Call to Treason - Tom Clancy [83]
"For what? Firing me? Placing my new boss under a magnifying glass?"
"Neither. We've been over those. I'm sorry there's nothing I can do about any of it."
Rodgers buckled the first bag. Before he loaded the second, he regarded Hood. "That's another difference between soldiers and politicians," he said. "Wo can do is not in our vocabulary. Neither is surrender."
"That may be," Hood said. Now there was a bit of steel in his voice.
"I'll tell you this, though, Mike. If I had made a stand on these points that obviously offend your sense of honor, the battlefield would be hip deep with corpses. And I still would have lost the battle."
Hood extended his hand. "I won't be offended if you don't shake it.
I'll only be sad."
Rodgers had not yet started loading the second bag. He began putting the keepsakes inside.
"I can't," he said.
"You mean you won't," Hood said.
Rodgers snickered. "Politicians play with words, too." He held up his right palm. "I mean this hand just took down a photograph of a man who gave his life for this place. It can't, and won't, clasp the hand of a guy who was afraid to lose his job. And by the way, Paul". A battlefield littered with war dead is not the same as a job market having to absorb some bureaucrats. Don't ever compare them."
"I wasn't," Hood said. "I was only trying to connect with you somehow."
"Well, you failed."
"I can see that." Hood lowered his arm. "If you change your mind, the hand is still extended."
"I appreciate that."
"And I do wish you well," Hood added.
"I appreciate that, too," Rodgers said with a little more formality.
Hood left, shutting the door behind him. Rodgers looked around. The office seemed both bigger and smaller because of the naked walls. Men are small, but their deeds are large.
Rodgers did not regret what he had just done. Unlike Hood, he did not even feel sad. All he felt was a sense of pride that he had lifted himself from the battlefield and soldiered on. He finished packing the second bag, then went to his desk and removed the few personal items that were still there. A leather bookmark with the NATO logo, a letter opener from the king of Spain in gratitude for the way Striker had helped prevent a new civil war.
A memorial card from the service of Bass Moore, the first Striker killed in action.
Rodgers was convinced that he had done the right thing by rejecting Hood's hand. As he left his former office, the general was convinced of something else. That there was probably nothing on God's sweet earth that would ever make him rescind that decision.
* * *
THIRTY
Washington, D.C. Thesday, 2:18 p.m.
Though the military police would never acknowledge it, security was rooted in the two Ps: preparedness and profiling. It had to be done that way. The kids manning the gates and checkpoints at bases around the world lacked street smarts and experience. They required checklists.
Jacquie Colmer did not fit any of the terrorist profiles. She was fair-skinned, and she was a woman. That eliminated religious extremists and white supremacists. She was also disarming. She smiled a great deal, which terrorists tended not to do. Most were anxious young amateurs, fearful of being captured and disappointing their sponsors. Jacquie was not a novice. The key to successful penetration of an enemy target was what Jacquie had always called the seduction factor. Her job was not to muscle people into submission but to coerce them. She used femininity, compliments, small talk, and invigorating observations to make herself welcome. "Look at that sky!" she would say, or "Smell that rain!" She drew attention to the moment to hide what lay beyond.
While the Herndon Road Services Company was not the usual Country-Fresh Water Corporation vehicle, she had the proper documentation. The Andrews Air Force Base guard went through the anti espionage checklist, which he knew by heart. There were only containers of water in the back, and the front-to-back mirror view of the underside revealed nothing. The young, expressionless guard looked under the hood with a flashlight.