Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [94]
He slipped off his jacket, then the tie he’d worn especially for his big trip to Washington.
He began to read about Colonel Hudson.
Chapter 70
WHEN HE HAD finished reading, Carroll tilted his creaking chair back. He shook his head.
The ledger on U.S. Army Colonel David Hudson lay flopped open before him. Hudson’s thick 211 file, his entire life in the U.S. military, was spread out on the desk.
Suddenly, the Green Band investigation was more hopelessly complex and confusing than it had ever been.
Colonel David Hudson was the final enigma.
David Hudson’s military career had begun with high promise at West Point, where he was an honor graduate in 1966. He’d been a four-year member, and finally captain, of the tennis team. He was also a popular cadet according to all the available reports.
It got even better, or worse, from there. Hudson had subsequently volunteered for Special Forces “Q” courses, followed by a special Ranger training. On a first impression at least, the Army couldn’t have asked for a more diligent or professional young soldier.
Colonel David Hudson: All-American Boy.
Every succeeding report Carroll read was highlighted and underscored with phrases like “one of our very best”; “the kind of young officer who should make us all proud”; “a model soldier in every way. Unbridled, absolutely infectious enthusiasm”; “definitely one of our future leaders”; “the kind of material we can build the modern Army around.”
In Viet Nam, Captain Hudson had been awarded the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross during his first tour. He had been captured and transported into North Viet Nam for interrogation. He’d spent seven months as a POW.
Hudson had almost died in the prison camp…. He had then volunteered for a second tour, and performed with “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” on several occasions.
Then, three months before the evacuation of Saigon, he’d been savagely wounded by a Viet Cong grenade blast and subsequently lost his left arm. Hudson reacted with characteristic bravura.
A hospital report read: “David Hudson has been a godsend, helping other patients, never seeming to feel sorry for himself…. In every way, a thoroughly idealistic young man.”
Following Viet Nam though, quite suddenly after his return to the United States, Colonel Hudson’s career, his entire life, seemed to become disturbingly unhinged. According to the files, the change was bewildering to his friends and family.
“It was almost as if a different man had returned from the war.” His father was interviewed and quoted several times. “The fire, that wonderful, contagious enthusiasm was burned out of David’s eyes. His eyes were those of a very old man.”
Colonel David Hudson: enigma, almost phantom after coming home from the Viet Nam War.
First at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, then at Fort Sill in Oklahoma; at Fort Polk, Hudson was quietly disciplined for “activities detrimental to the Army.”…
Another report indicated that he was transferred twice within three months, for what seemed on the surface to be petty insubordinations….
His marriage to Betsy Hinson, his hometown sweetheart, ended abruptly in 1973. Betsy Hinson said, “I don’t even know David anymore. I don’t know this man who I’m supposed to be married to. David’s become a stranger to everyone he knows.”
Hudson, in the postwar years, had become almost obsessive about his participation in a handful of ‘Viet Nam veterans’ organizations. As an organizer and spokesman at rallies around the country, Hudson had met and been photographed with liberal motion picture stars, with sympathetic big business leaders, with recognizable national politicians.
At one point during the morning, Carroll meticulously laid out Xerox copies of every available photo of David Hudson.
He rearranged the pictures until he liked the pattern of his collage. One photo was stained with coffee or cola. The stain looked recent. Samantha Hawes? Someone else? Or was he just getting squirrely?
In the photographs, at least, Colonel Hudson looked like the classic, idealized military man of