“Three master parachutists gave him a thirty-six-hour course that taught him more than he would have learned in four weeks at Benning. And now he’s getting the same sort of training by one of my A Teams at Mackall. He’ll come out of Mackall trained, and qualified to wear a beret. When he talks to people, they’ll listen to him. But he’s not going anywhere near where this hypothetical operation we’re talking about is going down. He probably won’t even leave the States.”
When Major General Robert F. Bellmon walked into his living room. Marjorie was sitting before the television, but not seeing anything.
“How goes it, honey?” he asked.
Until today, there had been very little about Dragon Rouge in the newspapers or on TV, except that an action to rescue the Europeans was under way. No journalists had been permitted to accompany the parachutists, and Joseph Kasavubu, the President of the Congo, had imposed an embargo on any news of the operation that had been lifted only twelve hours before.
“Did you find out anything for me?” Marjorie asked.
“No. I told you I have no need-to-know, and I know better than to ask. If something had happened to Jack, we would have heard. Sandy would have got word to us.”
“No news is good news, right?” she said sarcastically. He chose to let it pass.
“If I had to make a guess,” he said, “Jack is probably on Ascension Island. That’s as far as they would let him go. And the C-130s probably didn’t return that way; their mission was to get the people rescued back here as quickly as they could. So he’s out there waiting for transportation.”
He handed her The New York Times and the Atlanta Constitution.
“I asked somebody to get these for me,” he said. “For you. They’ll have more in them that that goddamned Dothan Eagle.”
The same picture was on the front page of both newspapers, over the caption “Bloody-Bandaged, Battle-Weary, Belgian Paratrooper Tenderly Comforts Rescued Girl In Stanleyville.”
Marjorie glanced at the picture and started reading the story.
“They killed that doctor,” General Bellmon said.
“What?” Marjorie asked, and looked up at him.
“I said they killed that doctor, the missionary? Carlson? It’s in there. Just shot him down in cold blood, as the parachutists were taking the town.”
“Oh, my God!” Marjorie wailed.
General Bellmon looked at his daughter in surprise.
“What?”
“Look at that!” she said, thrusting the Constitution at him.
“What am I looking at?”
“That’s no Belgian paratrooper,” Marjorie said, tears running down her face. “That’s my Jack! I can tell by his eyes! And that little girl is his sister. I’ve seen pictures of her. Oh, my God, he’s been shot in the face!”
General Bellmon examined the photograph carefully.
“I’ll be damned,” he said. “I think that’s Jack, all right.” Then he raised his voice. “Barbara! Come take a look at this!”
Second Lieutenant Robert F. Bellmon looked at the photograph after his mother, then informed his sister that he had been shown a film at West Point demonstrating what miracles of reconstructive surgery were now possible.
Marjorie, her mother saw, was about to respond when the telephone rang.
“Bobby, answer that,” Barbara Bellmon ordered, very quickly.
“Your brother gets his tact from his father,” Barbara said to Marjorie. “But Bobby’s right, honey, they can work miracles.”
“Hey, Marj!” Second Lieutenant Bellmon called.
“Now what?” Marjorie snapped.
“We got a collect call from Sergeant Jack Portet at Fort Bragg. You want to pay for it?”
[ TWO ]
Quarters #9
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
0215 2 December 1964
In a failed attempt to get out of bed to answer the goddamned doorbell without waking his wife, Brigadier General Paul Hanrahan painfully stubbed his toe on the leg of the bed.
He swore.
“My God, what are you doing?” Patricia inquired, sitting up in bed and turning on a light.
“I was trying not to wake you. There’s somebody at the door.”
“Well, get your bathrobe on. Don’t go down there in your underwear. ”
She turned the light off and dropped back into the bed.
General Hanrahan found his bathrobe in the dark, left the bedroom, turned on the hall lights, and made his way gingerly down the stairs.
This better be important, he vowed, or I will burn whoever is at the goddamned door at this goddamned hour a new anal orifice.
He snapped on the porch light and pushed the curtain away from the small triangular window in the center of the door.
“Shit,” he said softly, and unlocked and opened the door.
“What can I do for you, Marjorie?” he asked, as kindly as he could manage