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By Root 330 0

a small clearing. I did. My soles were deep in muck, bugs crawled over my boots, and I was hot as hell. I heard gunfire start to crack in sporadic bursts. It was a hollow, distant, lonely noise that shut all the birds and insects up. I never experienced such silence once the shooting started. I knew the guys with guns would be coming my way soon enough, and I had to face the fact that I could die. I was okay with that. I made mental good-byes and said some quiet I-love-yous to my folks. While I was doing that, I saw an opportunistic target. Five "Cong moved into position about two hundred yards away. They did not see me. I remember staring along my M1 thinking it wasn't fair to clock them from hiding, without warning. I even thought, Hell. This is their home. What business do I have shooting them? Then I saw one of them pull a bamboo stick grenade from a pouch. That was highly explosive, very deadly ordnance. I couldn't see our guys, but obviously Charlie could. Otherwise, he would not be going for the grenade. And at that moment it hit me. If I tag him, he "II drop the pestle that's what the grenade looked like, a pharmacist's pestle and it will blow all five of them to snake food. The "Cong were crouching, and this guy stuck his head up for a last look. I had done the math, it worked, and I took the shot. It was clean, through his temple. The other four guys shouted and scrambled, I ducked behind the tree, and the pestle blew. I sat there with my back against the damp trunk as the smoke and the sharp smell of the explosive charge rolled by. I held my breath so I didn't start to cough and reveal my position to any backup they might have had. After about a minute, I swung around to look at the clearing. I saw a couple of "Cong crawling through the smoke to try to find whoever had fired the shot. I picked them off."

"The second group was easier to kill?"

"Not just easier. Easy. Once you cross that line, you're not worried about damnation anymore."

"Like women and sex, I guess," Kat said.

"Killing. The male virginity," Rodgers said.

"Do you regret that experience?"

"How can I?" Rodgers asked. "It allowed me to do my job in Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, and at Op-Center."

"A job whose legitimacy you questioned the first time you did it," the woman pointed out.

"I was nineteen."

"That did not make you wrong," Kat said.

"Okay," Rodgers said. "Now I'm the one who doesn't understand. Are you justifying what Lucy may have been involved in?"

"No. I'm questioning what appears to be your own convenient morality.

Killing is okay in the first person, if you do it, but not if someone else does it."

Rodgers had opened himself up to Kat, hoping she would do the same. He had not expected that response. He also did not appreciate it.

"You're looking at me like I'm holding a pestle in a clearing," Kat said.

"No. You already lobbed it," he replied.

"Touche," she said. "It was not my intention to attack you. I'm just trying to understand what drives the man who may be the next secretary of defense. But we're obviously getting ahead of ourselves. I do not know about Lucy O'Connor's activities that night, and I do not believe she is capable of what happened at the hotel or at Op-Center. I can only suggest that your people talk to her."

"I am sure they will," Rodgers said.

There was a poorly concealed threat in her comment about "getting ahead of ourselves." If Rodgers did not join the team, he would become a free agent.

"So where does that leave us?" Kat asked as she picked up the phone.

"I'm not sure," he admitted. "I feel like I've crossed a line here, but this is an unusual situation."

"I agree," Kat said. She crossed her legs and moved her right foot anxiously. "Let me make this really simple, because I still have calls to make. I want this relationship to work. You're an exceptional man, and you would be a great asset to the party and to our team. But the core group should be able to watch out for each other. We should not have to watch each other."

"I can't argue with that," Rodgers said. "That's why I said I am not