Without remorse - Tom Clancy [222]
'Baltimore, Corporal. Matter of fact, I'll make it easy on you. Just drop me off at the airport. I'll catch a cab the rest of the way.'
'You got it, sir,' the driver told a man already fading into sleep.
'So what's the story, Mr MacKenzie?' Hicks asked.
'They approved it,' the special assistant replied, signing a few papers and initialing a few others for various official archives where future historians would record his name as a minor player in the great events of his time.
'Can you say what?'
What the hell,' MacKenzie thought. Hicks had a clearance, and it was a chance to display something of his importance to the lad. In two minutes he covered the high points of boxwood green.
'Sir, that's an invasion,' Hicks pointed out as evenly аs he could manage, despite the chill on his skin and the sudden knot in his stomach.
'I suppose they might think so, but I don't. They've invaded three sovereign countries, as I recall.'
More urgently: 'But the peace talks - you said yourself.'
'Oh, screw the peace talks! Damn it, Wally, we have people over there, and what they know is vital to our national security. Besides' - he smiled - 'I helped sell it to Henry.' And if this one comes off...
'But-'
MacKenzie looked up. Didn't this kid get it? 'But what, Wally?'
'It's dangerous.'
'War is that way, in case nobody ever told you.'
'Sir, I'm supposed to be able to talk here, right?' Hicks asked pointedly.
'Of course you are, Wally. So talk.'
'The peace talks are at a delicate stage now -'
'Peace talks are always delicate, aren't they? Go on,' MacKenzie ordered, rather enjoying his pedagogic discourse. Maybe this kid would learn something for a change.
'Sir, we've lost too many people already. We've killed a million of them. And for what? What have we gained? What has anybody gained?' His voice was almost a plea.
That wasn't exactly new, and MacKenzie was tired of responding to it. 'If you're asking me to defend how we got stuck with this mess, Wally, you're wasting your time. It's been a mess since the beginning, but that wasn't the work of this Administration, was it? We got elected with the mandate to get us the hell out of there.'
'Yes, sir,' Hicks agreed, as he had to. 'That's exactly my point. Doing this might harm our chances to bring it to an end. I think it's a mistake, sir.'
'Okay.' MacKenzie relaxed, giving a tolerant eye to his aide. 'That point of view may - I'll be generous, does have merit. What about the people, Wally?'
'They took their chances. They lost,' Hicks answered with the coldness of youth.
'You know, that sort of detachment may have its use, but one difference between us is that I've been there and you haven't. You've never been in uniform, Wally. That's a shame. You might have learned something from it.'
Hicks was genuinely taken aback by the irrelevancy. 'I don't know what that might be, sir. It would only have interfered with my studies.'
'Life isn't a book, son,' MacKenzie said, using a word that he'd intended to be warm, but which merely sounded patronizing to his aide. 'Real people bleed. Real people have feelings. Real people have dreams, and families. They have real lives. What you would have learned, Wally, is that they may not be like you, but they're still real people, and if you work in this government of the people, you must take note of that.'
'Yes, sir.' What else could he say? There was no way he'd win this argument. Damn, he really needed someone to talk to about this.
'John!' Not a word in two weeks. She'd feared that something had happened to him, but now she had to face the contradictory thought that he was indeed alive, and perhaps doing things best considered in the abstract.
'Hello, Sandy.' Kelly smiled, dressed decently again, in a tie and blue blazer. It was so obviously a disguise, and so different from the way she'd last seen the man, that even his appearance was disturbing.
'Where have you been?' Sandy asked, waving him in, not wanting the neighbors to know.
'Off doing something,' Kelly dodged.
'Doing what?' The immediacy of her tone demanded a