Without remorse - Tom Clancy [20]
'So,' Kelly said, 'you teach surgery?'
'Eight years now, yeah.' Roeen evened up the boxes on the two-wheeler.
'You don't took like a surgeon.'
Rosen took the compliment with grace. 'We're not all violinists. My father was a bricklayer.'
'Mine was a fireman.' Ketty started wheeling the groceries towards the bunker.
'Speaking of surgeons ...' Rosen pointed at Kelly's chest. 'Some good ones worked on you. That one looks like it was nasty.'
Kelly nearly stopped. 'Yeah, I got real careless that time. Not as bad as it looks, though, just grazed the lung.'
Rosen grunted. 'So I see. Must have missed your heart by nearly two inches. No big deal.'
Kelly moved the boxes into the pantry. 'Nice to talk to somebody who understands, doc,' he noted, wincing inwardly at the thought, remembering the feel of the bullet when it had spun him around. 'Like I said - careless.'
'How long were you over there?'
'Total? Maybe eighteen months. Depends on if you count the hospital time.'
'That's a Navy Cross you have hanging on the wall. Is that what it's for?'
Kelly shook his head. 'That was something else. I had to go up north to retrieve somebody, A-6 pilot. I didn't get hurt, but I got sicker 'n' hell. I had some scratches - you know - from thorns and stuff. They got infected as hell from the river water, would you believe? Three weeks in the hospital from that. It was worse'n being shot.'
'Not a very nice place, is it?' Rosen asked as they came back for the last load.
'They say there's a hundred different kinds of snake there. Ninety-nine are poisonous.'
'And the other one?'
Kelly handed a carton over to the doctor. 'That one eats your ass whole.' He laughed. 'No, I didn't like it there much. But that was the job, and I got that pilot out, and the Admiral made me a chief and got me a medal. Come on, I'll show you my baby.' Kelly waved Rosen aboard. The tour took five minutes, with the doctor taking note of all the differences. The amenities were there, but not glitzed up. This guy, he saw, was all business, and his charts were all brand new. Kelly fished out another beer from his cooler for the doctor and another for himself.
'What was Okinawa like?' Kelly asked with a smile, each man sizing up the other, each liking what he saw.
Rosen shrugged and grunted eloquently. 'Tense. We had a lot of work, and the kamikazes seemed to think the red cross on the ship made a hell of a nice target.'
'You were working while they were coming in at you?'
'Injured people can't wait, Kelly.'
Kelly finished his beer. 'I'd rather be shooting back. Let me get Pam's stuff and we can get back in the air conditioning.' He headed aft and picked up her backpack. Rosen was already on the quay, and Kelly tossed the backpack across. Rosen looked too late, missed the catch, and the pack landed on the concrete. Some contents spilled out, and from twenty feet away, Kelly immediately saw what was wrong even before the doctor's head turned to look at him.
There was a large brown plastic prescription bottle, but without a label. The top had been loose, and from it had spilled a couple of capsules.
Some things are instantly clear. Kelly stepped slowly off the boat to the quay. Rosen picked up the container and placed the spilled capsules back in it before snapping down the white plastic top. Then he handed it to Kelly.
'I know they're not yours, John.'
'What are they, Sam?'
His voice could not have been more dispassionate. 'The trade name is Quaalude. Methaqualone. It's a barbiturate, a sedative. A sleeping pill. We use it to get people off into dreamland. Pretty powerful. A little too powerful, in fact. A lot of people think it ought to be taken off the market. No label. It's not a prescription.'
Kelly suddenly felt tired and old. And betrayed somehow. 'Yeah.'
'You didn't know?'
'Sam, we only met - not even twenty-four hours ago. I don't know anything about her.'
Rosen stretched and looked around