Without remorse - Tom Clancy [227]
'You shouldn't let it get to you, Wally. It takes time. Everything takes time. You think we can fix things overnight?'
'I don't think we can fix things at all! You know what this all is? It's like Sophocles. We have our fatal flaw, and they have their fatal flaw, and when the fucking deus comes ex the fucking тасhinа, the deus is going to be a cloud of ICBMs, and it's all going to be over, Peter. Just like we thought a few years ago up in New Hampshire.' It wasn't Hicks's first smoke of the evening, Henderson realized. Intoxication always made his friend morose.
'Wally, tell me what the problem is.'
'There's supposedly this camp ...' Hicks began, his eyes down, not looking at his friend at all now as he related what he knew.
'That is bad news.'
'They think there's a bunch of people there, but it's just supposition. We only know about one. What if we're fucking over the peace talks for one guy, Peter?'
'Put that damned thing out,' Henderson said, sipping his beer. He just didn't like the smell of the stuff.
'No.' Wally took another big hit.
'When is it going?'
'Not sure. Roger didn't say exactly.'
'Wally, you have to stay with it. We need people like you in the system. Sometimes they will listen.'
Hicks looked up. 'When will that be, do you think?'
'What if this mission fails? What if it turns out that you're right? Roger will listen to you then, and Henry listens to Roger, doesn't he?'
'Well, yeah, sometimes.'
What a remarkable chance this was, Henderson thought.
The chartered bus drove to Andrews Air Force Base, duplicating, Kelly saw, more than half of his drive. There was a new C-141 on the ramp, painted white on the top and gray on the bottom, its strobe lights already rotating. The Marines got out of the bus, finding Maxwell and Greer waiting for them.
'Good luck,' Greer said to each man.
'Good hunting,' was what Dutch Maxwell told them.
Built to hold more than double their number, the Lockheed Starlifter was outfitted for litter patients, with a total of eighty beds bolted to the side of the aircraft and room for twenty or so attendants. That gave every Marine a place to lie down and sleep, plus room for all the prisoners they expected to rescue. The time of night made it easy for everyone, and the Starlifter started turning engines as soon as the cargo hatch was shut.
'Jesus, I hope this works,' Maxwell said, watching the aircraft taxi into the darkness.
'You've trained them well, Admiral,' Bob Ritter observed. 'When do we go out?'
'Three days. Bob,' James Greer answered. 'Got your calendar clear?'
'For this? You bet.'
CHAPTER 26
Transit
A new aircraft, the Starlifter was also a disappointingly slow one. Its cruising speed was a mere 478 miles per hour, and their first stop was Elmendorf Air Force base in Alaska, 3,350 miles and eight hours away. It never ceased to amaze Kelly that the shortest distance to any place on Earth was a curve, but that was because he was used to flat maps, and the world was a sphere. The great-circle route from Washington to Danang would actually have taken them over Siberia, and that, the navigator said, just wouldn't do. By the time of their arrival at Elmendorf, the Marines were up and rested. They departed the aircraft to look at snow on not-so-distant mountains, having only a few hours before left a place where heat and humidity were in a daily race for 100. But here in Alaska they found mosquitoes sufficiently large that a few might have carried one of their number off. Most took the opportunity to jog a couple of miles, to the amusement of the Air Force personnel, who typically had little contact with Marines. Servicing the C-141 took a programmed time of two and a quarter hours. After refueling and one minor instrument replacement, the Marines were just as happy to reboard the aircraft for the second leg of the journey, for Yakoda, in Japan. Three hours after that, Kelly walked onto the flight deck, growing bored with the noise and confinement.
'What's that over there?'