The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“No, I don’t remember any discussion like that.”

Artigas stood up.

“We’d better be getting over to the British Hospital,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to keep Ordóñez waiting, would we? Since he’s being so helpful?”

[FIVE]

Camp Mackall, North Carolina

0930 6 August 2005

Sergeant Major John K. Davidson’s job description said he was the Operations Sergeant of the Special Forces training facility. He was, but he actually had two other functions, both unwritten and both more or less secret. It was not much of a secret that he was the judge of the noncommissioned officers going through the basic qualification course—the “Q course.” He was the man who, with the advice of others, decided which trainee was going to go on to further, specialized training and ultimately earn the right to wear the blaze of a fully qualified Special Forces soldier on his green beret and which trainee would go back to other duties in the Army.

Far more of a secret was that he was also the judge of the commissioned officers going through the Q course.

Jack Davidson had not wanted the job—for one thing, Mackall was in the boonies and a long drive from his quarters on the post, and, for another, he thought of himself as an urban special operator—as opposed to an out in the boonies eating monkeys and snakes and rolling around in the mud field special operator—and running Mackall meant spending most of his time in the boonies.

But two people for whom he had enormous respect—he had been around the block with both of them: Vic D’Allessando, now retired and running the Stockade, and Bruce J. “Scotty” McNab, whom Davidson had known as a major and who was now the XVIII Airborne Corps commander and a three-star general—had almost shamelessly appealed to his sense of duty.

“Jack, you know better than anybody else what it takes,” Scotty McNab had told him. “Somebody else is likely to pass some character who can’t hack it and people will get killed. You want that on your conscience?”

Sergeant Major Davidson was not surprised when he heard the peculiar fluckata-fluckata sound the rotor blades of MH-6H helicopters make as they came in for a landing. And he was reasonably sure that it was either D’Allessando or the general, who often dropped in unannounced once a week or so, and neither had been at Mackall recently.

But when he pushed himself out of his chair and walked outside the small, wood-frame operations building just as the Little Bird touched down, he was surprised to see that the chopper held both of them. That seldom happened.

He waited safely outside the rotor cone as first General McNab—a small, muscular ruddy-faced man sporting a flowing red mustache—and then Vic D’Allessando ducked under the blades.

He saluted crisply.

“Good morning, General,” he said, officially. “Welcome to Camp Mackall. May the sergeant major ask the general who the bald, fat old Guinea is?”

“I told you it was a bad idea to teach the bastard how to read,” D’Allessando said, first giving Davidson the finger with both hands and then wrapping his arms around him.

“How are you, Jack?” McNab asked.

“Can’t complain, sir. What brings you to the boonies?”

“A bit of news that’ll make you weep for the old Army,” McNab said. “Guess who’s now a lieutenant colonel?”

“Haven’t the foggiest.”

“Charley Castillo,” Vic D’Allessando said. “Make you feel old, Jack?”

“Yeah,” Davidson said, thoughtfully. “I remember Charley when he was a second john and driving the general’s chopper in Desert One. Lieutenant Colonel Castillo. I’ll be damned.” He paused, thought about that, then added, “I think he’ll be a good one.”

“And I want to see Corporal Lester Bradley of the Marines,” McNab said.

“You heard about that, did you, General?” Davidson said.

“Heard about what?”

“The goddamned Marines pulling our chain.”

“How pulling our chain?”

“I’m responsible,” Davidson said.

“What are you talking about?”