The plane stopped on the tarmac, the whine of its engines died, and the stair door behind the cockpit windows unfolded. A tall, erect officer with four stars gleaming on the epaulets of his dress uniform nimbly came down them.
He was General Allan B. Naylor, whom-to his embarrassment-C. Harry Whelan had accurately described to Andy McClarren of Wolf News as the “most important general in the world.”
Whelan’s argument was that since the Chief of Staff of the Army no longer actually
Even Andy McClarren, who had been the most watched news personality on television for ten years and counting-in large part because of his skill in being able to argue the opposite position of whatever position his guests took-couldn’t disagree with that.
General Naylor exchanged salutes with the Air Force major general, and then shook hands with him and all of the officers, and finally turned to General McNab, who saluted.
“Good morning, Bruce,” General Naylor said.
“Good morning, General,” McNab said. “And how are things on beautiful Tampa Bay?”
The United States Central Command headquarters was on MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida.
Generals Naylor and McNab had been classmates at the United States Military Academy at West Point. They hadn’t liked each other as cadets, and a number of encounters between them as they had risen in rank in their subsequent service had exacerbated that relationship.
General Naylor didn’t reply. Instead, with a smile, he motioned for McNab to board the Gulfstream. McNab, in turn, motioned for his aides-de-camp to get aboard. When they had done so, he followed them, and when he had done so, General Naylor followed him.
The stair door started to close as the engines started.
When the Gulfstream started to move, the Air Force general called his formation to attention and saluted. When the Gulfstream was on the taxiway, he turned to the brigadier general and softly commented, “That should be an interesting flight.”
The friction between Generals McNab and Naylor was well known to senior officers of all the armed forces, and it went beyond “Isn’t that interesting?” or “What a shame.”
The United States Special Operations Command was subordinate to the United States Central Command, and when, at about the same time, Naylor was about to be named Commander in Chief of CENTCOM and McNab to be commanding general of SPECOPSCOM, it was almost universally recognized as one of those rare situations that would see the best possible man assigned to both jobs.
It was also just about unanimously agreed that making “Scotty” McNab subordinate to Allan Naylor was going to be like throwing lighted matches into a barrel of gasoline.
General McNab took an aisle seat in the luxuriously furnished cabin. As General Naylor walked past him en route to the VIP section-two extra-large seats and a table behind the door to the cockpit, which could be curtained off from the rest of the passenger compartment-McNab held up his hand.
Naylor looked down at him.
McNab said: “General, before they start the in-flight movie, there’s something I’d like to show you.”
“You don’t need an invitation to ride in front, Bruce, and you know it,” Naylor said.
He gestured for McNab to follow him.
McNab rose, and gestured for Captain Walsh to follow him.
Reaching his seat, Naylor took it and then, when McNab had taken the opposing chair, asked, “What have you got?”
Captain Walsh extended a pair of rubber gloves to General Naylor.
Naylor looked questioningly at McNab.
“Gloves?”
“I don’t think they’ll be able to get fingerprints off that, General,” McNab said, indicating the FedEx Overnight envelope. “But they may.”
Naylor took the gloves and pulled them on.
Walsh handed him the envelope, and Naylor took from it a sheet of paper and an eight-by-ten-inch color photograph.
The photograph showed a man dressed in a T-shirt and khaki trousers. He was sitting in a folding chair, holding up a copy of Mexico City’s
“That’s yesterday’s newspaper,” McNab said.
The sheet of paper, obviously printed on a cheap ink-jet printer, carried a simple message:
So Far He’s Alive.
There will be further communication.
“Who is he?” Naylor asked calmly. “He looks familiar.”
“Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris,” McNab said. “The officer whom-with great reluctance, you will recall-I detailed to DEA, from which he was further detailed to be-overtly-one of the assistant military attaches at our embassy in Mexico City. Covertly, I have been led to believe, he was ordered to advise the ambassador in his relentless and never-ending attempt to reason with the drug cartels.”
“I can do without the sarcasm, General,” Naylor said.
“Ferris marches in the Long Gray Line beside his classmates Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Richardson, Jr., and our own Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, Retired. He has a wife at Fort Bragg and three children. Small world, isn’t it?”
“Where did you get this?” Naylor asked.
“A FedEx delivery man handed it to me just now when I walked out of my quarters to come here.”
“It’s addressed to LTC McNab.”
“I noticed. It may be a typo, or it could be on purpose. My gut feeling is that it’s on purpose.”
“To attract less attention?” Naylor asked.
McNab nodded.
“I’ve been wondering if another. .”
“Was sent to me?” Naylor finished for him.
McNab nodded again.
“Captain,” Naylor said politely, “would you ask Colonel Brewer to come up here, please?”
Colonel J. D. Brewer was Naylor’s senior aide-de-camp.
“We have been cleared for takeoff,” the public-address system announced. “Please fasten your seat belts.”
“No FedEx Overnight envelope or other communication relative to this at MacDill, General,” Colonel Brewer reported five minutes later, as the Gulfstream reached cruising altitude.
Naylor looked at McNab.
“What’s the plan at Andrews?” McNab asked.
“A Black Hawk will take us to Langley; we meet the others there.”
“Including Natalie?”
“I have been led to believe
His tone made it clear that he thought General McNab should not refer to the secretary of State by her first name.
“I call her Natalie because I like her, General,” McNab said. “She’s my kind of gal.” And then he quoted the secretary of State: “ ‘You miserable goddamn shameless hypocritical sonofabitch!’ ”
