watched with a smile that Sam caught and returned. Pam was new at this, tripping twice as she walked the fish around. Again Sam did the honors with the net, this time recovering an eight-pound blue.
'Toss it back,' Kelly advised. 'They don't taste worth a damn!'
Sarah looked up. 'Throw back her first fish? What are you, a Nazi? You have any lemon at your place, John?'
'Yeah, why?'
'I'll show you what you can do with a bluefish, that's why.' She whispered something to Pam that evoked a laugh. The blue went into the same tank, and Kelly wondered how it and the rock would get along.
Memorial Day, Dutch Maxwell thought, alighting from his official car at Arlington National Cemetery. To many just a time for a five-hundred-mile auto race in Indianapolis, or a day off, or the traditional start of the summer beach season, as testified to by the relative lack of auto traffic in Washington. But not to him, and not to his fellows. This was their day, a time to remember fallen comrades while others attended to other things both more and less personal. Admiral Podulski got out with him, and the two walked slowly and out of step, as admirals do. Casimir's son, Lieutenant (junior grade) Stanislas Podulski, was not here, and probably never would be. His A-4 had been blotted from the sky by a surface-to-air missile, the reports had told them, nearly a direct hit. The young pilot had been too distracted to notice until perhaps the last second, when his voice had spoken its last epithet of disgust over the 'guard' channel. Perhaps one of the bombs he'd been carrying had gone off sympathetically. In any case, the small attack-bomber had dissolved into a greasy cloud of black and yellow, leaving little behind; and besides, the enemy wasn't all that fastidious about respecting the remains of fallen aviators. And so the son of a brave man had been denied his resting place with comrades. It wasn't something that Cas spoke about. Podulski kept such feelings inside.
Rear Admiral James Greer was at his place, as he'd been for the previous two years, about fifty yards from the paved driveway, setting flowers next to the flag at the headstone of his son.
'James?' Maxwell said. The younger man turned and saluted, wanting to smile in gratitude for their friendship on a day like this, but not quite doing so. All three wore their navy-blue uniforms because they carried with them a proper sort of solemnity. Their gold-braided sleeves glistened in the sun. Without a spoken word, all three men lined up to face the headstone of Robert White Greer, First Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps. They saluted smartly, each remembering a young man whom they had bounced on their knees, who had ridden his bike at Naval Station Norfolk and Naval Air Station Jacksonville with Cas's son, and Dutch's. Who had grown strong and proud, meeting his father's ships when they'd returned to port, and talked only about following in his father's footsteps, but not too closely, and whose luck had proven insufficient to the moment, fifty miles south-west of Danang. It was the curse of their profession, each knew but never said, that their sons were drawn to it also, partly from reverence for what their fathers were, partly from a love of country imparted by each to each, most of all from a love of their fellow man. As each of the men standing there had taken his chances, so had Bobby Greer and Stas Podulski taken theirs. It was just that luck had not smiled on two of the three sons.
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.
