The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

Washington

I will defer to your judgment as to where SgtMaj Davidson will be of the greatest value to the service.

McNab

* * *

Miller looked up at Davidson and saw that he and Bradley were still standing at attention.

“I told you, Jack,” Miller said, “I am not in a mood to be amused.”

Davidson didn’t move.

“Stand at ease, goddamn it,” Miller said.

Davidson relaxed.

“You want to enlist in what?” Miller asked.

“Oh, come on. I know what’s going on here, Dick.”

“What’s going on here is classified Top Secret Presidential,” Miller said.

“So Vic D’Allessando said.”

“And the pride of the jarheads here? Has he also been running off at the mouth?”

“Only after Vic told him to fill me in on the details. Before that, Lester was like a clam.”

“How did you get this out of General McNab?” Miller asked, waving the sheet of notepaper.

“I reminded him that Char—Colonel Castillo—was going to need a replacement for Kranz. And that we were going to have to find a better place to hide Lester; Mackall wasn’t hacking that. The jarheads going through the Q course were already getting curious.”

“That’s all?”

“And that I’d been around the block with Charley a couple of times and knew when he had to have someone sit on him.”

“That’s all?” Miller asked again.

Miller happened to be glancing at Bradley and saw on his face that there was indeed something else.

“Well, I told McNab that I was getting so tired of Camp Mackall that I was giving serious thought to taking my retirement,” Davidson admitted.

“You had the balls to threaten McNab?”

“That was more like a statement of fact, Dick,” Davidson said.

Miller saw on Bradley’s face that he was shocked to hear Sergeant Major Davidson address a major by his first name.

“What do you think Charley’s going to say?” Davidson asked.

“Inasmuch as Colonel Castillo is unable to accept that there are times when he should indeed be restrained from an impulsive act and that he knows you are one of the very few people who have proved themselves willing and able to restrain him, the colonel’s reaction to being informed that you want to join his merry little band is almost certainly going to be not only no but hell no!”

Davidson exhaled audibly.

“I could be useful, Dick, and you know it. Could you talk to him?”

“I could, but that would be what is known as pissing into the wind,” Miller said, and then articulated what he had been thinking. “What we’re going to do is present him with the fait accompli. When he gets to Buenos Aires, he’s going to find you there. We are going to suggest, imply—anything but outright bold-faced lie—that this is another brainstorm of Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.”