“De-capitation operation,” Frank said with a savage grin.
“What leaders?” Morehouse asked. “You talking about the head of the Deacons for Defense or something?”
“I don’t think so,” Sonny said, a strange thrumming in his chest.
Frank picked up a long barbecue fork and drew three letters in the sand at their feet: KKK.
“What the hell?” asked Morehouse. “You don’t mean kill Klan leaders!”
Frank scrubbed out the letters with his boot, then redrew them as corners of an equilateral triangle.
“I still don’t get it,” Sonny said.
Frank smiled, then reached into his back pocket and unfolded a page torn from a magazine. A photograph filled the top right quarter. In it, Attorney General Robert Kennedy stood beside Martin Luther King, while Lyndon Johnson towered above Kennedy to his left. An old black man Sonny didn’t know stood to the right of King. Bobby Kennedy was smiling in the picture, but King looked troubled, even afraid. Red crayon circles had been drawn around the heads of King and Kennedy. The caption said the photo had been taken in the Rose Garden of the White House.
Morehouse asked Frank something, but Sonny missed it because blood was pounding in his ears. He knew without asking what those red circles meant; he only wondered who had drawn them.
“What you think, Son?” Frank asked softly.
Sonny swallowed and tried to formulate an answer. Frank Knox was no deluded redneck with grandiose fantasies. Though largely self-educated, he was a tactical genius. He’d led successful assaults on Japanese positions that Marine officers had declared impregnable, and he had the medals to prove it. With Sonny and Glenn working under him, Frank had carried on a lucrative trade in Japanese trophy skulls right under the noses of the MPs—and he was his own supplier. If Frank was thinking about killing Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, those men were already in mortal danger.
While Morehouse jabbered in bewilderment, Frank took the long barbecue fork and added letters before each of the K’s in the sand. JFK. MLK. RFK. Then he drew an X over JFK, looked up, and said, “One down, two to go.”
After Sonny remembered to breathe, he cleared his throat. “How do you propose we get those guys, Top? We going to Atlanta and D.C.?”
Frank gave him a serene smile. “No need. We’re gonna do it the same way the Jap snipers killed us on the islands. Think about it. They never shot to kill with their first round. They always wounded somebody. They let him lie out there yelling in agony until somebody decided to save him. Then the sniper shot that poor son of a bitch. And on and on until we finally pinpointed his position and called in the arty on his ass.”
Sonny instantly grasped the elegance of this plan, and its real possibility of success. Morehouse, of course, still looked mystified.
Frank gave the big man the look of forbearance he’d give a slow child and said, “Imagine it’s 1936, Glenn. You want to assassinate Hitler. You don’t try to kill him in his bunker, do you? You get him out in the open.”
“I hear you. But how, though?”
Frank sighed wearily. “I don’t know … maybe you run over Max Schmeling in a car. Schmeling has just beaten Joe Louis on American soil, so Goebbels organizes a state funeral. Hitler’s gotta show, right? And that’s where you’re set up, waiting with a long rifle.”
“Sweet,” said Sonny, as understanding finally dawned in Glenn’s eyes. “We bring the targets to us. But who’s going to be our Max Schmeling?”
Frank clucked his tongue. “I been studying on that. There’s no rush. Mississippi’s gonna be popping for the next couple of years, and I guarantee you’ll see both King and Kennedy sticking their noses in here before long.”
“Just like JFK did at Ole Miss in sixty-two,” Sonny said.
“Hell, that was mostly Bobby, even then.”
“Is Brody Royal up for this kind of thing?”
Frank snorted. “Brody’s about making money, brother. But let me tell you something: he’s tied in with Carlos Marcello on all kinds of deals. And nobody hates Bobby Kennedy like Carlos. Not even Hoffa. Three years ago, Kennedy had the CIA kidnap Carlos, strap a parachute on him, and toss him out of a C-130 over Guatemala. ‘Unofficial deportation.’ Talk about stupid. That’s half the reason John Kennedy died, right there. Those CIA boys should have chucked Carlos out without a chute, ’cause that Sicilian bastard don’t forgive, and he damn sure don’t forget.”
Sonny looked away from Frank, realizing his old friend had probably said more than he’d intended. Frank had spent more than a year down near Morgan City, training Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion, and he’d gotten to know all sorts of shady characters. Sonny had visited him a couple of times, had even trained some Cubans on mortars and assorted small arms, but Frank had kept him clear of the CIA paramilitary types who ran the camp. Still, Sonny figured Frank knew more about the assassination of John Kennedy than any congressman sitting on the Warren Commission.