Darpa Alpha

Douglas took his wife’s hand. It felt remarkably warm. “I’m sorry you’ve had to get caught up in all this.”

“I’m a soldier’s wife now. You told me once that it comes with the territory. With command.”

“It does, but usually you can keep family out of it. I shouldn’t have come home, should’ve stayed away…”

She lifted her free hand, slipped it around his waist, and nuzzled into him. “Some of them were here, camped outside the house, before you even arrived at the airport.”

“They’ll go away,” he told her, “soon as the next story breaks.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “We’ve got enough provisions. We can stay holed up in here for—” She shrugged. “—as long as it takes.”

“You mean,” Douglas added, forcing a grin, “until the milk runs out!”

Margaret didn’t ask for much, but one of the first things Douglas had found out — the first night of their honeymoon — was that Margaret had a sacrosanct ritual. At 10:30 she would shower, prepare her bowl of cereal, pour the milk, and scan the “funnies” as she ate, finishing before the news at eleven. Sex was nonnegotiable until the weather forecast was over and the sports report threatened. But this night the general knew there was no chance of any conjugal enjoyment. Like many another soldier, postcombat coitus came in second only to slaking your thirst. But defeat, failure on the scale of the DARPA ALPHA murders and the nation-threatening theft that came with them, could rob a man, especially a commander, of any emotion other than self-punishing regret, the awful, accusatory postmortems of “what ifs” and “if onlys” that undermined self-confidence in the field and the bedroom. What he needed, he knew, was a win, a victory, a chance at a victory, to redeem himself in his own eyes and the team’s.

“They’ll go away,” Margaret told him. “They have the attention span of a newt.”

“A what?”

“A newt.”

Freeman laughed. “You nit!”

And that started her off giggling, “nit” and “newt” shooting back and forth between them like fireflies in the gloom, a burst of manic energy, as inexplicable as it was unexpected, fueling the exchange, then vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.

“Dammit,” said the general, getting up, walking over to the drapes for a brief reconnaissance, then to the kitchen. “I should have choppered the team ahead of where we were getting the bip from the transmitter on the disk. Gone ahead and set up an ambush.”

Margaret knew little if anything about military tactics, but she intuitively sensed a spouse’s duty to support whatever decision the other had made, unless there was something to be gained by a useful suggestion. What would that be? she wondered. She tried to recollect what he’d told her about the “op” on his return, but she simply found it too tiring to keep up with all the details, some of which she realized she had probably picked up from Marte Price’s Newsbreaks on CNN.

“Why didn’t you go ahead on the trail and—” Good grief, she hadn’t meant to say that, but it was what his musing had suggested to her, and besides, wasn’t he asking himself the very same question?

“I didn’t do it,” he bellowed from the kitchen, “because there’s not just one trail up there! It’s rugged mountain country. Wild country. Trappers’ve been going through those forests for hundreds of years. One trail! Son of a bitch, there’s a hundred trails, all hidden in the forest. I had to move fast, Margaret — with only seven men!”

“Well, then,” she said sharply, “you did your best. And that’s all anyone can do.” She paused. “Anyway, what’s done is done.” There was an edge to her voice that was a caution, a yellow light for this conversation to end, not to cry over spilt milk. She couldn’t stand it if there was even a hint of self-pity.

“Where’s the damn decaf?” he bawled.

“Where it always is. Right cupboard above the sink. Men!”

“What?”

“I said, ‘Men.’ You never know where anything is.”

“I would if this cupboard was organized. Goddamned jumble in here. Dark as Hades!”

“Turn on the light!” she admonished.

He stood grumpily by the kettle, ordering the water to boil faster, until he realized he hadn’t depressed the “on” switch. As the water began roiling, its subdued sound like the far-off rumble of artillery, the cold kettle of a few minutes ago grew warm and shuddered slightly as if it were coming to life. “Would you like a cup?”

“Decaf?” she said. “Sure.” His offer, her acceptance, constituted a cease-fire.

“Sorry,” he said, as he handed her the white mug, his second favorite, with the Brits’ Special Air Service insignia and motto “Who Dares, Wins.”

“Sorry for what?” she said, affecting surprise.

“Being so damned egotistical.” He sat down carefully in his TV command chair. “Must have seemed that I’m more concerned about my reputation than about my team.”

Margaret smiled diplomatically. “Ego’s first cousin to morale.”

He looked at her pensively. “Was that a shot?”

“An observation,” she replied coyly. “Do you know a general without an ego?”

He was about to answer when they heard a rumble outside and the rose red drapes were once again swept by lights.

“They’re moving,” she said, more out of hope than conviction. Douglas listened intently. Like the nuclear subs that kept a library of ships’ sounds and “noise shorts” in their sonar libraries, he had, over his years as a man who had soldiered all over the world, compiled an impressive sound library of his own. Blindfolded, he could tell precisely what kind of tank or armored personnel vehicle was approaching, friend or foe.

“Nothing new out there,” he concluded.

“Then what’s all the noise about?”

“Warming up,” he said. “Ready to leave. Or just repositioning.” He got up quickly and went to the slit in the drapes. “Flashlights moving about,” he said. “Fog’s thicker. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were laying smoke to hide in.”

“We’re the ones hiding,” said Margaret.

“I have a feeling,” he mused, “I don’t know why.” He paused. “Do you ever have that feeling,” he asked her, “deep inside you, a premonition almost, that something you wouldn’t normally expect—”

“Deja vu?”

“No…” He turned away from the drapes and she could see the expectation in his eyes. “I mean that you just know something is going to come along to help you out of a tight spot.”

“Intuition,” said Margaret.

“Yes. Intuition.”

“Do you remember,” he continued, “when Patton was in the doghouse with Ike over slapping that soldier in Sicily?”

“No.”

“Well, for a while Patton thought he would be locked out of the D-Day invasion.” Freeman, still trying to ascertain whether more media were arriving, withdrawing, or repositioning, turned around and looked at Margaret. “He said, ‘God will not allow it. I must fulfill my destiny.’” Douglas Freeman paused, as if expecting his wife to agree that he, Douglas Freeman, would, like Patton, end up fulfilling his destiny, end up victorious despite the slough of despondency in which he now found himself. He could see, had known in fact for a long time, that while Margaret would comfort and support him for better or for worse, she would not lie to him.

“I wouldn’t know,” she told him. “I don’t have such premonitions.”

“I feel it,” he told her, turning back to spy on the media. “I know, Margaret. I’ll — my team’ll — get another chance to run those scumbags to ground!”

It was precisely at that moment, eleven minutes after three in the morning, that the phone rang. Margaret answered, and though sure that it was yet one more reporter, tried to sound civil. “Freeman residence.” It was a woman’s voice, saying that she was calling from the Pentagon and inquiring as to whether General Freeman would be available to take a call in ten minutes from the CNO — chief of naval operations?