Tom Clancy's Op-center Balance of Power - Tom Clancy [9]
Now Rodgers was simply quiet. He was poking his chopsticks at a plate of salt-fried string beans. His rugged face was drawn beneath the close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and his eyes were downtumed. Both men had recently returned from Lebanon. Rodgers and a small party of soldiers and civilians had been field testing the new Regional Op-Center when they were captured and tortured by Kurdish extremists. With the help of an Israeli operative, August and Striker were able to go into the Bekaa Valley and get them out. When their ordeal was over and an attempt to start a war between Turkey and Syria had been averted, General Rodgers had drawn his pistol and executed the Kurdish leader out of hand. On the flight back to the United States, August had prevented a distraught General Rodgers from turning the handgun on himself.
August was using a fork to twirl up his pork lo mein. After watching the prison guards eat while he starved in Vietnam, if he never saw a chopstick again it would be too soon. As he ate, his blue eyes were on his companion. August understood the effects of combat and captivity, and he knew only too well what torture could do to the mind, let alone the body. He didn't expect Rodgers to recover quickly. Some people never recovered at all. When the depth of their dehumanization became apparent-both in terms of what had been done to them and what they may have been forced to do-many former hostages took their own lives. Liz Gordon had put it very well in a paper she'd published in International Amnesty Journal: A hostage is someone who has gone from walking to crawling. To walk again, to face even simple risks or routine authority figures, is often more difficult than lying down and giving up.
August picked up the metal teapot. "Want some?"
"Yes, please."
August kept an eye on his friend as he turned the two cups rightside up. He filled them and then set the pot down. Then he stirred a half packet of sugar into his own cup, raised it, and sipped. He continued to stare at Rodgers through the steam. The general didn't look up.
"Mike?"
"Yeah."
"This is no good."
Rodgers raised his eyes. "What? The lo mein?"
August was caught off guard. He grinned. "Well, that's a start. First joke you've made since-when? The twelfth grade?"
"Something like that," Rodgers said sullenly. He idly picked up his cup and took a sip of tea. He held the cup by his lips and stared down into it. "What's there been to laugh about since then?"
"Plenty, I'd say."
"Like what?"
"How about weekend passes with the few friends you've managed to hold on to. A couple of jazz clubs you told me about in New Orleans, New York, Chicago. Some damn fine movies. More than a few nice ladies. You've had some real nice things in your life."
Rodgers put the cup down and shifted his body painfully. The burns he'd suffered during torture at the hands of the Kurds in the Bekaa were a long way from healing, though not so long as the emotional wounds. But he refused to lie on his sofa and rust.
"Those things are all diversions, Brett. I love 'em, but they're solace. Recreation."
"Since when are solace and recreation bad things?"
"Since they've become a reason for living instead of the reward for a job well done,"