'You could lose your clearance that way, you know?'
'Well, gee, then I'll have to join Dad and make a few mill' on The Street, eh?'
'Wally, do you want to change the system or do you want to let other people keep it the same?'
Hicks nodded. 'Yeah, I suppose.'
The following winds had allowed the??-135 to make the hop in from Hawaii without a refueling stop, and the landing was a gentle one. Remarkably, Kelly's sleep cycle was about right now. It was five in the afternoon, and in another six or seven hours he'd be ready for more sleep.
'Can I get a day or two off?'
'We'll want you back to Quantico for an extended debrief,' Ritter told him, stiff and sore from the extended flight.
'Fine, just so I'm not in custody or anything. I could use a lift up to Baltimore.'
'I'll see what I can do,' Greer said as the plane came to a halt.
Two security officers from the Agency were the first up the mobile stairs, even before the oversized cargo hatch swung up. Ritter woke the Russian up.
'Welcome to Washington.'
'Take me to my embassy?' he asked hopefully. Ritter almost laughed.
'Not quite yet. We'll find you a nice, comfortable place, though.'
Grishanov was too groggy to object, rubbing his head and needing something for the pain. He went with the security officers, down the steps to their waiting car. It left at once for a safe house near Winchester, Virginia.
'Thanks for the try, John,' Admiral Maxwell said, taking the younger man's hand.
'I'm sorry for what I said before,' Cas said, doing the same. 'You were right.' They, too, had a car waiting. Kelly watched them enter it from the hatch.
'So what happens to them?' he asked Greer.
James shrugged, leading Kelly out and down the stairs. Noise from other aircraft made his voice hard to hear. 'Dutch was in line for a fleet, and maybe the CNO's job. I don't suppose that'll happen now. The operation - well, it was his baby, and it didn't get born. That'll finish him.'
'That's not fair,' Kelly said loudly. Greer turned.
'No, it isn't, but that's the way things are.' Greer, too, had a ride waiting. He directed his driver to head to the wing-headquarters building, where he arranged a car to take Kelly to Baltimore. 'Get some rest and call me when you're ready. Bob was serious about what he said. Think it over.'
'Yes, sir,' Kelly replied, heading to the blue Air Force sedan.
It was amazing, Kelly thought, the way life was. Within five minutes the sergeant drove onto an interstate highway. Scarcely twenty-four hours earlier he'd been on a ship approaching Subic Bay. Thirty-six hours prior to that he'd been on the soil of an enemy country - and now here he was in the backseat of a government Chevy, and the only dangers to which he was exposed came from other drivers. At least for a little while. All the familiar things, the highway exit signs painted that pleasant shade of green, traveling in the last half of the local rush hour. Everything about him proclaimed the normality of life, when three days earlier everything had been alien and hostile. Most amazing of all, he'd adjusted to it.
The driver didn't speak a word except to inquire about directions, though he must have wondered who the man was that had arrived on a special flight. Perhaps he had many such jobs, Kelly mused as the car pulled off Loch Raven Boulevard, enough that he'd stopped wondering about things he'd never be told.
'Thanks for the lift,' Kelly told him.
'Yes, sir, you're welcome.' The car pulled away and Kelly walked to his apartment, amused that he'd taken his keys all the way to Vietnam and back. Did the keys know how far they had come? Five minutes later he was in the shower, the quintessentially American experience, changing from one reality into another. Another five and he was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt and headed out the door to his Scout, parked a block away. Another ten and he'd parked the car within sight of Sandy's bungalow. The walk from his Scout to her door was yet another transition. He'd come home to something, Kelly told himself. For the first time.
'John!' He hadn't expected the hug. Even less so the tears in her eyes.
'It's okay, Sandy. I'm fine. No holes or scratches or anything.' He was slow to grasp the desperation of her hold on him, pleasant as it was. But then the face against his chest started sobbing, and he knew that this event was not for him at all. 'What's wrong?'
'They killed Doris.'
Time stopped again. It seemed to split into many pieces. Kelly closed his eyes, in pain at first, and in that instant he was back on his hilltop overlooking sender green, watching the NVA troops arrive; he was in his hospital bed looking at a photograph; he was outside some nameless village listening to the screams of children. He'd come home, all right, but to the same thing he'd left. No, he realized, to the thing that he had never left, which followed him everywhere he went. He'd never get away from it because he'd never really finished it, not even once. Noteven once.
And yet there was a new element as well, this woman holding him and feeling the same blazing pain that sliced through his chest.
'What happened, Sandy?'
'We got her well, John. We took her home, and then I called today like you told me to, and a policeman answered. Doris and her father, too, both murdered.'
'Okay.' He moved her to the sofa. He wanted at first to let her calm down, not to hold her too close, but that didn't work. She clung to him, letting out the feelings that she'd closeted off, along with worry for his safety, and he held Sandy's head to his shoulder for several minutes. 'Sam and Sarah?'
'I haven't told them yet.' Her face came up, and she looked across the room, her gaze unfocused. Then the nurse in her came out, as it had to. 'How are you?'
'A little frazzled from all the traveling,' he said, just to put words after her question. Then he had to tell the truth. 'It was a washout. The mission didn't work. They're still there.'
'I don't understand.'
'We were trying to get some people out of North Vietnam, prisoners - but something went wrong. Failed again,' he added quietly.
'Was it dangerous?'
Kelly managed a grunt. 'Yeah, Sandy, you might say that, but I came out okay.'
Sandy set that one aside. 'Doris said there were others, other girls, they still have 'em.'
'Yeah. Billy said the same thing. I'm going to try and get them out.' Kelly noticed she didn't react to his mention of Billy's name.
'It won't matter - getting them out, unless...'
'I know.' The thing that kept following him around, Kelly thought. There was only one way to make it stop. Running couldn't distance him from it. He had to turn and face it.
'Well, Henry, that little job was taken care of this morning,' Piaggi told him. 'Nice and clean.'
'They didn't leave -'
'Henry, they were two pros, okay? They did the job and now they're back home, couple hundred miles away. They didn't leave anything behind except for the two bodies.' The phone report had been very clear on that. It had been an easy job, since neither target had expected anything.
'Then that's that,' Tucker observed with satisfaction. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a fat envelope. He handed it to Piaggi, who had fronted the money himself, good partner that he was.
'With Eddie out of the way, and with that leak plugged, things ought to go back to normal.' Best twenty grand I ever spent, Henry thought.
'Henry, the other girls?' Piaggi pointed out. 'You've got a real business now. People inside like them are dangerous. Take care of it, okay?' He pocketed the envelope and left the table.
'Twenty- two's, back of the head, both of 'em,' the Pittsburgh detective reported over the phone. 'We've dusted the whole house -nothing. The flower box - nothing. The truck - nothing. The truck was stolen sometime last night - this morning, whatever. The florist has eight of them. Hell, we recovered it before the all-points was on the air. It was wise guys, had to be. Too smooth, too clean for local talent. No word on the street. They're probably out of town already. Two people saw the truck. One woman saw two guys walking to the door. She figured it was a flower delivery, and besides she was across the street half a block away. No description, nothing. She doesn't even remember what color they were.'