By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

The major looked at him but didn’t respond.

“What I’d like to know is how a civilian aircraft landed here without special permission and why I wasn’t told it had,” he said to the desk sergeant.

“The pilot filed his flight plan as Secret Service One,” Charley offered. “That gets him clearance to land just about any place he wants to.”

“Are you in the Secret Service?” the major asked.

Actually, I’m a supervisory agent of the Secret Service. Wanna see my badge?

Charley chuckled. It was almost a giggle.

“I say something funny?”

“No. All I am, Major, is another major.”

Major General H. V. Gonzalez, who was about five-foot- five, olive-skinned, weighed no more than 130 pounds, and looked meaner than hell, marched purposefully into base operations ten minutes later, trailed by his aide and a full colonel, both of whom were well over six feet tall. They were all wearing desert camouflage battle dress uniforms (BDUs).

The deputy commander of XVIII Airborne Corps glanced around the room and then marched to where Castillo was sitting. Charley got up quickly as he approached.

“You’re Castillo?”

“Yes, sir.”

General Gonzalez switched to Spanish.

“The name Elaine Naylor mean anything to you?”

"Sí, señor.”

“And what’s her husband’s first name?”

“Allan, señor.”

“But we are not privileged to call him by his first name, are we?”

“I’m not, sir.”

“General Naylor tells me you’re a Tex-Mex from San Antone who speaks pretty good Spanish and works for the secretary of homeland security and that he doesn’t have a clue why Dr. Natalie Cohen called me up to tell me the president was sending you here. That about sum things up?”

"Sí, señor.”

“Harry,” the general said, switching to English to speak to his aide, “help Major Castillo with his bags.”

There was a powder blue Plymouth Caravan parked outside the base operations building.

“You ride up front with me,” General Gonzalez ordered, in Spanish, as he got behind the wheel.

"Sí, señor,” Charley replied.

“What was that Chinese fire drill back there all about?” Gonzalez asked.

“My fault, sir. I asked the sergeant to call SWC to get me a ride. They’d never heard of me. And then I couldn’t come up with my Army ID.”

“Why did you call the SWC? Didn’t they tell you General McNab is the Eighteenth Airborne Corps commander?”

“Unless stupidity is an excuse, sir, no excuse. When General McNab was deputy commander of SWC, I was his aide. I called there. Not bright.”

“Oh, so you know General McNab?”