smile.
“My career, to say the least, was off to a promising start.”
Pamela read the pain behind the words. “What happened?”
“There was this girl. Sharyl Fitzroy.”
“Fitzroy! Not-”
“Yeah. The traditional admiral’s daughter. I don’t think he cared for
having a lowly lieutenant commander date his daughter, but she was the
independent type, y’know? Anyway. I was the one with the promising
career and all that, right?
“One night I took her to the Kennedy Center. She loved the opera. There
was a performance of La Bohme.” He said nothing more for a time. Pamela
waited quietly. After a time, he continued. “Afterwards, we went out
for a walk, down by the Potomac. A moonlight stroll, and all that. We
were …
attacked. Punks out joy-riding. Washington … Washington’s got the
highest crime rate in the country, did you know that?”
She nodded.
“There were three of them. They knocked me down, took my wallet. One
of them grabbed her … dragged her off. They had a van parked nearby.”
Pamela realized with a start that the man was crying. “It doesn’t sound
like something you could’ve helped.”
He shook his head. “We shouldn’t have been off by ourselves. Away from
the crowds. Away from the lights. Bad judgment … at least that’s
what the admiral said later.” His fists clenched. “Damn it, I was
there on the ground begging for my life while they … while they …”
He stopped again, and drew a long, ragged breath. “One of them shot me.
It just grazed my scalp, but I guess in the dark and with all the blood
they thought I was dead. They left me out there on the ground while
they took turns with her in the van. Then they shot her, tossed her
out. The police found us the next day.”
“You were wounded. There was nothing you could have done anyway!”
“Maybe.” He sounded bitter. “But I Played dead, lay there and didn’t
make a sound. I thought … I thought maybe they’d let her go
afterwards, but they killed her.
“So I got branded as a coward.”
“I don’t understand. Why?”
He looked at her as though trying to decide whether or not she was
joking. “Let’s just put it down to the Navy’s old-boy network,” he
said, finally. “Admiral Fitzroy had lost his only daughter, and I was
the … the fucking wimp who played dead while she was murdered. I got
transferred real fast after that. Probably a good thing. Fitzroy might
have shot me himself.”
Slowly, he rubbed his mustache. “But the word was out, y’know? This
man had gone as far as he can go in the Navy. Oh, nothing official, you
understand. I was even assigned a squadron skipper’s slot aboard
Jefferson.
Wouldn’t do to have a former CO get taken down a peg. But it was damn
clear I wasn’t going anywhere anymore.
“I suppose the real revelation came during the Wonsan crisis. My whole
squadron was held in reserve, while VF-95 went in to tangle with MiGs.
You … you’ve got to understand, Miss Drake. A Navy aviator spends his
whole life training for the moment when he can strap on an airplane and
go up against MiGs, one on one. Most men never have that chance.
“And I didn’t either.”
“You think Admiral Magruder has it in for you? That he chose his own
nephew instead of you?”
There was a long silence. “I don’t know. Maybe not. It seemed like it
at the time. And something … something happened on a flight a few
days ago.
Up by the Burmese border. I did something stupid, see. Something I
shouldn’t have done. CAG came down on me like a ton of laser-guided
ordnance, and I got relieved. It felt … it felt just like the
bastards had been waiting all that time just to see me busted.” He
looked at her. “Like I said, pretty cruddy, right?
“The worst of it is, it looks like they were right. All of them. I
broke. Maybe endangered my boat, my shipmates. I lost it.” He looked
away towards the woods beyond the cage. “Maybe I never had it.”