“I think from here on in, I better stop calling you colonel,” Fernando said to Colonel J. D. Torine, USAF, “and you start playing the role of pilot-for-hire. Okay with you?”
“Yeah, sure. Call me ’Jake.’ ”
“And when we’re dealing with Mexican customs and immigration, I think it would best if you called me ‘Mr. Lopez’ and Charley ‘Mr. Castillo.’ ”
“Sure,” Torine said and smiled. “You seem to have a feeling for this line of work, Mr. Lopez.”
“The way it is, Jake, is that Five-Oh-Seven-Five has unlimited, frequent, unscheduled permission to enter Mexican airspace. Usually, our destination is Mexico City, Oaxaca, or Bahias de Huatulco, but I don’t think alarm bells are going to go off when somebody reads our flight plan to Cozumel.”
He saw the look of curiosity on Torine’s face and responded to it. “The family has a ranch near Bahias de Huatulco. Used to be cattle, but now it’s mostly grapefruit.”
“I didn’t think Americans could own property in Mexico,” Torine said, and then quickly added, “I don’t mean to pry.”
“You goddamned yankees can’t own land down here,” Fernando explained. “Which is why my mother happened to be in Mexico when I was born. That made me a Mexican by birth.”
“Dual citizenship?”
Fernando nodded and said, “So was our grandmother south of the border when Charley’s father came along. Charley screwed up the system when he got himself born in Germany, but two of my kids are also bona fide Mexicanos. We won’t tell them that until we have to.”
Torine shook his head, smiling in wonder. “Why not?”
“It causes identity problems,” Fernando said, chuckling. “And, sometimes, official ones. The Counterintelligence Corps shit a brick when they found out that Lieutenant F. Lopez of the 1st Armored Division held Mexican citizenship. For a couple of days, it looked like they were going to send me home from Desert One in handcuffs.”
“What happened?”
“Our senator told the secretary of the Army whose side the Lopezes were on at the Alamo,” Fernando said, chuckling. “And that Cousin Charley was a West Pointer, and his father—my uncle Jorge—had won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam, and that he didn’t see any problems about wondering where our loyalties lay.”
“General McNab told me about Charley’s father,” Torine said.
“He bought the farm before Charley and I were born,” Fernando said, “but he was always a big presence around the family. Our grandfather hung his picture—and the medal, in a shadow box—in his office. It’s still there. We knew all about him. He was right up there with Manuel Lopez and Guillermo de Castillo.”
“Who were?”
“They bought the farm at the Alamo,” Fernando said, and then went on, “Jake, why don’t you go back in the cabin and get out of the flight suit? And wake up Sleeping Beauty? I want to get our little act for Mexican customs and immigration straight with him.”
Torine unfastened his harness and started to get out of the copilot’s seat.
“Merida area control,” Fernando said into his microphone, “this is Lear Five-Zero-Seven-Five. I’m at flight level three-five-zero, indicating five hundred knots on a heading of two-zero-niner. International, direct Cozumel. Estimating Cozumel in ten minutes. Request approach and landing to Cozumel. We will require customs and immigration service on landing.”
“The only problem we have is if customs wants a look at Sergeant Sherman’s suitcase,” Charley said. “How do we explain the radio?”
“They might not want to,” Fernando said. “They have the flight plan; they’ll know we came from the States. People usually don’t try to smuggle things into Mexico. And if they seem to be getting curious, you have that envelope I gave you?”
“Envelope?” Torine asked.
“The cash-stuffed envelope, Jake. It usually makes Mexican customs officers very trusting,” Fernando said.
[TWO]
Office of the Commanding General United States Central Command MacDill Air Force Base Tampa, Florida 0935 10 June 2005
When Sergeant Major Wes Suggins had gone into the office of the CentCom commander, General Allan Naylor, USA, to tell him that Frederick K. Beiderman, the secretary of defense, was on the secure line, Naylor, as he walked quickly to the phone booth, had signaled for Suggins to stay, which Suggins correctly interpreted to mean he was supposed to listen to as much of the conversation as he could overhear.
Suggins complied by leaning on the doorjamb of the phone booth while Naylor was on the horn, and Naylor held the handset as far from his ear as he could and still hear the secretary.
“Yes, Mr. Secretary, I’m sure we can handle this, and I will get back to you with how it’s going,” Naylor said, ending the conversation and thoughtfully replacing the handset in its cradle.
He looked at Suggins.