'There's quite a story behind them,' Chad said. 'You've probably taken note of the fact that they are the best of buddies, have you not?'
'Yeah,' Redhawk said with a slight grin. He was slightly amused by Chad's accent and manner of speaking. 'I did take note of that.'
'What makes that deep friendship so unique is the fact that Mike is an Arab-American and Dave is Jewish,' Chad explained. 'That's quite a mix when one considers the animosity between the two ethnic groups. You wouldn't think they would be buddies, but they're about as inseparable as twin brothers. Thus, we have dubbed them the Odd Couple. Like the Neil Simon characters in his play. Get it?'
'I get it,' Redhawk said. He was not familiar with the play but knew the TV series. 'Them two are Felix Unger and Oscar Madison in the real world. But maybe they're both just out of touch with their ancestries.'
Chad shook his head. 'Mike speaks Arabic and was raised in the Muslim faith. He's from an Arab community near Detroit. Dave's family is far from secular, and he was brought up in that culture. He even has family in Israel.'
'Does he speak Hebrew?'
'Just enough to get bar mitzvahed,' Chad replied. 'The Leibowitz family has evidently been in America for several generations?'
'So has the Redhawk family.'
'Indeed,' Chad remarked.
They fell back into silence, maintaining their vigil over the immediate area. After another half hour passed a single small splashing sound could be heard to the direct front. Immediately a voice came over the LASH headsets.
'This is Mike. Me and Dave are coming back.'
A few moments later the piragua appeared, and the two SEAL scouts nodded greetings to Chad and Redhawk as they poled by. It took another minute before they came to the spot near the junction of river and creek where Cruiser and Bruno Puglisi had set up just behind the rest of the section. The wooden boat was taken up to the bank, and the scouts jumped out.
'We didn't find anything, sir,' Leibowitz reported. 'The grasslands are empty up to where we went. But we determined the creek can give us good penetration farther into that area. It stays wide and goes anywhere from three to maybe five feet deep.'
'Good enough,' Cruiser said. 'We'll tie the piragua to the raider boat and move up a couple of kilometers for another scout.' He spoke into his AN/PRC-126 radio handset. 'Alpha and Bravo leaders, this is Brigand One. Bring your guys in. We're going to extend this patrol a bit more. Out.'
Chief Matt Gunnarson and Connie Concord gathered up their men for the short trek back to the boats.
.
PIAGGIO P 166
TURBOJET OVER THE CHILEAN-BOLIVIAN BORDER
THE rainstorm had blown through the Gran Chaco as Generalisimo Jose Maria de Castillo y Plato sat in the passenger cabin of the small private jet aircraft, gazing down 2,500 meters to the ground below. He had a special appreciation for what he saw. This was where the Dictadura Fascista de FaIangia was to be established, and he fully expected the nation to be flourishing well within a year to eighteen months. This flight, his first into the potential domain, was to take overall command of the preliminary military actions to conquer the Gran Chaco. But first he wished to make an inspection of the small, scattered detachments of the Falangist Army.
Teniente-Coronel Jeronimo Busch of the Chilean Army sat dozing beside him. This paratrooper, who was carried on the roster of his parachute infantry battalion as AWOL, was Castillo's main liaison officer when it came to dealing with the mutineers of the Chilean, Argentine and Bolivian armed forces. After months as a military attache in Madrid, Busch was looking forward to being back in camouflage fatigues to do some real soldiering with a 9- millimeter Star submachine gun in his hands. He'd even taken some time before this trip to get in a couple of parachute jumps with his battalion before taking French leave.
On the other side of the aircraft's aisle, Castillo's personal adjutant, Suboficial Ignacio Perez, busily perused the latest logistical figures in one of his many notebooks. The skinny little man looked as if he belonged more in a chess tournament than in a military campaign.
Jose Maria de Castillo y Plato, the supreme leader of the Falangists, was five feet, ten inches tall with a physique of muscular compactness. Long years of service in Morocco in the Spanish Foreign Legion had brought him into middle age in excellent physical condition; additionally, it was during this time that he painstakingly developed his personal political philosophy. He was trapped in a more or less arranged marriage to a grumpy, unattractive wife he had left behind in Madrid. Consequently Castillo had empty hours in the evenings with little to do in the isolated garrison where he had been posted. He could have filled the time with heavy drinking in the mess or fornicating with local slatterns brought in for the officers' collective pleasure, but he preferred to use the time to write a manifesto he had entitled La Nueva Falange de la Espana Moderna (The New Falange of Modem Spain). He further separated his new brand of fascism from the traditional by placing an accent mark in the name. Thus his followers were known as Falangistas rather than Falangistas.
It had all been laboriously spelled out in his neat, precise handwriting, and when it came time to have it entered into a word processor, he knew who to turn to. One of the clerk-typists in his tercio was a small, clever fellow by the name of Ignacio Perez, who had been convicted of forgery and embezzlement. The judge had given him a choice of fifteen years in the penitentiary or three years in the Foreign Legion, and he had chosen the military option. Unfortunately, Perez was not good soldier material and had been beaten half to death by the noncommissioned officers for his physical ineptness until it was discovered that he had certain office and administrative skills. Such individuals were rare in the Legion Extranjera, and the fellow was rescued to an assignment in headquarters, where his expertise in typing and filing could be put to good use. Most legionnaires were pathetic brutes who could barely read and write. Eventually, Castillo pulled Perez from headquarters and put him to work full-time entering his political writings into a word processor.
Castillo's philosophies were more than just a little different from that of the original Falange. He had no devotion to the Catholic Church, considering the modern version of the religion in Spain as too liberal and leftist. Instead, he looked to the archangel Michael for divine guidance and inspiration. After all, Arcangel Miguel was the warrior angel who had cast Satan down into hell. Castillo wrote a carefully crafted pamphlet explaining how Archangel Michael would give his followers spiritual guidance if they meditated properly, seeking a mystical rapport with him by drawing off by themselves and concentrating deep enough to turn off external stimuli and distractions.
Castillo designed an insignia of a medieval knight's sword with wings to represent the archangel, placing it on the center of the original Falangist flag design. He further decreed that the DFF would be run from a Center of Supreme Command and Dictates, using corporations to administer the running of the dictatorship. There would be separate corporations for Power (nuclear rather than fossil fuel), Transport (sea, land and air), Medical (including euthanasia of the hopelessly ill as well as the insane and feebleminded), Public Safety (to include the Secret Police), Sports and Recreation, Merchandising, and others as needed. The armed forces, of course, would be kept separate and run personally by the generalisimo and his handpicked staff.
Castillo sincerely felt that this organization would be welcomed by the weary, disappointed populaces of Western democracies who would appreciate a strong leader to take them away from the decadent, disorganized and corrupt society they lived in. Only people of European ancestry would be allowed in the ruling class of the DFF. The darker races would be the laborers and factory workers while Orientals would be employed in the sciences under strict supervision of the Europeans. Semitic people--both Jewish and Arabic would be eradicated in a carefully applied program of genocide. They would be joined by Gypsies and homosexuals as the new Falangists finished the job the Nazis started in World War II.
When Ignacio Perez finished entering the manifesto in the word processor and printed it out, Castillo took a thirty-day leave to distribute the document. His family members were wealthy industrialists with heavy investments and ownership in manufacturing, and he used these kinsmen to establish contacts not only in Spain but also France, Portugal and Germany to expound on his goals. In almost all cases he met with enthusiastic approval by these people who would be at the top of the heap if this philosophy became an established government. The present political climate in Europe forced them to exercise great clandestineness in their support. However, they were most generous with their secret donations hidden within the enigmatic ledgers where one plus one equaled whatever
