Without remorse - Tom Clancy [212]
'Gentlemen, this mission is called boxwood green. Your objective is to rescue twenty men, fellow Americans who are now in the hands of the enemy.'
John Kelly was standing next to Irvin, and he, too, was watching faces instead of the Admiral. Most were younger than his, but not by much. Their eyes were locked on the reconnaissance photographs - an exotic dancer would not have drawn the sort of focus that was aimed at the blowups from the Buffalo Hunter drone. The faces were initially devoid of emotion. They were like young, fit, handsome statues, scarcely breathing, sitting at attention while the Admiral spoke to them.
'This man here is Colonel Robin Zacharias, US Air Force,' Maxwell went on, using a yard-long wooden pointer. 'You can see what the Vietnamese did to him just for looking at the asset that snapped the picture.' The pointer traced over to the camp guard about to strike the American from behind. 'Just for looking up.'
Eyes narrowed at that, all of them, Kelly saw. It was a quiet, determined kind of anger, highly disciplined, but that was the deadliest kind of all, Kelly thought, suppressing a smile that only he would have understood. And so it was for the young Marines in the audience. It wasn't a time for smiles. Each of the people in the room knew about the dangers. Each had survived a minimum of thirteen months of combat operations. Each had seen friends die in the most terrible and noisy way that the blackest of nightmares could create. But there was more to life than fear. Perhaps it was a quest. A sense of duty that few could articulate but which all of them felt. A vision of the world that men shared without actually seeing. Every man in the room had seen death in all its dreadful majesty, knowing that all life came to an end. But all knew there was more to life than the avoidance of death. Life had to have a purpose, and one such purpose was the service of others. While no man in the room would willingly give his life away, every one of them would run the risk, trusting to God or luck or fate in the knowledge that each of the others would do the same. The men in these pictures were unknown to the Marines, but they were comrades - more than friends - to whom loyalty was owed. And so they would risk their lives for them.
'I don't have to tell you how dangerous the mission is,' the Admiral concluded. 'The fact of the matter is, you know those dangers better than I do, but these people are Americans, and they have the right to expect us to come for them.'
'Fuckin' A, sir!' a voice called from the floor, surprising the rest of the Marines.
Maxwell almost lost it then. It's all true, he told himself. It realty does matter. Mistakes and all, we're still what we are.
'Thank you, Dutch,' Marty Young said, walking to center stage. 'Okay, Marines, now you know. You volunteered to be here. You have to volunteer again to deploy. Some of you have families, sweethearts. We won't make you go. Some of you might have second thoughts,' he went on, examining the faces, and seeing the insult he had caused them, not by accident. 'You have today to think it over. Dismissed.'
The Marines got to their feet, to the accompaniment of the grating sound of chairs scraping on the tile floor, and when all were at attention, their voices boomed as one:
'RECON!'
It was clear to those who saw the faces. They could no more shrink from the mission than they could deny their manhood. There were smiles now. Most of the Marines traded remarks with their friends, and it wasn't glory they saw before their eyes. It was purpose, and perhaps the look to be seen in the eyes of the men whose lives they would redeem. We're Americans and we're here to take you home.
'Well, Mr Clark, your admiral makes a pretty good speech. I wish we recorded it.'
'You're old enough to know better. Guns. It's going to be a dicey one.'
Irvin smiled in a surprisingly