Games of State - Tom Clancy [7]
Yet, thought Rolf, Manfred is right. Werner Dagover probably was like them. And when the firestorm finally came, they would find allies among people like him. Men and women who were not afraid to cleanse the earth of the physically and mentally deficient, of the foreign-colored, of ethnic and religious undesirables. But the guard had tried to signal his superiors, and Karin was not one to forgive opposition. She'd kill him if he questioned her authority, and she'd be right to. As she'd told Rolf when he dropped out of school to become a full-time soldier, if someone opposes you once, they'll do it again. And that, she'd said, was something no commander could risk.
Karin picked up her Uzi, slipped it in the backpack, and walked to where Manfred was standing. The thirty-four-year-old wasn't as driven or well read as his companion, but he was devoted to her. In the two years that Rolf had been with Feuer, he'd never seen them apart. He didn't know whether it was love, mutual protection, or both, but he envied them their bond.
When Karin was ready, she took a moment to slip back into the girl-on-a-lark persona she'd used on the guard. Then she looked toward the hill.
"Let's go," she said impatiently.
Putting his big hand around Karin's arm, Manfred led her toward the set. When they were gone, Rolf turned and jogged back toward the main road to wait for them.
CHAPTER FOUR
Thursday, 3:04 A.M.,
Washington, D.C.
As he looked at the short stack of comic books on his bed, General Mike Rodgers wondered what the hell had happened to innocence.
He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it dies; he thought bitterly.
The forty-five-year-old deputy director of Op-Center had awakened at 2:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Since the death of Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires on a mission with his Striker commandos, Rodgers had spent night after night replaying the Russian incursion in his mind. The Air Force was delighted with the maiden performance of their stealth "Mosquito" helicopter, and the pilots had been credited with doing everything possible to extract Squires from the burning train. Yet key phrases in the Striker debriefings kept coming back to him.
" we shouldn't have let the train get onto the bridge "
" it was a matter of just two or three seconds "
" the Lieutenant Colonel was only concerned with getting the prisoner off the engine "
Rodgers had done two tours of Vietnam, led a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and held a Ph.D. in world history. He understood only too well that "the essence of war is violence," as Lord Macaulay put it, and that people died in combat-- sometimes by the thousands. But that didn't make the loss of each individual soldier any easier to endure. Especially when the soldier left behind a wife and young son. They were only beginning to enjoy the compassion, the humor, and-- Rodgers smiled as he thought back on the too-short life-- the unique savoir faire that was Charlie Squires.
Rather than lie in bed and mourn, Rodgers had driven from his modest ranch-style home to the local 7-Eleven. He would be going to see gangly Billy Squires in the morning and wanted to bring him something. Melissa Squires wasn't big on candy or video games for her son, so comic books seemed like a good bet. The kid liked superheroes.
Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all-- not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.
Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.
He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more