I suddenly realized it was time to return to the base and continue the training. Deerhunter was a long movie, at just over three hours, but there was organizational work to be done to continue building a lesson plan and then maximizing the use of Nguyen and Kingsley. Real ground combat veterans were rare, just as within considering the assembly where there were none. McCain was a combat flyer while Marcinko was a ground combat vet, but his credentials in that area, although there, were always suspect. His career, all the way through becoming a naval officer and eventually commanding Seal Team Six, was always more political and flamboyant than that of a real ground combat veteran. His background made him valuable as part of the combat leadership group I was building but it was tempered by a bombastic alpha male personality that was difficult for any veteran, combat or otherwise, to tolerate, much less accommodate.

I led Nguyen and Kingsley out to the parking lot. Nguyen had been delivered by some base vehicle I knew nothing about so all three of us climbed into the Rover, Kingsley set to drive before I stopped him.

Marcinko’s car was sitting near the corner of the building, parked next to Allen Weh’s pickup, with a couple of other full-size unmarked vehicles alongside it.

“For Christ’s sake,” I breathed out, loud enough for my companions to hear.

“What?” Kingsley asked, looking out at the lot where the cars were parked but not understanding.

“Marcinko is meeting with Weh, and whomever else,” I replied, “and that’s not a good thing no matter how I roll it around in my head.”

I looked over at Nguyen and knew immediately that he was thinking the same thing I was. I nodded at him, but his expressionless features didn’t change at all as he moved to cover my left flank, facing in the direction of Weh’s office spaces.

“Let’s pay them a visit,” I said to Kingsley, knowing Nguyen would be all in as he always was.

I moved down the hall and then entered Charter Services using the connecting door between our combined office spaces. I closed the door behind me and looked across the office space, which was shaped, to be about the same size as the clerical area in my own office, but there was nobody there. I moved toward Weh’s closed door with Kingsley, as Nguyen had somehow disappeared. When we stood in front of the door I hesitated. Our visit didn’t call for barging in or being mannerless. I knocked. I waited about ten seconds in silence, and then turned the doorknob and opened the door.

My entering the office announced only by the knock to no immediate response brought Marcinko swiveling around. I identified the other two men as members of the supposed assault team of the larger attack or recovery unit I was training, but they exited through the open door and disappeared without being told to do so. I checked my watch, being reminded that the film I’d used as a training tool, more to teach what combat wasn’t than what it was, would be coming to an end and I wanted to reappear in front of my students before that happened.

The Seiko gave me half an hour, which would make returning possible but only if I drove myself and put Kingsley in the passenger seat, or ‘riding shotgun,’ as he called it. I’d heard the expression before Ben had come into my life and always wanted to ask ‘where’s the shotgun’ from the people who used it but never had.

Weh smiled his wiry semi-sneering smile while Marcinko stood in disbelief at my presence. Over his shoulder I noticed the sliding glass door set into the side of Weh’s office, facing out into the nearly empty parking lot, rise just a bit, as if from a motion of the earth, although I knew right away, from the nearly unnoticeable movement, that Nguyen was nearby.

“You’ve no business here,” Marcinko said, his tone as aggressive as his forward-leaning torso and tough-looking facial expression, taking me right back to the Willard hotel room when things had gone badly.

I was determined to not make the mistake of being drawn into another macho showdown with the difficult man, so I ignored him and turned to look into Weh’s eyes while shrugging my shoulders and slightly shaking my head. Weh was angled in his chair to face me and Marcinko’s back was to the sliding glass door as Nguyen’s slightly built form eased into the room, unnoticed by Marcinko and Weh both. The glass door opened and closed ever so slowly behind him without making a whisper of sound. I glanced to my right and briefly looked into Kingsley’s big round and deeply black eyes. He said nothing, his shocked surprise at Nguyen’s deadly silent and nearly invisible appearance only registering through his facial expression.

“McCain’s not here to protect your ass this time,” Marcinko said.

My own eyes remained locked on Weh’s for a few seconds before turning my head to briefly look into the corner where Nguyen crouched. I pulled my right hand up to my chest and gestured. My right index finger barely extended to point first toward where Nguyen was and then at the door we’d come through only a few moments before.

Marcinko jerked as he turned to see who I was signaling to, and Weh came to his feet in surprise.

“Where in hell did he, or it, come from?” Marcinko asked, his whispering tone one of shock and disbelief.

“Vietnam,” Weh breathed out, staring across the office at Nguyen, whose eyes were locked only on Marcinko.

“He’s giving me the creeps,” Marcinko exclaimed, his voice little more than that same whisper, however.

“You’ve made your point,” Weh said, as he returned to his seat.

“What point is that?” Marcinko asked, but nobody answered.

I motioned to Nguyen who eased backward to the office door and then through it, leaving it open as he lurked in the hall, his attention never leaving Marcinko.

“What’s going on?” I asked as things settled down a bit, noting that Nguyen’s strange and vaguely threatening presence quieted Marcinko to the point of complete silence.

“You can’t fly your mission using governmental aircraft, so you need civilian aviation, and Charter’s civilian,” Weh stated as if everyone in the room was in on the conversation that had preceded their entrance.

“Who’s going to fly into a potential combat zone with civilian choppers, which you have none of, by the way,” I asked.

“We charter anything that flies,” Weh replied, “And that includes helicopters. Marcinko tells me your men are really military but working privately. The same device can be used for air transport.”

“They aren’t my men,” I responded forcefully, “And military choppers will turn any failure at all, or even witnessed success, into an international incident.”

“The C-47 is sold commercially, so there’d be no problem there, but getting pilots and crew to fly them into the rather unsettled parts of what was once North Vietnam would be more problematic, which brings us to my conversation with Mr. Marcinko here.”

“He wants almost a quarter of the entire mission budget just for the air transport,” Marcinko said as if the words had been forced from him under torture.

“I didn’t know there was a budget,” I replied, glad that Marcinko wasn’t up to anything nefarious about my contribution to the badly thought-out operation.

“How much is the budget?” I went on, truly curious.

“It’s classified,” Marcinko grumbled.

“It can’t be classified,” I said, my tone one of exasperation, “It’s a civilian private mission so there’s no governmental or military foundation for any classification possible.”

“I’m not telling you or anyone else,” Marcinko said, obviously holding his voice in control while glancing over to where Nguyen hid, once more blended into the shadows.

“Okay,” I replied, turning back to Weh. “What are you asking for the air transport charges?”

“Seven million,” Alan replied instantly. “No negotiation.”

“So, the budget is twenty-eight million, or so?” I asked, looking again into Marcinko’s eyes, but he only looked away, defeat in his expression.
Weh shook his head, the deadly smile once more crossing his lips.

“The price is fair for the risk and the equipment, which would be three civilianized Chinook C-47 helicopters, plus insurance.”

I stared at the colonel and wanted to laugh. No insurance company on earth was going to take such a risk, The cost of replacing the three Chinook C-47s would have to be about twenty million dollars alone, and then there’d be the fallout from lost personnel and other equipment as well.

“Pay it,” I said to Marcinko. “Transportation in size, speed, and dependability is ninety percent of the mission. If the men don’t get on the ground, get the prisoners, if there are any, and then back on the hopefully waiting choppers in a real hurry then they’re dead…and so much for the other seventy-five percent of your budget.”

“It’s not your mission to decide such things,” Marcinko said.

I looked at Weh who was staring back at me like he might have some reason to like me after all.

“His take on this would probably be a million or more,” Marcinko went on as if he had some sort of agreeable audience.

“Look around you” I replied, wanting only to get out of the man’s presence without doing something physical to him.

“What?” he replied, actually looking around us.

“There’s nobody here,” I finally said, trying to end the idiocy of the visit.

“He obviously needs the money for this to work for all of us.”

I walked out to let him work it out with Weh. That the powers that be, those with and behind McCain, would turn a budget of such size and responsibility for so many young lives, to Marcinko was astounding to me. The Agency wasn’t cheap with me or the work I did but it wasn’t turning over millions to me either.

I literally ran to the Rover and jumped in, thinking of the running start always, and ridiculously, used to begin the automobile race at LeMans every year in France. Once inside and behind the wheel, however, I had to hold my hand out to Ben for the keys. Both Ben and Nguyen climbed into the vehicle automatically, their capability of following likely beyond my capability of leading.

The drive back to the base was without incident, except for the fact that I never got the Rover under ninety for almost the entire way. When we drove through the gates, where we were thankfully waved in, I walked directly to the big tent and up to the makeshift stage. The credits for the Deerhunter movie were still running.

I began the next phase of the training by entertaining criticism of the movie. I was much more interested in who made what criticism and the nature of that criticism than the teaching ability of its use to train the class. I was looking for squad leaders, platoon commanders, and a couple of company commanders. There were no ranks in the ranks of my class and I had to make that part of the training a big part of what I was about.

As I was asking for comments from the group, as a whole, the two men who’d accompanied Marcinko to Weh’s office walked in, stood to the side, and acted for all the world that they were somehow only remotely attached to the training students. I held up one hand.

“You two, depart the tent and wait in your quarters until I come for you,” I ordered, lowering my hand to point at both of them. They looked at one another but didn’t move.

I twisted full around to where Kingsley and Nguyen stood behind me.

“You two, please accompany these men to their quarters here and if you receive resistance then hurt them. A knee or an ankle will be okay.”

A low murmur washed across the student body before me and seemed to crash like gentle surf against the canvas backdrop just to my rear. The two men, when Nguyen and Kingsley approached them, walked quickly out of the tent.

“If you’re not going to your bunks then get the hell off the base before I find you again,” I said, the microphone magnifying the strength of the harsh message.

I turned back to the students in front of me.

“If you’re going to go on missions off the base on your own then I want to know about it beforehand and not discover it by running into you out there. What we are doing here and what you are planning to do is an adventure, and that adventure needs to be as contained as possible and not dependent upon one of us saying the wrong thing on the outside. Adventure is doing something dangerous that has a happy ending. Making as certain as I can that you get the happy ending is what I am all about. Selfishly, I don’t want to lose you because it will hurt me, and I don’t need any more of those kinds of hurts.”

Marcinko walked into the tent through the folded back flap the two men hadn’t closed.

“The colonel is going to share lunch with you, then physical training and the forced march will follow. Later, before evening chow, I want you back in here to give me your opinions about what you might have observed and or learned from that Hollywood version of what combat is really like.” I nodded to where Marcinko stood.

“Attention,” Marcinko ordered, and everyone in the makeshift classroom jumped up as I walked out of the tent.

When everyone was gone I went back inside with Kingsley and Nguyen. Marcinko hadn’t joined the men in the chow tent.

“What about Christmas?” I asked.

“Christmas?” he replied. “What Christmas, you gave all the money for presents to Charter Services.”

I knew that was Marcinko’s twisted way of telling me that he’d acquiesced and granted Weh the funding. In no way was the man equipped to ever give credit to anyone else but himself.

“The boys can’t exactly go out and do a load of shopping, not with the sensitive nature of this mission,” I said. “As soon as we’re done here they go to Puerto Rico and into the jungle there. What of their families and Christmas?”

The man looked at me, his face showing the same rather vacant and stupefied expression as when I’d asked him about medical care for the wounded if casualties were taken in the rescue attempt.

I waited for a few seconds before deciding that expecting some sort of solution to a real leadership problem would not be forthcoming. I would be left to worry about the boys and their Christmas relationships. Their mental ‘edge’ could only be honed and built with careful planning, exposure, and supply.

The two men who’d accompanied Marcinko to Weh’s office sat on their bunks as I brushed aside the tent flap and entered. Only Nguyen was just outside simply because ordering him not to be there would have been useless. His presence also gave me a certain peace I wasn’t prepared for.
Upon returning home from the war and getting out of the hospital I’d needed many people, outside of Mary Julie and Micheal, right on through Paul, Bob Elwell, Tom Thorkelson, Bartok, and more; but their presence in the rebuilding of my psychology had been as external forces providing ‘supporting fire,’ as the artillery batteries had provided to our forces in the valley. Nguyen had been different than that. He was not support, he was intrinsically tied to me in a bond that could not be described.

The tent was composed of three double bunks, a center table, and two floor lamps set right next to the opening. I took a seat at the table.

“What’s going to happen to us, sir,” one of the men asked.

“Nothing,” I quickly replied. “You did nothing wrong. I used you as an example to the rest but even that was not right. You can go anywhere you want with Marcinko, as he’s your commanding officer, not me. In fact, for this mission, you don’t have a commanding officer except in name.”

I looked across the table at the two men, wondering if I’d just stuck to my guns and punished them for being late to a class by sending them home would not likely save their lives. It wasn’t my place however and I knew that.

“What were you doing with Marcinko?”

“He said that he needed a driver and some backup for a special meeting and offered us time off for Christmas in exchange,” the older trooper replied.

I thought about what the man said before allowing them to go back to the unit. The secrecy of the mission was important but since it was unlikely that there were any remaining POWs, and North Vietnam didn’t exist as a country anymore, much less an enemy, the security of the mission seemed absurd. Anything could happen on such a mission but the most likely would be that the men were caught and returned home without anyone firing a shot once they were found out and interdicted. Idiocy could always enter the equation of course, and firing began accidentally until there were potentially disastrous and deadly results.

“Dismissed,” I ordered, acting like the commander I was trying not to be

The men departed, murmuring their thanks, making me feel even worse than I already did about the situation. Suddenly, as I sat alone, staring at nothing, a portable radio emerged from the general scene in front of me. I had to be nowhere at the moment. I turned on the radio and adjusted the dial to a local rock and roll station before lying on one of the made-up bottom bunks. My wife was a big believer in her style of informal meditation, which she didn’t like being called meditation at all.

I was disappointed, as the DJ announced that, due to the coming holiday, the station would only be running only Christmas music. I wanted some of my stimulating rock and roll lyrics and melodies but once laying back down on the bunk. I didn’t want to bother to get up and change the station.

The song that came on a few seconds after the DJ stopped talking took me back to Duluth, Minnesota when I was in the sixth grade. The nun, Sister Mary Paul, picked me to sing the song in front of the elementary school body. I was not a member of the school choir, but I’d made some disparaging remarks about its poor performance in Mary Paul’s class. Mary Paul was the choir director of the chorus, as it turned out. I smiled, closed my eyes, and remembered how I’d done creditably well performing the song despite my total lack of experience and training. My near eidetic memory allowed me to belt out the words without the written script. The first stanza to me had always been like Psalm 23 in the Bible, words that no screenwriter in Hollywood had ever matched:

“O Holy night! The stars are brightly shining. It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, ’til He appeared, and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

I sat up on the bed, my mind going into top gear. Christmas, of course, the boys had a point. How was a unit to be able to come together to pull off such a mission without psychological help and family, like I’d had, to come home to after a ‘bad tour,’ as Jim Webb, the only officer I’d had a chance to really talk to in and after Vietnam, had termed my stay in country?

I walked out of the tent, dragging Nguyen from whatever small hiding place he’d found to provide total flank security. Kingsley waited at the side of the Rover like he knew I’d be coming for it.

“The office,” I said, getting into the passenger seat while Nguyen got in the back, not sitting on one of the two form-fitting seats there but instead riding without a seatbelt in the center, leaning forward like my son did in the Volkswagen before we sold it.

The office was nearly as empty as Charter Services always was. I didn’t bother asking Pat where the rest of our clerks were, or even where the make-believe agents might be. Lunch in New Mexico is a big deal, probably a leftover from its Mexican and Spanish origins, was probably the reason but it made no difference. My writing of policies paid the bills and it if didn’t the agency would likely somehow provide funding.

“Get him on the line,” I instructed Pat, without the preamble of any greeting.

I was on a mission of my own that made more sense than the one back to Vietnam.

The office was empty until the three of us descended upon it. With myself behind the desk in the swivel and Kingsley and Nguyen in the guest chairs there was no room for anybody else, which was fine with me.

Pat walked in and looked pointedly at all three of us, as if there was no room for her, even though she had never sat in any of the chairs that I had witnessed.

“Line one,” she said, flatly, before turning and leaving, this time, like in my earlier days, not closing the door behind her.

I picked up the phone, glancing at both men in front of me. There would be no secrets kept from them, I’d already decided.

My discussion was short with Herbert. I wanted a C-130 for my trip home before Christmas and then for the return to the jungle after Christmas. Herbert promptly, and seemingly with some enthusiasm, reported that Marcinko was the mission commander, not me. I couldn’t ask for anything without Marcinko’s approval. I hung up the phone without saying goodbye and dialed the number at the training center. It took twenty minutes for Marcinko to call back.

The three of us sat and waited, both men in front of me so loyal and trusting that neither asked what I was up to, even after hearing my conversation with Herbert. A locksmith truck was parked in the lot and that made me smile. Weh was pulling the locks out of the power room he’d built. It was a smart move.

He’d won the battle of getting his excessive electric bill paid so why bother irritating Huddleston and the power company?

When the phone blinked, I pushed the button and picked up the receiver.

“Banker’s Life of Iowa,” I stated, formally.

“Right,” Marcinko gruffly replied. “What is it now and where did you go?”

“Where did you call?” I said, shaking my head and not waiting through the silence that ensued at the other end of the line.

“I want a C-130 to remove me from training two days before Christmas, fly to Kirkland, and then return me to that jungle two days after Christmas. The troops can’t do much without me and my ‘vacation’ is already approved by the agency.

“What about something smaller?” Marcinko asked back.

“I’m bringing everyone home with me and then taking them back so I need something that can carry everyone.”

“No, you are not,” Marcinko shot back. “I’m the commander of this outfit and I say who goes where.”

“You don’t have a mission if I resign as the training officer,” I replied.

“I love that combat high-threat stuff you claim to never do,” Marcinko replied with a laugh. “I’d just find somebody else if you did.”

I breathed in and out deeply before responding. Marcinko knew full well that I cared about the men, more than he did. To him, they were just peons to justify the fact that he was a real leader of men but not to me.

“Alright, Richard, you and I have been playing this game since we met, even in front of my wife, and it needs to stop. Find a tent there that’s empty and I’ll be there in an hour. We’ll settle this pissing contest man to man and the one left standing gets his way about the C-130, time off, and flights.”

“Oh please, don’t make me laugh,” Marcinko replied, laughing. “I know full well about all your injuries lieutenant war hero and I can take advantage of each one of them. I’ve never been in better shape in my life. You got it. About time somebody puts you in your place.” Marcinko slammed the phone down.

I slowly returned the receiver to its base.

“I would advise against this,” Kingsley began, until I held up my right hand.

“The two of you go down there and find that tent,” I ordered. “When you do, go inside and take that man apart, so to speak, but not so bad he can’t be reassembled with a minimum of medical care.”

Nguyen and Kingsley stared, first at me and then at one another. Kingsley began to laugh.

“That will be so much fun,” he said to Nguyen.

For only the third time in my life with Nguyen I watched a smile cross his features. Both men departed immediately, neither of them pausing for any reason. They would not need equipment of any sort I knew.

I sat and hit a button on the phone, first letting Pat know that she could let Charter Services wouldn’t be needed for my Christmas trips, and then getting a line out to call Herbert back.