Without Remorse

  “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.”

  27

  Insertion

  Phase One of Operation BOXWOOD GREEN began just before dawn. The carrier USS Constellation reversed her southerly course at the transmission of a single code word. Two cruisers and six destroyers matched her turn to port, and the handles on nine different sets of engine-room enunciators were pushed down to the FULL setting. All of the various ships’ boilers were fully on line already, and as the warships heeled to starboard, they also started accelerating. The maneuver caught the Russian AGI crew by surprise. They’d expected Connie to turn the other way, into the wind to commence flight operations, but unknown to them the carrier was standing down this morning and racing northeast. The intelligence-gathering trawler also altered course, increasing power on her own in the vain hope of soon catching up with the carrier task force. That left Ogden with two Adams-class missile-destroyer escorts, a sensible precaution after what had so recently happened to USS Pueblo off the Korean coast.