'No. This is what I should have been doing from the start. Pushing.
Maybe then the attack would not have happened.'
'We'll never know. Look,' Rodgers said. 'I will go to San Diego with the senator and his staff. If they are involved, I will find out.'
'Maybe.'
'Okay, maybe,' Rodgers agreed. 'But pushing like this, in Washington, may not get you anything. Lowell is very good, but the senator has friends and influence. That's better.'
McCaskey exhaled through his nose. 'I've never played good cop, bad cop, Mike. I don't like manipulating people, or the law.'
'That isn't what we're doing,' Rodgers told him. 'We're playing by the rules of the system.'
McCaskey leaned closer. 'Do you think they're involved?'
'I don't know. I belong to the school of innocent until proven guilty,' Rodgers said.
'Your gut, Mike. Mine says yes. What does yours tell you?'
Rodgers looked into the main office. Kat was helping Kendra organize computer files for the trip. He could not tell if she was watching him. That was the great thing about the military. He knew who the enemy was.
'My gut tells me the same thing it told me before,' Rodgers said. 'To proceed with care, but definitely to proceed. I want the guys who hurt Op-Center as much as you do, Darrell. If they were responsible, I'll find out. I give you my word.'
'What if I went with you?' McCaskey asked.
'That would be overkill,' Rodgers said. 'This needs to be finessed.'
McCaskey sighed again. He seemed a little more temperate now. 'You could have ordered me off. You didn't.'
'I won't.'
'When will you leave?'
'Kendra is leaving tonight with the senator and wants me to go with Link and his group tomorrow morning,' Rodgers told him. 'That should work. It will give me a chance to smooth things over with Kat.'
'All right, Mike,' McCaskey said. 'I should probably get over to Op-Center anyway. Do you know exactly how bad it was?'
Rodgers told him. McCaskey was sorry to hear about Mac but relieved and also surprised that there were no other casualties.
McCaskey left, and Rodgers went to make a phone call. He would use a pay phone, not one in the senator's office. He did not want the call to be logged. He no longer felt like the Man Without a Country. He felt worse, like a wayward apostle.
'Wo man can serve two masters' Rodgers reminded himself. Yet here he was, the man who prized loyalty above all, preparing to spy on his future colleagues to help his former teammates. Fortunately, there was another biblical quote that gave the general comfort: 'The righteous man escapes trouble, and the wicked man falls into it in his stead!'
Rodgers chose to believe that one. It was easy.
There was no other choice.
THIRTY-FOUR
Camp Pendleton, California TUesday, 2:21 p.m.
Two-star Marine General Jack Breen was listening to his voice mail when a name from the past appeared. Breen smiled. He remembered the name, all right. He remembered the day he first heard the name. It was February 18, 1991.
