Nobody could believe how well Frenchy shot. Some of them were serious people. Some were ex- paratroopers, many ex-cops or FBI agents, some ex-Marines, all of whom who'd been in it, one way or the other. But Frenchy outshot them all, two-handed to boot.
'Son, who taught you to shoot like that?'
'An old guy, been in a lot of stuff. Worked it out, this system.'
'It's not doctrine, but damn, it's so fast and accurate I don't see a point in changing it. Never would have believed it could be so fast, two hands and everything.'
'You get used to it. It's rock steady.'
'Wish I'd had you along on my team in Market Garden.'
'Yeah, well, I was a little young for that.'
'You ever in the for-real?'
'I was a cop in the South. I was in some for-real stuff. In it deep.'
'Where?'
'Oh, the South.'
'Oh, it's that way, is it? Sure, kid. You are a good hand.'
'I was taught by the best,' Frenchy said.
He was D. A.'s best pupil, really. The gun came from his holster so fast nobody could see it, was clapped by the other hand and outthrust even as his eyes clamped to the front sight and bangbang, he'd slap two holes in the kill zone, rotate to another, bangbang, and on to another, with the seventh round saved for just in case. These.45s had not been worked on like the ones D. A. had tricked up by Griffin & Howe, they were just old sloppy twenty-seventh-hand service Ithacas and Singers and IBMs, with an old Colt thrown in here and there for good measure, but they went pop every time the trigger was jacked and they felt familiar to Frenchy.
It was the shooting week of CIG training class 004, Clandestine Techniques, up on Catoctin Mountain in Maryland, where the old OSS had trained, a place called Camp Ritchie, maybe fifty miles outside of D. C. It still had a lot of World War II feeling to it, with the old LOOSE UPS SINK SHIPS and INVEST IN INVASION BUY WAR BONDS posters turning yellow and tatty, the wooden barracks thick with the odor of men having lived in close quarters, all of it nestled safely behind barbed wire and guarded by Marines.
And of course Frenchy was just as good with anything; he could shoot the Thompson, the BAR and the carbine with extraordinary skill. It just seemed to come naturally to him, and it filled him with confidence, so that when the field problems arose, he seemed always to be the one who solved them fastest, even among men who'd been in combat. Soon he was an acting team leader, and he led after Earl's techniques, giving his boys nicknames (that is, nicknaming men who were ten years older than he was, Harvard and Yale graduates, and combat veterans), teasing them, cajoling them, always putting himself out front and when it came time to work, outworking them. He had a funny tic when he explained things to them: he'd listen, then say, 'See, here's the thing,' then gently point out the way it should be done.
Finally, toward the end of the course, an instructor drew him aside.
'You've done damned well, Short. You've impressed some people.'
'Thanks.'
'Now many of these guys will go under embassy cover to various spots around the world where they'll run agents, or recruit locals, or make reports. Some others will stay here, this'll be their only taste of the actual, and they'll be sent to headquarters, where they'll mainly be analysts.'
'Both those sound pretty boring to me.'
'Yeah, I thought so. You have a cowboy look to you. Are you a cowboy, Tex?'
'No sir.'
'But you have a field operator's brain, I can tell. And real good shooting skills. Real good.'
'Yes sir.'
'You've been mentioned for Plans.'
'Plans?' said Frenchy. 'That doesn't sound like much fun.'
'One thing you have to learn, Short, is that in this business nothing is what it sounds like. Okay?'
'Yes sir.'
'Mr. Dulles sees Plans as a kind of action unit.'
'like a raid team?'
'Yeah, exactly. It'll be working in military or guerrilla-warfare situations, sometimes behind the lines, running operations. Probably high-contact work. Lots of bang-bang. Lots of sentry-knifing, dog-killing, bomb-planting, border-crossing. That sound like your cup of tea?'
'Does it ever!'
'You have a problem with Army Jump School?'
'No sir.'
'You have a problem with a commando tour with the Brits? Good training.'
'Sounds good.'
'You have a problem with language studies?'
'Ah?I speak French and passable German.'
'Think about Chinese, Short. Or Indochinese. Or Greek. Or Korean. Or Russian, if the big one ever comes.'
'Yes sir,' said Frenchy.
'Good man,' said the instructor.
And so Frenchy's course was set. He was to become a specialist in doing the necessary, not out of sentiment but out of hard, rational thought, carefully measured risk, a burglar's guts and a killer's decisiveness. But at this point he envisioned one more moment in his career with the Garland County raid team, a kind of a last thing that he owed himself. It came some months ahead in the week after he graduated from Clandestine Techniques 004 at the head of his class and before he reported to Fort Benning for Jump School. He spent it in Washington, D. C., and for several days he roamed the city, looking for out-of-town newsstands, for copies of the Little Rock Arkansas Gazette or Democrat. He had no luck. But then he went to the Library of Congress and ordered up a batch of backdated NewYork Times and in that way, buried on a back page, learned of the fates of D. A. and the boys. EX-FBI AGENT SLAIN IN ACCIDENTAL GUNFIGHT. He did note that Earl's name was not listed among the dead, nor was Carlo Henderson's, so he assumed that somehow they had survived. It figured. You couldn't kill the cowboy. Maybe Bugsy Siegel would, as Johnny Spanish had predicted, but Owney hadn't been able to, not even with Frenchy's treacherous help.
If you saw him sitting there, in that vast, domed room on Capitol Hill behind the Congress, you would have seen a grave, calm young man, brimming with health and vitality, but already picking up a warrior's kind of melancholy aloofness from the workaday world around him. And at least at that moment?for he had not yet entirely mastered the art of completely stifling his emotions?you might have seen some regret too. Maybe even some sorrow.
Chapter 55
Earl started drinking almost immediately. The bourbon lit like a flare out beyond the wire and fell down his gullet, popping sparks of illumination, floating, drifting, pulling him ever so gently toward where he hoped the numbness was. No such goddamned luck. He drank only to forget, but of course the only thing the bourbon did was make him remember more, so he drank more, which made him remember yet more again.
He wasn't headed west on 270 toward Y City, which would take him over to 71 for the pull up toward Fort Smith and Camp Chaffee, where his wife and unborn child, his new life or whatever, awaited. He couldn't do that, somehow. He was in no state to face them and the emotions that he had controlled so masterfully for four days now seemed dangerously near explosion. He knew he was rocky. He turned south, down 27 out of Mount Ida, to 8, and then west on 8. He knew exactly where he was headed even if he couldn't say it or acknowledge it.
By the time he pulled into Board Camp it was nearly midnight. Wasn't much to be seen at all. It was never even as much as Mount Ida. He drove through the little town and there, a few miles beyond toward the county seat
