"The exec-the old man had taken a couple of hits and was in pretty bad shape-ran up to this Walker character and said, 'Not to worry, we're Green Beanies and we'll get you out of here. We can probably make it back in a week or ten days.'

"Walker looked at our exec-he was a lieutenant; looked a lot like this one-and decided while he might be a nice guy and would try real hard, he was no John Wayne.

" 'Lieutenant,' he says, 'let me tell you something about the structure of the U.S. Army. The Signal Corps is both a technical service and a combat arm. As the senior combat arm officer present, I hereby assume command.'

"Then he looked around at the rest of us. Anyone got any problems with that?"

"He was a great big, mean-looking sonofabitch with scars on his face he didn't get shaving. There was a couple of grenades in his pockets, he had a. 45 shoved into his waist, and he was carrying a shotgun-a Remington Model 1100 with the stock cut off at the pistol grip. Nobody had any problems.

" 'Okay,' he goes on, 'first we torch my machine and then we get the hell out of here. Anybody got a thermite grenade?'

"It took us fifteen days to walk out of there-we couldn't make very good time bringing Captain Haye along with us-longer than your, quote, war, unquote, in Iraq-and when the colonel heard what Walker had done he pinned the CIB on him. I heard he was the only Signal Corps aviator with the CIB."

"I've heard that story before," General McNab said as the waitress approached carrying a tray with three bottles of Schlitz and three frosted glass mugs. "Welcome home, Mr. Casey."

The men watched quietly as the waitress distributed the drinks before each, then said, "I'll be back shortly for your order," and turned and left.

"Yeah," Casey said when she was gone. "I never volunteered for Special Forces, General. I mean, yeah, I signed the papers, but the guy who recruited me was a lying sonofabitch, but I was eighteen years old and too dumb to know it.

"I was a ham-a radio amateur-when I was a kid, and, before I got drafted, I took the exam and got an FCC first-class radio telephone license. They sent me right from basic training to Fort Monmouth and put me to work as an instructor. Everybody but me was a sergeant, so I spent more time on KP than instructing.

"So this guy shows up and says if I volunteer for Special Forces, where they really need radio guys, I get to be a sergeant. So I signed up.

"What that bastard didn't tell me was that I got to be a sergeant after I got through jump school at Benning and the Q Course at Mackall."

"Does that sound familiar, Lieutenant Castillo?" General McNab asked, and then explained, "Lieutenant Castillo is himself a very recent graduate of the parachute school at Fort Benning and the Q Course."

Casey looked at Castillo but didn't respond to McNab's statement.

"So I finished the Q Course," he went on, "and they made me a buck sergeant, gave me a five-day leave and shipped my just-turned-nineteen-year-old ass to 'Nam, which turned out to be one of the less pleasant experiences of my life. I did all of my time in 'Nam on an A-Team, mostly in Laos.

"But I managed not to get blown away and they sent me home. A longhaired sonofabitch and his girlfriend-who wasn't wearing a bra; I still remember her tits-spit on me in the airport and called me a 'baby killer.'

"I got the same sort of shit in the Atlanta airport; this time, the spitter looked like my grandmother. And then I got here and went through separation processing. I figured it was good-bye, fuck you, and don't let the doorknob hit you on the ass on your way out. There was a final ceremony. The only reason I went was because I figured the bastards were entirely capable of court-martialing me for AWOL.

"So this sergeant major lines us all up, calls us to attention, and out marches this feisty little Green Beanie light colonel.

" 'Take your handkerchiefs out, girls,' he said. He meant it. So in a minute or so we're all standing there holding our handkerchiefs. 'All right, girls,' this bastard said. 'Blow your noses.'

"We wondered what the fuck was going on, but he was the sort of officer you did what he said so we all blew our noses.

" 'Okay,' he said. 'Put them away. Crying time is over. I know you all feel you've been crapped on by everybody from God on down in the chain of command. But the truth is, you've been given a gift. For one thing, you're part of a brotherhood of warriors. You'll never lose that. And you better understand that what you've been through has turned you into something special. You can do anything, anything you put your mind to doing. You're ten steps ahead of everybody else. You can be anyone you want to be. I don't feel sorry for you. I'm proud to have served with you. I salute you.'

"And he saluted, said, 'Dismiss the formation, Sergeant Major,' and marched off."

Casey and McNab locked eyes. There was no question in Castillo's mind that General McNab had been that lieutenant colonel.

"So I went back to Boston and tried to drink all the beer in the VFW post," Casey went on, "and then my father said I had to start thinking of my future and that maybe I should take advantage of my veteran's preference and get on with the city as a fireman, or a cop, or maybe at the post office.

"I didn't want to deliver the mail or be a cop or a fireman and I began to wonder how much of that light colonel's spiel was the real thing and how much was bullshit. Maybe I could do what I wanted to do.

"It took me a couple of days to get my shit together, but one day I went out to Cambridge, to MIT, asked to see a professor of electrical engineering and told him I had flunked out of high school but had learned in 'Nam that I knew more, understood more, about signal radiation than most people and that I wanted to learn more. There aren't very many poor Irish kids with lousy high school records in MIT, but that fall I was one of them. The first year, I went to MIT in the daytime and to adult education at night and got a high school diploma.

"I graduated with a B.S.-summa cum laude-two years after that and got my master's and Ph. D. in three more years. I was still at MIT when I started up AFC."

"I gave that same thanks-and-so-long talk fifty, a hundred times," McNab said.

"But you meant it, right?"

McNab nodded.

"So, at the risk of repeating myself, welcome home, Sergeant Casey," McNab said. He raised one of the beer bottles in salute.

"Thank you," Casey said, raising a bottle to meet McNab's and, now following suit, Castillo's.

"So what can we do for you?" McNab asked.

"It's payback time," Casey said.

"Excuse me?"

"Me to you," Casey said. "Unless I'm very wrong-which doesn't happen often-your communications gear is five, ten years behind state of the art."

McNab took a moment before replying.

"You've got equipment you think the Army should buy, is that it?"

"I've already got some equipment I think-I know-Special Forces should have," Casey said. "But I have no intention of getting involved with the Army procurement system or Fort Monmouth."

"I'm not sure I follow you," McNab said.

"No charge. I'll show you what's available. Take what you want. I'll charge it off to research and development," Casey said. "And, down the road, you give me your wish list and I'll see if AFC can make it work."

"You're talking about a lot of equipment," McNab said. "You must know that."

"I know. I'm a rich-very fucking rich-Irishman, which I know I wouldn't be if I hadn't taken the chance that you meant your speech and got my shit together and went out to MIT."

"Jesus Christ!" McNab said.

"No strings, General," Casey said. "When I heard what you guys were doing over there in Iraq, I decided it was high time I got back together with my brothers. So here I am."