Sarah poured two cups. She had very delicate movements. Sandy thought. ‘I know what I think. Tell me what you think,’ the pharmacologist said.
‘I think he’s killing people.’ It caused her physical pain to say that.
‘I think you’re right.’ Sarah Rosen sat down and rubbed her eyes. ‘You never met Pam. Prettier than Doris, willowy, sort of, probably from an inadequate diet. It was much easier to wean her off the drugs. Not as badly abused, physically anyway, but just as much emotional hurt. We never got the whole story. Sam says that John did. But that’s not the important part.’ Sarah looked up, and the pain O’Toole saw there was real and deep. ‘We had her saved, Sandy, and then something happened, and then something – something changed in John.’
Sandy turned to look out the window. It was quarter of seven in the morning. She could see people coming out in pajamas and bathrobes to get their morning papers and collect half-gallon bottles of milk. The early crowd was leaving for their cars, a process that in her neighborhood lasted until eight-thirty or so. She turned back. ‘No, nothing changed. It was always there. Something – I don’t know, released it, let it out? like opening the door of a cage. What sort of man – part of him’s like Tim, but another part I just don’t understand.’
‘What about his family?’
‘He doesn’t have any. His mother and father are dead, no siblings. He was married -‘
‘Yes, I know about that, and then Pam.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘So lonely.’
‘Part of me says he’s a good man, but the other part .. .’ Sandy’s voice trailed off.
‘My maiden name was Rabinowicz,’ Sarah said, sipping her coffee. ‘My family comes from Poland. Papa left when I was too young to remember; mother died when I was nine, peritonitis. I was eighteen when the war started,’ she went on. For her generation ‘the war’ could mean only one thing. ‘We had lots of relatives in Poland. I remember writing to them. Then they all just disappeared. All gone – even now it’s hard to believe it really happened.’
‘I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t know.’
‘It’s not the sort of thing you talk a lot about.’ Dr Rosen shrugged. ‘People took something from me, though, and I couldn’t do anything about it. My cousin Reva was a good pen pal. I suppose they killed her one way or another, but I never found out who or where. Back then I was too young to understand. I suppose I was more puzzled than anything else. Later, I got angry – but against whom? I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t. And there’s this empty space where Reva was. I still have her picture, black-and-white of a girl with pigtails, twelve years old, I guess. She wanted to be a ballet dancer.’ Sarah looked up. ‘Kelly’s got an empty place, too.’
‘But revenge -‘
‘Yeah, revenge.’ The doctor’s expression was bleak. ‘I know. We’re supposed to think he’s a bad person, aren’t we? Call the police, even, turn him in for doing that.’
‘I can’t – I mean, yes, but I just -‘
‘Neither will I. Sandy, if he were a bad person, why did he bring Doris up here? He’s risking his life two different ways.’
‘But there’s something very scary about him.’
‘He could have just walked away from her,’ Sarah went on, not really hearing. ‘Maybe he’s just the sort of person who thinks he has to fix everything himself. But now we have to help.’
That turned Sandy around, giving her a respite from her real thoughts. ‘What are we going to do with her?’
‘We’re going to get her well, as far as we can, and after that it’ll be up to her. What else can we do?’ Sarah asked, watching Sandy’s face change again, returning to her real dilemma. .
‘But what about John?’
Sarah looked up. ‘I have never seen him do anything illegal. Have you?’
It was a weapons-training day. A solid cloud cover meant that no reconnaissance satellites, American or Soviet, could see what was happening here. Cardboard targets were set up around the compound, and the lifeless eyes of mannequins watched from the sandbox and swing set as the Marines emerged from the woods, passing through the simulated gate, firing low-powered rounds from their carbines. The targets were shredded in seconds. Two M-60 machine guns poured fire into the open door of the ‘barracks’ – which would already have been wrecked by the two Huey Cobra gunships – while the snatch team raced into the ‘prison block.’ There, twenty-five more mannequins were in individual rooms. Each was weighted to about one hundred fifty pounds – nobody thought that the Americans at SENDER GREEN would weigh even that much – and every one was dragged out while the fire-support element covered the evacuation.
Kelly stood next to Captain Pete Albie, who, it had been assumed for the purpose of the exercise, was dead.
He was the only officer on the team, an aberration that was compensated for by the presence of so many senior NCOs. As they watched, the mannequins were dragged to the simulated fuselages of the rescue helicopters. These were mounted on semitrailers, and had come in at dawn. Kelly clicked his stopwatch when the last man was aboard.
‘Five seconds under nominal, Captain.’ Kelly held up the watch. ‘These boys are pretty good.’
‘Except we’re not doing it in daylight, are we, Mr Clark?’ Albie, like Kelly, knew the nature of the mission. The Marines as yet did not-at least not officially – though by now they had to have a fairly good idea. He turned and smiled. ‘Okay, it’s only the third run-through.’
Both men went into the compound. The simulated targets were in feathery pieces, and their number was exactly double the worst-case estimate for the SENDER GREEN guard force. They replayed the assault in their minds, checking angles of fire. There were advantages and disadvantages to how the camp was set up. Following the rules in some nameless East Bloc manual, it didn’t fit the local terrain. Most conveniently indeed, the best avenue of approach coincided with the main gate. In adhering to a standard that allowed for maximum security against a possible escape attempt of the prisoners, it also facilitated an assault from without – but they didn’t expect that, did they?
Kelly ran over the assault plan in his mind. The insertion would put the Recon Marines on the ground one ridge away from SENDER GREEN. Thirty minutes for the Marines to approach the camp. M-79 grenades to eliminate the guard towers. Two Huey Cobra gunships – known with lethal elegance as ‘snakes’ to the troops, and that appealed to him – would hose the barracks and provide heavy fire support – but the grenadiers on the team, he was sure, could take out the towers in a matter of five seconds, then pour willie-pete into the barracks and burn the guard force alive with deadly fountains of white flame, doing without the snakes entirely if they had to. Small and lean as this operation was, the size of the objective and the quality of the team made for unplanned safety factors. He thought of it as overkill, a term that didn’t just apply to nuclear weapons. In combat operations, safety lay in not giving the other guy a chance, to be ready to kill him two, three, a dozen times over in as little time as possible. Combat wasn’t supposed to be fair. To Kelly, things were looking very good indeed.
‘What if they have mines?’ Albie worried.
‘On their own turf?’ Kelly asked. ‘No sign of it from the photographs. The ground isn’t disturbed. No warning signs to keep their people away.’
Their people would know, wouldn’t they?’
‘On one of the photos there’s some goats grazing just outside the wire, remember?’
Albie nodded with some embarrassment. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I remember that.’
‘Let’s not borrow trouble,’ Kelly told him. He fell silent for a moment, realizing that he had been a mere E-7 chief petty officer, and now he was talking as an equal – more accurately as a superior to an O-3 captain of Recon Marines. That ought to have been – what? Wrong? If so, then why was he doing so well at it, and why was the captain accepting his words? Why was he Mr Clark to this experienced combat officer? ‘We’re going to do it.’
‘I think you’re right, Mr Clark. And how do you get out?’ .
‘As soon as the choppers come in, I break the Olympic record coming down that hill to the LZ. I call it a two-minute ran.’
‘In the dark?’ Albie asked.
Kelly laughed. ‘I run especially fast in the dark, Captain.’
‘Do you know how many Ka-Bar knives there are?’
From the tone of Douglas’s question, Lieutenant Ryan knew the news had to be bad. ‘No, but I suppose I’m about to find out.’