Perfect killer

CHAPTER 39

Thirty-eight thousand feet over the unremarkable topography of South Dakota, Braxton's chartered 737 anonymously sketched contrails on a cornflower sky. In the front of the aircraft, tousled and rumpled reporters slumped in the forward seats and spoke wearily among themselves. The predawn takeoff from Reagan National and the three lightning-quick campaign stops in Buffalo, Duluth, and Fargo had exacted their toll.

At the rear of the aircraft in the off-limits area outside the General's private compartment, Daniel Gabriel looked down at the towering storm clouds and chaffed at putting "retired" after the lieutenant general in his title.

He had devoted his life to the Army. His only marriage had lasted less than a year when his wife realized the military was a mistress with which she could not compete. Now, with his retirement papers grinding through the DOD bureaucracy, the change in his life gathered like the same thunderstorms assembling themselves over the prairie below.

"Retirement getting to you?" Gabriel turned as Braxton settled into a seat across the aisle. "Yes, it disturbed me as well, for months."

Gabriel felt half-dressed under Braxton's gaze.

"Yes, sir," Gabriel said. "That's most of it."

"I thought so." The General paused. "What's the rest of it?"

Gabriel looked back out the window for a thoughtful moment before returning his gaze to Braxton.

"When I was making some last rounds at the Pentagon, I paid a visit to Laura LaHaye."

"I know."

"Well, sir, I'm, uh"-Gabriel searched for the correct word-"not entirely comfortable with all the implications of the Enduring Valor project."

"What bothers you most?"

"The disclosure part, mostly I suppose."

"Disclosure?"

"To the men. The soldiers." Gabriel searched Braxton's face for a clue, but found nothing there but encouragement. "Doesn't giving them medication without telling them leave us open to charges we're performing medical experiments on people without their informed consent?"

Braxton nodded slowly "Dan, we have a life-and-death struggle to make sure our forces win every battle. If we had to have a public debate on every damned thing we do, getting a signed disclosure on every damn vitamin formula we hand out to the troops, we'd never get anything done, and whatever we accomplished would be out there for all our enemies to copy. Informed consent works fine for civilians, but when it comes to war, it would only cost the lives of a lot of brave men and women."

"But-"

"But nothing. Look, do you suppose we're telling everybody the nerve-gas antidotes we pass out contain a lot more than atropine? Or that MREs in a combat zone contain top-secret formulations designed to get the best possible performance from our boys? Which is why we don't sell those particular formulations to the public."

Gabriel nodded. "But I understand Enduring Valor has a history of side effects."

Braxton's face tightened for a single frame of reality, then smoothed out so fast Gabriel didn't really see it happen; it still made him anxious.

"Side effects?" Braxton said. "I can tell you about side effects." His hand traced the famous scar on his face. "Before God gave me this, artillery fire made me urinate on myself, son. But God struck me and changed me and left a mark telling others they can triumph over their shortcomings as well. Now that's a side effect of being wounded, and I am grateful for it every day I get up and look at myself in the mirror"

"But, sir-"

Braxton raised his hand. "Hold on. I'm taking you somewhere with this."

Gabriel nodded.

"Frank Harper saved my life twice," Braxton said. "First on the battlefield and later in a little clinic he set up in an old POW camp in the Godforsaken swamps of the Mississippi Delta. He took a look at me then, studied me along with others who had received head wounds of one sort or another. He helped me to understand what had happened to me and explained I had apparently received the perfect wound. I received a surgical incision so precise only the hand of God could have wielded the scalpel.

"Harper studied me and tried to perfect an operation on others with head wounds that could duplicate my success. Some got better, some worse, and most were unchanged."

"Harper's work?" Gabriel ventured. "Was this some sort of official military experiment?"

"Of course not!" Braxton shook his head. "It was treatment! A new treatment. As hard as he tried and as many operations as he performed, Harper and his team of crack brain surgeons could never duplicate with the scalpel what God had done for me with a twisted piece of metal."

The warrior who would be president leaned back and shook his head. Gabriel saw in his face the satisfaction of being the unique success.

"That's a side effect," Braxton said again. "Harper and his people had a lot better success with the new drugs. Those treatments eventually inaugurated what is, today, Enduring Valor."

Anxiety coiled tighter in Gabriel's chest.

"Yes, there have been undesirable side effects in Harper's work and in Enduring Valor," Braxton conceded. "Think of it as friendly fire of another stripe."

"Friendly fire."

"My Lai. Almost the right formula, wrong dose."

"You mean My Lai-"

Braxton nodded. "We never did get formula perfected in 'Nam. Fortunately the side effects looked similar enough to Agent Orange problems that it never got picked up."

"I'm not sure I want to know these things."

"It's time." Braxton looked up at the front of the aircraft to make sure the press remained obediently out of earshot. "Time to get your feet wet, soldier, wet with things you'll need to handle as SecDef."

Gabriel's anxiety gained new weight.

"Same thing with the new drugs we used in the first Gulf War," Braxton continued. An almost perfect formula that did its job, but in a very small number of cases it caused permanent brain modifications, Gulf War syndrome, blamed it on accidental exposure to low levels of Iraqi nerve gas.

"We thought we had things worked out in Afghanistan."

Gabriel heard Braxton only distantly as his anxiety became the cuckold's shock and anger at proof of the betrayal.

"Then we had all those murders by troops who had returned from combat. Fortunately the test samples were small. But by then, LaHaye and McGovern had the right formula but realized the drug needed to be released in continuous, sustained concentrations to avoid complications. That's what our allies in Holland have perfected."

Gabriel let the drone of the aircraft wash through an emptiness in his soul he had not experienced since the death of his father.

"Son, war is for keeps," Braxton said as he laid a practiced hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "War is hell. People in American society can sustain their delicate ethical sensitivities only when people like you and me clearly grasp the reality of winning."

You and me. Gabriel thought about this. He recognized the horrors of war, and he certainly knew the arrogant hypocrisy of the antimilitary, anti-any-war people who were willing to take advantage of freedoms that could be maintained only by the very force and establishment they defamed and despised.

You and me.

Gabriel encountered a new line here and worried about stepping across. He wished Braxton had never told him about this. The knowledge burned like acid, ticked like a bomb.

You and me.

The General had made good points about necessity. War was a messy ethical morass that usually rewarded action over contemplation.

You and me.

Gabriel considered resigning. Walking away before he learned any more. But he had nowhere to go, no career, no job. He had left his wife-the Army-and he had nothing, no one to rely on. The press would also have a field day with the resignation. It was something he would never live down; he'd live the rest of his life in shame.

You and me.

Perhaps the General was right. He had seen a lot more action, had needed to make more tough decisions, and had more experience weighing them all. You and me.

Gabriel knew he had to cross the line with the General. It would just take some time to come to grips with this new reality.