Games of State

CHAPTER FOUR

As he looked at the short stack of comic books on his bed, General Mike Rodgers wondered what the hell had happened to innocence.

He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it dies; he thought bitterly.

The forty-five-year-old deputy director of Op-Center had awakened at 2:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Since the death of Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires on a mission with his Striker commandos, Rodgers had spent night after night replaying the Russian incursion in his mind. The Air Force was delighted with the maiden performance of their stealth "Mosquito" helicopter, and the pilots had been credited with doing everything possible to extract Squires from the burning train. Yet key phrases in the Striker debriefings kept coming back to him.

"…we shouldn't have let the train get onto the bridge…" "…it was a matter of just two or three seconds…" "…the Lieutenant Colonel was only concerned with getting the prisoner off the engine…." Rodgers had done two tours of Vietnam, led a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and held a Ph.D. in world history. He understood only too well that "the essence of war is violence," as Lord Macaulay put it, and that people died in combat— sometimes by the thousands. But that didn't make the loss of each individual soldier any easier to endure. Especially when the soldier left behind a wife and young son. They were only beginning to enjoy the compassion, the humor, and— Rodgers smiled as he thought back on the too-short life— the unique savoir faire that was Charlie Squires.

Rather than lie in bed and mourn, Rodgers had driven from his modest ranch-style home to the local 7-Eleven. He would be going to see gangly Billy Squires in the morning and wanted to bring him something. Melissa Squires wasn't big on candy or video games for her son, so comic books seemed like a good bet. The kid liked superheroes.

Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all— not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.

Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.

He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more expensive than when he was reading them— $2.50 instead of twelve cents. He'd gone out with just a couple of bucks in his pocket and had to charge the damn things. But what bothered him more was that he couldn't tell the comic-book good guys from the bad guys. Superman had long hair and a mean temper, Batman was a borderline psychotic, Robin was no longer clean-cut Dick Grayson but some brat, and a cigarette-smoking sociopath named Wolverine got his jollies ripping people apart with his claws.

If Melissa doesn't approve of SweetTarts, these sure aren't going to go down real easy.

Rodgers dropped the stack of comic books on the floor, beside his slippers. He wouldn't give these to a kid.

Maybe I should wait and buy him a Hardy Boys book, he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see what had become of Frank and Joe. The brothers probably had lip rings, choppers, and attitude. Like Rodgers, their father Fenton was probably prematurely gray and dating a succession of marriage-minded women.

Hell, Rodgers decided. I'll just stop at a toy store and pick up an action figure. That, and maybe a chess set or some kind of educational videotape. Something for the hands and something for the mind.

Rodgers absently rubbed his high-ridged nose, then reached for the remote. He sat up on his pillows, punched on the TV, and surfed through vividly colored vacuous new movies and washed-out vacuous old sitcoms. He finally settled on an old-movie channel that was showing something with Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman. Chaney was pleading with a young man in a lab coat to cure him, to relieve his suffering.

"I know how you feel," Rodgers muttered.

Chaney was lucky, though. His pain was usually ended by a silver bullet. In Rodgers's case, as with most survivors of war, crime, or genocide, the suffering diminished but never died. It was especially painful now, in the small hours of the night, when the only distractions were the drone of the TV and the intrusion of headlights from passing cars. As Sir Fulke Greville once noted in an elegy, "Silence augmenteth grief." Rodgers shut off the TV and switched off the light. He bunched his pillows under him and lay on his belly.

He knew he couldn't change the way he felt. But he also knew he couldn't afford to surrender to sorrow. There was a widow and her son to think about, plus the sad task of finding a new commander for Striker, and he had to run Op- Center for the rest of the week that Paul Hood would be in Europe. And today was going to be a low point on the job, what Op-Center's attorney Lowell Coffey II accurately described as "the welcoming of the Fox to the warren." In the night, in that silence, it always seemed like too much to deal with. But then Rodgers thought about the people who didn't live long enough to become oppressed by life's burdens, and those burdens seemed less crushing.

Thinking that he could understand why a middle-aged Batman or anyone else might go a little nuts at times, Rodgers finally floated into a dreamless sleep.