VI
SPRING 2005
[ONE]
The Mayflower Hotel 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 1655 31 May 2005
“So you became this Green Beret colonel’s fair-haired boy?” Fernando asked.
Castillo nodded. He asked with a raised eyebrow if Fernando wanted another drink. Fernando held out his empty glass.
“ ‘Fair-haired boy’ does not accurately describe what I was,” Castillo said. “But I went right to work for him.”
“He could arrange your transfer just like that?”
"The C-5 landed us—and McNab’s dune buggy—at Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware,” Castillo said. “McNab told me to get the dune buggy to the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg and when I had I could take ten days off after which I was to report to him at Bragg. I asked him how I was supposed to get the dune buggy off the air base, much less to Fort Bragg. He said he was sure I would figure something out and left me there, right then, standing beside the dune buggy on the tarmac, in my short pants, bush jacket, and ghutra.”
“Short pants? Bush jacket? And what?”
“And knee-high stockings,” Castillo said. “Don’t want to forget those.”
Fernando’s face showed he wanted an explanation.
“I got the story from guys who were with him before I got there,” Castillo said. “He lined them all up, said that he had looked into previous hostilities in the area, and learned that the Brit uniform had been short pants, bush jackets, and knee-high stockings. He had therefore purchased, with his discretionary operating funds, a supply of same from a hunting outfitter in Nairobi. They made, he said, a lot more sense than what the Army was issuing to ordinary soldiers.”
“And the other thing? The goot-something?”
“That came next,” Castillo said, smiling. “According to the story I got, he went on to say that Lawrence of Arabia, who had been a very successful irregular warrior in the area, always wore a ghutra an iqal, the standard Arab headdress.” He made a circular movement around the front of his head.
Fernando’s nod told him he had the picture.
“Actually, there’s two kinds, one with a red-and-white headcloth. That’s the shumagh,” Castillo went on. “With a white headcloth, it’s a ghutra. Since Lawrence had learned it was a practical item of military clothing for Arabia, that was good enough for McNab and his special operators. It obviously made more sense than a Kevlar helmet, since they were going to be out on the desert in the sun a lot. He had acquired a supply of them—one size fits all—in Riyadh.”
“And you all actually wore this thing?”
“I admit, some heads turned when we showed up in Riyadh,” Castillo said, chuckling.
“So how did you get the dune buggy to Fort Bragg?”
“I knew how far I would get if I went to the Air Force with my problem—especially in my Lawrence of Arabia uniform—so I went into Dover, rented a ton-and-a-half truck from U-Haul, loaded the dune buggy aboard, and drove to Bragg. Thank God for the American Express card. Then I went home, spent ten days with Abuela and Grandpa, and then went back to Bragg.”
“While I sat in the goddamned desert,” Fernando said, “drinking lukewarm bottled water and eating MREs.”
“I admit I was really beginning to think that I was something special,” Castillo said. “Which notion was promptly taken from me when I got to Bragg. By then, he was Brigadier General McNab. I expected either thanks or even congratulations for getting his damned buggy to Bragg. Instead, he chewed me out for not protecting the footlocker full of scotch and cognac . . .”
“What?”
“Before the Marines liberated Kuwait City, Special Ops guys were there. Including McNab. His first stop was the U.S. embassy, where he blew the door on the crypto room and filled a footlocker with the booze the diplomats had locked up before getting out. I had forgotten it was still on the dune buggy.
“He said if I was going to be in Special Forces, I was going to have to understand that Special Forces people could be trusted with anything but somebody else’s whiskey and I could consider myself lucky that nobody at SWC thought I could possibly have been stupid enough to leave it on the dune buggy and that it had still been there when he collected the buggy.”
Fernando laughed.
“And then he said he was going to charm school . . .”
“What?”
“I didn’t know what it was, either,” Castillo replied. “What they do is gather all the just-promoted-to-brigadier-generals together, usually at Fort Leavenworth, the Command and General Staff School?”