The Specialists

Twenty

The colonel sat in his wheelchair and massaged the stumps of his legs. Both of them had ached ever since the phone call. It had come at eight o’clock. It was nine now, and they were all gathered in the library waiting for the colonel to speak, and all he could think was that his legs hurt. It was psychosomatic, and he knew it was psychosomatic, but somehow the knowledge did nothing whatsoever to alleviate the pain.

He said, “It’s obvious that Eddie is in very serious trouble.”

He circled the table with his eyes and studied the four faces. They gave back virtually nothing. He thought at first that they were impassive, stoic. Then he realized that it was something else. They were merely waiting for orders.

But he was not yet ready for orders. He said, “At the very least, we are forced to assume that Eddie has been exposed. The illegitimate son facade was never designed to withstand long scrutiny. Eddie insisted that it had been completely successful, however, and felt it might be worthwhile to remain behind enemy lines until the last possible moment. Evidently he’s been found out.”

“We have to get him out of there.”

The colonel raised his eyes, sought out the speaker. “Howard?”

“Sir. If Eddie’s in there with his cover blown, we have to get him out. And the sooner the better.”

Dehn said, “This phone call. You said it was a man?”

“Yes.”

“But definitely not Eddie?”

“Definitely not.”

“Meaning he conned someone into making the tipoff call. He could be dead already, sir.”

The colonel nodded. His legs twinged, and he massaged the stumps again with his hands. He closed his eyes for a moment, absorbed in the pain, and considered the possibility that Eddie Manso was dead.

If you couldn’t send men to their death, you couldn’t command troops. This was basic and everyone knew it. A low-rank combat officer had to be able to take it for granted that some of the men he led into any action would not come back. A strategic officer had it even worse; he would sacrifice patrols and platoons and companies, knowing in advance that he was sentencing men to death in wholesale lots. You had to be able to do this without getting sick about it any more than a chess player let himself mourn for a sacrificed pawn. It was that intimately a part of the game.

And yet this private war was a very different matter, just as the Special Forces had differed greatly from conventional warfare. When you had only a handful of men, a small elite corps of skilled operatives, you could not squander them as if they were a swarm of foot-slogging infantry. Instead you had to aim for a minimum number of casualties.

Now, in their private war, they wanted no casualties. Neither the profit nor the pleasure of destroying Platt’s operation was sufficient compensation for the loss of a single man. If Eddie Manso was dead, the entire operation was a failure, no matter how much cash the bank held or how neatly they took it off.

And Manso was very probably dead.

And Roger Cross’s legs were killing him.

“We have to assume that Eddie is alive,” he said at length. “I agree that this is very possibly not the case, but we must act upon the assumption. We will break into the Platt estate tonight. The cover of night is of sufficient value to cover the hours we lose by waiting.”

“And the bank? We still follow through tomorrow on schedule?”

“No.”

Simmons said, “Then we abort?”

“No.”

“Then what, sir?”

Colonel Cross folded his hands on the table in front of him. He said, “It is probable that Eddie will undergo intensive interrogation. If that happens, he will talk. This is not criticism of Corporal Manso. Some of you may remember the way some of our Asian friends taught us to interrogate prisoners. I for one will never forget the Montagnard lad who worked with us up around Due Din Hao. A very quiet, soft-spoken boy. Well.

“Assume Eddie has talked, or will talk. Assume the plan is dead. We cannot do anything for Eddie, if indeed anything can be done, before nightfall.” Colonel Cross drew a breath. “It is now nine twenty-three,” he said. “Louis?”

“Sir?”

“Confirm my memory. The Wells Fargo pickup takes place Wednesdays at fourteen hundred hours.”

“Correct, sir.”

“There will be four of you instead of five. The old plan is entirely dead and we have only an hour or two to draft a new one. We will make use of the Wells Fargo pickup, and the four of you will hit the bank at fourteen hundred hours this afternoon.” He closed his eyes, his mind already at work, picking at the bones of the Commercial Bank of New Cornwall, probing its defenses, searching for a new way to open it up.