'We don't know. His contacts, my contacts, we got nothin'.'
'Well, ain't that just too fuckin' bad?' Eddie segued into his own agenda. 'Tony, he came to me, remember? Through Angelo, and maybe Angelo tried to set us up, and we took care of that, remember? You wouldn't have this setup except for me, so now what's happening? I get shut out and he gets closer in - so what gives. Tony, you gonna get him made?'
'Back off, Eddie.'
'How come you didn't stand up for me?' Morello demanded.
'I can't make it happen, Eddie. I'm sorry, but I can't.' Piaggi hadn't expected this conversation to go well, but neither had he expected it to go this badly, this quickly. Sure, Eddie was disappointed. Sure, he had expected to be taken in. But the dumb fuck was getting a good living out of it, and what was it about? Being inside or making a living? Henry could see that. Why couldn't Eddie? Then Eddie took it one step further.
'I set this deal up for you. Now, you got a little-bitty problem, and who you come to - me! You owe me, Tony.' The implications of the words were clear for Piaggi. It was quite simple from Eddie's point of view. Tony's position in the outfit was growing in importance. With Henry as a potential - a very real - major supplier, Tony would have more than a position. He would have influence. He'd still have to show respect and obeisance to those over him, but the command structure of the outfit was admirably flexible, and Henry's double-blind methods meant that whoever was his pipeline into the outfit had real security. Security of place in his organization was a rare and treasured thing. Piaggi's mistake was in not taking the thought one step further. He looked inward instead of outward. All he saw was that Eddie could replace him, become the intermediary, and then become a made man, adding status to his comfortable living. All Piaggi had to do was die, obligingly, at the right time. Henry was a businessman. He'd make the accommodation. Piaggi knew that. So did Eddie.
'Don't you see what he's doing? He's using you, man.' The odd part was that while Morello was beginning to understand that Tucker was manipulating both of them, Piaggi, the target of that manipulation, did not. As a result, Eddie's correct observation was singularly ill-timed.
'I've thought about that,' Piaggi lied. 'What's in it for him? A linkup with Philadelphia, New York?'
'Maybe. Maybe he thinks he can do it. Those people are getting awful big for their pants, man.'
'We'll sweat that one out later, and I don't see him doing that. What we want to know is, who's taking his people down? You catch anything about somebody from out of town?' Puthimonthe spot, Piaggi thought. Make him commit. Tony's eyes bored in across the table at a man too angry to notice or care what the other man was thinking.
'I haven't heard shit about that.'
'Put feelers out,' Tony ordered, and it was an order. Morello had to follow it, had to check around.
'What if he was taking out some people from inside, reliability problems, like? You think he's loyal to anybody?'
'No. But I don't think he's offing his own people, either.' Tony rose with a final order. 'Check around.'
'Sure,' Eddie snorted, left alone at his table.
CHAPTER 24
Hellos
'People, that went very well,' Captain Albie announced, finishing his critique of the exercise. There had been various minor deficiencies on the approach march, but nothing serious, and even his sharp eye had failed to notice anything of consequence on the simulated assault phase. Marksmanship especially had been almost inhumanly accurate, and his men had sufficient confidence in one another that they were now running within mere feet of fire streams in order to get to their assigned places. The Cobra crews were in the back of the room, going over their own performance. The pilots and gunners were treated with great respect by the men they supported, as were the Navy flight crews of the rescue birds. The normal us-them antipathy found among disparate units was down to the level of friendly joshing, so closely had the men trained and dedicated themselves. That antipathy was about to disappear entirely.
'Gentlemen,' Albie concluded, 'you're about to learn what this little picnic outing is all about.'
'Ten- hut! ' Irvin called.
Vice Admiral Winslow Holland Maxwell walked up the center of the room, accompanied by Major General Martin Young. Both flag officers were in their best undress uniforms. Maxwell's whites positively glistened in the incandescent lights of the building, and Young's Marine khakis were starched so stiff that they might well have been made of plywood. A Marine lieutenant carried a briefing board that nearly dragged on the floor. This he set on an easel as Maxwell took his place behind the lectern. From his place on the corner of the stage, Master Gunnery Sergeant Irvin watched the young faces in the audience, reminding himself that he had to pretend surprise at the announcement.
'Take your seats, Marines,' Maxwell began pleasantly, waiting for them to do so. 'First of all, I want to tell you for myself how proud I am to be associated with you. We've watched your training closely. You came here without knowing why, and you've worked as hard as any people I have ever seen. Here's what it's all about.' The Lieutenant flipped the cover off the briefing board, exposing an aerial photograph.
'Gentlemen, this mission is called boxwood green. Your objective is to rescue twenty men, fellow Americans who are now in the hands of the enemy.'
John Kelly was standing next to Irvin, and he, too, was watching faces instead of the Admiral. Most were younger than his, but not by much. Their eyes were locked on the reconnaissance photographs - an exotic dancer would not have drawn the sort of focus that was aimed at the blowups from the Buffalo Hunter drone. The faces were initially devoid of emotion. They were like young, fit, handsome statues, scarcely breathing, sitting at attention while the Admiral spoke to them.
'This man here is Colonel Robin Zacharias, US Air Force,' Maxwell went on, using a yard-long wooden pointer. 'You can see what the Vietnamese did to him just for looking at the asset that snapped the picture.' The pointer traced over to the camp guard about to strike the American from behind. 'Just for looking up.'
Eyes narrowed at that, all of them, Kelly saw. It was a quiet, determined kind of anger, highly disciplined, but that was the deadliest kind of all, Kelly thought, suppressing a smile that only he would have understood. And so it was for the young Marines in the audience. It wasn't a time for smiles. Each of the people in the room knew about the dangers. Each had survived a minimum of thirteen months of combat operations. Each had seen friends die in the most terrible and noisy way that the blackest of nightmares could create. But there was more to life than fear. Perhaps it was a quest. A sense of duty that few could articulate but which all of them felt. A vision of the world that men shared without actually seeing. Every man in the room had seen death in all its dreadful majesty, knowing that all life came to an end. But all knew there was more to life than the avoidance of death. Life had to have a purpose, and one such purpose was the service of others. While no man in the room would willingly give his life away, every one of them would run the risk, trusting to God or luck or fate in the knowledge that each of the others would do the same. The men in these pictures were unknown to the Marines, but they were comrades - more than friends - to whom loyalty was owed. And so they would risk their lives for them.
'I don't have to tell you how dangerous the mission is,' the Admiral concluded. 'The fact of the matter is, you know those dangers better than I do, but these people are Americans, and they have the right to expect us to come for them.'
'Fuckin' A, sir! ' a voice called from the floor, surprising the rest of the Marines.
Maxwell almost lost it then. It's alltrue, he told himself. It realty does matter. Mistakes and all, we're still what we are.
'Thank you, Dutch,' Marty Young said, walking to center stage. 'Okay, Marines, now you know. You volunteered to be here. You have to volunteer again to deploy. Some of you have families, sweethearts. We won't make you go. Some of you might have second thoughts,' he went on, examining the faces, and seeing the insult he had caused them, not by accident. 'You have today to think it over. Dismissed.'
The Marines got to their feet, to the accompaniment of the grating sound of chairs scraping on the tile floor, and when all were at attention, their voices boomed as one:
'RECON!'
