Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [99]
“But his training wasn’t typical, not the regular course? His was different somehow?”
“Yes. David Hudson’s training at Fort Bragg was beyond the established norm, which was demanding in itself.”
“Give me some idea, Colonel. Put me at the training camp. Can you make it come alive for me? What was the actual training like?”
“All right, I don’t think you can imagine it, unless you actually went through it…. Up at two-thirty in the morning. Physical abuse. Drug-induced nightmares. Interrogation by the best in the Army. Pushed like a dirt farm tractor until you dropped at eight Up again at two-thirty—I mean pushed, drained. Each day was one hundred percent harder than the last. Physically and emotionally, psychologically…. The men chosen to go to Bragg were all considered top rank. Hudson had West Point and extensive combat behind him. He’d been a successful commander in Nam…. Uh, Captain Hudson was also a military assassin in Viet Nam. He was very heavy. With a good rep.”
Carroll, hearing the word “assassin,” felt that he had taken still another step into the endless Green Band maze. The further he moved, the more confused and lost he became. The All-American soldier had an even darker side: assassin. He brought Hudson’s clean-cut photographs back to mind: the sunshine face of determination, the bristling crewcut hair, the honesty in those eyes.
“Meaning what, Colonel? What does a good rep mean in that context? As a military assassin.”
“It means he wasn’t a thrill killer—which some of the top hitters were…. A real problem is what to do with some of those guys, once they leave the Army. If the generals had decided to take out Ho Chi Minh, something very big, very delicate, Hudson most likely would have been considered.”
“You seem a little awed by Hudson yourself.”
Williamson smiled; he chuckled softly into his chest full of medals.
“I don’t know about awe. Awe isn’t the right word. Definitely respect, though.”
“Why, Colonel?”
“He was one of the best soldiers I’ve ever trained. He had physical endurance and all the technical skills. He had strength and tremendous smarts. He also had something else, dignity.”
“So what went wrong? What happened to Hudson after the war? Why did he finally leave the service in 1976?”
Colonel Williamson rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “As I said, the one problem was his attitude. He could be extremely judgmental He also thought he had answers to some controversial Army problems. Some career officers might not have appreciated Hudson’s judgment of them and their actions. The other thing was the loss of his arm. David Hudson had big, big plans for himself. How many one-armed generals are you aware of?”
Carroll paused and thought before he spoke again. For all the apparent cooperation, he had a sneaking feeling that Colonel Williamson was still holding something back. It was the Army way, he remembered from extensive past dealings with the Pentagon. Everything had to be a huge need to know” secret, shared only inside the sacred fraternity of Army blood brothers, shared with the other warriors only.
“Colonel Williamson, I’ve got to ask the next few questions with the authority of the Commander-in-Chief. That means I need complete answers.”
“That’s what you’ve been getting.”
“Colonel Williamson, did you know the official purpose of David Hudson’s Special Forces training at Fort Bragg? Why was he at the JFK school? If that information was in any of your orders, if you heard it anywhere on the base, I need to know it, Colonel”
Colonel Duriel Williamson stared back hard at Carroll, then at Captain Hawkins.
When he spoke, his voice was softer but seemed an octave deeper than it had been.
“Nothing was ever written down in any of the orders…. As I said, I don’t remember who actually issued our daily orders. I do know why he was supposed to be there though…”
“Go on. Please, Colonel.”
“It was something we were told at the very first briefing on David