"You said something before, Pete, about what Castillo is 'really doing here'?" Prentiss asked.
"You really don't know?"
Prentiss shook his head.
"And the general doesn't know either? Or maybe heard something? Why the questions?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Prentiss said. "I heard he was getting Blue Flight transition into the King Air."
"Then I think we should leave it there," Kowalski said. "If you don't mind."
"If I tell you, and Miss Wilson agrees, that anything you tell us won't go any farther than this room…"
"I really would like an explanation of that," Beth said.
"Okay, with the understanding that I'll deny everything if anybody asks me," Kowalski said.
"Understood," Prentiss said.
"Agreed," Beth said.
"Well, the original idea, as I understand it, was to stash Charley where he should have been all along-flying in the left seat of a Huey in an aviation company. Christ, he'd just gotten out of flight school, and he didn't even go through the Huey training; they just gave him a check ride. In a company, he could build up some hours. But Naylor figured if he sent him to a regular company, the same people who'd put him in an Apache would put him back in one. So he sent him to McNab, who had this civil affairs outfit as a cover for what he was really doing in the desert."
"Which was?" Beth asked.
"Special Forces, honey," Kowalski said. "The guys with the Green Beanies."
"Oh," she said.
"But it didn't work out that way. McNab heard about the kid who'd flown the shot-up Apache back across the berm, went for a look, liked what he saw, and put him to work flying him around. I understand they got involved in a lot of interesting stuff. And then McNab found out that Charley speaks German and Russian. I mean really speaks it, like a native. And that was really useful to McNab.
"So the war's over. McNab gets his star…there were a lot people who didn't think that would ever happen-"
"How is it that he speaks German and Russian like a native?" Beth interrupted.
"His mother was German; he was raised there. I don't know where he got the Russian. And some other languages, too. Anyway, McNab is now a general. He's entitled to an aide, so he takes Charley to Bragg with him as his aide…"
Kowalski stopped and smiled and shook his head.
"Why are you smiling?" Beth asked.
"Charley thought he was really hot stuff. And why not? He wasn't out of West Point a year, and here he was an aviator with the DFC, two Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star, and the Combat Infantry Badge. And now a general's aide."
"I didn't know about the CIB and the Bronze Star," Prentiss said. "Where'd he get those?"
"I saw the Bronze Star citation," Kowalski said. "It says he 'distinguished himself while engaged in intensive combat action of a clandestine and covert nature.' I guess he got the CIB and the second Purple Heart from the same place."
"That's all it said?" Prentiss asked.
"God only knows what McNab did over there, all of it covert and clandestine. He came out of that war-and you know how long it lasted; it took me longer to walk out of Cambodia-with a Distinguished Service Medal, a Purple Heart, a star for his CIB, and the star that most people never thought he'd get.
"Anyway, when Charley got to Bragg, McNab quickly took the wind out of his sails."
"I'd like to know how he managed to do that," Beth said sweetly.
Kowalski gave her a look that was half curiosity and half frown, then went on, "When I heard Charley was at Bragg, I went to see him the first time. He wasn't in McNab's office; he was out in the boonies, at Camp Mackall, taking Green Beanie qualification training. Eating snakes and all that crap, you know? And before that, McNab had sent him to jump school. That'll take the wind out of anybody's sails."
"I thought he was General McNab's aide," Beth said.
"Oh, he was, but first he had to go to Benning and Mackall. Then, as an aide, McNab really ran his ass ragged. What he was doing, of course, was training him. But Charley didn't know that. He decided that God really didn't like him after all, that the fickle finger of fate had got him, that he was working for one mean sonofabitch.
"He told me that when his tour as an aide was up, it was sayonara, Special Forces, back to Aviation for him. McNab was of course one, two jumps ahead of him. I was up there to see Charley maybe two, three months ago on a, quote, Blue Flight cross-country exercise, end quote. McNab sent for me, told me the conversation was private, and asked me what I thought of the 160th."
"The Special Forces Aviation Regiment?" Beth asked.
Kowalski nodded.
"Special Operations Aviation Regiment. SOAR. I told him what I thought-which is that it's pretty good, and I would much rather be at Campbell flying with the Night Stalkers than teaching field-grade officers to fly here.
"He said he thought it would be just the place for Charley to go when his aide tour was up. I told him I didn't think that with as little time as Charley had-either total hours or in the Army-they'd take him. He said what he was thinking of doing was sending Charley over here for Blue Flight transition into the King Air-which he already knew how to fly-and what could be done while he was here to train him in something else, something that would appeal to the 160th?
"He said he knew two people who were going to have a quiet word in the ear of whoever selected people for the 160th saying that they'd flown with him in combat, and thought he could make it in the 160th. Then he pointed to me and him.
"And he said, 'If I hear you told him, or even if he finds out about this, I will shoot you in both knees with a.22 hollow-point.'" Kowalski laughed. "McNab really likes Charley. They're two of a kind."
"So what are you doing for him here?" Prentiss asked.
"If it's got wings or rotary blades, by the time I send him back to Bragg, he will be checked out in it as pilot-in-command," Kowalski said. "I've even checked him out in stuff the Aviation Board has for testing that the Army hasn't even bought yet."
"How do you get away with that?" Prentiss asked.
"I'm the vice president of the Instrument Examiner Board and the training scheduler for Blue Flight," Kowalski said. "Very few people ask me why I'm doing something. And a lot of people owe me favors. Like I figure I owe Charley several big ones."
Prentiss nodded
"Thanks, Pete," he said.
"This is the favor you wanted? Telling you about Charley?"
"Yeah. And now I need one more. You going home from here?"
"Yeah," Kowalski said.
"How about dropping Miss Wilson at Colonel Gremmier's quarters? I have the feeling she'd rather be with anyone but me right now."
Kowalski looked at the girl, then back at Prentiss.
"You going to explain that?" Kowalski said.
"You don't want to know, Pete."
"Yeah, sure. Gremmier's house is right on my way."
[-VI-] 2002 Red Cloud Road
Fort Rucker, Alabama 1955 6 February 1992 "These are really wonderful photos," Juan Fernando Castillo said. He glanced up from the thick photo album on the coffee table in the Wilsons' living room and met Brigadier General Harold F. Wilson's eyes.
"They mean a lot to me, Don Fernando," the general said.
The last snapshot that Don Fernando was looking at was a five-by-seven color photograph of Second Lieutenant Harold F. Wilson and WOJG Jorge A. Castillo standing by the nose of an HU-1D helicopter of the 322nd Attack Helicopter Company. Both were smiling broadly.
Don Fernando-no one had ever dared call him Don Juan, for the obvious reason-was a tall, heavyset man with a full head of dark hair. He wore a well-tailored nearly black double-breasted pin-striped suit. He looked very much like one of his grandsons, Fernando Manuel Lopez, who sat on one side of him on the Wilsons' couch, and not at all like his other grandson, Carlos Guillermo Castillo, who sat on the other side of him.