Kilmara shook his head. "It was always there, Hugo. Blame your ancestors. A willingness to serve: It's something that is bred into you."
Fitzduane leaned on the railings and gazed out over Washington. "Quite a country," he said with feeling. "I love the place, the land, the energy, many of the structures, and the sense that in the U.S. anything is possible. But some pundits argue that America's day is over and that power is now gravitating inexorably toward Asia or some other axis. Think so, Shane?"
Kilmara was looking again at the Iwo Jima memorial.
"We're both Irish," he said, "and these days we are both European, but the reality is that America is us. We are all of a piece and we are not going to go away."
He turned to Fitzduane. "Hugo," he said firmly. "You're going to get Kathleen back. But don't get killed. Do what you have to and then get the hell out. We have enough dead heroes."
Fitzduane smiled. "Deal!" he said.
They went back inside.
Fitzduane slept for several hours and then he woke.
It was still dark, but he could not sleep. He put on some running gear and jogged down to the Iwo Jima memorial. Somehow it seemed to bring comfort.
He was thinking of Kathleen. Was she really where he thought she was? Could he really bring her back? Were his plans the best that could be devised? Was there an alternative strategy? Should he go in with helicopters, as everyone else had recommended? Was it all as impossible as some had argued?
Endless doubts coursed through his mind. He was not just putting his own life at risk. Apart from the C130 pilots and crew, he was taking with him fourteen others. All of those people had their own relationships and dependents, and it was near certain that some would die. This was too dangerous a mission for all to get through unscathed. Life was not like that. Had he the right to get other people killed and to wreck other lives?
He walked slowly around the memorial. Such self-doubt, he knew, was futile. In the end you did your best and lived or died with the consequences. And that was all you could do. But above all, you had to try.
Dawn was coming. Could Kathleen see the sky as he could, or was she held chained and blindfolded like so many hostages? Was she alive at all?
At first he had been so horrified and angered by her kidnapping that it had taken all his self-control not to head down to Mexico and just do what he could. But that would have been futile and he knew it. The initial shock and fury had passed. Now there was just a cold anger that stayed with him every waking hour and an absolute determination to get Kathleen back.
He stood back and looked at the marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi. He was sure it had not been quite as depicted, but he was equally sure it was close enough.
He raised his hand in a silent salute and went jogging toward ArlingtonCemetery.
Behind him his shadow ran easily, ever watchful. Dana had been strangely touched by what she had seen. It was not his country, but he still seemed to care.
She had lost her partner. She was not going to lose her charge. And when the mission was mounted she was going to be damn sure she was on it. Texas had been the best of people and the closest of friends, and her killing was not going to go unpunished. She smiled as she cried. Texas had been good fun, too. Outrageous sometimes, humorous practically always.
She thought ArlingtonNationalCemetery at dawn was the most beautiful place she had ever seen. It should be somehow sad, given all the dead and the memories they evoked, but it was not. It was magnificent.
Fitzduane ran steadily toward a tombstone not too far from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Then he stopped beside the tombstone, took something out of his pocket, and placed it on the base. Next he stepped back and stood with his head bowed for a good ten minutes.
After he had left, Dana checked the headstone:
JAMES N. “NICK” ROWE
COLONEL U.S. ARMY
Then she remembered. This grave had particular significance for special forces. The inscription closed with the stark line:
KILLED BY TERRORISTS, MANILA
Fitzduane had left an Irish Rangers shoulder patch on the base, held in place by a small stone. The rituals of warriors before battle, Dana thought. We think we have changed, but we have not. We prepare, we draw strength from our heroes, we pay our dues, and then we fight. Ancient Roman, Norman knight, or twentieth-century special forces. Different causes, different customs, different weapons, but when it came to facing the reality of combat, common traditions.
11
Fitzduane flew into Phoenix, picked up a rented Ford Bronco, and drove north and east.
He had debated phoning rather than making the trip, but he rationalized that if he was going to ask Al to put his life on the line it was something he had better do face-to-face.
In reality, he was desperate for a change of environment. The mission was coming together, but Washington was one long reminder of Kathleen. He needed space and a chance to get some perspective.
He was heading for the newly incorporated city of Medora, population all of 5,648. It was about three hours' steady driving time from Phoenix. He could have rented a light aircraft and flow the last hop, but he had mixed feelings about light aircraft he did not know, and anyway he had heard the that the Medora airstrip was on top of a butte.
Since a butte, as best he could recall, was a sheer-sided mountain jutting out of the ground rather like a rocket, its top, even if flat, did not seem a terrific place to land. The pilot could miss or you could fall of the edge or something. Fitzduane preferred his airstrips on the ground, preferably very flat ground without things to bump into.
A few miles outside Phoenix, the highway climbed steadily. The rolling foothills stretched away on either side and the ground looked hard and arid. This was high desert dotted with scrub and mesquite and cacti. Some people found it harsh and forbidding. Fitzduane relished the contours of the land and the clear light and the sense of space, and found it achingly beautiful.
It was so different from his home country. Ireland's scenery was on an altogether smaller and more human scale. Here, the vistas were immense and mankind almost insignificant.
It was hard to imagine how anyone had survived in such a vast, rugged, water-starved landscape, yet this was the terrain that the Apaches had made their own and over which Geronimo had been hunted. Five thousand troops trying to find thirty men in an era before helicopters and radios and modern technology. Endless locations in the heavily contoured landscape to hide in. The difficulties and hardships overcome in the hunt were hard to comprehend.
Al Lonsdale's mother had been a full-blooded Apache. His father, the sheriff of a border town in Texas, had been of mixed English and Irish stock, and the combination had produced a striking-looking man. Al had thick black hair, a high forehead, deep-set thoughtful eyes, high cheekbones, and a strong nose and chin. He stood six feet three in his socks.
Lonsdale had followed in his father's profession and spent a few years as a sheriff's deputy, but then had joined the U.S. Army in search of wider horizons. He had grown up with weapons, and hunting was a family tradition, so the transition to U.S. Army Special Forces had been smooth. But Lonsdale wanted to be the best of the best, so he volunteered for the top-secret U.S. Army counterterrorist unit, Delta, which had been set up Colonel Charlie Beckwith on SAS lines. When he was accepted by Delta, Al Lonsdale felt he had arrived.
The Irish equivalent of Delta were the Rangers commanded by General Shane Kilmara. Master Sergeant Al Lonsdale had been on secondment to them, training on Fitzduane's island off the West of Ireland, when they had stumbled across a terrorist assassination attempt.