'Well, he's back to wherever the hell he goes to, and we're back to where we were before, too.' Douglas picked up the file and walked back to his desk.
It was after dark when Kelly tied Springer up. He looked up to note that a helicopter was overhead, probably doing something or other from the nearby naval air station. In any case it didn't circle or linger. The outside air was heavy and moist and sultry. Inside the bunker was even worse, and it took an hour to get the air conditioning up to speed. The 'house' seemed emptier than before, for the second time in a year, the rooms automatically larger without a second person to help occupy the space. Kelly wandered about for fifteen minutes or so. His movements were aimless until he found himself staring at Pam's clothes. Then his brain clicked in to tell him that he was looking for someone no longer there. He took the articles of clothing and set them in a neat pile on what had once been Tish's dresser, and might have become Pam's. Perhaps the saddest thing of all was that there was so little of it. The cutoffs, the halter, a few more intimate things, the flannel shirt she'd worn at night, her well-worn shoes on top of the pile. So little to remember her by.
Kelly sat on the edge of his bed, staring at them. How long had it all lasted? Three weeks? Was that all? It wasn't a matter of checking the days on a calendar, because time wasn't really measured in that way. Time was something that filled the empty spaces in your life, and his three weeks with??m had been longer and deeper than all the time since Tish's death. But all that was now a long time ago. His hospital stay seemed like a mere blink of an eye, but it was as though it had become a wall between that most precious part of his life and where he was now. He could walk up to the wall and look over it at what had been, but he could never more reach out and touch it. Life could be so cruel and memory could be a curse, the taunting reminder of what had been and what might have developed from it if only he'd acted differently. Worst of all, the wall between where he was and where he might have gone was one of his own construction, just as he had moments earlier piled up Pam's clothes because they no longer had a use. He could close his eyes and see her. In the silence he could hear her, but the smells were gone, and her feel was gone.
Kelly reached over from the bed and touched the flannel shirt, remembering what it had once covered, remembering how his large strong hands had clumsily undone the buttons to find his love inside, but now it was merely a piece of cloth whose shape contained nothing but air, and little enough of that. It was then that Kelly began sobbing for the first time since he'd learned of her death. His body shook with the reality of it, and alone inside the walls of rebarred concrete he called out her name, hoping that somewhere she might hear, and somehow she might forgive him for killing her with his stupidity. Perhaps she was at rest now. Kelly prayed that God would understand that she'd never really had a chance, would recognize the goodness of her character and judge her with mercy, but that was one mystery whose solutions were well beyond his ability to solve. His eyes were limited by the confines of this room, and they kept returning to the pile of clothing.
The bastards hadn't even given her body the dignity of being covered from the elements and the searching eyes of men. They'd wanted everybody to know how they'd punished her and enjoyed her and tossed her aside like a piece of rubbish, something for a bird to pick at. Pam Madden had been of no consequence to them, except perhaps a convenience to be used in life, and even in death, as a demonstration of their prowess. As central as she had been to his life, that was how unimportant she had been to them. Just like the headman's family, Kelly realized. A demonstration: defy us and suffer. And if others found out, so much the better. Such was their pride.
Kelly lay back in the bed, exhausted by weeks of bed rest followed by a long day of exertion. He stared at the ceiling, the light still on, hoping to sleep, hoping more to find dreams of Pam, but his last conscious thought was something else entirely.
If his pride could kill, then so could theirs.
Dutch Maxwell arrived at his office at six-fifteen, as was his custom. Although as Assistant Chief of Naval Operations (Air) he was no longer part of any operational command hierarchy, he was still a Vice Admiral, and his current job required him to think of every single aircraft in the US Navy as his own. And so the top item on his pile of daily paperwork was a summary of the previous day's air operations over Vietnam - actually it was today's, but had happened yesterday due to the vagaries of the International Dateline, something that had always seemed outrageous even though he'd fought one battle practically astride the invisible line on the Pacific Ocean.
He remembered it well: less than thirty years earlier, flying an F4F-4 Wildcat fighter off USS Enterprise, an ensign, with all his hair - cut very short - and a brand-new wife, all piss-and-vinegar and three hundred hours under his belt. On the fourth of June, 1942, in the early afternoon, he'd spotted three Japanese 'Val' dive bombers that ought to have followed the rest of the Hiryu air group to attack Yorktown but had gotten lost and headed towards his carrier by mistake. He'd killed two of them on his first surprise pass out of a cloud. The third had taken longer, but he could remember every glint of the sun off his target's wings and the tracers from the gunner's futile efforts to drive him on. Landing on his carrier forty minutes later, he'd claimed three kills before the incredulous eyes of his squadron commander - then had all three confirmed by gunsight cameras. Overnight, his 'official' squadron coffee mug had changed from 'Winny' - a nickname he'd despised - to 'Dutch,' engraved into the porcelain with blood-red letters, a call sign he'd borne for the remainder of his career.
Four more combat cruises had added twelve additional kills to the side of his aircraft, and in due course he'd commanded a fighter squadron, then a carrier air wing, then a carrier, then a group, and then been Commander, Air Forces, US Pacific Fleet, before assuming his current job. With luck a fleet command lay in his future, and that was as far as he'd ever been able to see. Maxwell's office was in keeping with his station and experience. On the wall to the left of his large mahogany desk was the side plate from the F6F Hellcat he'd flown at Philippine Sea and off the coast of Japan. Fifteen rising-sun flags were painted on the deep blue background lest anyone forget that the Navy's elder statesman of aviators had really done it once, and done it better than most. His old mug from the old Enterprise sat on his desk as well, no longer used for something so trivial as drinking coffee, and certainly not for pencils.
This near-culmination of his career should have been a matter of the utmost satisfaction to Maxwell, but instead his eyes fell upon the daily loss report from Yankee Station. Two A-7A Corsair light-attack bombers had been lost, and the notation said they were from the same ship and the same squadron.
'What's the story on this?' Maxwell asked Rear Admiral Podulski.
'I checked,' Casimir replied. 'Probably a midair. Anders was the element leader, his wingman, Robertson, was a new kid. Something went wrong but nobody saw what it was. No SAM call, and they were too high for flak.'
'Chutes?'
'No.' Podulski shook his head. 'The division leader saw the fireball. Just bits and pieces came out.'
'What were they in after?'
Gas's face said it all. 'A suspected truck park. The rest of the strike went in, hit the target, good bomb patterns, but no secondaries.'
'So the whole thing was a waste of time.' Maxwell closed his eyes, wondering what had gone wrong with the two aircraft, with the mission assignment, with his career, with his Navy, with his whole country.
'Not at all, Dutch. Somebody thought it was an important target.'
'Cas, it's too early in the morning for that, okay?'
'Yes, sir. The CAG is investigating the incident and will probably take some token action. If you want an explanation, it's probably that Robertson was a new kid, and he was nervous - second combat mission - and probably he thought he saw something, and probably he jinked too hard, but they were the trail element and nobody saw it. Hell, Dutch, we saw that sort of thing happen, too.'
Maxwell nodded. 'What else?'
'An A- 6 got shredded north of Haiphong -SAM - but they got it back to the boat all right. Pilot and B/N both get DFCs for that,' Podulski reported. 'Otherwise a quiet day in the South China Sea. Nothing much in the Atlantic. Eastern Med, picking up some signs the Syrians are getting frisky with their new MiGs, but that's not our problem yet. We have that meeting with Grumman tomorrow, and then it's off to The Hill to talk with our worthy public servants about the F-14 program.'
'How do you like the numbers on the new fighter?'
'Part of me wishes we were young enough to qualify, Dutch.' Cas managed a smile. 'But, Jesus, we used to build carriers for what one of these things is going to cost.'
'Progress, Cas.'
'Yeah, we have so much of that.' Podulski grunted. 'One other thing. Got a call from Pax River. Your friend may be back home. His boat's at the dock, anyway.'
'You made me wait this long for it?'
