Without Remorse

CHAPTER 16

Exercises

Ryan and Douglas stood back, letting the forensics people do their jobs. The discovery had happened just after five in the morning. On his routine patrol pattern, Officer Chuck Monroe had come down the street, and spotting an irregular shadow in this passage between houses, shone his car light down it. The dark shape might easily have been a drunk passed out and sleeping it off, but the white spotlight had reflected off the pool of red and bathed the arched bricks in a pink glow that looked wrong from the first instant. Monroe had parked his car and come in for a look, then made his call. The officer was leaning on the side of his car now, smoking a cigarette and going over the details of his discovery, which was to him less horrific and more routine than civilians understood. He hadn't even bothered to call an ambulance. These two men were clearly beyond any medical redemption.

'Bodies sure do bleed a lot,' Douglas observed. It wasn't a statement of any significance, just words to fill the silence as the cameras flashed for one last roll of color film. It looked as if two full-size cans of red paint had been poured in one spot.

'Time of death?' Ryan asked the representative from the coroner's office.

'Not too long ago,' the man said, lifting one hand. 'No rigor yet. After midnight certainly, probably after two.'

The cause of death didn't require a question. The holes in both men's foreheads answered that.

'Monroe?' Ryan called. The young officer came over. 'What do you know about these two?'

'Both pushers. Older one on the right there is Maceo Donald, street name is Ju-Ju. The one on the left, I don't know, but he worked with Donald.'

'Good eye spotting them, patrolman. Anything else?' Sergeant Douglas asked.

Monroe shook his head. 'No, sir. Nothing at all. Pretty quiet night in the district, as a matter of fact. I came through this area maybe four times on my shift, and I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The usual pushers doing the usual business.' The implied criticism of the situation that everyone had to acknowledge as normal went unanswered. It was a Monday morning, after all, and that was bad enough for anyone.

'Finished,' the senior photographer said. He and his partner, on the other side of the bodies, got out of the way.

Ryan was already looking around. There was a good deal of ambient light in the passageway, and the detective augmented that with a large flashlight, playing its beam over the edges of the walkway, his eyes looking for a coppery reflection.

'See any shell casing, Tom?' he asked Douglas, who was doing the same thing.

'Nope. They were shot from this direction, too, don't you think?'

'Bodies haven't been moved,' the coroner said unnecessarily, adding, 'Yes, definitely both shot from this side. Both were lying down when they were shot.'

Douglas and Ryan took their time, examining every inch of the passageway three times, for thoroughness was their main professional weapon, and they had all the time in the world - or at least a few hours, which amounted to the same thing. A crime scene like this was one you prayed for. No grass to conceal evidence, no furniture, just a bare brick corridor not five feet wide, everything self-contained. That would be a time-saver.

'Nothing at all, Em,' Douglas said, finishing his third sweep.

'Probably a revolver, then.' It was a logical observation. Light.22 shell casings, ejected from an automatic, could fly incredible distances, and were so small that finding them could drive one to distraction. Rare was the criminal who recovered his brass, and to have recovered four little.22s in the dark - no, that wasn't very likely.

'Some robber with a cheap one, want to bet?' Douglas asked.

'Could be.' Both men approached the bodies and squatted down close to them for the first time.

'No obvious powder marks,' the sergeant said in some surprise.

'Any of these houses occupied?' Ryan asked Monroe.

'Not either one of these, sir,' Monroe said, indicating both of those bordering the passageway. 'Most of the ones on the other side of the street are, though.'

'Four shots, early in the morning, you figure somebody might have heard?' The brick tunnel ought to have focused the sound like the lens of a telescope, Ryan thought, and the.22 had a loud, sharp bark. But how often had there been cases just like this one in which no one had heard a thing? Besides, the way this neighborhood was going, people divided into two classes: those who didn't look because they didn't care, and those who knew that looking merely increased the chance of catching a stray round.

'There's two officers knocking on doors now, Lieutenant. Nothing yet.'

'Not bad shooting, Em.' Douglas had his pencil out, pointing to the holes in the forehead of the unidentified victim. They were scarcely half an inch apart, just above the bridge of the nose. 'No powder marks. The killer must have been standing... call it three, four feet, max.' Douglas stood back at the feet of the bodies and extended his arm. It was a natural shot, extending your arm and aiming down.

'I don't think so. Maybe there's powder marks we can't see, Tom. That's why we have medical examiners.' He meant that both men had dark complexions, and the light wasn't all that good. But if there was powder tattooing around the small entrance wounds, neither detective could see it. Douglas squatted back down to give the entrance wounds another look.

'Nice to know somebody appreciates us,' the coroner's representative said, ten feet away, scribbling his own notes.

'Either way, Em, our shooter has a real steady hand.' The pencil moved to the head of Maceo Donald. The two holes in his forehead, maybe a little higher on the forehead then the other man, were even closer together. 'That's unusual.'

Ryan shrugged and began his search of the bodies. Though the senior of the two, he preferred to do this himself while Douglas took the notes. He found no weapon on either man, and though both had wallets and ID, from which they identified the unknown as Charles Barker, age twenty, the amount of cash discovered wasn't nearly what men in their business would customarily have on their persons. Nor were there any drugs -

'Wait, here's something - three small glassine bags of white powdery substance,' Ryan said in the language of his profession. 'Pocket change, a dollar seventy-five; cigarette lighter, Zippo, brushed steel, the cheap one. Pack of Pall Malls from the shirt pocket - and another small glassine bag of white powdery substance.'

'A drug ripoff,' Douglas said, diagnosing the incident. It wasn't terribly professional but it was pretty obvious. 'Monroe?'

'Yes, sir?' The young officer would never stop being a Marine. Nearly everything he said, Douglas noted, had 'sir' attached to it.

'Our friends Barker and Donald - experienced pushers?'

'Ju- Ju's been around since I've been in the district, sir. I never heard of anybody messin' with him.'

'No signs of a fight on the hands,' Ryan said after turning them over. 'Hands are tied up with... electrical wire, copper wire, white insulation, trademark on it, can't read it yet. No obvious signs of a struggle.'

'Somebody got Ju-Ju!' It was Mark Charon, who had just arrived. 'I had a case running on that fuck, too.'

'Two exit wounds, back of Mr Donald's head,' Ryan went on, annoyed at the interruption. 'I expect we'll find the bullets somewhere at the bottom of this lake,' he added sourly.

'Forget ballistics,' Douglas grunted. That wasn't unusual with the.22. First of all, the bullet was made of soft lead, and was so easily deformed that the striations imparted by the rifling of the gun barrel were most often impossible to identify. Second, the little,22 had a lot of penetrating power, more even than a.45, and often ended up splattering itself on some object beyond the victim. In this case the cement of the walkway.

'Well, tell me about him,' Ryan ordered.

'Major street pusher, big clientele. Drives a nice red Caddy,' Charon added. 'Pretty smart one, too.'

'Not anymore. His brain got homogenized about six hours ago.'

'Rip?' Charon asked.

Douglas answered. 'Looks that way. No gun, no drugs or money to speak of. Whoever did it knew their business. Looks real professional, Em. This wasn't some junkie who got lucky.'

'I'd have to say that's the morning line, Tom,' Ryan replied, standing up. 'Probably a revolver, but those groups are awfully tight for a Saturday-night special. Mark, any word on an experienced robber working the street?'

'The Duo,' Charon said. 'But they use a shotgun.'

'This is almost like a mob hit. Look 'em straight in the eye - whack.' Douglas thought about his words. No, that wasn't quite right either, was it? Mob hits were almost never this elegant. Criminals were not proficient marksmen, and they used cheap weapons for the most part. He and Ryan had investigated a handful of gang-related murders, and typically the victim had either been shot in the back of the head at contact range, with all the obvious forensic signs that attended such an event, or the damage was done so haphazardly that the victim was more likely to have a dozen widely scattered holes in his anatomy. These two had been taken out by someone who knew his business, and the collection of highly skilled Mafia soldiers was very slim indeed. But who had ever said that homicide investigation was an exact science? This crime scene was a mix of the routine and the unusual. A simple robbery in that the drugs and money of the victims were missing, but an unusually skillful killing in the fact that the shooter had been either very lucky - twice - or an expert shot. And a mob hit was usually not disguised as a robbery or anything else. A mob murder was most often a public statement.

'Mark, any noise on the street about a turf war?' Douglas asked.

'No, not really, nothing organized. A lot of stuff between pushers over street corners, but that isn't news.'

'You might want to ask around,' Lieutenant Ryan suggested.

'No problem, Em. I'll have my people check that out.'

We're not going to solve this one fast - maybe never, Ryan thought. Well, he thought.

'Can I have 'em now?'

'All yours,' Ryan told the man from the medical examiner's office. His black station wagon was ready, and the day was warming up. Already flies were buzzing around, drawn to the smell of blood. He headed off to his own car, accompanied by Tom Douglas. Junior detectives would have the rest of the routine work.

'Somebody that knows how to shoot - better than me even,' Douglas said as they drove back downtown. He'd tried out for the department's pistol team once.

'Well, lots of people with that skill are around now, Tom. Maybe some have found employment with our organized friends.'

'Professional hit, then?'

'We'll call it skillful for now,' Ryan suggested as an alternative. 'We'll let Mark do some of the scutwork on the intelligence side.'

'That makes me feel warm all over.' Douglas snorted.

Kelly arose at ten-thirty, feeling clean for the first time in several days. He'd showered immediately on returning to his apartment, wondering if in doing so he'd left rings on the sewers. Now he could shave, even, and that compensated for the lack of sleep. Before breakfast - brunch - Kelly drove half a mile to a local park and ran for thirty minutes, then drove back home for another thoroughly wonderful shower and some food. Then there was work to do. All the clothing from the previous evening was in a brown paper grocery bag - slacks, shirt, underwear, socks, and shoes. It seemed a shame to part with the bush jacket, whose size and pockets had proven to be so useful. He'd have to get another, probably several. He felt certain that he hadn't been splattered with blood this time, but the dark colors made it difficult to be sure, and they probably did carry powder residue, and this was not the time to take any chances at all. Leftover food and coffee grounds went on top of the clothing, and found their way into the apartment complex's Dumpster. Kelly had considered taking them to a distant dumpsite, but that might cause more trouble than it solved. Someone might see him, and take note of what he did, and wonder why. Disposing of the four empty.22 cases was easy. He'd dumped them down a sewer while jogging. The noon news broadcast announced the discovery of two bodies, but no details. Maybe the newspaper would say more. There was one other thing.

'Hi, Sam.'

'Hey, John. You in town?' Rosen asked from his office.

'Yeah. Do you mind if I come down for a few minutes? Say around two?'

'What can I do for you?' Rosen asked from behind his desk.

'Gloves,' Kelly said, holding his hand up. 'The kind you use, thin rubber. Do they cost much?'

Rosen almost asked what the gloves were for, but decided he didn't need to know. 'Hell, they come in boxes of a hundred pair.'

'I don't need that many.'

The surgeon pulled open a drawer in his credenza and tossed over ten of the paper-and-plastic bags. 'You look awfully respectable.' And so Kelly did, dressed in a button-down white shirt and his blue CIA suit, as he'd taken to calling it. It was the first time Rosen had seen him in a tie.

'Don't knock it, doc.' Kelly smiled. 'Sometimes I have to be. I even have a new job, sort of.'

'Doing what?'

'Sort of consulting.' Kelly gestured. 'I can't say about what, but it requires me to dress properly.'

'Feeling okay?'

'Yes, sir, just fine. Jogging and everything. How are things with you?'

'The usual. More paperwork than surgery, but I have a whole department to supervise.' Sam touched the pile of folders on his desk. The small talk was making him uneasy. It seemed that his friend was wearing a disguise, and though he knew Kelly was up to something, in not knowing exactly what it was, he managed to keep his conscience under control. 'Can you do me a favor?'

'Sure, doc.'

'Sandy's car broke down. I was going to run her home, but I've got a meeting that'll run till four. She gets off shift at three.'

'You're letting her work regular hours now?' Kelly asked with a smile.

'Sometimes, when she's not teaching.'

'If it's okay with her, it's okay with me.'

It was only a twenty-minute wait that Kelly disposed of by going to the cafeteria for a light snack. Sandy O'Toole found him there, just after the three-o'clock change of shift.

'Like the food better now?' she asked him.

'Even hospitals can't hurt a salad very much.' He hadn't figured out the institutional fascination with Jell-0, however. 'I hear your car's broke.'

She nodded, and Kelly saw why Rosen had her working a more regular schedule. Sandy looked very tired, her fair skin sallow, with puffy dark patches under both eyes. 'Something with the starter - wiring. It's in the shop.'

Kelly stood. 'Well, my lady's carriage awaits.' His remark elicited a smile, but it was one of politeness rather than amusement.

'I've never seen you so dressed up,' she said on the way to the parking garage.

'Well, don't get too worked up about it. I can still roll in the mud with the best of 'em.' And his jesting failed again.

'I didn't mean -'

'Relax, ma'am. You've had a long day at the office, and your driver has a crummy sense of humor.'

Nurse O'Toole stopped and turned. 'It's not your fault. Bad week. We had a child, auto accident. Doctor Rosen tried, but the damage was too great, and she faded out on my shift, day before yesterday. Sometimes I hate this work,' Sandy concluded.

'I understand,' Kelly said, holding the door open for her. 'Look, you want the short version? It's never the right person. It's never the right time. It never makes any sense.'

'That's a nice way of looking at things. Weren't you trying to cheer me up?' And that, perversely, made her smile, but it wasn't the kind of smile that Kelly wanted to see.

'We all try to fix the broken parts as best we can, Sandy. You fight your dragons. I fight mine,' Kelly said without thinking.

'And how many dragons have you slain?'

'One or two,' Kelly said distantly, trying to control his words. It surprised him how difficult that had become. Sandy was too easy to talk with.

'And what did it make better, John?'

'My father was a fireman. He died while I was over there. House fire, he went inside and found two kids, they were down from smoke. Dad got them out okay, but then he had a heart attack on the spot. They say he was dead before he hit the ground. That counted for something,' Kelly said, remembering what Admiral Maxwell had said, in the sick bay of USS Kitty Hawk, that death should mean something, that his father's death had.

'You've killed people, haven't you?' Sandy asked.

'That's what happens in a war,' Kelly agreed.

'What did that mean? What did it do?'

'If you want the big answer, I don't have it. But the ones I took out didn't ever hurt anybody else.' plastic flower sure as hell didn't, he told himself. No more village chiefs and their families. Maybe someone else had taken the work over, but maybe not, too.

Sandy watched the traffic as he headed north on Broadway. 'And the ones who killed Tim, did they think the same thing?'

'Maybe they did, but there's a difference.' Kelly almost said that he'd never seen one of his people murder anyone, but he couldn't say that anymore, could he?

'But if everybody believes that, then where are we? It's not like diseases. You fight against things that hurt everybody. No politics and lying. We're not killing people. That's why I do this work, John.'

'Sandy, thirty years ago there was a guy named Hitler who got his rocks off lulling people like Sam and Sarah just because of what their goddamned names were. He had to be killed, and he was, too damned late, but he was.' Wasn't that a simple enough lesson?

'We have problems enough right here,' she pointed out. That was obvious from the sidewalks they passed, for Johns Hopkins was not in a comfortable neighborhood.

'I know that, remember?'

That statement deflated her. 'I'm sorry, John.'

'So am I.' Kelly paused, searching for words. 'There is a difference, Sandy. There are good people. I suppose most people are decent. But there are bad people, too. You can't wish them away, and you can't wish them to be good, because most won't change, and somebody has to protect the one bunch from the other. That's what I did.'

'But how do you keep from turning into one of them?'

Kelly took his time considering that, regretting the fact that she was here at all. He didn't need to hear this, didn't want to have to examine his own conscience. Everything had been so clear the past couple of days. Once you decided that there was an enemy, then acting on that information was simply a matter of applying your training and experience. It wasn't something you had to think about. Looking at your conscience was hard, wasn't it?

'I've never had that problem,' he said, finally, evading the issue. That was when he saw the difference. Sandy and her community fought against a thing, and fought bravely, risking their sanity in resisting the actions of forces whose root causes they could not directly address. Kelly and his fought against people, leaving the actions of their enemies to others, but able to seek them out and fight directly against their foe, even eliminating them if they were lucky. One side had absolute purity of purpose but lacked satisfaction. The other could attain the satisfaction of destroying the enemy, but only at the cost of becoming too much like what they struggled against. Warrior and healer, parallel wars, similarity of purpose, but so different in their actions. Diseases of the body, and diseases of humanity itself. Wasn't that an interesting way to look at it?

'Maybe it's like this: it's not what you fight against. It's what you fight for.'

'What are we fighting for in Vietnam?' Sandy asked Kelly again, having asked herself that question no less than ten times per day since she'd received the unwelcome telegram. 'My husband died there and I don't still understand why.'

Kelly started to say something but stopped himself. Really there was no answer. Bad luck, bad decisions, bad timing at more than one level of activity created the random events that caused soldiers to die on a distant battlefield, and even if you were there, it didn't always make sense. Besides, she'd probably heard every justification more than once from the man whose life she mourned. Maybe looking for that kind of meaning was nothing more than an exercise in futility. Maybe it wasn't supposed to make sense. Even if that were true, how could you live without the pretense that it did, somehow?

He was still pondering that one when he turned onto her street.

'Your house needs some paint,' Kelly told her, glad that it did.

'I know. I can't afford painters and I don't have the time to do it myself.'

'Sandy - a suggestion?'

'What's that?'

'Let yourself live. I'm sorry Tim's gone, but he is gone. I lost friends over there, too. You have to go on.'

The fatigue in her face was painful to see. Her eyes examined him in a professional sort of way, revealing nothing of what she thought or what she felt inside, but the fact that she troubled herself to conceal herself from him told Kelly something.

Something's changed in you. I wonder what it is. I wonder why, Sandy thought. Something had resolved itself. He'd always been polite, almost funny in his overpowering gentility, but the sadness she'd seen, that had almost matched her own undying grief, was gone now, replaced with something she couldn't quite fathom. It was strange, because he had never troubled to hide himself from her, and she thought herself able to penetrate whatever disguises he might erect. On that she was wrong, or perhaps she didn't know the rules. She watched him get out, walk around the car, and open her door.

'Ma'am?' He gestured toward the house.

'Why are you so nice? Did Doctor Rosen...?'

'He just said you needed a ride, Sandy, honest. Besides, you look awful tired.' Kelly walked her to the door.

'I don't know why I like talking to you,' she said, reaching the porch steps.

'I wasn't sure that you did. You do?'

'I think so,' O'Toole replied, with an almost-smile. The smile died after a second. 'John, it's too soon for me.'

'Sandy, it's too soon for me, too. Is it too soon to be friends?'

She thought about that. 'No, not too soon for that.'

'Dinner sometime? I asked once, remember?'

'How often are you in town?'

'More now. I have a job - well, something I have to do in Washington.'

'Doing what?'

'Nothing important.' And Sandy caught the scent of a lie, but it probably wasn't one aimed at hurting her.

'Next week maybe?'

'I'll give you a call. I don't know any good places around here.'

'I do.'

'Get some rest,' Kelly told her. He didn't attempt to kiss her, or even take her hand. Just a friendly, caring smile before he walked away. Sandy watched him drive off, still wondering what there was about the man that was different. She'd never forget the look on his face, there on the hospital bed, but whatever that had been, it wasn't something she needed to fear.

Kelly was swearing quietly at himself as he drove away, wearing the cotton work gloves now, and rubbing them across every surface in the car that he could reach. He couldn't risk many conversations like this one. What was it all about? How the hell was he supposed to know? It was easy in the field. You identified the enemy, or more often somebody told you what was going on and who he was and where he was - frequently the information was wrong, but at least it gave you a starting place. But mission briefs never told you, really, how it was going to change the world or bring the war to an end. That was stuff you read in the paper, information repeated by reporters who didn't care, taken down from briefers who didn't know or politicians who'd never troubled themselves to find out. 'Infrastructure' and 'cadre' were favorite words, but he'd hunted people, not infrastructure, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. Infrastructure was a thing, like what Sandy fought against. It wasn't a person who did evil things and could be hunted down like an offensive big-game animal. And how did that apply to what he was doing now? Kelly told himself that he had to control his thinking, stay to the easy stuff, just remember that he was hunting people, just as he had before. He wasn't going to change the whole world, just clean up one little corner.

'Does it still hurt, my friend?' Grishanov asked.

'I think I have some broken ribs.'

Zacharias sat down in the chair, breathing slowly and in obvious pain. That worried the Russian. Such an injury could lead to pneumonia, and pneumonia could kill a man in this physical condition. The guards had been a little too enthusiastic in their assault on the man, and though it had been done at Grishanov's request, he hadn't wanted to do more than to inflict some pain. A dead prisoner would not tell him what he needed to know.

'I've spoken to Major Vinh, The little savage says he has no medicines to spare.' Grishanov shrugged. 'It might even be true. The pain, it is bad?'

'Every time I breathe,' Zacharias replied, and he was clearly speaking the truth. His skin was even paler than usual.

'I have only one thing for pain, Robin,' Kolya said apologetically, holding out his flask.

The American colonel shook his head, and even that appeared to hurt him. 'I can't.'

Grishanov spoke with the frustration of a man trying to reason with a friend. 'Then you are a fool, Robin. Pain serves no one, not you, not me, not your God. Please, let me help you a little. Please?'

Can't do it, Zacharias told himself. To do so was to break his covenant. His body was a temple, and he had to keep it pure of such things as this. But the temple was broken. He feared internal bleeding most of all. Would his body be able to heal itself? It should, and under anything approaching normal circumstances, it would do so easily, but he knew that his physical condition was dreadful, his back still injured, and now his ribs. Pain was a companion now, and pain would make it harder for him to resist questions, and so he had to measure his religion against his duty to resist. Things were less clear now. Easing the pain might make it easier to heal, and easier to stick to his duty. So what was the right thing? What ought to have been an easy question was clouded, and his eyes looked at the metal container. There was relief there. Not much, but some, and some relief was what he needed if he were to control himself.

Grishanov unscrewed the cap. 'Do you ski, Robin?'

Zacharias was surprised by the question. 'Yes, I learned when I was a kid.'

'Cross- country?'

The American shook his head. 'No, downhill.'

'The snow in the Wasatch Mountains, it is good for skiing?'

Robin smiled, remembering. 'Very good, Kolya. It's dry snow. Powdery, almost like very fine sand.'

'Ah, the best kind of all. Here.' He handed the flask over.

Justthis once, Zacharias thought, just for the pain. He took a swallow. Push the pain back a few steps, just so I can keep myself together.

Grishanov watched him do it, saw his eyes water, hoping the man wouldn't cough and hurt himself more. It was good vodka, obtained from the embassy's storeroom in Hanoi, the one thing his country always had in good supply, and the one thing the embassy always had enough of. The best quality of paper vodka, Kolya's personal favorite, actually flavored with old paper, something this American was unlikely to note - and something he himself missed after the third or fourth drink, if the truth be known.

'You are a good skier, Robin?'

Zacharias felt the warmth in his belly as it spread out and allowed his body to relax. In that relaxation his pain lessened, and he felt a little stronger, and if this Russian wanted to talk skiing, well, that couldn't hurt much, could it?

'I ski the expert slopes,' Robin said with satisfaction. 'I started when I was a kid. I think I was five when Dad took me the first time.'

'Your father - also a pilot?'

The American shook his head. 'No, a lawyer.'

'My father is a professor of history at Moscow State University. We have a dacha, and in the winter when I was little, I could ski in the woods. I love the silence. All you can hear is the - how you say, swish? Swish of the skis in the snow. Nothing else. Like a blanket on the earth, no noise, just silence.'

'If you go up early, the mountains can be like that. You pick a day right after the snow ends, not much wind.'

Kolya smiled. 'Like flying, isn't it? Flying in a single-seat aircraft, a fair day with a few white clouds.' He leaned forward with a crafty look. 'Tell me, do you ever turn your radio off for a few minutes, just to be alone?'

'They let you do that?' Zacharias asked.

Grishanov chuckled, shaking his head. 'No, but I do it anyway.'

'Good for you,' Robin said with a smile of his own, remembering what it was like. He thought of one particular afternoon, flying out of Mountain Home Air Force Base one February day in 1964.

'It is how God must feel, yes? All alone. You can ignore the noise of the engine. For me it just goes away after a few minutes. Is it the same for you?'

'Yeah; if your helmet fits right.'

'That is the real reason I fly,' Grishanov lied. 'All the other rubbish, the paperwork, and the mechanical things, and the lectures, they are the price. To be up there, all alone, just like when I was a boy skiing in the woods - but better. You can see so far on a clear winter day.' He handed Zacharias the flask again. 'Do you suppose these little savages understand that?'

'Probably not.' He wavered for a moment. Well, he'd already had one. Another couldn't hurt, could it? Zacharias took another swallow.

'What I do, Robin, I hold the stick just in my fingertips, like this.' He demonstrated with the top of the flask. 'I close my eyes for a moment, and when I open them, the world is different. Then I am not part of the world anymore. I am something else - an angel, perhaps,' he said with good humor. 'Then I possess the sky as I would like to possess a woman, but it is never quite the same. The best feelings are supposed to be alone, I think.'

This guy really understands, doesn't he? He really understands flying. 'You a poet or something?'

'I love poetry. I do not have the talent to make it, but that does not prevent me from reading it, and memorizing it, feeling what the poet tells me to feel,' Grishanov said quietly, actually meaning what he said as he watched the American's eyes lose focus, becoming dreamy. 'We are much alike, my friend.'

'What's the story on Ju-Ju?' Tucker asked.

'Looks like a ripoff. He got careless. One of yours, eh?' Charon said.

'Yeah, he moved a lot for us.'

'Who did it?' They were in the Main Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, hidden in some rows, an ideal place, really. Hard to approach without being spotted, and impossible to bug. Even though a quiet place, there were just too many of the little alcoves.

'No telling, Henry. Ryan and Douglas were there, and it didn't look to me like they had much. Hey, you going to get that worked up over one pusher?'

'You know better than that, but it puts a little dent in things. Never had one of mine wasted before.'

'You know better than that, Henry.' Charon flipped through some pages. 'It's a high-risk business. Somebody wanted a little cash, maybe some drugs, too, maybe break into the business quick? Look for a new pusher selling your stuff, maybe. Hell, as good as they were on the hit, maybe you could reach an understanding with 'em.'

'I have enough dealers. And making peace like that is bad for business. How they do 'em?'

'Very professional. Two in the head each. Douglas was talking like it was a mob hit.'

Tucker turned his head. 'Oh?'

Charon spoke calmly, his back to the man. 'Henry, this wasn't the outfit. Tony isn't going to do anything like that, is he?'

'Probably not.' ButEddie might.

'I need something,' Charon said next.

'What?'

'A dealer. What did you expect, a tip on the second at Pimlico?'

Too many of 'em are mine now, remember?' It had been all right - better than that, really - to use Charon to eliminate the major competition, but as Tucker had consolidated his control on the local trade, he was able to target fewer and fewer independent operators for judicial elimination. That was particularly true of the majors. He had systematically picked out people with whom he had no interest in working, and the few who were left might be useful allies rather than rivals, if he could only find a way to negotiate with them.

'If you want me to be able to protect you, Henry, then I have to be able to control investigations. For me to control the investigations, I have to land some big fish from time to time.' Charon put the book back on the shelf. Why did he have to explain things like this to the man?.

'When?'

'Beginning of the week, something tasty. I want to take down something that looks nice.'

'I'll get back to you.' Tucker replaced his book and walked away. Charon spent another few minutes, searching for the right book. He found it, along with the envelope that sat next to it. The police lieutenant didn't bother counting. He knew that the amount would be right.

Greer handled the introductions.

'Mr Clark, this is General Martin Young, and this is Robert Ritter.'

Kelly shook hands with both. The Marine was an aviator, like Maxwell and Podulski, both of whom were absent from this meeting. He hadn't a clue who Ritter was, but he was the one who spoke first.

'Nice analysis. Your language wasn't exactly bureaucratic, but you hit all the high points.'

'Sir, it's not really all that hard to figure out. The ground assault ought to be fairly easy. You don't have first-line troops in a place like this, and those you have are looking in, not out. Figure two guys in each tower. The MGs are going to be set to point in, right? It takes a few seconds to move them. You can use the treeline to get close enough for M-79 range.' Kelly moved his hands around the diagram. 'Here's the barracks, only two doors, and I bet there's not forty guys in there.'

'Come in here?' General Young tapped the southwest corner on the compound.

'Yes, sir.' For an airedale, the Marine caught on pretty fast. 'The trick's getting the initial strike team in close. You'll use weather for that, and this time of the year that shouldn't be real hard. Two gunships, just regular rockets and miniguns to hose these two buildings. Land the evac choppers here. It's all over in under five minutes from when the shooting starts. That's the land phase. I'll leave the rest to the fliers.'

'So you say the real key is to get the assault element in close on the ground -'

'No, sir. If you want to do another Song Tay, you can duplicate the whole plan, crash the chopper in the compound, the whole nine yards - but I keep hearing you want it done small.'

'Correct,' Ritter said. 'Has to be small. There's no way we can sell this as a major operation.'

'Fewer assets, sir, and you have to use different tactics. The good news is that it's a small objective, not all that many people to get out, not many bad guys to get in the way.'

'But no safety factor,' General Young said, frowning.

'Not much of one,' Kelly agreed. 'Twenty-five people. Land them in this valley, they hump over this hill, get into place, do the towers, blow this gate. Then the gunships come in and hose these two buildings while the assault element hits this building here. The snakes orbit while the slicks do the pickup, and we all boogie the hell down the valley.'

'Mr Clark, you're an optimist,' Greer observed, reminding Kelly of his cover name at the same time. If General Young found out that Kelly had been a mere chief, they'd never get his support, and Young had already stretched a long way for them, using up his whole year's construction budget to build the mockup in the woods of Quantico.

'It's all stuff I've done before, Admiral.'

'Who's going to get the personnel?' Ritter asked.

'That's being taken care of,' James Greer assured him.

Ritter sat back, looking at the photos and diagrams. He was putting his career on the line, as was Greer and everyone else. But the alternative to doing something was doing nothing. Doing nothing meant that at least one good man, and perhaps twenty more, would never come home again. That wasn't the real reason, though, Ritter admitted to himself. The real reason was that others had decided that the lives of those men didn't matter, and those others might make the same decision again. That kind of thinking would someday destroy his Agency. You couldn't recruit agents if the word got out that America didn't protect those who worked for her. Keeping faith was more than the right thing. It was also good business.

'Better to get things going before we break the story,' he said. 'It'll be easier to get a "go-mission" if we've already got it ready to go. Make it look like a unique opportunity. That's the other big mistake they made with kingpin. It was too obviously aimed at getting a hunting license, and that was never in the cards. What we have here is a one-time rescue mission. I can take that to my friends in the NSC. That'll fly, probably, but we have to be ready to go when I do that.'

'Bob, does that mean you're on our side?' Greer asked. Ritter took a long moment before answering. 'Yes, it does.'

'We need an additional safety factor,' Young said, looking at the large-scale map, figuring how the helicopters would get in.

'Yes, sir,' Kelly said. 'Somebody has to go in early and eyeball things.' They still had both photos of Robin Zacharias out, one of an Air Force colonel, standing upright, holding his cap under his arm, chest decorated with silver wings and ribbons, smiling confidently into the camera with his family arrayed around him; and the other of a bowed, bedraggled man, about to be butt-stroked from behind. Hell, he thought, why not one mote crusade?

'I guess that's me.'