Okay, he thought, Okay. They’ve never met anyone like me before.
I need to get back into shape, Chief Bosun’s Mate John Terrence Kelly told himself.
The injuries were severe, but he’d survive them. He knew every step of the process. Recovery would be painful, but he’d do what they told him, he’d push the envelope a little bit, enough to make them proud of their patient. Then the really hard part would start. The running, the swimming, the weights. Then the weapons training. Then the mental preparation—but that was already underway, he realized ...
Oh, no. Not in their wildest nightmares have they ever met anyone like me.
The name they had given him in Vietnam boiled up from the past.
Snake.
Kelly pushed the call button pinned to his pillow. Nurse O’Toole appeared within two minutes.
“I’m hungry,” he told her.
“I hope I never have to do that again,” Douglas told his lieutenant, not for the first time.
“How did it go?”
“Well, that professor might make a formal complaint. I think I calmed him down enough, but you never know with people like that.”
“Does Kelly know anything?”
“Nothing we can use,” Douglas replied. “He’s still too messed up from being shot and all to be coherent, but he didn’t see any faces, didn’t—hell, if he had seen anything, he would probably have done something. I even showed him the picture, trying to shake him a little. I thought the poor bastard would have a heart attack. The doctor went crazy. I’m not real proud of that, Em. Nobody should have to see something like that.”
“Including us, Tom, including us.” Lieutenant Emmet Ryan looked up from a large collection of photos, half taken at the scene, half at the coroner’s office. What he saw there sickened him despite all his years of police work, especially because this wasn’t a crime of madness or passion. No, this event had been done for a purpose by coldly rational men. “I talked to Frank. This Kelly guy is a good scout, helped him clear the Gooding case. He’s not linked up with anything. The doctors all say that he’s clean, not a user.”
“Anything on the girl?” Douglas didn’t need to say that this could have been the break they’d needed. If only Kelly had called them instead of Allen, who didn’t know about their investigation. But he hadn’t, and their best potential source of information was dead.
“The prints came back. Pamela Madden. She was picked up in Chicago, Atlanta, and New Orleans for prostitution. Never came to trial, never did any time. The judges just kept letting her go. Victimless crime, right?”
The sergeant suppressed a curse at the many idiots on the bench. “Sure, Em, no victims at all. So we’re not any closer to these people than we were six months ago, are we? We need more manpower,” Douglas said, stating the obvious.
“To chase down the murder of a street hooker?” the Lieutenant asked. “The mayor didn’t like the picture, but they’ve already told him what she was, and after a week, things go back to normal. You think we’ll break something loose in a week, Tom?”
“You could let him know—”
“No.” Ryan shook his head. “He’d talk. Ever know a politician who didn’t? They’ve got somebody inside this building, Tom. You want more manpower? Tell me, where do we get it, the kind we can trust?”
“I know, Em.” Douglas conceded the point. “But we’re not getting anywhere.”
“Maybe Narcotics will shake something loose.”
“Sure.” Douglas snorted.
“Can Kelly help us?”
“No. Damned fool was just looking the wrong way.”
“Then do the usual follow-up, just to make sure everything looks okay and leave it at that. Forensics isn’t in yet. Maybe they’ll turn something.”
“Yes, sir,” Douglas replied. As so often happened in police work, you played for breaks, for mistakes the other side made. These people didn’t make many, but sooner or later they all did, both officers told themselves. It was just that they never seemed to come soon enough.
Lieutenant Ryan looked back down at the photos. “They sure had their fun with her. Just like the other one.”
“Good to see you’re eating.”
Kelly looked up from a mostly empty plate. “The cop was right, Sam. It’s over. I have to get better, have to focus on something, right?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Hell, I could always go back in the Navy or something.”
“You have to deal with your grief, John,” Sam said, sitting down next to the bed.
“I know how. I’ve had to do that before, remember?” He looked up. “Oh—what did you tell the police about me?”
“How we met, that sort of thing. Why?”
“What I did over there. It’s secret, Sam.” Kelly managed to look embarrassed. “The unit I belonged to, it doesn’t officially exist. The things we did, well, they never really happened, if you know what I mean.”
“They didn’t ask. Besides, you never really told me,” the surgeon said, puzzled—even more so by the relief on his patient’s face.
“I got recommended to them by a pal in the Navy, mainly to help train their divers. What they know is what I’m allowed to tell. It’s not what I really did, exactly, but it sounds good.”
“Okay.”
“I haven’t thanked you for taking such good care of me.”
Rosen stood and walked to the door, but he stopped dead three feet short of it and turned.
“You think you can fool me?”
“I guess not, Sam,” Kelly answered guardedly.
“John, I have spent my whole damned life using these hands to fix people. You have to stay aloof, you can’t get too involved, because if you do you can lose it, lose the edge, lose the concentration. I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You don’t want to know, Sam.”
“I want to help. I really do,” Rosen said, genuine wonder in his voice. “I liked her, too, John.”
“I know that.”
“So what can I do?” the surgeon asked. He was afraid that Kelly might ask for something he was unfitted to do; more afraid still that he might agree.
“Get me better.”
9
Labor
It was almost grim to watch, Sandy thought. The strange thing was that he was being a good patient. He didn’t whine. He didn’t bitch. He did just what they told him to do. There was a streak of the sadist in all physical therapists. There had to be, since the job meant pushing people a little further than they wanted to go—just as an athletic coach would do—and the ultimate aim was to help, after all. Even so, a good therapist had to push the patient, encourage the weak, and browbeat the strong; to cajole and to shame, all in the name of health; that meant taking satisfaction from the exertion and pain of others, and O’Toole could not have done that. But Kelly, she saw, would have none of it. He did what was expected, and when the therapist asked for more, more was delivered, and on, and on, until the therapist was pushed beyond the point of pride in the result of his efforts and began to worry.
“You can ease off now,” he advised.
“Why?” Kelly asked somewhat breathlessly.
“Your heart rate is one-ninety-five.” And had been there for five minutes.
“What’s the record?”
“Zero,” the therapist replied without a smile. That earned him a laugh, and a look, and Kelly slowed his pace on the stationary bike, easing himself down over a period of two minutes to a reluctant stop.
“I’ve come to take him back,” O’Toole announced.
“Good, do that before he breaks something.”
Kelly got off and toweled his face, glad to see that she hadn’t brought a wheelchair or something similarly insulting. “To what do I owe this honor, ma’am?”
“I’m supposed to keep an eye on you,” Sandy replied. ??
?Trying to show us how tough you are?”
Kelly had been a touch lighthearted, but turned serious. “Mrs. O’Toole, I’m supposed to get my mind off my troubles, right? Exercise does that for me. I can’t run with one arm tied up, I can’t do push-ups, and I can’t lift weights. I can ride a bike. Okay?”
“You have me there. Okay.” She pointed to the door. Out in the bustling anonymity of the corridor, she said, “I’m very sorry about your friend.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He turned his head, slightly dizzy from the exertion, as they walked along in the crowd. “We have rituals in uniform. The bugle, the flag, the guys with rifles. It works fairly well for the men. It helps you to believe that it all meant something. It still hurts. but it’s a formal way to say goodbye. We learned to deal with it. But what happened to you is different, and what just happened to me is different. So what did you do? Get more involved in work?”
“I finished my masters. I’m a nurse-practitioner. I teach. I worry about patients.” And that was her whole life now.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about me, okay? I know my limits.”
“Where are the limits?”
“A long way off,” Kelly said with the beginnings of a smile that he quickly extinguished. “How am I doing?”
“Very well.”
It hadn’t gone all that smoothly, and both knew it. Donald Madden had flown to Baltimore to claim the body of his daughter from the coroner’s office, leaving his wife home, never meeting with anyone despite pleas from Sarah Rosen. He wasn’t interested in talking to a fornicator, the man had said over the phone, a remark that Sandy knew about but which neither medic had passed on. The surgeon had filled her in on the background of the girl, and it was merely a final sad chapter to a brief and sad life, something the patient didn’t need to know. Kelly had asked about funeral arrangements, and both had told him that he would be unable to leave the hospital in any case. Kelly had accepted that in silence, surprising the nurse.
His left shoulder was still immobilized, and there had to be pain, the nurse knew. She and others could see the occasional wince, especially close to the time for a new pain medication, but Kelly wasn’t the type to complain. Even now, still breathing hard from a murderous thirty minutes on the bike, he was making quite a point of walking as rapidly as he could, cooling himself down like a trained athlete.
“Why the big show?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Does there have to be a reason for everything? It’s the way I am, Sandy.”
“Well, your legs are longer than mine. Slow down, okay?”
“Sure.” Kelly eased off his pace as they reached the elevator. “How many girls are there—like Pam I mean?”
“Too many.” She didn’t know the numbers. There were enough that they were noticed as a class of patient, enough that you knew they were there.
“Who helps them?”
The nurse pushed the elevator button. “Nobody. They’re starting up programs for dealing with the drug habits, but the real problems, the abusive backgrounds and what comes from it—there’s a new term now, ‘behavioral disorder.’ If you’re a thief, there are programs. If you abuse kids, there’s a program, but girls like that are outcasts. Nobody does much of anything. The only people who deal with that are church groups. If somebody said it was a disease, maybe people would pay attention.”
“Is it a disease?”
“John, I’m not a doctor, just a nurse-practitioner, and it’s outside my field anyway. I do post-op care for surgical patients. Okay, we talk over lunch, and I know a little. It’s surprising how many of them show up dead. Drug overdoses, accidental or deliberate, who can say? Or they meet the wrong person or their pimp gets a little too rough, and they show up here, and their underlying medical problems don’t help very much, and a lot of them just don’t make it. Hepatitis from bad needles, pneumonia, add that to a major injury and it’s a deadly combination. But is anybody going to do anything about it?” O’Toole looked down as the elevator arrived. “Young people aren’t supposed to die that way.”
“Yeah.” Kelly gestured for her to get in the elevator first.
“You’re the patient,” she objected.
“You’re the lady,” he insisted. “Sorry, it’s the way I was raised.”
Who is this guy? Sandy asked herself. She was managing the care of more than one patient, of course, but the professor had ordered her—well, not exactly, she told herself, but a “suggestion” from Dr. Rosen carried a lot of weight, especially since she had great respect for him as a friend and counselor—to keep a special eye on him. It wasn’t matchmaking, as she’d initially suspected. He was still too hurt—and so was she, though she would not admit it. Such a strange man. So like Tim in many ways, but much more guarded. A strange mixture of the gentle and the rough. She hadn’t forgotten what she had seen the previous week, but it was gone now, and never a hint of it had returned. He treated her with respect and good humor, never once commenting on her figure, as many patients did (and to which she pretended to object). He was so unlucky and yet so purposeful. His furious effort in rehab. His outward toughness. How to reconcile that with his incongruous good manners?
“When will 1 get out?” Kelly asked in a voice that was light but not light enough.
“Another week,” O’Toole replied, leading him off the elevator. “Tomorrow we unwrap your arm.”
“Really? Sam didn’t tell me. Then I can start using the arm again?”
“It’s going to hurt when you do,” the nurse warned.
“Hell, Sandy, it hurts already.” Kelly grinned. “I might as well get some use out of the pain.”
“Lie down,” the nurse ordered. Before he could object, she had a thermometer in his mouth and was taking his pulse. Then she checked his blood pressure. The numbers she put on the chart were 98.4, 64, and 105/60. The last two were especially surprising, she thought. Whatever else she might say about the patient, he was rapidly getting himself back into shape. She wondered what the urgency was.
One more week, Kelly thought after she left. Got to get this damned arm working.
“So what have you found out for us?” Maxwell asked.
“Good news and bad news,” Greer replied. “The good news is that the opposition has very little in the way of regular ground forces within response distance of the objective. We have ID’d three battalions. Two are training to go south. One just returned from Eye Corps. It’s pretty beat-up, in the process of reconstituting. The usual TO and E. Not much in the way of heavy weapons. What mechanized formations they have are well away from here.”
“And the bad news?” Admiral Podulski asked.
“Do I have to tell you? Enough triple-A along the coast to turn the sky black. SA-2 batteries here, here, and probably here, too. It’s dangerous there for fast-movers, Cas. For helicopters? One or two rescue birds, sure, it’s doable, but a large lift will be real dicey. We went all over this when we scoped out KINGPIN, remember?”
“It’s only thirty miles from the beach.”
“Fifteen or twenty minutes in a helo, flying in a straight line, which they will not be able to do, Cas. I went over the threat maps myself. The best route I can identify—it’s your area, Cas, but I do know a little, okay?—is twenty-five minutes, and I wouldn’t want to fly it in daylight.”
“We can use -52s to blast a corridor through,” Podulski suggested. He’d never been the most subtle man in the world.
“I thought you wanted to keep this small,” Greer observed. “Look, the real bad news is that there isn’t much enthusiasm for this kind of mission anywhere. KINGPIN failed—”
“That wasn’t our fault!” Podulski objected.
“I know that, Cas,” Greer said patiently. Podulski had always been a passionate advocate.
“It ought to be doable,” Cas growled.
All three men hovered over the reconnaisance photos. It was a good collection, two from satellites, two from SR-71 Blackbirds, and three very recent low-obliq
ues from Buffalo Hunter drones. The camp was two hundred meters square, an exact square in fact, undoubtedly fitting exactly the diagram in some East Bloc manual for building secure facilities. Each corner had a guard tower, each of which was exactly ten meters in height. Each tower had a tin roof to keep the rain off the NVA-standard-issue RPD light machine gun, an obsolete Russian design. Inside the wire were three large buildings and two small ones. Inside one of the large buildings were, they believed, twenty American officers, all lieutenant-colonel/commander rank or higher, for this was a special camp.
It was the Buffalo Hunter photos that had first come to Greer’s attention. One was good enough to have identified a face, Colonel Robin Zacharias, USAF. His F-105G Wild Weasel had been shot down eight months earlier; he and his weapons-systems operator had been reported killed by the North Vietnamese. Even a picture of his body had been published. This camp, whose code name, SENDER GREEN. was known to fewer than fifty men and women, was separate from the better-known Hanoi Hilton, which had been visited by American citizens and where, since the spectacular but unsuccessful Operation KINGPIN raid on the camp at Song Tay, nearly all American POWs had been concentrated. Out of the way, located in the most unlikely of places, not acknowledged in any way, SENDER GREEN was ominous. However the war would turn out, America wanted her pilots back. Here was a place whose very existence suggested that some would never be returned. A statistical study of losses had shown an ominous irregularity: flight officers of relatively high rank were reported killed at a higher rate than those of lower rank. It was known that the enemy had good intelligence sources, many of them within the American “peace” movement, that they had dossiers on senior American officers, who they were, what they knew, what other jobs they had held. It was possible that those officers were being held in a special place, that their knowledge was being used by North Vietnam as a bargaining chip for dealing with their Russian sponsors. The prisoners’ knowledge in areas of special strategic interest was being traded—maybe—for continuing support from a sponsor nation that was losing interest in this lengthy war, with the new atmosphere of detente. So many games were going on.