"That's right," Fernando said. "Generals have one solid stripe down the seam of their trousers, don't they? I'd forgotten that."

": and with that in mind, I was on the four-forty flight from Fayetteville to Columbus, Georgia, via Atlanta, where, starting the next morning, I was to begin the course of instruction leading to being rated as a parachutist.

" 'Don't pay any attention to their bullshit, Charley,' McNab said. 'They still think what they call "airborne"-vertical envelopment, which means a thousand hanging targets floating down onto a field-is modern warfare, and getting those wings is an end in itself. Just keep your mouth shut, get through the course, and then come back here and we'll get you some useful training.'

"So less than twenty-four hours after I arrived at Bragg, a decorated, wounded hero who had been on a couple of interesting operations, and was now to be the aide-de-camp to the deputy commander of the Special Warfare Center, I found myself lying in the mud at Benning with a barrel-chested hillbilly sergeant-his name was Staff Sergeant Dudley J. Johnson, Jr.; I'll never forget that-in a T-shirt with airborne printed on it standing over me screaming-I couldn't do forty push-ups-that he couldn't understand how a fucking flaming faggot-I loved that line-like me got into the Army, much less into jump school, and I better get my act in gear or he would send me back to whatever fairy-fucking dipshit outfit I came from so fast my asshole wouldn't catch up for six months."

"I know the type of gentle, nurturing, noncommissioned officer to which you refer," Fernando said, laughing. But then he had a thought and asked:

"Didn't he know you were a lieutenant? Had been in Desert Storm? Worse, that you were a West Pointer?"

"That I was a lieutenant? Yeah, sure. But rank doesn't count in jump school. And I was still a second lieutenant. He probably thought I'd just graduated from OCS, or, more than likely, from some ROTC college. He didn't think I'd been in Desert Storm, because I was there. McNab brought me home a couple of days after the armistice. And I'd already learned what wearing a West Point ring means:"

"What?"

"People watch you closely to see if you're really perfect and are absolutely delighted when you fuck up. So my ring went in my toilet kit beside my wings. I was pretty stupid, but I knew better than to show up at jump school wearing pilot's wings."

"But you muddled through?" Fernando asked.

"I could even do fifty push-ups by the time I finished."

"Was there a temptation to show up at the graduation ceremony wearing your wings, ring, and DFC?"

"Yeah. But I didn't. I'd worked for McNab long enough to know that when he said I was to keep my mouth shut he meant that I was to keep my mouth shut. And Staff Sergeant Dudley J. Johnson, Jr., was really just doing his job, trying to get people through jump school alive. I did see him, come to think of it, a year, eighteen months later. He had applied for Special Forces and reported in to the SWC to go through the Q Course. It was McNab's turn to give the welcoming speech, and there behind him, in Class A uniform, wearing a green beanie, with the rope of an aide hanging from his epaulets, was this familiar-looking lieutenant, an aviator."

Fernando chuckled.

"I did check to see how he was doing," Castillo said. "He didn't make it through Camp Mackall. They busted him out as 'unsuitable.' "

"What does that mean?"

"It can mean any number of things, but it's usually because the raters, which include other trainees, conclude that he would be either a pain in the ass in an A-Team or that he couldn't carry his share of the load. Special Forces requires more brains than brawn. You can't make it on the number of push-ups you can do."

"Then how the hell did you get through if it takes brains?"

Castillo looked at him thoughtfully a moment.

"Fernando, I'm not trying to paint myself as John Wayne, but when I decided to have this little tete-a-tete with you I decided I was going to tell you everything I could."

"Okay, Gringo. I understand."

"I had already passed the real test; I'd been on operations and carried my weight. The instructors at Mackall knew that, so they knew all they had to do with me was give me skills I didn't have and polish the very few I already did. Aside from having my ass run ragged, I actually liked Mackall. The instructors knew what they were teaching and they wanted you to learn. I can't remember one of them ever shouting at me, even when I did something really stupid."

"Interesting," Fernando said.

"My weekends were free," Castillo went on. "I spent them proofreading the How to Fight in the Desert literature General McNab was preparing. And staying current as an aviator."

"How did this affect your social life?"

"If you mean how did I find time to get laid, I didn't."

"Poor Gringo."

"Anyway, I finally finished the course and went to work as his aide."

"Passing hors d'oeuvres and shining shoes?"

"At oh-dark-hundred, his driver picked me up at my BOQ and drove me to Simmons Army Airfield, where, if I was lucky, the guy given the great privilege of being the general's copilot that day had already checked the weather and had the Huey ready to go. Nine times out of ten he had not, so I did the weather, got the Huey up and running, and flew it to Smoke Bomb Hill. Then I went inside, got the coffeepot running, and checked the overnight mail. By then his driver had picked him up and delivered him to headquarters. Then the three of us took a three- or four-mile run around scenic Smoke Bomb Hill to get the juices flowing. Following which, we returned to the office where I spent part of the day taking notes at meetings of one kind or another to which the general was part, and the rest of the day flying him wherever he thought it would be advantageous for military efficiency for him to drop in unannounced. Camp Mackall, the stockade:"

"The stockade?"

"Delta Force is in what had been a stockade. Makes sense. It was already surrounded by large fences and barbed wire."

"You got involved with Delta Force?"

"You've just heard all I can tell you about Delta Force," Castillo said, and then went on: ": and other places he felt he should keep an eye on. Sometimes, we even got to eat lunch. It was a blue-ribbon day if we happened to be flying near the Fort Bragg Rod and Gun Club, out in the boonies, and the general decided he would like one of their really first-class hamburgers."

"Speaking of food:"

"Getting hungry?"

"All I had was two bowls of pistachios," Fernando said.

"So am I, I just realized. There's a Morton's of Chicago across the street."

"A little fancy, no?"

"They have huge lobsters. And nice steaks. I suspect I will be able to get neither where I'm going."

"And where is that?"

"Luanda, Angola."

"And where is that?"

"On the west coast of Africa."

"Looking for this missing 727?"

"Yeah. Let me check on my flight and then we'll go. I'll even buy," Castillo said. He took a notebook from his jacket, found the number he wanted, and dialed it.

" Guten abend, heir is von und zu Gossinger, Karl, "he began and then inquired into the status of his business-class reservation, Dulles to Frankfurt am Main.

He hung up and looked at Fernando.

"I'm going on Lufthansa," he said. "It leaves at one-thirty in the morning."

"As Karl von und zu Gossinger?" Fernando asked.

"He's the Washington correspondent of the Fulda Tages Zeitung," Castillo said. "Accredited to the White House and everything. Charming fellow. People say he has quite a way with the ladies."

He reached into his jacket again and tossed a German passport to Fernando, who looked at it.

"That's who it says you are, Gringo. You going to tell me what that's all about?"