26
Transit
A new aircraft, the Starlifter was also a disappointingly slow one. Its cruising speed was a mere 478 miles per hour, and their first stop was Elmendorf Air Force base in Alaska, 3,350 miles and eight hours away. It never ceased to amaze Kelly that the shortest distance to any place on Earth was a curve, but that was because he was used to flat maps, and the world was a sphere. The great-circle route from Washington to Danang would actually have taken them over Siberia, and that, the navigator said, just wouldn’t do. By the time of their arrival at Elmendorf, the Marines were up and rested. They departed the aircraft to look at snow on not-so-distant mountains, having only a few hours before left a place where heat and humidity were in a daily race for 100. But here in Alaska they found mosquitoes sufficiently large that a few might have carried one of their number off. Most took the opportunity to jog a couple of miles, to the amusement of the Air Force personnel, who typically had little contact with Marines. Servicing the C-141 took a programmed time of two and a quarter hours. After refueling and one minor instrument replacement, the Marines were just as happy to reboard the aircraft for the second leg of the journey, for Yokota, in Japan. Three hours after that, Kelly walked onto the flight deck, growing bored with the noise and confinement.
“What’s that over there?” he asked. In the distant haze was a brown-green line that denoted somebody’s coast.
“Russia. They have us on radar right now.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Kelly observed.
“It’s a small world, sir, and they own a big hunk of it.”
“You talk to them—air-traffic control, like?”
“No.” The navigator laughed. “They’re not real neighborly. We talk on HF to Tokyo for this leg, and after Yokota, we’re controlled through Manila. Is the ride smooth enough?”
“No beefs so far. Gets long, though.”
“It does that,” the navigator acknowledged, turning back to his instruments.
Kelly walked back into the cargo area. The C-141 was noisy, a constant high-frequency whine from the engines and the air through which they were passing. The Air Force didn’t waste any money, as airlines did, on sound insulation. Every Marine was wearing earplugs, which made conversation difficult, and after a time didn’t really block the noise anyway. The worst part of air travel was the boredom, Kelly thought, made worse by the sound-induced isolation. You could only sleep so much. Some of the men were honing knives which they would never really use, but it gave you something to do, and a warrior had to have a knife for some reason. Others were doing push-ups on the metal cargo deck of the aircraft. The Air Force crewmen watched impassively, not wanting to laugh, wondering what this obviously select group of Marines was up to, but unable to ask. It was for them just one more mystery as their aircraft slid down the Siberian coast. They were used to it, but to a man they wished the Marines well on whatever their job was.
The problem was the first thing on his mind when his eyes opened. What do I do about this? Henderson asked himself crossly.
It wasn’t what he wanted to do, but what he would be able to do. He’d delivered information before. At first unknowingly, through contacts in the peace movement, he’d—well, not so much given over information as had joined in rambling discussions which over time had become more and more pointed until finally one of his friends had asked something just a little too directed to be a random inquiry. A friendly question she’d asked, and at a very friendly moment, but the look in her eyes was a little too interested in the reply and not enough interested in him, a situation which had immediately reversed when he’d answered the question. A spoonful of sugar, he’d told himself later, rather vexed with himself that he’d fallen prey to such an obvious and old-fashioned-well, not an error, really. He liked her, believed as she did in the way the world should be, and if anything he was annoyed that she’d felt it necessary to manipulate his body in order to get something that reason and intellect would have elicited quite readily from his mind . . . well, probably.
She was gone now, gone somewhere. Henderson didn’t know where, though he was sure that he’d never see her again. Which was sad, really. She’d been a great lay. One thing had led to another in a seemingly gradual and natural series of steps ending with his brief conversation at H.M. Tower of London, and now—now he had something the other side really needed. It was just that he didn’t have anyone to tell it to. Did the Russians really know what they had there at that damned-fool camp southwest of Haiphong? It was information which, if used properly, would make them feel far more comfortable about detente, would allow them to back off a little, in turn allowing America to back off a little. That was how it had to start. It was a shame Wally didn’t grasp that it had to start as little things, that you couldn’t change the world all at once. Peter knew that he had to get that message across. He couldn’t have Wally leave government service now, to become just one more goddamned financial puke, as though the world didn’t have enough of them already. He was valuable where he was. Wally just liked to talk too much. It went along with his emotional instability. And his drug use, Henderson thought, looking in the mirror as he shaved.
Breakfast was accompanied by a morning paper. There it was again, on the first page as it was almost every day. Some medium-sized battle for some hill that had been exchanged a dozen or more times, X number of Americans and Y number of Vietnamese, all dead. The implications for the peace talks of some air raid or other, another boring and predictable editorial. Plans for a demonstration. One, Two, Three, Four. We don’t want your fucking war. As
though something so puerile as that really meant anything. In a way, he knew, it did. It did put pressure on political figures, did catch media attention. There was a mass of politicians who wanted the war to end, as Henderson did, but not yet a critical mass. His own senator, Robert Donaldson, was still on the fence. He was called a reasonable and thoughtful man, but Henderson merely found him indecisive, always considering everything about an issue and then most often going with the crowd as though he hadn’t thought anything at all on his own. There had to be a better way, and Henderson was working on that, advising his senator carefully, shading things just a little bit, taking his time to become trusted so that he could learn things that Donaldson wasn’t supposed to tell anyone—but that was the problem with secrets. You just had to let others know, he thought on the way out the door.
Henderson rode the bus to work. Parking on The Hill was such a pain in the rump, and the bus went nearly from door to door. He found a seat in the back where he could finish reading the paper. Two blocks later he felt the bus stop, and immediately thereafter a man sat down next to him.
“How was London?” the man asked in a conversational voice, barely over the noise of the bus’s diesel. Henderson looked over briefly. It wasn’t someone he’d met before. Were they that efficient?
“I met someone there,” Peter said cautiously.
“I have a friend in London. His name is George.” Not a trace of an accent, and now that contact was established, the man was reading the sports page of the Washington Post. “I don’t think the Senators will make it this year. Do you?”
“George said he had a . . . friend in town.”
The man smiled at the box score. “My name is Marvin; you can call me that.”
“How do we . . . how do I . . . ?”
“What are you doing for dinner tonight?” Marvin asked.
“Nothing much. Want to come over—”
“No, Peter, that is not smart. Do you know a place called Alberto’s?”
“Wisconsin Avenue, yeah.”
“Seven-thirty,” Marvin said. He rose and got off at the next stop.
The final leg started at Yokota Air Base. After another programmed two-and-a-quarter-hour service wait, the Starlifter rotated off the runway, clawing its way back into the sky. That was when things started to get real for everyone. The Marines made a concerted effort to sleep now. It was the only way to deal with the tension that grew in inverse proportion to the distance from their final destination. Things were different now. It wasn’t just a training exercise, and their demeanor was adapting itself to a new reality. On a different sort of flight, a commercial airliner, perhaps, where conversation might have been possible, they’d trade jokes, stories of amorous conquests, talk about home and family and plans for the future, but the noise of the C-141 denied them that, and so they traded brave smiles that hung under guarded eyes, each man alone with his thoughts and fears, needing to share them and deflect them, but unable to in the noisy cargo compartment of the Starlifter. That was why many of them exercised, just to work off the stress, to tire themselves enough for the oblivion of sleep. Kelly watched it, having seen and done it himself, alone with his own thoughts even more complex than theirs.
It’s about rescue, Kelly told himself. What had started the whole adventure was saving Pam, and the fact of her death was his fault. Then he had killed, to get even, telling himself it was for her memory and for his love, but was that really true? What good things came from death? He’d tortured a man, and now he had to admit to himself that he’d taken satisfaction in Billy’s pain. If Sandy had learned that, then what? What would she think of him? It was suddenly important to consider what she thought about him. She who worked so hard to save that girl, who nurtured and protected, following through on his more simple act of rescue, what would she think of someone who’d torn Billy’s body apart one cell at a time? He could not, after all, stop all the evil in the world. He could not win the war to which he was now returning, and as skilled as this team of Recon Marines was, they would not win the war either. They were going for something else. Their purpose was rescue, for while there could be little real satisfaction in the taking of life, saving life was ever something to recall with the deepest pride. That was his mission now, and must be his mission on returning. There were four other girls in the control of the ring. He’d get them clear, somehow . . . and maybe he could somehow let the cops know what Henry was up to, and then they could deal with him. Somehow. How exactly he wasn’t sure. But at least then he could do something that memory would not try to wash away.
And all he had to do was survive this mission. Kelly grunted to himself. No big deal, right?
Tough guy, he told himself with bravado that rang false even within the confines of his own skull. I can do this. I’ve done it before. Strange, he thought, how the mind doesn’t always remember the scary parts until it was too late. Maybe it was proximity. Maybe it was easier to consider dangers that were half a world away, but then when you started getting closer, things changed. . . .
“Toughest part, Mr. Clark,” Irvin said loudly, sitting down beside him after doing his hundred push-ups.
“Ain’t it the truth?” Kelly half-shouted back.
“Something you oughta remember, squid—you got inside and took me out that night, right?” Irvin grinned. “And I’m pretty damned good.”
“They ought not to be all that alert, their home turf an’ all,” Kelly observed after a moment.
“Probably not, anyway, not as alert as we were that night. Hell, we knew you were coming in. You kinda expect home troops, like, go home to the ol’ lady every night, thinking about havin’ a piece after dinner. Not like us, man.”
“Not many like us,” Kelly agreed. He grinned. “Not many dumb as we are.”
Irvin slapped him on the shoulder. “You got that right, Clark.” The master gunnery sergeant moved off to encourage the next man, which was his way of dealing with it.
Thanks, Guns, Kelly thought, leaning back and forcing himself back into sleep.
Alberto’s was a place waiting to be fully discovered. A small and rather typical mom-and-pop Italian place where the veal was especially good. In fact, everything was good, and the couple who ran it waited patiently for the Post’s food critic to wander in, bringing prosperity with him. Until then they subsisted on the college crowd from nearby Georgetown University and a healthy local trade of neighborhood diners without which no restaurant could really survive. The only disappointing note was the music, schmaltzy tapes of Italian opera that oozed out of substandard speakers. The mom and pop in question would have to work on that, he thought.
Henderson found a booth in the back. The waiter, probably an illegal Mexican who comically tried to mask his accent as Italian, lit the candle on the table with a match and went off for the gin-and-tonic the new customer wanted.
Marvin arrived a few minutes later, dressed casually and carrying the evening paper, which he sat on the table. He was of Henderson’s age, totally nondescript, not tall or short, portly or thin, his hair a neutral brown and of medium length, wearing glasses that might or might not have held prescription lenses. He wore a blue short-sleeve shirt without a tie, and looked like just another local resident who didn’t feel like doing his own dinner tonight.
“The Senators lost again,” he said when the waiter arrived with Henderson’s drink. “The house red for me,” Marvin told the Mexican.
“Sí,” the waiter said and moved off.
Marvin had to be an illegal, Peter thought, appraising the man. As a staffer for a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Henderson had been briefed in by serious members of the FBI’s Intelligence Division. “Legal” KGB officers had diplomatic covers, and if caught could only be PNG’d—declared persona non grata—and sent home. So they were secure from serious mishandling on the part of the American government, which was the good news; the bad news was that they were also more easily tracked, since their residences and automobiles were known. Illegals were just that, Soviet intelligence officers who came into the country with false papers and who if caught would end up in federal prison until the next exchange, which could take years. Those facts explained Marvin’s superb English. Any mistake he made would have serious consequences. That made his relaxed demeanor all the more remarkable.
“Baseball fan, eh?”
“I learned the game long ago. I was a pretty good shortstop, but I never learned to hit a curve ball.” The man grinned. Henderson smiled back. He’d seen satellite imagery of the very place where Marvin had learned his trade, that interesting little city northwest of Moscow.
“How will it work?”
“I like that. Good. Let’s get down to business. We won’t be doing this very often. You know why.”
Another smile. “Yeah, they say that winters at Leaven-worth are a motherfucker.”
“Not a laughing matter, Peter,” the KGB officer said. “This is a very serious business.” Please, not another bloody cowboy, Marvin thought to himself.
“I know. Sorry,” Henderson apologized. “I’m new to this.”
“First of all, we need to set up a way of contacting me. Your apartment has curtains on the front windows. When they are all the way open, or all the way closed, there is nothing to concern us. When there is, leave them halfway closed. I will check your windows twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday mornings, about nine. Is that acceptable?”
“Yes, Marvin.”
“For starters, Peter, we’ll use a simple transfer method. I will park my car on a street close to your home. It’s a dark-blue Plymouth Satellite with license number HVR-309. Repeat that back to me. Don’t ever write it down.”
“HVR-309.”
“Put your messages in this.” He passed something under the table. It was small and metallic. “Don’t get it too close to your watch. There’s a powerful magnet in it. When you walk past my car, you can bend down to pick up a piece of litter, or rest your foot on the bumper and tie your shoe. Just stick the container on the inside surface of the bumper. The magnet will hold it in place.”
It seemed very sophisticated to Henderson, though everything he’d just heard was kindergarten-level spycraft. This was good for the summer. Winter weather would require something else. The dinner menu arrived, and both men selected veal.
“I have something now if you’re interested,” Henderson told the KGB officer. Might as well let them know how important I am.
Marvin, whose real name was Ivan Alekseyevich Yegorov, had a real job, and everything that went along with it. Employed by the Aetna Casualty and Surety Company as a loss-control representative, he’d been through company training on Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut, before returning to the Washington regional office, and his job was to identify safety hazards at the many clients of the company, known in the trade as “risks.” Selected mainly for its mobility—the post even came with a company car—the job carried with it the unexpected bonus of visiting the offices of various government contractors whose employees were not always as careful covering up the papers on their desks as they ought to have been. His immediate boss was delighted with Marvin’s performance. His new man was highly observant and downright superb at documenting his business affairs. He’d already turned down promotion and transfer to Detroit—Sorry,boss, but I just like the Washington area too much—which didn’t bother his supervisor at all. A guy with his skills, holding a fairly low-paying job, just made his part of the office look all the better. For Marvin, the job meant being out of the office four days out of five, which allowed him to meet people whenever and wherever he wished, along with a free car—Aetna even paid gas and maintenance—and a life so comfortable that had he believed in God he might have thought himself dead and in heaven. A genuine love for baseball took him to RFK Stadium, where the anonymity of the crowd was as perfect a place for brush-passes and other meets as the KGB Field Operations Manual dared to hope for. All in all, Captain Yegorov was a man on the way up, comfortable with his cover and his surroundings, doing his duty for his country. He’d even managed to arrive in America just in time to catch the sexual revolution. All he really missed was the vodka, something Americans did poorly.
Isn’t this interesting? Marvin asked himself in his Chevy Chase apartment. It was downright hilarious that he had learned about a high-level Russian intelligence operation from an American, and here was a chance to hurt his country’s Main Enemy through surrogates—if they could get things moving in time. He would also be able to inform his control officers of something the Soviet Air Force cretins had running that had significant implications for the Soviet Union’s defense. They’d probably try to take that operation over. You couldn’t trust pilots—it had to be a PVO Strany officer doing the questioning, he was sure—with something as important as national defense. He made his notes, photographed them, and rewound the film into the tiny cassette. His first appointment tomorrow was an early call at a local contractor. From there he would stop off to have breakfast at a Howard Johnson‘s, where he’d make his transfer. The cassette would be in Moscow in two days, maybe three, by diplomatic pouch.
Captain Yegorov ended his work for the evening just in time to catch the end of the Senators game—despite a ninth-inning homer by Frank Howard they fell short again, losing to Cleveland 5-3. Wasn’t this something, he thought, sipping at his beer. Henderson was a plum all by himself, and nobody had bothered to tell him—probably hadn’t known—that he had his own source within the White House Office of National Security Affairs. Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?
Mission stress and all, it was a relief when the C-141 thumped down at Danang. They’d been in transit for a total of twenty-three noisy and mind-numbing hours, and that was quite long enough, they all thought, until reality struck them hard and fast. Scarcely had the cargo hatch opened when the smell hit them. It was what all veterans of this place came to think of as the Smell of Vietnam. The contents of various latrines were dumped into barrels and burned with diesel fuel.
“Smell o’ home!” one Marine joked, badly, evoking isolated barks of semiamusement.
“Saddle up!” Irvin shouted as the engine noise died. It took a little time. Reactions were slowed by fatigue and stiffness. Many shook their heads to clear off the dizziness induced by the earplugs, along with yawns and stretches which psychologists would have called typical nonverbal expressions of unease.
The flight crew came aft just as the Marines left. Captain Albie went to them, thanking them for the ride, which had been smooth, if long. The Air Force crew looked forward to several days of enforced crew-rest after the marathon stint, not yet knowing that they would hold in this area until the team was ready to fly home, perhaps catching a few cargo hops back and forth to Clark. Then Albie led his men off the aircraft. Two trucks were waiting, and they drove to a different part of the air base, where two aircraft waited. These were Navy C-2A Greyhounds. With a few desultory moans, the Marines selected seats for the next part of their journey, a one-hour hop to USS Constellation. Once there, they boarded a pair of CH- 46 Sea Knight helicopters for a transfer to USS Ogden, where, disoriented and exhausted by travel, they were led to capacious and empty troop quarters—and bunks. Kelly watched them file off, wondering what came next for him.
“How was the trip?” He turned to see Admiral Podulski, dressed in wrinkled khakis and far too cheerful for the moment.
“Aviators gotta be crazy,” Kelly bitched.
“Does get kinda long. Follow me,” the Admiral ordered, leading him into the superstructure. Kelly looked around first. Constellation was on the eastern horizon, and he could see aircraft flying off one end while others circled to land on the other. Two cruisers were in close attendance, and destroyers ringed the formation. It was part of the Navy which Kelly had rarely seen, the Big Blue Team at work, commanding the ocean. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
“Russian fishing trawler, AGI.” Podulski waved Kelly through a watertight door.
“Oh, that’s just great!”
“Don’t worry. We can deal with that,” the Admiral assured him.
Inside the superstructure, the two men headed up a series of ladders, finding flag quarters, or what passed for them at the moment. Admiral Podulski had taken over the Captain’s in-port cabin for the duration of the mission, relegating Ogden’s CO to his smaller accommodations nearer the bridge. There was a comfortable sitting room, and the ship’s captain was there.
“Welcome aboard!” Captain Ted Franks said in greeting. “You’re Clark?”
“Yes, sir.”
Franks was a fifty-year-old pro who’d been in amphibious ships since 1944. Ogden was his fifth and would be his last command. Short, pudgy, and losing his hair, he still had the look of a warrior on a face that was by turns good-natured and deadly serious. At the moment, it was the former. He waved Kelly to a chair next to a table in the center of which was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
“That ain’t legal,” Kelly observed at once.
“Not for me,” Captain Franks agreed. “Aviator rations.”
“I arranged for them,” Casimir Podulski explained. “Brought ’em over from Connie. You need something to steady down after all that time with the Air Scouts.”
“Sir, I never argue with admirals.” Kelly dropped two ice cubes into a tumbler and covered them with alcohol.
“My XO is talking with Captain Albie and his people. They’re all getting entertained, too,” Franks added, meaning that every man had two miniatures on his assigned bunk. “Mr. Clark, our ship is yours. Anything we have, you got it.”
“Well, Cap’n, you surely know how to say hello.” Kelly sipped at his drink, and the first touch of the booze made his body remember how wrung-out he was. “So when do we start?”
“Four days. You need two to recover from the trip,” the Admiral said. “The submarine will be with us two days after that. The Marines go in Friday morning, depending on weather.”
“Okay.” There was nothing else he could say.
“Only the XO and I know anything yet. Try not to spread things around. We’ve got a pretty good crew. The intel team is aboard and working. The medical team gets here tomorrow.”
“Recon?”
Podulski handled that one. “We’ll have photos of the camp later today, from a Vigilante working off Connie. Then another set twelve hours before you move out. We have Buffalo Hunter shots, five days old. The camp is still there, still guarded, same as before.”
“Items?” Kelly asked, using the code word for prisoners.
“We’ve only got three shots of Americans in the compound.” Podulski shrugged. “They don’t make a camera yet that can see through a tile roof.”
“Right.” Kelly’s face said it all.
“I’m worried about that, too,” Cas admitted.
Kelly turned. “Captain, you have an exercise place, something like that?”
“Weight room, aft of the crew’s mess. Like I said, it’s yours if you want it.”
He finished off his drink. “Well, I think I need to get some rack time.”
“You’ll mess with the Marines. You’ll like the food here,” Captain Franks promised.
“Fair enough.”
“I saw two men not wearing their hard-hats,” Marvin Wilson said to the boss.
“I’ll talk to them.”
“Aside from that, thanks a lot for your cooperation.” He’d made a total of eleven safety recommendations, and the owner of the cement company had adopted every one, hoping for a reduction in his insurance rates. Marvin took off his white hard-hat and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was going to be a hot one. The summer climate was not all that much unlike Moscow, but more humid. At least the winters were milder.
“You know, if they made these things with little holes in them for ventilation, they’d be a lot more comfortable to wear.”
“I’ve said that myself,” Captain Yegorov agreed, heading off to his car. Fifteen minutes later he pulled into a Howard Johnson’s. The blue Plymouth took a spot along the west side of the building, and as he got out, a patron inside finished off his coffee and left his spot at the counter, along with a quarter tip to thrill the waitress. The restaurant had a double set of doors to save on the air-conditioning bill, and when the two men met there, just the two of them, moving, with the glass of the doors interfering with anyone who might be observing them, the film was passed. Yegorov/Wilson continued inside, and a “legal” KGB major named Ishchenko went his way. Relieved of his burden for the day, Marvin Wilson sat at the counter and ordered orange juice to start. There were so many good things to eat in America.
“I’m eating too much.” It was probably true, but it didn’t stop Doris from attacking the pile of hotcakes.
Sarah didn’t understand the Americans’ love for emaciation. “You lost plenty in the last two weeks. It won’t hurt you to put a little back,” Sarah Rosen told her graduating patient.
Sarah’s Buick was parked outside, and today would see them in Pittsburgh. Sandy had worked on Doris’s hair a little more, and made one more trip to get clothes that befitted the day, a beige silk blouse and a burgundy skirt that ended just above the knee. The prodigal son could return home in rags, but the daughter had to arrive with some pride.
“I don’t know what to say,” Doris Brown told them, standing to collect the dishes.
“You just keep getting better,” Sarah replied. They went out to the car, and Doris got in the back. If nothing else, Kelly had taught them caution. Dr. Sarah Rosen headed out quickly, turning north on Loch Raven, getting on the Baltimore Beltway and heading west to Interstate 70. The posted limit on the new highway was seventy miles per hour, and Sarah exceeded it, pushing her heavy Buick northwest toward the Catoctin Mountains, every mile between them and the city an additional safety factor, and by the time they passed Hagerstown she relaxed and started enjoying the ride. What were the chances, after all, of being spotted in a moving car?
It was a surprisingly quiet ride. They’d talked themselves out in the previous few days as Doris had returned to a condition approximating normality. She still needed drug counseling, and seriously needed psychiatric help, but Sarah had already taken care of that with a colleague at the University of Pittsburgh’s excellent medical school, a sixtyish woman who knew not to report things to the local police, assured that that part of the matter was already in hand. In the silence of the car Sandy and Sarah could feel the tension build. It was something they’d talked about. Doris was returning to a home and a father she’d left for a life that had nearly become a death. For many months the principal component of her new life would be guilt, part earned, part not. On the whole she was a very lucky young lady, something Doris had yet to grasp. She was, first of all, alive. With her confidence and self-esteem restored she might in two or three years be able to continue her life on a course so normal that no one would ever suspect her past or notice the fading scars. Restored health would change this girl, returning her not only to her father but also to the world of real people.
Perhaps she might even become stronger, Sarah hoped, if the psychiatrist brought her along slowly and carefully. Dr. Michelle Bryant had a stellar reputation, a correct one, she hoped. For Dr. Rosen, still racing west slightly over the legal limit, this was one of the hard parts of medicine. She had to let the patient go with the job not yet complete. Her clinical work with drug abusers had prepared her for it, but those jobs, like this one, were never really finished. It was just that there came a time when you had to let go, hoping and trusting that the patient could do the rest. Perhaps sending your daughter off to be married was like this, Sarah thought. It could have been so much worse in so many ways. Over the phone her father seemed a decent man, and Sarah Rosen didn’t need a specialization in psychiatry to know that more than anything else, Doris needed a relationship with an honorable and loving man so that she could, one day, develop another such relationship that would last her lifetime. That was now the job of others, but it didn’t stop Sarah from worrying about her patient. Every doctor can be a Jewish mother, and in her case it was difficult to avoid.
The hills were steep in Pittsburgh. Doris directed them along the Monongahela River and up the right street, suddenly tense while Sandy checked the numbers on the houses. And there it was. Sarah pulled the red Buick into a parking place and everyone took a deep breath.
“You okay?” she asked Doris, getting a frightened nod in response.
“He’s your father, honey. He loves you.”
There was nothing remarkable about Raymond Brown, Sarah saw a moment later. He must have been waiting at the door for hours, and he, too, was nervous, coming down the cracked concrete steps, holding the rail as he did so with a trembling hand. He opened the car door, helping Sandy out with awkward gallantry. Then he reached inside, and though he was trying to be brave and impassive, when his fingers touched Doris‘s, the man burst into tears. Doris tripped coming out of the car, and her father kept her from falling, and clutched her to his chest.
“Oh, Daddy!”
Sandy O’Toole turned away, not put off by the emotion of the moment, but wanting them to have it alone, and the look she gave Dr. Rosen was its own culminating moment for people of their profession. Both medics bit their lips and examined the other’s moist eyes.
“Let’s get you inside, baby,” Ray Brown said, taking his little girl up the steps, needing to have her in his house and under his protection. The other two women followed without being bidden.
The living room was surprisingly dark. A day-sleeper, Mr. Brown had added dark shades to his home and had forgotten to raise them this day. It was a cluttered room of braided rugs and overstuffed ’40s furniture, small mahogany tables with lacelike doilies. There were framed photos everywhere. A dead wife. A dead son. And a lost daughter—four of those. In the dark security of the house, father clutched daughter again.
“Honey,” he said, recounting words that he’d been practicing for days. “The things I said, I was wrong, I was so damned wrong!”
“It’s okay, Daddy. Thank you for . . . for letting me—”
“Dor, you’re my little girl.” Nothing more had to be said. That hug lasted over a minute, and then she had to draw back with a giggle.
“I have to go.”
“The bathroom’s in the same place,” her father said, wiping his own eyes. Doris moved off, finding the stairs and going up. Raymond Brown turned his attention to his guests.
“I, uh, I have lunch ready.” He paused awkwardly. This wasn’t a time for good manners or considered words. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“That’s okay.” Sarah smiled her benign doctor’s smile, the sort that told him that everything was all right, even though it wasn’t, really. “But we need to talk. This is Sandy O’Toole, by the way. Sandy’s a nurse, and she’s more responsible for your daughter’s recovery than I am.”
“Hi,” Sandy said, and handshakes were exchanged all around.
“Doris still needs a lot of help, Mr. Brown,” Dr. Rosen said. “She’s been through a really terrible time. Can we talk a little bit?”
“Yes, ma’ am. Please, sit down. Can I get you anything?” he asked urgently.
“I’ve set your daughter up with a doctor at Pitt. Her name’s Michelle Bryant. She’s a psychiatrist—”
“You mean Doris is . . . sick?”
Sarah shook her head. “No, not really. But she’s been through a very bad time, and good medical attention will help her recover a lot faster. Do you understand?”
“Doc, I will do anything you tell me, okay? I’ve got all the medical insurance I need through the company.”
“Don’t worry about that. Michelle will handle this as a matter of professional courtesy. You have to go there with Doris. Now, it is very important that you understand, she’s been through a really horrible experience. Terrible things. She’s going to get better—she’s going to recover fully, but you have to do your part. Michelle can explain all that better than I can. What I’m telling you, Mr. Brown, is this: no matter what awful things you learn, please—”
“Doc,” he interrupted softly, “that’s my little girl. She’s all I have, and I’m not going to . . . foul up and lose her again. I’d rather die.”
“Mr. Brown, that is exactly what we needed to hear.”
Kelly awoke at one in the morning, local time. The big slug of whiskey he’d downed along the way had blessedly not resulted in a hangover. In fact, he felt unusually rested. The gentle rocking of the ship had soothed his body during the day/night, and lying in the darkness of his officers’ accommodations he heard the gentle creaks of steel compressing and expanding as USS Ogden turned to port. He made his way to the shower, using cold water to wake himself up. In ten minutes he was dressed and presentable. It was time to explore the ship.
Warships never sleep. Though most work details were synchronized to daylight hours, the unbending watch cycle of the Navy meant that men were always moving about. No less than a hundred of the ship’s crew were always at their duty stations, and many others were circulating about the dimly lit passageways on their way to minor maintenance tasks. Others were lounging in the mess spaces, catching up on reading or letter-writing.
He was dressed in striped fatigues. There was a name tag that said Clark, but no badges of rank. In the eyes of the crew that made “Mr. Clark” a civilian, and already they were whispering that he was a CIA guy—to the natural accompaniment of James Bond jokes that evaporated on the sight of him. The sailors stood aside in the passageways as he wandered around, greeting him with respectful nods that he acknowledged, bemused to have officer status. Though only the Captain and Executive Officer knew what this mission was all about, the sailors weren’t dumb. You didn’t send a ship all the way from ‘Dago just to support a short platoon of Marines unless there was one hell of a good reason, and the bad-ass bunch that had come aboard looked like the sort to make John Wayne take a respectful step back.
Kelly found the flight deck. Three sailors were walking there, too. Connie was still on the horizon, still operating aircraft whose strobes blinked away against the stars. In a few minutes his eyes adapted to the darkness. There were destroyers present, a few thousand yards out. Aloft on Ogden, radar antennas turned to the hum of electric motors, but the dominating sound was the continuous broomlike swish of steel hull parting water.
“Jesus, it’s pretty,” he said, mainly to himself.
Kelly headed back into the superstructure and wandered forward and upwards until he found the Combat Information Center. Captain Franks was there, sleepless, as many captains tended to be.
“Feeling better?” the CO asked.
“Yes, sir.” Kelly looked down at the plot, counting the ships in this formation, designated TF-77.1. Lots of radars were up and running, because North Vietnam had an air force and might someday try to do something really dumb.
“Which one’s the AGI?”
“This is our Russian friend.” Franks tapped the main display. “Doing the same thing we are. The Elint guys we have embarked are having a fine old time,” the Captain went on. “Normally they go out on little ships. We’re like the Queen Mary for them.”
“Pretty big,” Kelly agreed. “Seems real empty, too.”
“Yep. Well, no scuffles to worry about, ‘tween my kids and the Marine kids, I mean. You need to look at some charts? I have the whole package under lock in my cabin.”
“Sounds like a good idea, Cap’n. Maybe some coffee, too?”
Franks’s at-sea cabin was comfortable enough. A steward brought coffee and breakfast. Kelly unfolded the chart, again examining the river he’d be taking up.
“Nice and deep,” Franks observed.
“As far as I need it to be,” Kelly agreed, munching on some toast. “The objective’s right here.”
“Better you than me, my friend.” Franks pulled a pair of dividers out of his pocket and walked off the distance.
“How long you been in this business?”
“Gator navy?” Franks laughed. “Well, they kicked my ass out of Annapolis in two and a half years. I wanted destroyers, so they gave me a first-flight LST. XO as a jaygee, would you believe? First landing was Pelileu. I had my own command for Okinawa. Then Inchon, Wonsan, Lebanon. I’ve scraped off a lot of paint on a lot of beaches. You think . . . ?” he asked, looking up.
“We’re not here to fail, Captain.” Kelly had every twist of the river committed to memory, yet he continued to look at the chart, an exact copy of the one he’d studied at Quantico, looking for something new, finding nothing. He continued to stare at it anyway.
“You’re going in alone? Long swim, Mr. Clark,” Franks observed.
“I’ll have some help, and I don’t have to swim back, do I?”
“I suppose not. Sure will be nice to get those guys out.”
“Yes, sir.”