Without remorse - Tom Clancy [73]
'Don't you think I know that? Osborne worked for me at Suitland. I went with the chaplain when he delivered the fucking telegram, okay? I'm on your side, remember?'
Unlike Cas and Dutch, Greer knew that certain cornet would never be more than a staff study. It just couldn't happen, not without briefing Congress, and Congress had too many leaks A possibility in 1966 or '67, maybe even as late as 1968, such an operation was unthinkable now. But sender green was still there, and this mission was possible, just.
'Cool down, Cas,' Maxwell suggested.
'Yes, sir.'
Greer shifted his gaze to the relief map. 'You know, you airedales kind of limit your thinking.'
'What do you mean? 'Maxwell asked.
Greer pointed to a red line that ran from a coastal town neatly to the camp's main gate. On the overhead photos it looked like a good road, black-topped, and all. 'The reaction forces are here, here, and here. The road's here, follows the river most of the way up. There are flak batteries all over the place, the road supports them, but, you know, triple-A isn't dangerous to the right sort of equipment.'
'That's an invasion,' Podulski observed.
'And sending in two companies of air-mobile troops isn't?'
'I've always said you were smart, James,' Maxwell said. 'You know, this is right where my son was shot down. That SEAL went in and recovered him right about here,' the Admiral said, tapping the map.
'Somebody who knows the area from ground level?' Greer asked. 'That's help. Where is he?'
'Hi, Sarah.' Kelly waved her to the chair. She looked older, he thought.
'This is my third time, John. You were asleep the other two.'
'I've been doing a lot of that. It's okay,' he assured her. 'Sam's in here a couple times a day.' He was already uncomfortable. The hardest part was facing friends, Kelly told himself.
'Well, we've been busy in the lab.' Sarah spoke rapidly. 'John, I needed to tell you how sorry I am that I asked you to come into town. I could have sent you somewhere else. She didn't need to see Madge. There's a guy I know in Annapolis, perfectly good practitioner ...' Her voice stumbled on. .
So much guilt, Kelly thought. 'None of this was your fault, Sarah,' he said when she stopped talking. 'You were a good friend to Pam. If her mom had been like you, maybe - '
It was almost as though she hadn't heard him. 'I should have given you a later date. If the timing had been a little different-'
She was right on that part, Kelly thought. The variables. What if? What if he'd selected a different block to be parked on? What if Billy had never spotted him? What if I hadn't moved at all and let the bastard just go on his way? A different day, a different week? What if a lot of things. The past happened because a hundred little random things had to fall exactly into place in exactly the right way, in exactly the proper sequence, and while it was easy to accept the good results, one could only rage at the bad ones. What if he'd taken a different route from the food warehouse? What if he'd not spotted Pam at the side of the road and never picked her up? What if he'd never spotted the pills? What if he hadn't cared, or what if he'd been so outraged that he had abandoned her? Would she be alive now? If her father had been a little more understanding, and she'd never run away, they would never have met. Was that good or bad?
And if all that were true, then what did matter? Was everything a random accident? The problem was that you couldn't tell. Maybe if he were God looking down on everything from above, maybe then it would fit some pattern, but from the inside it merely was, Kelly thought, and you did the best you could, and tried to learn from your mistakes for when the next random event happened to you. But did that make sense? Hell, did anything really make sense? That was far too complex a question for a former Navy chief lying in a hospital bed.
'Sarah, none of this is your fault. You helped her in the best way you could. How could you change that?'
'Damn it, Kelly, we had her saved!'
'I know. And I brought her here, and