Greer and Podulski told themselves at this moment that it had mattered, that freedom had a price, that some men must pay that price else there would be no flag, no Constitution, no holiday whose meaning people had the right to ignore. But in both cases, those unspoken words rang hollow. Greer’s marriage had ended, largely from the grief of Bobby’s death. Podulski’s wife would never be the same. Though each man had other children, the void created by the loss of one was like a chasm never to be bridged, and as much as each might tell himself that, yes, it was worth the price, no man who could rationalize the death of a child could truly be called a man at all, and their real feelings were reinforced by the same humanity that compelled them to a life of sacrifice. This was all the more true because each had feelings about the war that the more polite called ‘doubts,’ and which they called something else, but only among themselves.
‘Remember the time Bobby went into the pool to get Mike Goodwin’s little girl – saved her life?’ Podulski asked. ‘I just got a note from Mike. Little Amy had twins last week, two little girls. She married an engineer down in Houston, works for NASA.’
‘I didn’t even know she was married. How old is she now?’ James asked.
‘Oh, she must be twenty … twenty-five? Remember her freckles, how the sun used to breed them down at Jax?’
‘Little Amy,’ Greer said quietly. ‘How they grow.’ Maybe she wouldn’t have drowned that hot July day, but it was one more thing to remember about his son. One life saved, maybe three? That was something, wasn’t it? Greer asked himself.
The three men turned and left the grave without a word, heading slowly back to the driveway. They had to stop there. A funeral procession was coming up the hill, soldiers of the Third Infantry Regiment, ‘The Old Guard,’ doing their somber duty, laying another man to rest. The admirals lined up again, saluting the flag draped on the casket and the man within. The young Lieutenant commanding the detail did the same. He saw that one of the flag officers wore the pale blue ribbon denoting the Medal of Honor, and the severity of his gesture conveyed the depth of his respect.
‘Well, there goes another one,’ Greer said with quiet bitterness after they had passed by. ‘Dear God, what are we burying these kids for?’
‘ “Pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe …” ‘ Cas quoted. ‘Wasn’t all that long ago, was it? But when it came time to put the chips on the table, where were the bastards?’
‘We are the chips, Cas,’ Dutch Maxwell replied. ‘This is the table.’
Normal men might have wept, but these were not normal men. Each surveyed the land dotted with white stones. This had been the front lawn of Robert E. Lee once – the house was still atop the hill – and the placement of the cemetery had been the cruel gesture of a government that had felt itself betrayed by the officer. And yet Lee had in the end given his ancestral home to the service of those men whom he had most loved. That was the kindest irony of this day, Maxwell reflected.
‘How do things look up the river, James?’
‘Could be better, Dutch. I have orders to clean house. I need a pretty big broom.’
‘Have you been briefed in on BOXWOOD GREEN?’
‘No.’ Greer turned and cracked his first smile of the day. It wasn’t much, but it was something, the others told themselves. ‘Do I want to be?’
‘We’ll probably need your help.’
‘Under the table?’
‘You know what happened with KINGPIN,’ Casimir Podulski noted.
‘They were damned lucky to get out,’ Greer agreed. ‘Keeping this one tight, eh?’
‘You bet we are.’
‘Let me know what you need. You’ll get everything I can find. You doing the “three” work, Cas?’
‘That’s right.’ Any designator with a -3 at the end denoted the operations and planning department, and Podulski had a gift for that. His eyes glittered as brightly as his Wings of Gold in the morning sun.
‘Good,’ Greer observed. ‘How’s little Dutch doing?’
‘Flying for Delta now. Copilot, he’ll make captain in due course, and I’ll be a grandfather in another month or so.’
‘Really? Congratulations, my friend.’
‘I don’t blame him for getting out. I used to, but not now.’
‘What’s the name of the SEAL who went in to get him?’
‘Kelly. He’s out, too,’ Maxwell said.
‘You should have gotten the Medal for him, Dutch,’ Podulski said. ‘I read the citation. That was as hairy as they come.’
‘I made him a chief. I couldn’t get the Medal for him.’ Maxwell shook his head. ‘Not for rescuing the son of an admiral, Cas. You know the politics.’
‘Yeah.’ Podulski looked up the hill. The funeral procession had stopped, and the casket was being moved off the gun carriage. A young widow was watching her husband’s time on earth end. ‘Yeah, I know about politics.’
Tucker eased the boat into the slip. The inboard-outboard drive made that easy. He cut the engine and grabbed the mooring lines, which he tied off quickly. Tony and Eddie lifted the beer cooler out while Tucker collected the loose gear and snapped a few covers into place before joining his companions on the parking lot.
‘Well, that was pretty easy,’ Tony noted. The cooler was already in the back of his Ford Country Squire station wagon.
‘Who do you suppose won the race today?’ Eddie asked. They’d neglected to take a radio with them for the trip.
‘I had a yard bet on Foyt, just to make it interesting.’
‘Not Andretti?’ Tucker asked.
‘He’s a paisan, but he ain’t lucky. Betting is business,’ Piaggi pointed out. Angelo was a thing of the past now, and the manner of his disposal was, after all, a little amusing, though the man might never eat crab cakes again.
‘Well,’ Tucker said, ‘you know where to find me.’
‘You’ll get your money,’ Eddie said, speaking out of place. ‘End of the week, the usual place.’ He paused. ‘What if demand goes up?’
‘I can handle it,’ Tucker assured him. ‘I can get all you want.’
‘What the hell kind of pipeline do you have?’ Eddie asked, pushing further.
‘Angelo wanted to know that, too, remember? Gentlemen, if I told you that, you wouldn’t need me, would you?’
Tony Piaggi smiled. ‘Don’t trust us?’
‘Sure.’ Tucker smiled. ‘I trust you to sell the stuff and share the money with me.’
Piaggi nodded approval. ‘I like smart partners. Stay that way. It’s good for all of us. You have a banker?’
‘Not yet, haven’t thought about it much,’ Tucker lied.
‘Start thinking, Henry. We can help set you up, overseas bank. It’s secure, numbered account, all that stuff. You can have somebody you know check it out. Remember, they can track money if you’re not careful. Don’t live it up too much. We’ve lost a lot of friends that way.’
‘I don’t take chances, Tony.’
Piaggi nodded. ‘Good way to think. You have to be careful in this business. The cops are getting smart.’
‘Not smart enough.’ Neither were his partners, when it came to that, but one thing at a time.
CHAPTER 5
Commitments
The package arrived with a very jet-lagged Captain at the Navy’s intelligence headquarters in Suitland, Maryland. On-staff photo-interpretation experts were supplemented by specialists from the Air Force’s 1127th Field Activities Group at Fort Belvoir. It took twenty hours to go through the entire process, but the frames from the Buffalo Hunter were unusually good, and the American on the ground had done what he was supposed to do: look up and stare at the passing reconnaissance drone.
‘Poor bastard paid the price for it,’ a Navy chief observed to his Air Force counterpart. Just behind him the photo caught an NVA soldier with his rifle up and reversed. ‘I’d like to meet you in a dark alley, you little fuck.’
‘What do you think?’ The Air Force senior master sergeant slid an ID photo over.
‘Close enough I’d bet money on it.’ Both intelligence specialists thought it odd that they had such a thin collection of files to compare with these photographs, but whoever had guessed had guessed well. They had a match. They didn’t know that what they had was a series of photographs of a dead man.
Kelly let her sleep, glad that she was able to without any chemical help. He got himself dressed, went outside, and ran around his island twice – the circumference was about three quarters of a mile – to work up a sweat in the still morning air. Sam and Sarah, early risers also, bumped into him while he was cooling down on the dock.
‘The change in you is remarkable, too,’ she observed. She paused for a moment. ‘How was Pam last night?’