He laughed, and stopped. They passed, one to either side, a dejected-looking palm tree in an island protected from cars by empty oil drums. When they rejoined on the other side, Kelly chuckled in embarrassment and said, “After all, there aren’t a lot of times it’s helpful to point a gun at your colonel’s eye and tell him he’s history if he makes a peep in the next ten minutes.”
“You did that?” Elaine said, her tone one of amusement rather than the cool appraisal Kelly had expected.
“Yeah,” Kelly admitted. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, and I figured we were far enough back in the boonies that he wouldn’t have to report it later to cover his own ass. Neither of us got anything in our jackets for that one, and he stopped tryin’ to be a big hero like his old man – at least when he was in sight of me.”
“This is the car,” Elaine said. “We’ll put your luggage behind the seats.”
The car was a Porsche 944, new enough that the treads on both front and rear tires were almost unworn. It was painted a metallic green, the gloss overlaid by a light dusting of yellow grit from the parking lot.
“What,” asked Kelly as Elaine unlocked the Porsche, “were you going to do if I showed up here with a steamer trunk?” An obvious answer struck him, and he looked around for a follow-car big enough to handle any possible load of baggage. Though he craned his neck and raised himself onto his toes, looking like a gigged frog because of his squat build, Kelly could see no likely vehicle nearby.
“There isn’t one, Tom,” Elaine said dryly, flipping the dirver’s seat forward, “but don’t worry” – she patted his left arm, whose muscles were rock solid with the weight of the suitcase they were supporting – “I’m packing.”
” ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death . . .’ ” quoted Kelly as he set the case into the car. It was a snug fit, but because the driver’s seat was well forward there was a fit.
“And as for the rest,” she went on when he straightened, “if you got off with more luggage than you’d boarded with in Frankfurt, we were going to have to hire a taxi for it – yes.” She smiled.
The veteran held both hands out in front of him, palms down, and looked at them for a moment. Then he met Elaine’s eyes and said, “Look, I know how I get. Don’t – ” He swallowed. “I’ve got real problems working close with people when it gets tense, I don’t usually do that. I don’t wanna, you know, somebody get hurt because I was pissed and there wasn’t a whole lotta time.”
Elaine touched his hands with hers, fingertips to palms and her thumbs lying gently on his scarred knuckles. “You haven’t had anyone you could trust before, Tom,” she said. “You’ve got that now.”
Kelly grinned and squeezed hands that felt so delicate that he could have crumpled them like cellophane. “Yeah, that’s a change,” he said, stepping around the back of the car to get to the passenger side. His fingers tapped idly on the black rubber spoiler as he passed it, wondering whether there would be any chance of putting the Porsche through its paces one of these days. He was going to need some relaxation. . . .
And he could’ve used somebody to trust as well, but he didn’t have that on this operation either. You could trust the people beneath you, sometimes, if you’d trained them and worked with them before. But your superiors in a hierarchy could never by definition be expected to do exactly what you told them to – especially if the time were too short for what they thought was proper respect. People didn’t get into positions of responsibility by abdicating responsibility.
Elaine Tuttle would be welcome any day as a member of a team Kelly put together, for her driving and her mind if nothing else. But right now she was, at a guess, a lieutenant colonel – and he was a master sergeant in the only scheme of things that a light colonel’s mind could accept.