put the whiskey glass and the bottle of Famous Grouse into the drawer, then closed it.
Again wincing with the pain it caused, he shifted his body so that he could get the vial of painkillers into his trousers pocket. Finally, he pulled up his necktie and buttoned his uniform tunic.
Almost immediately, there was a discreet knock at the office door.
"Come!"
Sergeant Major John K. Davidson and Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, marched into the office, stopped twelve inches from the desk, and saluted.
"Good evening, sir!" Davidson barked.
Miller-in perhaps a Pavlovian reflex-returned the salute.
"Jack, it's been a bad day and I'm not drunk enough to be amused. What's on your mind?"
"Sir, the sergeant major has come to enlist."
"What?"
"Sir, I have a permission to enlist note from my daddy," Davidson said.
He took a half step forward, laid a small sheet of paper on the desk, then stepped back and resumed the position of attention.
Miller picked up the piece of paper, saw it was general officer's notepaper, and read it.
6 August 2005 Chief Office of Organizational Analysis Washington I will defer to your judgment as to where SgtMaj Davidson will be of the greatest value to the service. McNab
Miller looked up at Davidson and saw that he and Bradley were still standing at attention.
"I told you, Jack," Miller said, "I am not in a mood to be amused."
Davidson didn't move.
"Stand at ease, goddamn it," Miller said.
Davidson relaxed.
"You want to enlist in what?" Miller asked.
"Oh, come on. I know what's going on here, Dick."
"What's going on here is classified Top Secret Presidential," Miller said.
"So Vic D'Allessando said."
"And the pride of the jarheads here? Has he also been running off at the mouth?"
"Only after Vic told him to fill me in on the details. Before that, Lester was like a clam."
"How did you get this out of General McNab?" Miller asked, waving the sheet of notepaper.
"I reminded him that Char-Colonel Castillo-was going to need a replacement for Kranz. And that we were going to have to find a better place to hide Lester; Mackall wasn't hacking that. The jarheads going through the Q course were already getting curious."
"That's all?"
"And that I'd been around the block with Charley a couple of times and knew when he had to have someone sit on him."
"That's all?" Miller asked again.
Miller happened to be glancing at Bradley and saw on his face that there was indeed something else.
"Well, I told McNab that I was getting so tired of Camp Mackall that I was giving serious thought to taking my retirement," Davidson admitted.
"You had the balls to threaten McNab?"
"That was more like a statement of fact, Dick," Davidson said.
Miller saw on Bradley's face that he was shocked to hear Sergeant Major Davidson address a major by his first name.
"What do you think Charley's going to say?" Davidson asked.
"Inasmuch as Colonel Castillo is unable to accept that there are times when he should indeed be restrained from an impulsive act and that he knows you are one of the very few people who have proved themselves willing and able to restrain him, the colonel's reaction to being informed that you want to join his merry little band is almost certainly going to be not only no but hell no!"
Davidson exhaled audibly.
"I could be useful, Dick, and you know it. Could you talk to him?"
"I could, but that would be what is known as pissing into the wind," Miller said, and then articulated what he had been thinking. "What we're going to do is present him with the fait accompli. When he gets to Buenos Aires, he's going to find you there. We are going to suggest, imply-anything but outright bold-faced lie-that this is another brainstorm of Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab."
"Thanks, Dick," Davidson said, simply. "He'll accept that. It won't be the first time the general has sent me to try to keep a tight rein on him."
"How do you think we should handle Corporal Big Mouth?" Miller asked, looking at Bradley.
"Hide him in plain sight," Davidson said. "At the embassy in Buenos Aires."
"One of the reasons Castillo brought him here was because he knew the gunnery sergeant of the guard detachment there was going to want to know what he's been up to and wasn't going to back off until Bradley told him."