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 of 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 dollies. 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 my 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.
??ll? 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’ 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-sight 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.