30

Travel Agents

It was obvious to everyone that things were wrong. The two rescue helos touched down on Ogden not an hour after they’d left. One was wheeled aside at once. The other, flown by the senior pilot, was refueled. Captain Albie was out almost the second it landed, sprinting to the superstructure, where the command team was waiting for him. He could feel that Ogden and her escorts were racing into the beach. His dejected Marines trailed out as well, silent, looking down at the flight deck as they cleared their weapons.

“What happened?” Albie asked.

“Clark waved it off. All we know is that he’s moved off his hill; he said other people were there. We’re going to try to get him out. Where do you think he’ll go?” Maxwell asked.

“He’ll look for a place the helo can get him. Let’s see the map.”

 

Had he had the time to reflect, Kelly might have considered how quickly things could go from good to bad. But he didn’t. Survival was an all-encompassing game, and at the moment it was also the only game in town. Certainly it wasn’t a boring one, and with luck not overly demanding. There weren’t all that many troops for the purpose of securing the camp against an assault, not enough—yet—to conduct real defensive patrols. If they were worried about another Song Tay-type mission, they’d keep their firepower in close. They’d put observation teams on hilltops, probably nothing more than that at least for the moment. The top of Snake Hill was now five hundred meters in his wake. Kelly slowed his descent, catching his breath—he was more winded from fear than effort. though the two traded off heavily against each other. He found a secondary crest and rested on the far side of it. Standing still now, he could hear talk behind him—talk. not movement. Okay. good, he’d guessed right on the tactical situation. Probably more troops would be arriving in due course, but he’d be long gone by then.

If they can get that helo in.

Pleasant thought.

I’ve been in tighter spots than this, Defiance proclaimed.

When? Pessimism inquired delicately.

The only thing that made sense at the moment was to put as much distance as possible between himself and the NVA. Next came the necessity of finding something approximating an LZ so that he could get the hell out of this place. It wasn’t a time to panic, but he couldn’t dally either. Come daylight there would be more troops here, and if their commander was a competent one. he’d want to know if there might be an enemy reconnaissance element on his turf. Failure to get out before dawn would materially degrade Kelly’s chances of ever escaping this country. Move. Find a good spot. Call the helo. Get the hell out of here. He had four hours until dawn. The helo was about thirty minutes away. Make it two or three hours to find a spot and make the call. That didn’t seem overly difficult. He knew the area around SENDER GREEN from the recon photos. Kelly took a few minutes to look around, orienting himself. The quickest way to a clear spot was that way. across a twist in the road. It was a gamble but a good one. He rearranged his load, moving his spare magazines within easier reach. More than anything else, Kelly feared capture, to be at the mercy of men like PLASTIC FLOWER. to be unable to fight back. to lose control of his life. A quiet little voice in the back of his mind told him that death was preferred to that. Fighting back, even against impossible odds, wasn’t suicide. Okay. That was decided. He started moving.

 

“Call him?” Maxwell asked.

“No, not now.” Captain Albie shook his head. “He’ll call us. Mr. Clark is busy right now. We leave him be.” Irvin came into the Combat Information Center.

“Clark?” the master gunnery sergeant asked.

“On the run,” Albie told him.

“Want me and some people on Rescue One. riding shotgun?” That they would try to get Clark out was not a question. Marines have an institutional loathing of leaving people behind.

“My job, Irvin,” Albie said.

“Better you run the rescue, sir,” Irvin said reasonably. “Anybody can shoot a rifle.”

Maxwell, Podulski, and Greer stayed out of the conversation. watching and listening to two professionals who knew what they were about. The Marine commander bent to the wisdom of his most senior NCO.

“Take what you need.” Albie turned to Maxwell. “Sir, I want Rescue One up now.”

The Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Air) handed over the headset to a Marine officer only twenty-eight years old; with it came tactical command of the busted mission. With it went the end of Dutch Maxwell’s career.

 

It was less fearful to be moving. Movement gave Kelly the feeling that he had control of his life. It was an illusion, and intellectually he knew it, but his body took the message that way. which made things better. He got to the bottom of the hill. into thicker growth. There. Right across the road was an open space, a meadow or something, maybe a floodplain area from the river. That would do just fine. Nothing fancy. He grabbed his radio.

“SNAKE to CRICKET, over.”

“This is CRICKET. We read you, and we are standing by.”

 

The message came in gasps, spoken one short breath at a time: “West of my hill, past the road, about two miles west of objective, open field. I’m close. Send the helo. I can mark with strobe.”

Albie looked at the map, then the aerial photos. Okay, that looked easy enough. He stabbed a finger on the map, and the air-control petty officer relayed the information at once. Albie waited for the confirmation before transmitting back to Clark.

“Roger, copy. Rescue One is moving in now. two-zero minutes away.”

“Copy that.” Albie could hear the relief in Clark’s voice through the static. “I’ll be ready. Out.”

 

Thank you, God.

Kelly took his time now, moving slowly and quietly towards the road. His second sojourn into North Vietnam wouldn’t end up being as long as the first. He didn’t have to swim out this time, and with all the shots he’d gotten before coming in, maybe this time he wouldn’t be getting sick from the water in that goddamned river. He didn’t so much relax as lose some of his tension. As though on cue, the rain picked up, dampening noise and reducing visibility. More good news. Maybe God or fate or the Great Pumpkin hadn’t decided to curse him after all. He stopped again, ten meters short of the road, and looked around. Nothing. He gave himself a few minutes to relax and let the stress bleed off. There was no sense in hurrying across just to be in open ground. Open ground was dangerous for a man alone in enemy territory. His hands were tight on his carbine, the infantryman’s teddy bear, as he forced himself to breathe deeply and slowly in order to bring his heart rate down. When he felt approximately normal again, he allowed himself to approach the road.

 

Miserable roads, Grishanov thought, even worse than those in Russia. The car was something French, oddly enough. More remarkably, it ran fairly well, or would have done so, except for the driver. Major Vinh ought to have driven it himself. As an officer he probably knew how, but status-conscious fool that he was, he had to let his orderly do it, and this little lump of a peasant probably didn’t know how to drive anything more complicated than an ox. The car was swerving in the mud. The driver was having trouble seeing in the rain as well. Grishanov closed his eyes in the rear seat, clutching his backpack. No sense watching. It might just scare him to watch. It was like flying in bad weather, he thought, something no pilot relished—even less so when someone else was in control.

 

He waited, looking before crossing, listening for the sound of a truck’s engine, which was the greatest danger to him. Nothing. Okay, about five minutes on the helo now. Kelly stood erect, reaching back with his left hand for the marker-strobe. As he crossed the road, he kept looking to his left, the route that additional troop trucks would take to approach the now entirely secure prison camp. Damn!

Rarely had concentration ever worked against John Kelly, but it did this time. The sound of the approaching car, swishing through the muddy surface of the road, was a little too close to the environmental noises, and by the time he recognized the difference it was too late. When the car came around the bend, he was right in the middle of the road, standing there like a deer in the headlights, and surely the driver must see him. What followed was automatic.

Kelly brought his carbine up and fired a short burst into the driver’s area. The car didn’t swerve for a moment, and he laid a second burst into the front-passenger seat. The car changed directions then, slamming directly into a tree. The entire sequence could not have taken three seconds, and Kelly’s heart started beating again after a dreadfully long hiatus. He ran to the car. Whom had he killed?

The driver had come through the windshield, two rounds in his brain. Kelly wrenched open the passenger door. The person there was—the Major! Also hit in the head. The shots weren’t quite centered, and though the man’s skull was opened on the right side, his body was still quivering. Kelly yanked him out of the vehicle and had knelt down to search him before he heard a groan from the inside. He lunged inside, finding another man—Russian!—on the floor in the rear. Kelly pulled him out. too. The man had a backpack clutched in his hands.

The routine came as automatically as the shot. Kelly clubbed the Russian to full unconsciousness with his buttstock, then quickly turned back to rifle the Major’s uniform for intelligence material. He stuffed all documents and papers into his pockets. The Vietnamese was looking at him, one of his eyes still functioning.

“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Kelly said coldly as the eyes lost their animation.

“What the hell do I do with you?” Kelly asked, turning to the Russian body. “You’re the guy who’s been hassling our guys, aren’t you?” He knelt there, opening the backpack and finding whole sheaves of paper, which answered his question for him—something the Soviet colonel was singularly unable to do.

Think fast, John—the helo isn’t very far out now.

 

“I got the strobe!” the copilot said.

“Coming in hot.” The pilot was driving his Sikorsky as hard as the engines would allow. Two hundred yards short of the clearing he pulled back sharply on the cyclic, and the forty-five-degree nose-up attitude stopped forward motion quickly—perfectly in fact, as he leveled out within feet of the blinking infrared strobe light. The rescue helicopter came to a steady hover two feet over the deck, buffeted by the winds. The Navy commander was fighting all manner of forces to hold his aircraft steady, and was slow to respond to something his eyes had told him. He had seen the rotor wash knock his intended survivor down, but -

“Did I see two people out there?” he asked over the intercom.

“Go go go!” another voice said over the IC circuit. “Pax aboard now, go!”

“Getting the hell outa Dodge City, now!” The pilot pulled collective for altitude, kicked rudder pedal, and dropped his nose, heading back to the river as the helicopter accelerated. Wasn’t there just supposed to be one person? He set it aside. He had to fly now, and it was thirty twisty miles to the water and safety.

“Who the fuck is this?” Irvin asked.

“Hitchhiker,” Kelly answered over the din of the engines. He shook his head. Explanations would be lengthy and would have to wait. Irvin understood, offering him a canteen. Kelly drained it. That’s when the shaking started. In front of the helicopter crew and five Marines, Kelly shivered like a man in the Arctic, huddling and clutching himself, holding his weapon close until Irvin took it away and cleared it. It had been fired, the master gunnery sergeant saw. Later he’d find out why and at what. The door gunners scanned the river valley while their aircraft screamed out, barely a hundred feet over the meandering surface. The ride proved uneventful, far different from what they had expected, as was the case with this whole night. What had gone wrong? they all wanted to know. The answer was in the man they’d just picked up. But who the hell was the other one, and wasn’t that a Russian uniform? Two Marines sat over him. One of them tied his hands up. A third secured the pack’s flap in place with the straps.

 

“Rescue One, feet-wet. We have SNAKE aboard, over.”

“Rescue One, this is CRICKET, roger, copy that. Standing by. Out.” Albie looked up. “Well, that’s it.”

Podulski took it the hardest of all. BOXWOOD GREEN had been his idea from the start. Had it been successful, it might have changed everything. It might have opened the door for CERTAIN CORNET, might have changed the course of the war—and his son’s death would not have been for nothing. He looked up at the others. He almost asked if they might still try it again, but he knew better. Washout. It was a bitter concept and an even more bitter reality for one who had served his adopted country for nearly thirty years.

 

“Tough day?” Frank Allen asked.

Lieutenant Mark Charon was surprisingly chipper for a man who’d been through a fatal shooting and the almost-as-rigorous interrogation that had followed it.

“The damned fool. Didn’t have to happen that way.” Charon said. “I guess he didn’t like the idea of life on Falls Road,” the narcotics-division lieutenant added, referring to the Maryland State Penitentiary. Located in downtown Baltimore, the building was so grim that its inmates referred to it as Frankenstein’s Castle.

Allen didn’t have to tell him much. The procedures for the incident were straightforward. Charon would go on administrative leave for ten working days while the Department made sure that the shooting had not been contrary to official policy guidelines for the use of “deadly force.” It was essentially a two-week vacation with pay, except that Charon might have to face additional interviews. Not likely in this case, as several police officers had observed the whole thing, one from a mere twenty feet away.

“I’ve got the case, Mark,” Allen told him. “I’ve been over the preliminaries. Looks like you’ll come out okay on this. Anything you might have done to spook him?”

Charon shook his head. “No, I didn’t shout or anything until he went for his piece. I tried to ease him into it, y’know, calm him down, like? But he just jumped the wrong way. Eddie Morello died of the dumbs,” the Lieutenant observed, impassively enjoying the fact that he was telling the exact truth.

“Well, I’m not gonna cry over the death of a doper. Good day all around, Mark.”

“How’s that, Frank?” Charon sat down and stole a cigarette.

“Got a call from Pittsburgh today. Seems there may be a witness for the Fountain Murder that Em and Tom are handling.”

“No shit? That’s good news. What do we have?”

“Somebody, probably a girl from how the guy was talking, who saw Madden and Waters get it. Sounds like she’s talking to her minister about it and he’s trying to coax her into opening up.”

“Great.” Charon observed, concealing his inward chill as well as he’d hid his elation at his first contract murder. One more thing to clean up. With luck that would be the end of it.

 

The helicopter flared and made a soft landing on USS Ogden. As soon as it was down, people came back out on the flight deck. Deck crewmen secured the aircraft in place with chains while they approached. The Marines came out first, relieved to be safe, but also bitterly disappointed at the way the night had turned out. The timing was nearly perfect, they knew. This was their programmed time to return to the ship. with their rescued comrades, and they’d looked forward to this moment as a sports team might anticipate the joys of a winning locker room. But not now. They’d lost and they still didn’t know why.

Irvin and another Marine climbed out, holding a body, which really surprised the assembled flag officers as Kelly alighted next. The helicopter pilot’s eyes grew wide as he watched. There had been two bodies in the meadow. But mainly he was relieved at achieving another semisuccessful rescue mission into North Vietnam.

“What the hell?” Maxwell asked as the ship commenced a turn to the east.

“Uh. guys, let’s get this guy inside and isolated right now!” Ritter said.

“He’s unconscious, sir.”

“Then get a medic, too,” Ritter ordered.

They picked one of Ogden’s many empty troop-berthing spaces for the debrief. Kelly was allowed to wash his face, but nothing else. A medical corpsman checked out the Russian, pronouncing him dazed but healthy, both pupils equal and reactive. no concussion. A pair of Marines stood guard over him.

“Four trucks.” Kelly said. “They just drove right in. A reinforced platoon—weapons platoon, probably, they showed up while the assault team was inbound, started digging in right away—about fifty of ’em. I had to blow it off.”

Greer and Ritter traded a look. No coincidence.

Kelly looked at Maxwell. “God, I’m sorry, sir.” He paused. “It would not have been possible to execute the mission. I had to leave the hill because they were putting listening posts out. I mean, even if we were able to deal with that—”

“We had gunships, remember?” Podulski growled.

“Back off, Cas,” James Greer warned.

Kelly looked long at the Admiral before responding to the accusation. “Admiral, the chances of success were exactly zero. You guys gave me the job of eyeballing the objective so that we could do it on the cheap, right? With more assets, maybe we could have done it—the Song Tay team could have done it. It would have been messy, but they had enough firepower to bring it off, coming right into the objective like they did.” He shook his head again. “Not this way.”

“You’re sure?” Maxwell asked.

Kelly nodded. “Yes, sir. Sure as hell.”

“Thank you, Mr. Clark,” Captain Albie said quietly, knowing the truth of what he’d just heard. Kelly just sat there, still tensed from the night’s events.

“Okay,” Ritter said after a moment. “What about our guest, Mr. Clark?”

“I fucked up,” Kelly admitted, explaining how the car had gotten so close. He reached into his pockets. “I killed the driver and the camp commander—I think that’s what he was. He had all this on him.” Kelly reached into his pockets and handed over the documents. “Lots of papers on the Russian. I figured it wasn’t smart to leave him there. I figured-I thought maybe he might be useful to us.”

“These papers are in Russian,” Irvin announced.

“Give me some,” Ritter ordered. “My Russian’s pretty good.”

“We need somebody who can read Vietnamese, too.”

“I have one of those,” Albie said. “Irvin, get Sergeant Chalmers in here.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Ritter and Greer moved to a corner table “Lord.” the field officer observed, flipping through the written notes. “This guy’s gotten a lot . . . Rokossovskiy? He’s in Hanoi? Here’s a summary sheet.”

Staff Sergeant Chalmers, an intelligence specialist, started reading through the papers taken from Major Vinh. Everyone else waited for the spooks to get through the papers.

 

“Where am I?” Grishanov asked in Russian. He tried to reach for his blindfold, but his hands couldn’t move.

“How are you feeling?” a voice answered in the same language.

“Car smashed into something.” The voice stopped. “Where am I?”

“You’re aboard USS Ogden, Colonel,” Ritter told him in English.

The body strapped in the bunk went rigid, and the prisoner immediately said, in Russian, that he didn’t speak English.

“Then why are some of your notes in English?” Ritter asked reasonably.

“I am a Soviet officer. You have no right—”

“We have as much right as you had to interrogate American prisoners of war, and to conspire to kill them. Comrade Colonel.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your friend Major Vinh is dead, but we have his dispatches. I guess you were finished talking to our people, right? And the NVA were trying to figure the most convenient way to eliminate them. Are you telling me you didn’t know that?”

The oath Ritter heard was a particularly vile one, but the voice held genuine surprise that was interesting. This man was too injured to dissimulate well. He looked up at Greer.

“I’ve got some more reading to do. You want to keep this guy company?”

 

The one good thing that happened to Kelly that night was that Captain Franks hadn’t tossed the aviator rations over the side after all. Finished with his debrief. he found his cabin and downed three stiff ones. With the release from the tension of the night, physical exhaustion assaulted the young man. The three drinks knocked him out, and he collapsed into his bunk without so much as a cleansing shower.

It was decided that Ogden would continue as planned, steaming at twenty knots back towards Subic Bay. The big amphibious ship became a quiet place. The crew, pumped up for an important and dramatic mission, became subdued with its failure. Watches were changed, the ship continued to function as before, but the mess rooms’ only noise was that of the metal trays and utensils. No jokes, no stories. The additional medical personnel took it the hardest of all. With no one to treat and nothing to do, they just wandered about. Before noon the helicopters departed, the Cobras for Danang and the rescue birds back to their carrier. The signal-intelligence people switched over to more regular duties, searching the airways for radio messages, finding a new mission to replace the old.

Kelly didn’t awaken until 1800 hours. After showering, he headed below to find the Marines. He owed them an explanation, he thought. Somebody did. They were in the same space. The sand-table model was still there as well.

“I was right up here,” he said, finding the rubber band with two eyes on it.

“How many bad guys?”

“Four trucks, they came in this road, stopped here,” Kelly explained. “They were digging in crew-served weapons here and here. They sent people up my hill. I saw another team heading this way right before I moved.”

“Jesus,” a squad leader noted. “Right on our approach route.”

“Yeah,” Kelly confirmed. “Anyway, that’s why.”

“How’d they know to send in the reinforcements?” a corporal asked.

“Not my department.”

“Thanks, Snake,” the squad leader said, looking from the model that would soon be tossed over the side. “Tough call, wasn’t it?”

Kelly nodded. “I’m sorry, pal. Jesus God, I’m sorry.”

“Mr. Clark, I got a baby due in two months. ‘Cept for you, well . . .” The Marine extended his hand across the model.

“Thank you, sir.” Kelly took it.

“Mr. Clark. sir?” A sailor stuck his head into the compartment. “The admirals are looking for you. Up in officer country, sir.”

 

“Doctor Rosen,” Sam said, lifting the phone.

“Hi, doctor. This is Sergeant Douglas.”

“What can I do for you?”

“We’re trying to track down your friend Kelly. He isn’t answering his phone. Do you have any idea where he is?”

“I haven’t seen him in a long time,” the surgeon said guardedly.

“You know anybody who has?”

“I’ll check around. What’s the story?” Sam added, asking what he knew might be a highly inconvenient question. wondering what sort of answer he might get.

“I, uh, can’t say, sir. I hope you understand.”

“Ummhmm. Yeah, okay. I’ll ask.”

 

“Feeling better?” Ritter asked first.

“Some.” Kelly allowed. “What’s the story on the Russian?”

“Clark, you just might have done something useful.” Ritter gestured to a table with no fewer than ten piles of documents on them.

“They’re planning to kill the prisoners.” Greer said.

“Who? The Russians?” Kelly asked.

“The Vietnamese. The Russians want them alive. This guy you picked up is trying to take them home,” Ritter said. lifting a sheet of paper. “Here’s his draft of the letter justifying it.”

“Is that good or bad?”

 

The outside noises were different. Zacharias thought. More of them, too. Shouts with purpose to them, though he didn’t know what purpose. For the first day in a month, Grishanov hadn’t visited him, even for a few minutes. The loneliness he felt became even more acute, and his only company was the realization that he’d given to the Soviet Union a graduate-level course in continental air-defense. He hadn’t meant to do it. He hadn’t even known what he was doing. That was no consolation, however. The Russian had played him for a fool, and Colonel Robin Zacharias, USAF, had just given it all up, outsmarted by some kindness and fellowship from an atheist . . . and drink. Stupidity and sin, such a likely combination of human weaknesses, and he’d done it all.

He didn’t even have tears for his shame. He was beyond that, sitting on the floor of his cell, staring at the rough, dirty concrete between his bare feet. He’d broken faith with his God and his country, Zacharias told himself, as his evening meal was pushed through the slot at the bottom of his door. Thin, bodiless pumpkin soup and maggoty rice. He made no move towards it.

 

Grishanov knew he was a dead man. They wouldn’t give him back. They couldn’t even admit that they had him. He’d disappear, as other Russians in Vietnam had disappeared, some at SAM sites, some doing other things for those ungrateful little bastards. Why were they feeding him so well? It had to be a large ship, but it was also his first time at sea. Even the decent food was hard to get down, but he swore not to disgrace himself by succumbing to motion sickness mixed with fear. He was a fighter pilot, a good one who had faced death before, mainly at the controls of a malfunctioning aircraft. He remembered wondering at the time what they’d tell his Marina. He wondered now. A letter? What? Would his family be looked after by his fellow officers in PVO Strany? Would the pension be sufficient?

 

“Are you kidding me?”

“Mr. Clark, the world can be a very complicated place. Why did you think the Russians like them?”

“They give them weapons and training, don’t they?”

Ritter stubbed out his Winston. “We give those things to people all over the world. They’re not all nice folks, but we have to work with them. It’s the same for the Russians, maybe less so, but still pretty much the same. Anyway, this Grishanov guy was going to a considerable effort to keep our people alive.” Ritter held up another sheet. “Here’s a request for better food—for a doctor, even.”

“So what do we do with him?” Admiral Podulski asked.

“That, gentlemen, is our department,” Ritter said, looking at Greer, who nodded.

“Wait a minute,” Kelly objected. “He was pumping them for information.”

“So?” Ritter asked. “That was his job.”

“We’re getting away from the real issue here,” Maxwell said.

James Greer poured some coffee for himself. “I know. We have to move fast.”

“And finally. . .” Ritter tapped a translation of the Vietnamese message. “We know that somebody burned the mission. We’re going to track that bastard down.”

Kelly was still too drugged from sleep to follow it all, much less see far enough into the future to realize how he had assumed his place in the center of the affair.

 

“Where’s John?”

Sandy O’Toole looked up from her paperwork. It was close to the end of her shift, and Professor Rosen’s question brought to the fore a worry that she’d managed to suppress for over a week.

“Out of the country. Why?”

“I got a call today from the police. They’re looking for him.”

Oh, God. “Why?”

“He didn’t say.” Rosen looked around. They were alone at the nurses’ station. “Sandy, I know he’s been doing things—I mean, I think I know, but I haven’t—”

“I haven’t heard from him. either. What are we supposed to do?”

Rosen grimaced and looked away before replying. “As good citizens, we’re supposed to cooperate with the police—but we’re not doing that, are we? No idea where he is?”

“He told me, but I’m not supposed to—he’s doing something with the government . . . over in . . . ” She couldn’t finish, couldn’t bring herself to say the word. “He gave a number I can call. I haven’t used it.”

“I would,” Sam told her. and left.

It wasn’t right. He was off doing something scary and important. only to come back to a police investigation. It seemed to Nurse O’Toole that the unfairness of life had gotten as bad as it could. She was wrong.

 

“Pittsburgh?”

“That’s what he said.” Henry confirmed.

“It’s cute, by the way, having him as your man on the inside. Very professional,” Piaggi said with respect.

“He said we need to take care of it quick, like. She hasn’t said much yet.”

“She saw it all?” Piaggi didn’t have to add that he didn’t think that very professional at all. “Henry, keeping people in line is one thing. Making them into witnesses is another.”

“Tony, I’m going to take care of that, but we need to handle this problem right quick, y’dig?” It seemed to Henry Tucker that he was in the stretch run, and over the finish line were both safety and prosperity. That five more people had to die to get him across that line was a small matter after the race he’d already run.

“Go on.”

“The family name is Brown. Her name is Doris. Her father’s name is Raymond.”

“You sure of this?”

“The girls talk to each other. I got the street name and everything. You got connections. I need you to use ’em fast.”

Piaggi copied down the information. “Okay. Our Philly connections can handle it. It’s not going to be cheap. Henry.”

“I didn’t expect it would be.”

 

The flight deck looked very empty. All four of the aircraft briefly assigned to Ogden were gone now, and the deck reassumed its former status as the ship’s unofficial town square. The stars were the same as before, now that the ship was again under clear skies, and a sliver of a waning moon was high in the sky in these early hours. No sailors were out now. however. Those awake at this hour were on duty, but for Kelly and the Marines the day/night cycle was askew, and the gray steel walls of their spaces were too confining for the thoughts they had. The ship’s wake was a curious luminescent green from the photoplankton stirred up by the ship’s screws, and left a long trail showing where she’d been. Half a dozen men stood well aft, staring at it without words.

“It could have been a hell of a lot worse, you know.” Kelly turned. It was Irvin. It had to be.

“Could have been a hell of a lot better, too, Guns.”

“Wasn’t no accident, them showing up like that, was it?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to say. Is that a good enough answer?”

“Yes, sir. And Lord Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ ”

“And what if they do know?”

Irvin grunted. “I think you know what my vote is. Whoever it was, they could have killed all of us.”

“You know, Guns, just once, just one time, I’d like to finish something the right way,” Kelly said.

“Yeah.” Irvin took a second before going on, and going back. “Why the hell would anybody do something like that?”

A shape loomed close. It was Newport News, a lovely silhouette only two thousand yards off, and visible in a spectral way despite the absence of lights. She, too. was heading back, the last of the Navy’s big-gun cruisers, creature of a bygone age, returning home after the same failure that Kelly and Irvin knew.

 

“Seven-one-three-one,” the female voice said.

“Hello, I’m trying to get Admiral James Greer,” Sandy told the secretary.

“He’s not in.”

“Can you tell me when he’ll be back?”

“Sorry, no, I don’t know.”

“But it’s important.”

“Could you tell me who’s calling, please?”

“What is this place?”

“This is Admiral Greer’s office.”

“No, I mean, is it the Pentagon?”

“Don’t you know?”

Sandy didn’t know. and that question led her off in a direction she didn’t understand. “Please, I need your help.”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Please, I need to know where you are!”

“I can’t tell you that,” the secretary responded, feeling herself to be one of the fortress walls that protected U.S. National Security.

“Is this the Pentagon?”

Well, she could tell her that. “No, it isn’t.”

What then? Sandy wondered. She took a deep breath. “A friend of mine gave me this number to call. He’s with Admiral Greer. He said I could call here to find out if he’s okay.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look, I know he went to Vietnam!”

“Miss, I cannot discuss where Admiral Greer is.” Who violated security! She’d have to make a report on this.

“It’s not about him, it’s about John!” Calm down. You’re not helping anyone this way.

“John who?” the secretary asked.

Deep breath. Swallow. “Please get a message to Admiral Greer. This is Sandy. It’s about John. He will understand. Okay? He will understand. This is most important.” She gave her home and work numbers.

“Thank you. I will do what I can.” The line went dead.

Sandy wanted to scream, and nearly did so. So the Admiral had gone. too. Okay, he’d be close to where John is. The secretary would get the message through. She would have to. People like that. if you said most important, didn’t have the imagination not to do it. Settle down. Anyway, where he was, the police couldn’t get him either. But for the rest of the day. and into the next, the second hand on her watch seemed to stand still.

USS Ogden pulled into Subic Bay Naval Station in the early afternoon. Coming alongside seemed to take forever in the moist tropical heat. Finally lines were tossed and a brow advanced to the ship’s side. A civilian sprinted up first even before it was properly secured. Soon thereafter the Marines filed off to a bus which would take them to Cubi Point. The deck division watched them walk off. A few hands were shaken as everyone tried to leave at least one good memory from the experience, but “good try” just didn’t make it, and “good luck” seemed blasphemous. Their C-141 was waiting there for the flight stateside. Mr. Clark, they saw, wasn’t with them.

 

“John, it seems you have a lady friend who’s worried about you,” Greer said, handing the message over. It was the friendliest of the dispatches that the junior CIA officer had brought up from Manila. Kelly scanned it while three admirals reviewed the others.

“Do I have time to call her, sir? She’s worried about me.”

“You left her my office number?” Greer was slightly vexed.

“Her husband was killed with the First Cav, sir. She worries,” Kelly explained.

“Okay.” Greer put his own troubles aside for the moment. “I’ll have Barbara tell her you’re safe.”

The rest of the messages were less welcome. Admirals Maxwell and Podulski were being summoned back to Washington soonest to report on the failure of BOXWOOD GREEN. Ritter and Greer had similar orders, though they also had an ace in the hole. Their KC-135 was waiting at Clark Air Force Base. A puddle jumper would hop over the mountains. The best news at the moment was their disrupted sleep cycle. The flight back to the American East Coast would bring them back in just the right way.

Colonel Grishanov came into the sunlight along with the admirals. He was wearing clothing borrowed from Captain Franks—they were of approximately the same size—and escorted by Maxwell and Podulski. Kolya was under no illusions of his chance to escape anywhere, not on an American naval base located on the soil of an American ally. Ritter was talking to him quietly, in Russian, as all six men walked down to the waiting cars. Ten minutes later, they climbed into an Air Force C-12 twin-prop Beechcraft. Half an hour later that aircraft taxied right alongside the larger Boeing jet, which got off less than an hour after they’d left Ogden. Kelly found himself a nice wide seat and strapped himself in, asleep before the windowless transport started rolling. The next stop, they’d told him, was Hickam in Hawaii, and he didn’t plan to be awake for any of that.