Under Siege

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Three hours into his first day as a junior—very junior — weenie on the Joint Staff of the JCS, Lieutenant Toad Tarkington was wondering if perhaps Captain Grafton hadn’t been right. Maybe he should have asked to have his shore tour cut short and gone back to sea. Sitting at a borrowed desk in an anonymous room without windows deep in the Pentagon, Toad was working his way through a giant hardbound manual of rules and regulations that he was supposed to be reading carefully, embedding permanently in the gray matter. He glanced surreptitiously around the large office to see if there was a single other O-3 in sight.

He was going to be the coffee and paperclips guy. He knew it in his bones. Rumor had it there were other peasants with railroad tracks on the staff, although he hadn’t yet seen a live one.

At the next desk over a female navy lieutenant commander was giving him the eye. Uh-oh! He turned the page he had been praying over for five minutes and examined the title of the next directive in the book. Something about uniforms, shiny shoes, and all that. He initialed it in the stamped box provided, sneaked a glance at the lieutenant commander — she was still looking — and pretended to read.

Without moving his head he checked his watch. Ten thirty-two. Oh, my God! He would be dead of boredom by lunchtime. If his heart stopped right now he would not fall over, he would just remain frozen here staring at this page until his uniform rotted off or they decided to buy new desks and move this one out. Maybe some of these other people sitting here at the other twenty-seven desks were already dead and nobody knew. Perhaps he should get a mirror and check all the bodies for signs of respiration. Maybe — the telephone buzzed softly. His first call!

He grabbed it and almost fumbled the receiver onto the floor.

“Lieutenant Tarkington, sir.”

“Is this Robert Tarkington?” A woman’s voice.

“Yes it is.”

“Mr. Tarkington, this is Nurse Hilda Hamhocker, at the Center for Disease Control?”

He glanced around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Not noticeably so, anyway. “Yes.”

“I’m calling to ask if you have known a woman named Rita Moravia?”

“Let’s see. Rita Moravia … a short, squatty woman with a Marine Corps tattoo and a big wart right on the end of her nose? I do believe I know her, yes.”

“I mean, have you known her? In the biblical sense, Mr. Tarkington. You see, she’s one of our clients and has given your name as an ‘intimate’ partner.”

The lieutenant commander was all ears, surveying him from beneath a droopy bang.

“That list of partners is modestly short, I trust.”

“Oh, no. Tragically long, Mr. Tarkington. Voluminous. Like the Manhattan telephone directory. We’ve been calling for three months and we’re only now getting to the Ts.”

“Yes. I have known her, Nurse Hamhocker.”

“Would you like to know Miss Moravia again, Mr. Tarkington?”

“Well, yes, this very minute would be just perfect. Right here on my clean borrowed desk while everyone watches. But you see, the dear little diseased squatty person is never around. Not ever!”

“Oh, my poor, poor Horny Toad. It’s that bad, is it?”

“Yes, Rita, it’s that bad. Are you ever coming home?”

“Christmas leave starts in a week, lover. I’ll be coming into National on United.” She gave him the flight number and time. “Meet me, will you?”

“Plan on getting known again in the parking lot.”

“If you’ll make that a backseat, I’ll say yes.”

“Okay, the backseat.”

“I’ll hold you to that, Toad. ’Bye.”

“’Bye, babe.” He cradled the instrument and took a deep breath.

The lieutenant commander arched an eyebrow and raked her errant bang back into place. Then she concentrated on the document on the desk in front of her.

Toad took another deep breath, sighed, and resumed his study of the read-and-initial book. Ten minutes later he found a memo that he read with dismay. “Staff is reminded,” the document said — rather too officially and formally for Toad’s taste—“that classified information shall not be discussed over unsecure telephones. [Numerous cites.] To ensure compliance with this regulation, all telephones in the staff spaces are continuously monitored while in use and the conversations taped by the communications security group.”

“Stepped in it again, Toad-man,” he muttered.

His stupor had returned and was threatening to become terminal ennui when Captain Jake Grafton entered the room, scanned it once, and headed in Toad’s direction. Toad stood as the captain walked over and pulled a chair around. As usual, both officers wore their blue uniforms. But, Toad noticed with a pang, the two gold stripes around each of his sleeves contrasted sharply with the four on each of the captain’s.

“Sit, for heaven’s sake. If you pop up every time a senior officer comes around in this place, you’ll wear out your shoes.”

“Yessir.” Toad put his bottom back into his chair.

“Howzit goin’?”

“Just about finished the read-and-initial book.” Toad sighed. “What do you do around here, anyway?”

“I’m not sure. Seems to change every other week. Right now I’m doing analyses of counternarcotics operations from information sent over by the FBI and DEA. What can the military do to help and how much will it cost? That kind of thing. Keeps me jumping.”

“Sounds sexy.”

“Today it is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with training troops and aircrews or sustaining combat readiness.”

“Exciting, too, eh?”

Jake Grafton gave Tarkington a skeptical look.

“Well, at least we’re pentaguys,” Toad said earnestly, “ready to help chart the future of mankind, along with a thousand or so equally dedicated and talented Joint Staff souls. Makes me tingle.”

“Pentaguys?”

“I just made that up. Like it?” The lieutenant’s innocent face broke into a grin, which caused his cheeks to dimple and exposed a set of perfect teeth. Deep creases radiated from the corners of his eyes.

The captain grinned back. He had known Tarkington for several years; one of Toad’s most endearing qualities was his absolute refusal to take anything seriously. This trait, the captain well knew, was rare among career officers, who learned early on that literally everything was very important. In the highly competitive world of the peacetime military, an officer’s ranking among his peers might turn on something as trivial as how often he got a haircut, how he handled himself at social functions, the neatness of his handwriting. For lack of a neat signature a fitness report was a notch lower than it might have been, so a choice assignment went to someone else, a promotion didn’t materialize…. There was an acronym popular now in the Navy that seemed to Jake to perfectly capture the insanity of the system: WETSU — We Eat This Shit Up. One battleship captain that Jake knew had even adopted WETSU as the ship’s motto.

Toad Tarkington seemed oblivious to the rat race going on around him. One day it would probably dawn on him that he was a rodent in the maze with everyone else, but that realization hadn’t hit him yet. Jake fervently hoped it never would.

“So what am I gonna be doing around here to thwart the forces of evil?” Toad asked.

“Officially you’re one of thirty junior officer interns. For a while, at least, you’ll be in my shop assisting me.”

“How about them apples!” Toad’s eyebrows waggled. “I’ll start by drafting up a memo for you to fire off to the Joint Chiefs: ‘Shape up or ship out!’ Don’t worry, I’ll make it more diplomatic than that, take the edge off, pad it and grease it. Then memos for the FBI and DEA. We’ll—”

“We’ll start in the morning at oh-seven-thirty,” Jake said, rising from his chair. He looked around again, taking it all in. “What do you think of this place, anyway?”

“All these different kinds of uniforms, it looks like a bus drivers’ convention.” Toad lowered his voice. “Don’t you think the Air Farce folks look like they work for Greyhound?”

“I’ll give you the same advice my daddy gave me, Tarkington, when he put me on a bus and sent me off to the service. Keep your mouth shut and your bowels open, and you’ll do okay.” Jake Grafton walked away.

Toad grinned broadly and settled back into his chair.

“I couldn’t help overhearing your insensitive remark, Lieutenant,” the lieutenant commander at the desk across the aisle informed him.

Toad swiveled. The lieutenant commander reminded him of his third-grade teacher, that time she caught him throwing spitballs. She had that look.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Our friends in the Air Force are very proud of their uniform.”

“Yes, ma’am. No offense intended.”

“Who was that captain?”

“Captain Grafton, ma’am.”

“He was very informal with you, Lieutenant.” The way she said “lieutenant” made it sound like the lowest rank in the Guatemalan National Guard. “Here at Joint Staff we’re much more formal.”

“I’m sure.” Toad tried out a smile.

“This is a military organization.”

“I’ll try to remember,” Toad assured her, and stalked off toward the men’s head.

Henry Charon eased the car to a stop in front of the abandoned farmhouse and killed the engine. He rolled down his window and sat looking at the overgrown fields and the stark leafless trees beyond.

The dismal gray sky seemed to rest right on the treetops. The crisp air smelled of snow.

He had followed the dirt road for four miles, just a rut through the forest, and made it through a mudhole that he had explored with a stick before he tried it. There were tire tracks that he thought were at least a month old, left by deer hunters. Nothing fresh. That was why he had selected this dirt road after he had examined three others.

He was deep in the Monongahela National Forest, four hours west of Washington in the West Virginia mountains. Henry Charon took a deep deep breath and smiled. It was gorgeous here.

He pulled on his coat and hat and locked the car, then walked back along the road in the direction from which he had come. He inspected the remnants of an apple orchard and the brush that had grown up on a two-acre plot that had once been a garden.

When he had walked about a mile, he left the road and began climbing the hillside. He proceeded slowly, taking his time, pausing frequently to listen and look. He moved like a shadow through the gray trees, climbing steadily to the top of the ridge, then along it with the abandoned farm, which was somewhere below him on his left. He intended to circle the farm to ensure there were no people nearby. If there were he would hear or see enough to warn him of their presence.

As he moved Henry Charon examined the trees, noting the places where deer had browsed, feeling the pellet droppings and estimating their age. This was his first outing in the hardwood forests of the eastern United States. He felt like a youngster again, exploring and greeting new things with delight. He saw where the chipmunks had opened their acorns and he spent five minutes watching a squirrel watching him. He examined a groundhog hole and ran his fingers along the scars in a young sapling that a buck had used to rub the velvet from his antlers earlier this autumn. He heard a woodpecker drumming and detoured for a hundred yards to glimpse it.

He had been in the fourth grade when he found a biography of Daniel Boone in the school library. The book had fascinated him and, he admitted now to himself as he glided silently through the forest, changed his life. The years Boone spent alone in Kentucky hunting wild game for furs and food and avoiding hostile Indians had seemed to young Henry Charon to be the ultimate in adventure. And now, at last, he was in the type of forest Boone had known so well. True, it wasn’t the virgin forest of two hundred and fifty years ago, but still …

He was thinking of Boone and the hunting years when he saw the doe. She was browsing and had her back to him. He froze. Something, instinct perhaps, made her turn her head and swivel her large ears for any sound that should not have been there.

Henry Charon stood immobile. The deer’s eyes and brain were alert to movement, so Charon held every muscle in his body absolutely still. He even held his breath.

The gentle wind was from the northwest, carrying his scent away from her as she sampled the breeze. Satisfied at last, she resumed her browsing.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he stepped closer. He froze whenever her head position would allow his movement to be picked up by her peripheral vision.

He was only twenty-five feet or so from her when she finally saw him. She had moved unexpectedly. Now she stood stock still, tense, ready to flee, her ears bent toward him to catch the slightest sound.

Henry Charon remained motionless.

She relaxed slightly and started toward him, her ears still attuned, her eyes fixed on him.

Surprised, he moved a hand.

The deer paused, wary, then kept coming.

Someone tamed her, he thought. She’s tame!

The doe came to him and sniffed his hands. He presented them for her inspection, then scratched between her ears.

Her coat was stiff and thick to his touch. He stroked her and felt it. He spoke to her and watched her ears move to catch the sound of his voice.

The memory must have been strong. She seemed unafraid.

The moment bothered him, somehow. Man had changed the natural order of things and Henry Charon knew that this change was not for the better. For her own safety the doe should flee man. Yet he had not the heart to frighten her. He petted her and spoke softly to her as if she could understand, then watched in silence when she finally walked away.

The doe paused and looked back, then trotted off into the trees. She was soon lost from sight. Thirty seconds later he could no longer hear her feet among the leaves that carpeted the ground.

An hour later he arrived back at his car. He opened the trunk and got some targets, which he posted on the wall of the ramshackle farmhouse.

The pistols were first. All 9 mm, he fired them two-handed at the target at a distance of ten paces. There were four pistols, all identical Smith & Wesson automatics. He fired a clipful through each. One seemed to have a noticeably heavier trigger pull than the others, and he set it aside. When he finished, he carefully retrieved all the spent brass. If he missed one it was no big deal, but he didn’t want to leave forty shells scattered about.

After he posted a fresh target, he took the three rifles and moved off to fifty yards.

The rifles were Winchester Model 70s in .30–06, with 3x9 variable scopes. He squeezed off three rounds from the first rifle, checked the target with the binoculars, and adjusted the scope. All three bullets in his third string formed a group that could be covered with a dime. Charon carefully placed every spent cartridge in his pocket.

After repeating the process with the second and third rifle he moved back to one hundred yards. He fired three, checked the target, fired again.

The final group from each rifle formed a small, nickel-sized group about one inch above his point of aim. This with factory ammunition.

Satisfied, he wiped the weapons carefully and stored each in a soft guncase and repacked them in the trunk of the car.

The final item he carried several hundred yards up the hill. Then he came back to the car and backed it down the road past the first bend. From the floor of the backseat he took several old newspapers. He retrieved the targets from the wall of the house and added them to the newspapers.

On the side of the other hill, high up near the tree line, was a fairly prominent outcropping of rock. Standing on the rock and using the binoculars, he could just make out the item he had left amid the trees and leaves on the other side of the little valley. At least three hundred yards, he decided. Closer to four hundred.

He used the targets and wadded up sheets of newsprint to build a small fire. To this he added sticks and twigs and a relatively dry piece of a dead limb. Then he walked back across the valley.

The weapon was in an olive-drab tube. Ridiculously simple instructions were printed on the tube in yellow stenciled letters. He followed them. Tube on right shoulder, eyepiece open, power on, crosshairs on the rock outcropping — listen for the tone. There it is! Heat source acquired.

Charon squeezed the trigger.

The missile left in a flash and roar. Loud but not terribly so. It shot across the valley trailing fire and exploded above the rock ledge, seemingly right in the fire.

Carrying the now empty tube, Henry Charon walked back across the valley. The weapon had gone right through the fire and exploded against the base of a tree on the other side. The shrapnel had sprayed everywhere. The bark of the trees was severely flayed: one small wrist-thick tree trunk had been completely severed by flying shrapnel. The tree the missile had impacted was severely damaged. No doubt it and several other trees would eventually die.

Satisfactory. Quite satisfactory. The other two missiles should work equally well.

He put the remnants of the fire completely out, scattered the charred wood, and dumped dirt on the site where it had been.

Fifteen minutes later Henry Charon started the car. The empty cartridges and spent missile launcher were all in the trunk. He had found a likely spot to bury them on the way in, about two miles back. There was enough daylight left.

Smiling, thinking about the doe, Henry Charon slipped the transmission into drive and turned the car around.