Without remorse - Tom Clancy [282]
'Yes, sir,' Kelly replied, heading to the blue Air Force sedan.
It was amazing, Kelly thought, the way life was. Within five minutes the sergeant drove onto an interstate highway. Scarcely twenty-four hours earlier he'd been on a ship approaching Subic Bay. Thirty-six hours prior to that he'd been on the soil of an enemy country - and now here he was in the backseat of a government Chevy, and the only dangers to which he was exposed came from other drivers. At least for a little while. All the familiar things, the highway exit signs painted that pleasant shade of green, traveling in the last half of the local rush hour. Everything about him proclaimed the normality of life, when three days earlier everything had been alien and hostile. Most amazing of all, he'd adjusted to it.
The driver didn't speak a word except to inquire about directions, though he must have wondered who the man was that had arrived on a special flight. Perhaps he had many such jobs, Kelly mused as the car pulled off Loch Raven Boulevard, enough that he'd stopped wondering about things he'd never be told.
'Thanks for the lift,' Kelly told him.
'Yes, sir, you're welcome.' The car pulled away and Kelly walked to his apartment, amused that he'd taken his keys all the way to Vietnam and back. Did the keys know how far they had come? Five minutes later he was in the shower, the quintessentially American experience, changing from one reality into another. Another five and he was dressed in slacks and a short-sleeve shirt and headed out the door to his Scout, parked a block away. Another ten and he'd parked the car within sight of Sandy's bungalow. The walk from his Scout to her door was yet another transition. He'd come home to something, Kelly told himself. For the first time.
'John!' He hadn't expected the hug. Even less so the tears in her eyes.
'It's okay, Sandy. I'm fine. No holes or scratches or anything.' He was slow to grasp the desperation of her hold on him, pleasant as it was. But then the face against his chest started sobbing, and he knew that this event was not for him at all. 'What's wrong?'
'They killed Doris.'
Time stopped again. It seemed to split into many pieces. Kelly closed his eyes, in pain at first, and in that instant he was back on his hilltop overlooking sender green, watching the NVA troops arrive; he was in his hospital bed looking at a photograph; he was outside some nameless village listening to the screams of children. He'd come home, all right, but to the same thing he'd left. No, he realized, to the thing that he had never left, which followed him everywhere he went. He'd never get away from it because he'd never really finished it, not even once. Not even once.
And yet there was a new element as well, this woman holding him and feeling the same blazing pain that sliced through his chest.
'What happened, Sandy?'
'We got her well, John. We took her home, and then I called today like you told me to, and a policeman answered. Doris and her father, too, both murdered.'
'Okay.' He moved her to the sofa. He wanted at first to let her calm down, not to hold her too close, but that didn't work. She clung to him, letting out the feelings that she'd closeted off, along with worry for his safety, and he held Sandy's head to his shoulder for several minutes. 'Sam and Sarah?'
'I haven't told them yet.' Her face came up, and she looked across the room, her gaze unfocused. Then the nurse in her came out, as it had to. 'How are you?'
'A little frazzled from all the traveling,' he said, just to put words after her question. Then he had to tell the truth. 'It was a washout. The mission didn't work. They're still there.'
'I don't understand.'
'We were trying to get some people out of North Vietnam, prisoners - but something went wrong. Failed again,' he added quietly.
'Was it dangerous?'
Kelly managed a grunt. 'Yeah, Sandy, you might say that, but I came out okay.'
Sandy set that one aside. 'Doris said there were others, other girls, they still have 'em.'
'Yeah. Billy said the same thing. I'm