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Dona Alicia shook her head. "Carlos, I'm being serious here."
"So am I, Abuela. Go on, Jack, fess up. Tell Dona Alicia that you talked me into sling-loading a dune buggy under McNab's Huey so we could 'reconnoiter the American embassy in Kuwait by air and land before the Marines could get there.' And that when we got to the embassy, you blew the safe and stole all the diplomats' whiskey."
"Really?" Svetlana said. She did not seem disapproving.
"He's an evil man, Sweaty," Castillo said. "Rotten to the core."
"Sweaty?" Dona Alicia repeated.
"Was that before or after you made the Russian colonels sing 'The Internationale'?" Dmitri Berezovsky asked.
"What?" Dona Alicia asked.
"A couple of days after, Colonel," Davidson said. "We needed a little something to drink to celebrate the Well Done message we got from Bush One."
"What Russian colonels singing?" Dona Alicia asked.
Berezovsky and Davidson related the Russian and American versions of the story.
"I should be ashamed of myself," Dona Alicia then said. "My curiosity always seems to get out of control. We were talking about how bad General Naylor feels about your . . . retirement."
"He shouldn't," Castillo said seriously. "He went along with Montvale because that's what he thought his duty called for him to do. I did the same thing; I did what I thought was my duty. I'm not angry with Naylor, Abuela. Really. He's always been one of the good guys."
"What are you going to do when this is over and . . ."
"When I am 'Lieutenant Colonel Castillo (Retired)'? Right now what I'm thinking is that I'll move into Sweaty's new house in the Pilar Golf and Polo Country Club and maybe even learn how to play golf. Or polo. Or both."
My post-retirement plans are a little vague, probably because I don't want to even think about them.
What the hell am I going to do?
I can't imagine playing golf or polo. . . .
"What about coming back here?" Dona Alicia asked.
Lester came into the kitchen, saving him from having to answer the question.
"Mr. D'Allessando's got Colonel Hamilton on the AFC for you, Colonel."
And what happens to you, Lester, when this merry little band folds its tent and steals off into the night?
"Thanks, Lester."
He motioned for everybody to follow him into the library, where Bradley had the AFC set up.
[FIVE]
0855 8 January 2006
When Castillo walked into the library, he saw that the first steps to convert it into the Command Post for what he was now thinking of as Operation Fish Farm had been taken by Corporal Bradley. The AFC had been set up on a table near a window. A bed for the 24/7 posting had been dragged in from somewhere and there was a coffeemaker on another table against the wall.
Chairs had been arranged around the table, and there were lined pads and several ballpoint pens on each pad. Aside from that, there was nothing on the table but Castillo's and Davidson's notebook computers and the AFC handset. The rest of what they were going to need was going to have to wait until Lester or Jack went shopping.
Castillo took the seat at the head of the table, with his back to the fireplace, which held a crackling fire. Dmit
ri Berezovsky took the seat on the left side of the table. Davidson slipped into the seat across from him. Svetlana and Dona Alicia sat together on the left at the other end of the table, and Bradley sat across from them.
A Winchester lever-action .44-40 rifle was mounted on pegs above the fireplace. Large, accurate-scale models of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and an M1A1 Abrams tank sat on the mantelpiece under it. Castillo had bought the Apache model in the bookstore at Fort Rucker shortly after having been rated in that aircraft and had it shipped home. Fernando had done about the same thing with the Abrams model: bought it at the Fort Knox bookstore and sent it home just before shipping out for the Desert War.
