Kathleen's words cut like a knife through Fitzduane. Their real effectiveness stemmed from the fact that these were the very thoughts that he harbored himself.
"I love you, Hugo," continued Kathleen, "but sometimes you make me despair. You're the kindest, gentlest, sweetest man and the most loving father – and yet when I see you with these people talking about the techniques of killing, I feel I have married a monster." She gave a small sad laugh. "I'm in love with a monster. I'm bearing a monster's child. And I have no regrets."
Fitzduane lay down beside her and put his arm around her. They had had this conversation before and he had run out of answers. Fundamentally, there weren't any. Kathleen was right. But in the real world, being right was not enough.
Kathleen snuggled into him. Then she reached out with her hand and caressed him. Soon, none of it mattered.
Don Shanley, manager of Magnavox's Electro-Optical Division, watched with mixed feelings as the six special forces troopers left.
They had been drinking beer and telling war stories for the past three hours, and it had been good fun. But it had been a long day, and now all he really wanted to do was have a shower and put his feet up. Exhibitions were hard on the feet. You were standing working all day, and standing around socializing in the evening, and it just was not the way, in his opinion, feet were designed to be used. They were useful appendages and really should receive more care and consideration.
Shanley stripped and stood under the shower, the pressure turned full up. The water needled into him and he could feel the layers of fatigue being stripped away. It was just as well. It was after eleven, but his day was still not finished. An exhibition meant a sixteen-hour day, sometimes more.
Tomorrow, he had additional work to do. He was starting the day with a demonstration of the MAG-600 for a cadre of the 82 ^ nd Airborne. The good news about that was that he would not lose any time at the stand, because the paratroopers started so goddamn early. The bad news was that he was not going to get much sleep. All equipment, no matter how inherently reliable, had an amazing knack of letting you down at sales demonstrations. Doubtless, it was the gods playing games.
But interestingly, he reflected, they seemed to play them much less often if equipment was checked out thoroughly and methodically in advance. It was doubly important if the devices had been fiddled about with all day on the exhibition stand. It was impressive how much several hundred pairs of untrained hands could fuck up the most soldier-proof of devices.
Laymen thought you designed equipment for performance. That was the easy part. The hard part was making it stand up to the average soldier's activities in the field. That was not so easy. The military had strange habits. They liked mud and rain and sand and grit and extremes of temperature and humidity. They jumped out of airplanes and helicopters and rattled around armored fighting vehicles. People shot at them with sharp pieces of metal and dropped explosives on them.
All of this was not conducive to good electro-optical performance. No, ‘Mil-Spec’ was not just an arbitrary list of standards. The military were really rough on things.
But it was fair enough, Shanley thought, because they were hardest of all on themselves. And that was hard to take.
Shanley looked like everyone's image of the ultimate professional soldier. His bearing was military. His black hair was cropped short. He was fit and lean, with high cheekbones and a firm jaw. His eyes were blue and piercing and laughter lines showed he could take stress. He was deeply tanned. His demeanor was both confident and encouraging. He had a natural air of command. His voice was a pleasure to listen to, both crisp and authoritative and persuasive. Clothes fitted him as if tailored. He was a man's man and a woman's man. Both sexes automatically warmed to him.
Unprompted, enlisted men automatically called him ‘Sir.’ Officers called him ‘Sir’ also, or ‘Mister’ with respect. He had eyeballed Death and he had not blinked. He was ex-Special Forces or some such elite unit. He was ranger and airborne qualified. He was a warrior.
But he had never served. He had come close, but then Lydia had showed up and civilian life had seemed the better option. But he had always wondered.
The irony of Don Shanley was that none of his military traits or mannerisms was affected. All were natural and were innate to the man. Shanley was just ordained by nature to look the part.
It went deeper than mere looks. Shanley also was a crack shot and had a deep understanding of the military art. He knew weapons and tactics and military history, and how the whole terrible business worked, in very considerable detail.
By nature he was conscientious and thorough, and in his value system you should thoroughly understand the needs of your customer. It went with doing the job right.
Shanley was a decent man. Doing the job as well as it could be done was important to him. Work was how he supported his family, and they were everything to him. Lydia and the twins. They were why he did what he did and why he was proud to do it. He also thought it was necessary. The U.S. military were entitled to have the best weapons that money and technology could provide, and he, Donald Shanley, would see that they had them. On that issue he slept easy.
But when he trained men who were about to put their lives on the line, he felt guilty. He felt the need to pay his dues. To serve in a combat unit in defense of his country.
He was an old-fashioned man with simple values. He had a conscience and he cared.
He picked up the phone and called Lydia in New Jersey. This was something he had done virtually every night he had been away since they had gotten married eight years ago. She was asleep, but she responded to his voice with drowsy warmth.
The twins were fine. Sam adored the new pancake recipe. Samantha wanted to play the guitar instead of the piano. The air conditioner had been fixed. All was well with the world. She missed him and loved him.
Shanley replaced the receiver. He had a good job with a fine company, and he had a wife and children he adored. He should be entirely content. And yet something was missing.
He wanted to – needed to – serve.
He swung his legs off the bed and began checking the equipment. Toward the end, he stripped and cleaned the M16A2 and the Barrett. The Magnavox MAG-600, which he was going to demonstrate to the 82 ^ nd tomorrow, was an interesting piece of equipment.
It was a thermal-imager sight, which meant it responded to heat emanations. With it, you could shoot in complete darkness or through smoke or fog at quite considerable ranges. Variations of it could accomplish the same task when fitted to a Stinger antiaircraft missile.
One of the most interesting applications of all was the application of the Magnavox thermal imaging technology to driving. Using a thermal viewer fed through to a miniature TV monitor mounted on or in the dashboard, you could drive without lights in the absolute dead of night. Image intensifiers required some light. Thermal imagers required none at all.
Shanley finished the weapons cleaning and consulted his appointment schedule.
A Colonel Hugo Fitzduane of the Irish Rangers and party were due at 3:00 P.M. for a personal demonstration. They had some particular problems they wanted to resolve that sounded as if they were right up Magnavox's street. They wanted to equip a FAV – a fast-attack vehicle – with full thermal capability and wondered if the equipment could take the pounding.
Don Shanley smiled to himself. The Shanleys had come to America from famine-stricken Ireland in the middle of the nineteenth century. Who would have thought then that Ireland would become independent and thrive and prosper?
He was looking forward to meeting this Colonel Fitzduane.