the airplane, shook his head in disgust, turned to the air commandos manning the machine gun, and signaled for them to point the machine gun in another direction.
Then he pointed at Jack and indicated that he wished for him to get out of the aircraft.
“I think he wants to talk to us,” Geoff said. “You better shut it down.”
“What the fuck are you guys up to?” the air commando lieutenant asked. “Didn’t you hear the tower deny you permission to land?”
It was not normally the way he would have questioned the crew of an aircraft that had violated a direct order not to land at the air commando base.
But this crew was something special. They were Green Berets in addition to being pilots, which made them almost as good as air commandos, and thus entitled to a little professional courtesy.
“No,” Geoff said, “what I heard him say was ‘you are number one to land, there are no other aircraft in the area.’ Isn’t that what you heard him say, Jack?”
“That’s what I heard him say,” Jack said.
“You know you need prior permission to land here,” the air commando said.
“We didn’t remember that until we were halfway down here,” Geoff said, “and the guy that sent us here apparently didn’t remember at all.”
“This is official? You’re not just fucking around?”
“It’s official,” Geoff said. “We’re going to pick up a guy and be out of here in five minutes.”
“What guy?”
“His name is Santiago,” Jack said. “De la Santiago.”
“That’s on the schedule for Saturday morning,” the air commando lieutenant said.
“The early bird gets the worm,” Geoff said. “You never heard that before?”
“Jesus!” the air commando said. He looked more closely at Jack. “Don’t I know you? You’ve been here before, right?” His memory filled in the blank. “With the B-26’s for the Congo, right?”
“Right,” Jack said.
Intending them for service in the rapidly expanding war in Vietnam, the Air Force had taken a number of World War II B-26 bombers from the Air Force “graveyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and had them rebuilt. One of the first things Colonel Felter had done when given responsibility for the Congo was to order a dozen of them diverted to the air commando base at Hurlburt Field. There their American insignia was removed, and replaced with that of the air force of the Republic of the Congo.
Since there were no B-26 pilots in the Congolese Air Force, which existed mostly on paper, and the President didn’t want the trouble he would get from the American people, and the Russians, if an American pilot was shot down, or crashed, non-American pilots, most of them formerly officers in the pre-Cuban Air Force, were hurriedly recruited to fly them to the Congo, and then into action against the Simbas.
“I figured your guy Santiago—he’s Cuban, right?—was involved in that.”
“You know him?”
“He walked into Base Ops about twenty minutes ago and said somebody was going to pick him up. I told him nothing was scheduled, and he should come back on Saturday. He just smiled at me, and went outside and sat down against the building.”
“He’s been flying B-26s in the Congo—” Jack said.
“While I sit on my ass here,” the air commando pilot interrupted, more than a little bitterly.
“—and now he’s back, and we were sent down to get him.”
“With a little luck, maybe you can get yourself sent to Vietnam, ” Geoff said.
“You realize the crack you guys put my ass in?” the air commando asked.
“Just let us pick up Santiago, and then forget we were here,” Geoff said.
“All that ‘you are denied permission to land’ conversation is on tape, how the hell can I forget it?” the air commando said. “Oh, hell, I’ll think of something.”
“Thank you,” Geoff said.
“If I went to Base Ops and brought your guy out here,” the air commando asked thoughtfully, “could you get someone to cancel the pickup scheduled for Saturday morning?”
“Consider it done,” Geoff said.
“Don’t go anywhere,” the air commando said.
He turned, walked to his jeep, got in, and motioned first for the driver to turn around and then for the other jeep to follow them.
“I think we ruined the day of the guys with the machine gun,” Geoff said. “They thought they were finally going to get a chance to shoot somebody.”
“Jacques, mon ami,” Enrico de la Santiago said when he got out of the air commando lieutenant’s jeep. “They are finally letting you fly airplanes?”
But then Latin emotion took over and he ran to him, grabbed his arms, kissed both