“I know who you are, General,” the man said. “There’s a picture of you and Clarence on the mantel—when you handed him his flash when he came out of Camp Mackall.”
The flash is the embroidered insignia of the fully qualified Special Forces soldier, worn on the green beret.
“Yes, sir,” Hanrahan said. “Mr. Withers—”
“Why don’t we go in the house?” Withers said. “I suspect I’m going to need a drink.”
“I was in the Army,” Withers said. “I know a chaplain when I see one.”
He walked up the stairs to his porch, then opened the unlocked door and held it, motioning them all to enter. When they had, he followed them inside.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked. “Let’s have it.”
“About as bad as it gets, Mr. Withers,” Hanrahan said.
“I didn’t think they’d send a general out here to tell me Clarence broke his leg, or got shot,” Withers said.
He walked away from them, into the house, and returned almost immediately with a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon and a stack of short squat glasses.
“You hold the glasses, Sergeant,” he said to Tony Calzazzo, “and I’ll pour.”
“Yes, sir,” Tony said.
Very soon everyone had a glass of whiskey.
“If you’re a teetotaler, Chaplain,” Withers said. “You don’t have to drink that.”
“I’m not a teetotaler,” Chaplain Martin said simply.
“Clarence bought this out at Fort Bragg,” Withers said, tapping the Wild Turkey. “My daddy taught me to drink good whiskey, and I taught Clarence, and he always brought me a couple of bottles when he came home. This is the last one. I was going to save it until he came home. Now I don’t have to, right?”
“It looks that way, Mr. Withers,” Hanrahan said.
He drained his whiskey glass.
“Goddamn, I’m going to miss him,” Withers said. “He was a good boy, and his mama and I were so proud of him.”
“You had every right to be,” Hanrahan said. He raised his glass. “Gentlemen, I give you Sergeant First Class Clarence Withers.”
He drained his glass, and the others followed suit.
"Did you know him, General? I mean, really know him, aside from giving him his flash?”
"Yes, I did,” Hanrahan said.
“We were in Vietnam together, Mr. Withers,” Captain Zabrewski said.
“No, sir, I did not,” Chaplain Martin said.
“I saw him around,” Sergeant Tony Calzazzo said. “But we wasn’t buddies, or anything like that.”
“So what happened to my boy, General? And when? And where? Hell, all he would say was that he was going someplace in Africa.”
“Just before we came out, Mr. Withers, I had a telephone call telling me there had been word from Africa—”
“Where in Africa?” Withers interrupted.
“Mr. Withers, your son was on a classified assignment,” Hanrahan said.
Goddamn it, I’m not going to tell this man—he doesn’t have the need-to-know.
“He told me that,” Withers said.
“What he was doing was advising the Congolese,” Hanrahan said. “He was with a small detachment of Congolese soldiers, and they were apparently run over—”
“Apparently? Run over by who?”
“We lost radio contact with the detachment at 1530 Congo time—that would be ten-thirty this morning, here. There’s a five-hour difference. They anticipated an attack, and there apparently was one.”
“And no chance that he’s a prisoner?”
“The Simbas rarely take prisoners, Mr. Withers,” Hanrahan said. “I wouldn’t want to give you false hope.”
“The Simbas? That the bunch that was eating the white people in Stanleyville?”
“Yes,” Hanrahan said.
“You think they ate Clarence?”
“I think that’s very unlikely, Mr. Withers. We won’t know until we can get people on the ground where this happened. That won’t be until seven o’clock or so, tomorrow morning there. Two A.M. here.”
“How’d you get your information so quick?”
“We sent them there with the best communication equipment we have,” Hanrahan said.
“Satellite? You’re bouncing your communication off a satellite? ”
“Yes, sir. As a matter of fact, we are.”
“I think we should have some more details by three or four o’clock tomorrow morning,” Zabrewski said.
“Ain’t that a bitch?” Mr. Withers said. “Until I read in the papers what happened over there in the Congo, saw it on the TV, I thought savages eating people was something out of a comic book. Now I’m going to learn, bounced off a satellite, whether or not savages ate my son.”
“I don’t think we’ll learn that, Mr. Withers,” Hanrahan said.
“General, I don’t want to seem rude, but I’d rather you not be here when Clarence’s mama gets home. Not knowing is worse than knowing, where she’s concerned. I’ll try to break this to her gently. If you could