W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 Read Online Free PDF Page A

Baron Acton,” Annapolis said, “what he said was ‘All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely . ’ ”
    “Thank you,” Castillo said. “Sweaty, Annapolis men always like to demonstrate their erudition.”
    Delchamps laughed.
    “I tend to agree with the first part of that quotation,” Annapolis went on. “Is that what you’re suggesting happened here?”
    “Bull’s-eye, Admiral,” Castillo said.
    “Actually, I was a commander,” Annapolis said. “All right, Colonel, we’re guilty as charged. What would you have us do? Commit seppuku?”
    “That’d work for you,” Castillo said. “But I don’t see any VFW buttons on your pals.”
    “What are you talking about?” Sweaty demanded.
    “Seppuku, my love, also known as hara-kiri, is what defeated samurai—warriors—do to atone for their sins. It involves stabbing yourself in the belly with a sword and then giving it a twist. But only warriors are allowed to do that.”
    Delchamps chuckled.
    “I don’t have a VFW pin, Colonel,” Radio and TV Stations said. “But I do have a baseball cap with the legend PALM BEACH CHAPTER, VIETNAM HELICOPTER PILOTS ASSOCIATION embroidered in gold on it. Would you say that gives me the right to disembowel myself?”
    “Only if you didn’t buy the cap at a yard sale,” Castillo said.
    Radio and TV Stations did not look anything like what comes to mind when the term warrior was used.
    “I got mine after I showed them my DD 214 and gave them fifty bucks,” Radio and TV Stations said.
    DD 214 was the Defense Department’s form that listed one’s military service, qualifications, and any decorations.
    “You were a helicopter pilot in Vietnam?” Castillo asked, but even as the words came out of his mouth he knew that was the case.
    Radio and TV Stations met Castillo’s eyes and nodded.
    “I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Castillo said.
    “It gets better than that, Castillo,” Annapolis said. “Tell him, Chopper Jockey.”
    “I’d planned to tell you this at some time, but not under these circumstances,” Radio and TV Stations said, “but what the hell. I would guess you’ve heard of Operation Lam Son 719?”
    Castillo nodded.
    “I was shot down—and wounded—during it,” Radio and TV Stations went on. “My co-pilot and I were hiding in a rice paddy, wondering if we were going to die right there—or after the VC found us and put us in a bamboo cage—when a pretty well shot-up Huey flew through some really nasty antiaircraft fire and landed next to us. The pilot and his co-pilot jumped out, threw us onto the Huey, and got us out of there.
    “I later learned the pilot was a young Mexican-American from San Antonio who had flown fifty-odd such missions before his luck ran out. He became a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor.”
    “He wasn’t a Mexican-American,” Castillo said. “He was a Texican, a Texan of Mexican heritage.”
    “You knew this man, Karl?” Berezovsky asked.
    “Unfortunately, no,” Castillo said.
    “Don’t stop there,” Annapolis said. “Tell him the rest.”
    Radio and TV Stations considered the order, nodded, and went on: “Fast forward—what? Twelve, thirteen years? Maybe a little longer. I was in San Antone on business. I own one of the TV stations there, an English FM station, and one each Spanish-language AM and FM station.
    “I found myself with a little time to kill, and finally remembering the man who saved my life just before he got blown away was from there, thought they might have buried him there in the Fort Sam National Cemetery. I called them, they said he was, so I stopped by a florist, and went to the cemetery and laid a dozen roses on the grave of Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo, MOH.”
    “Your father, Carlito?” Sweaty asked softly.
    Castillo nodded.
    “Who, according to his tombstone had left this vale of tears when he was nineteen years old,” Radio and TV Stations went on, “which caused me to think,