25
Departures
One demonstration, however perfect, wasn’t enough, of course. For each of the next four nights, they did it all again, and twice more in daylight, just so that positioning was clear to everyone. The snatch team would be racing into the prison block only ten feet away from the stream of fire from an M-60 machine gun—the physical layout of the camp demanded it, much to everyone’s discomfort—and that was the most dangerous technical issue of the actual assault. But by the end of the week, the BOXWOOD GREEN team was as perfectly trained as men could be. They knew it, and the flag officers knew it. Training didn’t exactly slack off, but it did stabilize, lest the men become overtrained and dulled by the routine. What followed was the final phase of the preparation. While training, men would stop the action and make small suggestions to one another. Good ideas were bumped immediately to a senior NCO or to Captain Albie and more often than not incorporated in the plan. This was the intellectual part of it, and it was important that every member of the team felt as though he had a chance to affect things to some greater or lesser degree. From that came confidence, not the bravado so often associated with elite troops, but the deeper and far more significant professional judgment that considered and adjusted and readjusted until things were just right—and then stopped.
Remarkably, their off-duty hours were more relaxed now. They knew about the mission, and the high-spirited horseplay common to young men was muted. They watched TV in the open bay, read books or magazines, waiting for the word in the knowledge that halfway across the world other men were waiting, too, and in the quiet of twenty-five individual human minds, questions were being asked. Would things go right or wrong? If the former, what elation would they feel? If the latter—well, they all had long since decided that win or lose, this wasn’t the sort of thing you walked away from. There were husbands to be restored to their wives, fathers to their children, men to their country. Each knew that if death was to be risked, then this was the time and the purpose for it.
At Sergeant Irvin’s behest, chaplains came to the group. Consciences were cleared. A few wills were drafted-just in case, the embarrassed Marines told the visiting officers—and all the while the Marines focused more and more on the mission, their minds casting aside extraneous concerns and concentrating on something identified only by a code name selected at random from separate lists of words. Every man walked over to the training site, checking placement and angles, usually with his most immediate teammate, practicing their run-in approach or the paths they’d take once the shooting started. Every one began his own personal exercise regime, running a mile or two on his own in addition to the regular morning and afternoon efforts, both to work off tension and to be just a little bit more certain that he’d be ready for it. A trained observer could see it from their look: serious but not tense, focused but not obsessive, confident but not cocky. Other Marines at Quantico kept their distance when they saw the team, wondering why the special place and the odd schedule, why the Cobras on the flight line, why the Navy rescue pilots in the Q, but one look at the team in the piney woods was all the warning they needed to mute the questions and keep their distance. Something special was happening.
“Thanks, Roger,” Bob Ritter said in the sanctity of his office in Langley. He switched buttons on his phone and dialed another in-house number. “James? Bob. It’s a go. Start pushing buttons.”
“Thank you, James.” Dutch Maxwell turned in his swivel chair and looked at the side panel affixed to his wall, blue aluminum from his F6F Hellcat fighter, with its even rows of red-and-white painted flags, each denoting a victim of his skill. It was his personal touchstone to his profession. “Yeoman Grafton,” he called.
“Yes, sir?” a petty officer appeared in his doorway.
“Make signal to Admiral Podulski on Constellation: ‘Olive Green.’ ”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Have my car come around, then call Anacostia. I need a helo in about fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, Admiral.”
Vice Admiral Winslow Holland Maxwell, USN, rose from his desk and headed out the side door into the E-Ring corridor. His first stop was at the office in the Air Force’s section of the building.
“Gary, we’re going to need that transport we talked about.”
“You got it, Dutch,” the General replied, asking no questions.
“Let my office know the details. I’m heading out now, but I’ll be calling in every hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maxwell’s car was waiting at the River entrance, a master chief aviation bosun’s mate at the wheel. “Where to, sir?”
“Anacostia, Master Chief, the helo pad.”
“Aye.” The senior chief dropped the car into gear and headed for the river. He didn’t know what it was all about, but he knew it was about something. The Old Man had a spring in his step like the chief’s daughter heading out for a date.
Kelly was working on his woodcraft, again, as he’d been doing for several weeks. He’d picked his weapons load-out in the fervent hope that he would not need to fire a single shot. The primary weapon was a CAR-IS carbine version of the M-16 assault rifle. A silenced 9mm automatic went into a shoulder holster, but his real weapon was a radio, and he would be carrying two of those, just to be sure, plus food and water and a map—and extra batteries. It came out to a twenty-three-pound load, not counting his special gear for the insertion. The weight wasn’t excessive, and he found that he could move through the trees and over the hills without noticing it. Kelly moved quickly for a man of his size, and silently. The latter was a matter of where he walked more than anything else, where he placed his feet, how he twisted and turned to pass between trees and bushes, watching both his path and the area around him with equal urgency.
Overtraining, he told himself. You should take it easier now. He stood erect and headed down the hill, surrendering to his instincts. He found the Marines training in small groups, miming the use of their weapons while Captain Albie consulted with the four helicopter crews. Kelly was just approaching the site’s LZ when a blue Navy helo landed and Admiral Maxwell emerged. Kelly, by chance, was the first one there. He knew the purpose and the message of the visit before anyone had a chance to speak.
“We’re going?”
“Tonight,” Maxwell confirmed with a nod.
Despite the expectation and enthusiasm, Kelly felt the usual chill. It wasn’t practice anymore. His life was on the line again. The lives of others would depend on him. He would have to get the job done. Well, he told himself, I know how to do that. Kelly waited by the chopper while Maxwell went over to Captain Albie. General Young’s staff car pulled up so that he could deliver the news as well. Salutes were exchanged as Kelly watched. Albie got the word, and his back went a little straighter. The Recon Marines gathered around, and their reaction was surprisingly sober and matter-of-fact. Looks were exchanged, rather dubious ones, but they soon changed to simple, determined nods. The mission was GO. The message delivered, Maxwell came back to the helicopter.
“I guess you want that quick liberty.”
“You said you’d do it, sir.”
The Admiral clapped the younger man on the shoulder and pointed to the helo. Inside, they put on headsets while the flight crew spooled up the engine.
“How soon, sir?”
“You be back here by midnight.” The pilot looked back at them from the right seat. Maxwell motioned for him to stay on the ground.
“Aye aye, sir.” Kelly removed the headset and jumped out of the helicopter, going to join General Young.
“Dutch told me,” Young said, the disapproval clear in his voice. You just didn’t do things this way. “What do you need?”
“Back to the boat to change, then run me up to Baltimore, okay? I’ll drive back myself.”
“Look, Clark—”
“General, I helped plan this mission. I’m first in and I’m last out.” Young wanted to swear but didn’t. Instead he pointed to his driver, then to Kelly.
Fifteen minutes later, Kelly was in another life. Since leaving Springer tied up at the guest slip, the world had stopped, and he’d moved backwards in time. Now he was in forward motion for a brief period. A quick look determined that the dockmaster was keeping an eye on things. He raced through a shower and changed into civilian clothes, heading back to the General’s staff car.
“Baltimore, Corporal. Matter of fact, I’ll make it easy on you. Just drop me off at the airport. I’ll catch a cab the rest of the way.”
“You got it, sir,” the driver told a man already fading into sleep.
“So what’s the story, Mr. MacKenzie?” Hicks asked.
“They approved it,” the special assistant replied, signing a few papers and initialing a few others for various official archives where future historians would record his name as a minor player in the great events of his time.
“Can you say what?”
What the hell, MacKenzie thought. Hicks had a clearance, and it was a chance to display something of his importance to the lad. In two minutes he covered the high points of BOXWOOD GREEN.
“Sir, that’s an invasion,” Hicks pointed out as evenly as he could manage, despite the chill on his skin and the sudden knot in his stomach.
“I suppose they might think so, but I don’t. They’ve invaded three sovereign countries, as I recall.”
More urgently: “But the peace talks—you said yourself.”
“Oh, screw the peace talks! Damn it, Wally, we have people over there, and what they know is vital to our national security. Besides”—he smiled—“I helped sell it to Henry.” And if this one comes off. . .
“But—”
MacKenzie looked up. Didn’t this kid get it? “But what, Wally?”
“It’s dangerous.”
“War is that way, in case nobody ever told you.”
“Sir, I’m supposed to be able to talk here, right?” Hicks asked pointedly.
“Of course you are, Wally. So talk.”
“The peace talks are at a delicate stage now—”
“Peace talks are always delicate, aren’t they? Go on,” MacKenzie ordered, rather enjoying his pedagogic discourse. Maybe this kid would learn something for a change.
“Sir, we’ve lost too many people already. We’ve killed a million of them. And for what? What have we gained? What has anybody gained?” His voice was almost a plea.
That wasn’t exactly new, and MacKenzie was tired of responding to it. “If you’re asking me to defend how we got stuck with this mess, Wally, you’re wasting your time. It’s been a mess since the beginning, but that wasn’t the work of this Administration, was it? We got elected with the mandate to get us the hell out of there.”
“Yes, sir,” Hicks agreed, as he had to. “That’s exactly my point. Doing this might harm our chances to bring it to an end. I think it’s a mistake, sir.”
“Okay.” MacKenzie relaxed, giving a tolerant eye to his aide. “That point of view may-I’ll be generous, does have merit. What about the people, Wally?”
“They took their chances. They lost,” Hicks answered with the coldness of youth.
“You know, that sort of detachment may have its use, but one difference between us is that I’ve been there and you haven’t. You’ve never been in uniform, Wally. That’s a shame. You might have learned something from it.”
Hicks was genuinely taken aback by the irrelevancy. “I don’t know what that might be, sir. It would only have interfered with my studies.”
“Life isn’t a book, son,” MacKenzie said, using a word that he’d intended to be warm, but which merely sounded patronizing to his aide. “Real people bleed. Real people have feelings. Real people have dreams, and families. They have real lives. What you would have learned, Wally, is that they may not be like you, but they’re still real people, and if you work in this government of the people, you must take note of that.”
“Yes, sir.” What else could he say? There was no way he’d win this argument. Damn, he really needed someone to talk to about this.
“John!” Not a word in two weeks. She’d feared that something had happened to him, but now she had to face the contradictory thought that he was indeed alive, and perhaps doing things best considered in the abstract.
“Hello, Sandy.” Kelly smiled, dressed decently again, in a tie and blue blazer. It was so obviously a disguise, and so different from the way she’d last seen the man, that even his appearance was disturbing.
“Where have you been?” Sandy asked, waving him in, not wanting the neighbors to know.
“Off doing something,” Kelly dodged.
“Doing what?” The immediacy of her tone demanded a substantive response.
“Nothing illegal, I promise,” was the best he could do.
“You’re sure?” A very awkward moment developed out of thin air. Kelly just stood there, right inside the door, suddenly oscillating between anger and guilt, wondering why he’d come here, why he’d asked Admiral Maxwell for a very special favor, and not really knowing the answer now.
“John!” Sarah called down the stairs, saving both from their thoughts.
“Hey, doc,” Kelly called, and both were glad for the distraction.
“Have we got a surprise for you!”
“What?”
Dr. Rosen came down the stairs, looking as frumpy as ever despite her smile. “You look different.”
“I’ve been exercising pretty regularly,” Kelly explained.
“What brings you here?” Sarah asked.
“I’m going to be going somewhere, and I wanted to stop over before I left.”
“Where to?”
“I can’t say.” The answer chilled the room.
“John,” Sandy said. “We know.”
“Okay.” Kelly nodded. “I figured you would. How is she?”
“She’s doing fine, thanks to you,” Sarah answered.
“John, we need to talk, okay?” Sandy insisted. Dr. Rosen bent to her wishes and went back upstairs while nurse and former patient drifted into the kitchen.
“John, what exactly have you been doing?”
“Lately? I can’t say, Sandy. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
“I mean-I mean everything. What have you been up to?”
“You’re better off not knowing, Sandy.”
“Billy and Rick?” Nurse O’Toole said, putting it on the table.
Kelly motioned his head to the second floor. “You’ve seen what they did to her? They won’t be doing that anymore.”
“John, you can’t do things like that! The police—”
“—are infiltrated,” Kelly told her. “The organization has compromised somebody, probably someone very high up. Because of that I can’t trust the police, and neither can you, Sandy,” he concluded as reasonably as he could.
“But there are others. John. There are others who—” His statement finally penetrated. “How do you know that?”
“I asked Billy some questions.” Kelly paused, and her face gave him yet more guilt. “Sandy, do you really think somebody is going to go out of his way to investigate the death of a prostitute? That’s what it is to them. Do you think anybody really cares about them? I asked you before, remember? You said that nobody even has a program to help them. You care. That’s why I brought her here. But do the cops? No. Maybe I could scratch up information to burn the drug ring. I’m not sure, it’s not what I’ve been trained for, but that’s what I’ve been doing. If you want to turn me in, well, I can’t stop you. I won’t hurt you—”
“I know that!” Sandy almost screamed. “John, you can’t do this,” she added more calmly.
“Why not?” Kelly asked. “They kill people. They do horrible things, and nobody’s doing anything about it. What about the victims, Sandy? Who speaks for them?”
“The law does!”
“And when the law doesn’t work, then what? Do we just let them die? Die like that? Remember the picture of Pam?”
“Yes,” Sandy replied, losing the argument, knowing it, wishing it were otherwise.
“They took hours on her, Sandy. Your—houseguest—watched. They made her watch. ”
“She told me. She’s told us everything. She and Pam were friends. After—after Pam died, she’s the one who brushed Pam’s hair out, John.”
The reaction surprised her. It was immediately clear that Kelly’s pain was behind a door, and some words could bring it out in the open with a sudden speed that punished him badly. He turned away for a moment and took a deep breath before turning back. “She’s okay?”
“We’re going to take her home in a few days. Sarah and I will drive her there.”
“Thanks for telling me that. Thank you for taking care of her.”
It was the dichotomy that unsettled her so badly. He could talk about inflicting death on people so calmly, like Sam Rosen in a discussion of a tricky surgical procedure—and like the surgeon, Kelly cared about the people he—saved? Avenged? Was that the same thing? He thought so.
“Sandy, it’s like this: They killed Pam. They raped and tortured and killed her—as an example, so they could use other girls the same way. I’m going to get every one of them, and if I die in the process, that’s the chance I’m going to take. I’m sorry if you don’t like me for that.”
She took a deep breath. There was nothing more to be said.
“You said you’re going away.”
“Yes. If things work out I should be back in about two weeks.”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“Not if I do it right.” Kelly knew she would see through that one.
“Doing what?”
“A rescue mission. That’s as far as I can go, and please don’t repeat that to anyone. I’m leaving tonight. I’ve been off training for it, down at a military base.”
It was Sandy’s turn to look away, back towards the kitchen door. He wasn’t giving her a chance. There were too many contradictions. He’d saved a girl who would otherwise have certainly died, but he’d killed to do it. He loved a girl who was dead. He was willing to kill others because of that love, to risk everything for it. He’d trusted her and Sarah and Sam. Was he a bad man or a good one? The mixture of facts and ideas was impossible to reconcile. Seeing what had happened to Doris, working so hard now to get her well, hearing her voice—and her father’s—it had all made sense to her at the time. It was always easy to consider things dispassionately, when they were at a distance. But not now, faced with the man who had done it all, who explained himself calmly and directly, not lying, not concealing, just telling the truth, and trusting her, again, to understand.
“Vietnam?” she asked after a few moments, temporizing, trying to add more substance to a very muddled collection of thoughts.
“That’s right.” Kelly paused. He had to explain it, just a little, to help her understand. “There are some people over there who won’t get back unless we do something, and I am part of it.”
“But why do you have to go?”
“Why me? It has to be somebody, and I’m the one they asked. Why do you do the things you do, Sandy? I asked that before, remember?”
“Damn you, John! I’ve started to care about you,” she blurted out.
The pain returned to his face one more time. “Don’t. You might get hurt again, and I wouldn’t want that.” Which was exactly the wrong thing for him to say. “People who get attached to me get hurt, Sandy.”
Sarah came in just then, leading Doris into the kitchen, for the moment saving both of them from themselves. The girl was transformed. Her eyes were animated now. Sandy had trimmed her hair and found decent clothes for her. She was still weak, but moving under her own power now. Her soft brown eyes fixed on Kelly.
“You’re him,” she said quietly.
“I guess I am. How are you?”
She smiled. “I’m going home soon. Daddy—Daddy wants me back.”
“I’m sure he does, Ma’am,” Kelly said. She was so different from the victim he’d seen only a few weeks before. Maybe it did all mean something.
The same thought came into Sandy’s mind just then. Doris was the innocent one, the real victim of forces that had descended on her, and but for Kelly, she would be dead. Nothing else could have saved her. Other deaths had been necessary, but—but what?
“So maybe it was Eddie,” Piaggi said. “I told him to sniff around and he says he doesn’t have anything.”
“And nothing’s happened since you talked to him. Everything’s back to normal, like,” Henry replied, telling Anthony Piaggi what he already knew and following with a conclusion that he had also considered. “What if he was just trying to shake things up a little? What if he just wanted to be more important, Tony?”
“Possible.”
Which led to the next question: “How much you want to bet that if Eddie takes a little trip, nothing else happens?”
“You think he’s making a move?”
“You got anything else that makes sense?”
“Anything happens to Eddie, there could be trouble. I don’t think I can—”
“Let me handle it? I have a way that’ll work just fine.”
“Tell me about it,” Piaggi said. Two minutes later he nodded approval.
“Why did you come here?” Sandy asked while she and Kelly cleaned up the dinner table. Sarah took Doris back upstairs for more rest.
“I wanted to see how she was doing.” But that was a lie, and not an especially good one.
“It’s lonely, isn’t it?” Kelly took a long time to answer.
“Yeah.” She’d forced him to face something. Being alone was not the sort of life he wanted to have, but fate and his own nature had forced it on him. Every time he’d reached out, something terrible had happened. Vengeance against those who had made his life into what it now was did make for a purpose, but it wasn’t enough to fill the void they’d created. And now it was clear that what he was doing, all of it, was merely distancing him from someone else. How did life get so complicated as this?
“I can’t say it’s okay, John. I wish I could. Saving Doris was a fine thing, but not through killing people. There is supposed to be another way—”
“—and if there isn’t, then what?”
“Let me finish?” Sandy asked quietly.
“Sorry.”
She touched his hand. “Please be careful.”
“I usually am, Sandy. Honest.”
“What you’re doing, what you’re going off to, it’s not—”
He smiled. “No, it’s a real job. Official stuff and everything.”
“Two weeks?”
“If it goes according to plan, yes.”
“Will it?”
“Sometimes it actually does.”
Her hand squeezed his. “John, please, think it over. Please? Try to find another way. Let it go. Let it stop. You saved Doris. That’s a wonderful thing. Maybe with what you’ve learned you can save the others without—without any more killing?”
“I’ll try.” He couldn’t say no to that, not with the warmth of her hand on his, and Kelly’s trap was that his word, once given, could not be taken back. “Anyway, I have other things to worry about now.” Which was true.
“How will I know, John—I mean—”
“About me?” He was surprised she would even want to know.
“John, you can’t just leave me not knowing.”
Kelly thought for a moment, pulled a pen from his coat, and wrote down a phone number. “This goes to a guy—an admiral named James Greer. He’ll know, Sandy.”
“Please be careful.” Her grip and her eyes were desperate now.
“I will. I promise. I’m good at this, okay?”
So was Tim. She didn’t have to say it. Her eyes did, and Kelly understood how cruel it could be to leave anyone behind.
“I have to go now, Sandy.”
“Just make sure you come back.”
“I will. Promise.” But the words sounded empty, even to him. Kelly wanted to kiss her but couldn’t. He moved away from the table, feeling her hand still on his. She was a tall woman, and very strong and brave, but she’d been hurt badly before, and it frightened Kelly that he might bring yet more pain to her life. “See you in a couple weeks. Say goodbye to Sarah and Doris for me, okay?”
“Yes.” She followed him towards the front door. “John, when you get back, let it stop.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said without turning, because he was afraid to look at her again. “I will.”
Kelly opened the door. It was dark outside now, and he’d have to hustle to get to Quantico on time. He could hear her behind him, hear her breathing. Two women in his life, one taken by an accident, one by murder, and now perhaps a third whom he was driving away all by himself.
“John?” She hadn’t let go of his hand, and he had to turn back despite his fear.
“Yes, Sandy?”
“Come back.”
He touched her face again, and kissed her hand, and drew away. She watched him walk to the Volkswagen and drive off.
Even now, she thought. Even now he’s trying to protect me.
Is it enough? Can I stop now? But what was “enough”?
“Think it through,” he said aloud. “What do you know that others can use?”
It was quite a lot, really. Billy had told him much, perhaps a sufficient amount. The drugs were processed on one of those wrecked ships. He had Henry’s name, and Burt’s. He knew a senior narcotics officer was in Henry’s employ. Could the police take that and spin it into a case firm enough to put them all behind bars for drug trafficking and murder? Might Henry get a death sentence? And if the answer to every question was yes, was that good enough?
As much as Sandy’s misgivings, his association with the Marines had brought the same questions to the front of his mind. What would they think if they knew that they were associating with a murderer? Would they see it that way or would they be sympathetic to his point of view?
“The bags stink,” Billy had said. “Like dead bodies, like the stuff they use.”
What the hell did that mean? Kelly wondered, going through town one last time. He saw police cars operating. They couldn’t all be driven by corrupt cops, could they?
“Shit,” Kelly snarled at the traffic. “Clear your mind, sailor. There’s a job waiting, a real job.”
But that had said it all. BOXWOOD GREEN was a real job, and the realization came as clear and bright as the headlights of approaching cars. If someone like Sandy didn’t understand—it was one thing to do it alone, just with your own thoughts and rage and loneliness, but when others saw and knew, even people who liked you, and knew exactly what it was all about. . . . When even they asked you to stop. . . .
Where was right? Where was wrong? Where was the line between them? It was easy on the highway. Some crew painted the lines, and you had to stay in the proper lane, but in real life it wasn’t so clear.
Forty minutes later he was on I-495, the Washington Beltway. What was more important, killing Henry or getting those other women out of there?
Another forty and he was across the river into Virginia. Seeing Doris—what a dumb name—alive, after the first time when she’d been almost as dead as Rick. The more he thought about it, the better that seemed.
BOXWOOD GREEN wasn’t about killing the enemy. It was about rescuing people.
He turned south on Interstate 95, and a final forty-five or so delivered him to Quantico. It was eleven-thirty when he drove into the training site.
“Glad you made it,” Marty Young observed sourly. He was dressed in utilities for once instead of his khaki shirt.
Kelly looked hard into the General’s eyes. “Sir, I’ve had a bad enough night. Be a pal and stow it, all right?”
Young took it like the man he was. “Mr. Clark, you sound like you’re ready.”
“That isn’t what it’s about, sir. Those guys in SENDER GREEN are ready.”
“Fair enough, tough guy.”
“Can I leave the car here?”
“With all these clunkers?”
Kelly paused, but the decision came quickly enough. “I think it’s served its purpose. Junk it with the rest of ’em.”
“Come on, the bus is down the hill a ways.”
Kelly collected his personal gear and carried them to the staff car. The same corporal was driving as he sat in the back with the Marine aviator who wouldn’t be going.
“What do you think, Clark?”
“Sir, I think we have a really good chance.”
“You know, I wish just once, just one goddamned time, we could say, yeah, this one’s going to work.”
“Was it ever that way for you?” Kelly asked.
“No,” Young admitted. “But you don’t stop wishing.”
“How was England, Peter?”
“Pretty nice. It rained in Paris, though. Brussels was pretty decent, my first time there,” Henderson said.
Their apartments were only two blocks apart, comfortable places in Georgetown built during the late thirties to accommodate the influx of bureaucrats serving a growing government. Built of solid cinder-arch construction, they were more structurally sound than more recent buildings. Hicks had a two-bedroom unit, which compensated for the smallish living-dining room.
“So what’s happening that you wanted to tell me about?” the Senate aide asked, still recovering from jet lag.
“We’re invading the North again,” the White House aide answered.
“What? Hey, I was at the peace talks, okay? I observed some of the chitchat. Things are moving along. The other side just caved in on a big one.”
“Well, you can kiss that goodbye for a while,” Hicks said morosely. On the coffee table was a plastic bag of marijuana, and he started putting a smoke together.
“You should lay off that shit, Wally.”
“Doesn’t give me a hangover like beer does. Shit, Peter, what’s the difference?”
“The difference is your fucking security clearance!” Henderson said pointedly.
“Like that matters? Peter, they don’t listen. You talk and talk and talk to them, and they just don’t listen.” Hicks lit up and took a long pull. “I’m going to leave soon anyway. Dad wants me to come and join the family business. Maybe after I make a few mill’, maybe then somebody’ll listen once in a while.”
“You shouldn’t let it get to you, Wally. It takes time. Everything takes time. You think we can fix things overnight?”
“I don’t think we can fix things at all! You know what this all is? It’s like Sophocles. We have our fatal flaw, and they have their fatal flaw, and when the fucking deus comes ex the fucking machina, the deus is going to be a cloud of ICBMs, and it’s all going to be over, Peter. Just like we thought a few years ago up in New Hampshire.” It wasn’t Hicks’s first smoke of the evening, Henderson realized. Intoxication always made his friend morose.
“Wally, tell me what the problem is.”
“There’s supposedly this camp . . . ” Hicks began, his eyes down, not looking at his friend at all now as he related what he knew.
“That is bad news.”
“They think there’s a bunch of people there, but it’s just supposition. We only know about one. What if we’re fucking over the peace talks for one guy, Peter?”
“Put that damned thing out,” Henderson said, sipping his beer. He just didn’t like the smell of the stuff.
“No.” Wally took another big hit.
“When is it going?”
“Not sure. Roger didn’t say exactly.”
“Wally, you have to stay with it. We need people like you in the system. Sometimes they will listen.”
Hicks looked up. “When will that be, do you think?”
“What if this mission fails? What if it turns out that you’re right? Roger will listen to you then, and Henry listens to Roger, doesn’t he?”
“Well, yeah, sometimes.”
What a remarkable chance this was, Henderson thought.
The chartered bus drove to Andrews Air Force Base, duplicating, Kelly saw, more than half of his drive. There was a new C-141 on the ramp, painted white on the top and gray on the bottom, its strobe lights already rotating. The Marines got out of the bus, finding Maxwell and Greer waiting for them.
“Good luck.” Greer said to each man.
“Good hunting,” was what Dutch Maxwell told them.
Built to hold more than double their number, the Lockheed Starlifter was outfitted for litter patients, with a total of eighty beds bolted to the side of the aircraft and room for twenty or so attendants. That gave every Marine a place to lie down and sleep, plus room for all the prisoners they expected to rescue. The time of night made it easy for everyone, and the Starlifter started turning engines as soon as the cargo hatch was shut.
“Jesus, I hope this works,” Maxwell said, watching the aircraft taxi into the darkness.
“You’ve trained them well, Admiral,” Bob Ritter observed. “When do we go out?”
“Three days, Bob,” James Greer answered. “Got your calendar clear?”
“For this? You bet.”