“Now you understand why I asked you yesterday what your job meant to you, honey. I know without a doubt that Thornton will get rid of you. If he doesn’t fire you outright, he’ll create enough pressure and embarrassment to force you to leave.” His fingers tightened momentarily about her arm. “That means living with me for two more years in the D.C. area. I know Thornton hates me enough to make sure it’s tough for you to get any kind of other job that’s connected with the government.”
Alanna faced him, gripping his hands. “Matt,” she begged in desperation, “please tell me what happened to make him hate you so much!” She swallowed hard, watching the play of emotions on his face. “Please, darling, tell me. I won’t say anything, I promise. Help me to understand this damn feud between you and the senator. I—I could take being fired and even barred from the Hill if I only knew the truth of the matter.”
A flash of pain and then indecision appeared in his eyes as he stared at her. Alanna felt his inner torture, and she tightened her grip on his fingers. “All of it, Matt. Don’t spare me the details just because I may find them hard to take,” she urged throatily.
His mouth became thinner, that same grim line that she had seen before when the weather had prevented the rescue efforts at San Dolega. He bowed his head, chin resting against his chest, and the silence grew around them. “When I was asked never to divulge the true story, Alanna, I meant to keep that promise,” he said, his voice oddly devoid of emotion as he raised his head to study her. His brows formed a downward arc. “But it wouldn’t be fair to allow you to walk into the field of fire without knowing how things stand.”
She remained motionless, noticing that he had dropped back into military terminology. Field of fire…. It sent a shiver down her spine, and an ugly, unsettling sensation replaced her sunny mood. Matt looked away, his profile rugged and withdrawn as he stared at the beauty of the meadow in the noon light.
“You’ll need some background information,” he began in a faraway, detached tone. “I went back to Vietnam after viewing the graves of my parents and Rachel and our baby and threw myself into the most dangerous Recon activity that I could find. That meant operating behind enemy lines for more than ten days at a time. I don’t know how to explain the stress of such duty except to say that we lived with death twenty-four hours a day. Our job was to melt into the enemy’s homeland, gain information, and then radio for a chopper to fly us back to base on the other side of the DMZ, where we delivered our reports.
“I hadn’t been able to release the grief I carried with me, so it compounded my problems. Inevitably, I put my team into an untenable position. It happened because I was still too caught up in Rachel’s death…in the death of my child, whom I’d never seen.” He closed his eyes, his face expressing the anguish of his next words. “I had put the lives of six other Marines in danger. The enemy had discovered us, and we had our backs to the river. We were all wounded to some degree or another, and that was when Jim Cauley came out of nowhere and rescued us. He went against my express orders by flying into that withering blanket of fire. He disregarded them and saved all our lives.” He halted again, his face becoming less readable. “Thank God no one died. I don’t think that I could have lived with that on top of everything else.”
“Is that how you got your shoulder wound?” she asked softly.
“Yeah. I recuperated in-country at a hospital in Saigon and then got orders cut to the I Corps area again.”
Alanna watched him, amazement evident in her wide-eyed gaze. “Why? Surely you could have gone home at that point?”
He turned, regarding her moodily. “Home to what? My parents were dead, my wife and baby…hell, Alanna, I was empty inside and at the same time filled with so much hate, anger and bitterness that it was eating me up alive. In my own convoluted way, I was trying to release that hatred against a known enemy. I couldn’t face my brother and his wife or their kids yet. I just didn’t have the emotional stamina to stand on my own two feet.”
“How did you and Tim Thornton meet, then?” she urged gently.
Matt ran his fingers through his hair in an aggravated gesture. “My company commander, who was also my best friend, wouldn’t let me go back to the Recons because my shoulder was not fully healed yet. So he put me in charge of a company of Marines instead.
“Morale was at an all-time low. We were trying to extricate ourselves from an embarrassing little war that we had no business being in. But orders kept coming down to continue our search-and-destroy raids and our ambushes. It was then Tim was transferred into my company. He had enough rank to take certain responsibilities for his squad, a group of ten men. But he was high on grass most of the time, and once the gunnery sergeant found him shooting up.” Matt’s face became grim and battle-hardened.
“I have no use for a soldier on dope or drugs. He’s a threat to everyone, not just to himself. I was ordered by my superior to take the company out on one of the last search-and-destroy sweeps. Tim, in the four months he’d been with us, had become a real albatross. He knew he had his father’s political clout behind him. He pulled things that no one else would dare and got away with it.”
Alanna moistened her lips. “Somehow, I can’t envision you letting him get away with it too often, Matt,” she began slowly.
He gave a derisive snort. “If I had had my way, he would have been sent flying back stateside so fast it would have made his head spin,” he growled. “He was just one of those rebels that would eventually get a lot of people hurt, and I knew it….” He rested his arms against his long muscular thighs, clasping his hands in front of him. “In retrospect I realize I should have done something about it sooner,” he muttered.
“What stopped you?”
Matt remained silent for almost a minute before answering her. “My company commander, Bob Green, told me he was getting pressure from headquarters staff to give Tim a good report. Bob and I had grown up together in Maine, and when he joined the Marine Corps I went away to college. He worked up through the ranks, and when I joined up after graduation we renewed out close friendship. When I needed someone, Bob used his authority to get me under his command, and I was grateful. Neither of us expected Tim Thornton to be dumped on us.
“Bob asked me to be patient with the kid because the staff threatened to ruin his career otherwise, and he was sitting in a good position to become a general himself someday. I agreed to try to ride the situation out. But Tim kept eroding the morale of the men. Finally I said to hell with it and flew to Da Nang to see what I could do. I tried everyone, from the colonel on down, hoping to take their attention away from Bob and focus it on me instead.” His face grew hard. “And that’s where I got my hatred for politics, Alanna. I was told that Tim was the son of an influential senator who held the purse strings to the military via the committee on defense spending. They didn’t want the boat rocked. The Chiefs of Staff were afraid of large defense cutbacks and didn’t want Thornton’s son implicated in anything which might set the military up as a target of his father’s vast senatorial anger and power. God, I can still see myself standing stiffly at attention while that panel of officers explained their reasoning to me. I was told that if I intended to remain a career officer I’d better learn to live with the kid. Not only that, they threatened to destroy Bob’s career if there was any trouble. It was an effective maneuver. I might have destroyed my own career, but they were betting high stakes that I wouldn’t jeopardize his.” He sighed raggedly. “They were right,” he whispered.
Alanna stared at Matt disbelievingly. “It sounds like they blackmailed you,” she murmured.
He gave her a cutting smile. “They did. It was on that final sweep that everything went to hell,” he said, tiredness evident in his voice. “When we stopped to make camp on the fifth night, LPs, or listening posts, were set out around the perimeter of the company. The men in the LPs were on watch for four hours at a time. It was their job to warn the company if the enemy was getting ready to launch a surprise attack. Tim h
ad the post at the northern side of the camp. According to the surviving Marines in his company, he had taken a couple of uppers before going out,” Matt snarled softly. “The LPs were supposed to radio at any sign of danger so I could call in air strikes and get assistance to protect my men.”
Matt rubbed his palms against his thighs, straightening up. “To make an excruciating story very short, Tim, after being “up,” promptly came down and fell asleep at his post. The enemy did launch a ground assault against us early that morning. Tim apparently awakened after the sappers, who carry explosives, had passed by him. I don’t know whether he was disoriented or just plain scared, but he got out of the foxhole and ran into the jungle.”
Alanna inhaled sharply, her hand across her mouth as she stared at Matt. “Are you saying he deserted his post?”
Wearily, Matt nodded. “Exactly. He left our entire company vulnerable to attack. Our first warning was when the sappers started blowing holes in the concertina barbed wire and the enemy began to pour through those holes, attacking the awakening men.” He rubbed his face, shaking his head. “God, it was the worst nightmare I’ve ever survived, Alanna. We ended up rallying enough to throw back the first wave. But the second wave came, and we had so many casualties, I—” His voice halted. Finally, his words came out in anguished tones. “I had to call in an air strike on top of our own position in order to save us.”
“Oh, no,” Alanna cried softly, large tears blurring her vision. She resisted the horrible image of an air strike being dropped on both the enemy and the Marines.
“It’s a last-ditch procedure, when you’re being overrun.” He gave a painful shrug. “Not one that we like to employ, but—if it hadn’t been for Tim leaving his post, it would never have happened. Never.” The final words were grated out with such coldness that Alanna felt her stomach knot.
“I launched an investigation as to what had happened. We found Tim’s body almost a quarter of a mile away—he had been killed by the enemy. I interrogated his squad mates…or what was left of his squad. The two men who survived told me he had been drinking alcohol before going out and popped the uppers just before leaving for his post. I had Thornton’s body flown directly to Saigon for autopsy. At that point, I didn’t care any longer. The press was hounding headquarters, and the pressure was on Bob because he was the officer in charge. I was going to make sure Thornton got credit for the massacre and that Bob’s name as well as my own were cleared in the process. I had all the proof I needed because the autopsy report from the hospital showed significant levels of alcohol as well as drugs in his bloodstream.”
“They stopped you,” Alanna stated hoarsely, her eyes round with disbelief. “Oh, my God, Matt, you mean all these years you’ve taken the blame for what happened, and it wasn’t your fault?” she cried.
He managed a bitter smile. “Let’s just put it this way, honey. Orders came down, unofficially, that my commander was to cover up the whole sordid affair. I was so distraught at that point, I allowed Bob to make me promise to go along with the phony story. In essence, we were both ordered to go along with the cover-up. And if we didn’t, then we could expect our careers to be ruined. And the blame for the massacre would be squarely laid on Bob.”
She could only sit there in shock. “I can’t believe you would sacrifice your convictions in such a situation.”
“Frankly, when I look back on it, I can’t either,” he admitted. “But you have to remember my emotional instability, the shock of losing so many Marines, and the fact that my best friend was begging me not to spill the ugly truth. And the truth wouldn’t really help anyone. Tim was dead—he couldn’t be taught a lesson.” He turned, grasping her hand and squeezing it. “We all do things we’d never thought we would do when the pressures are great enough, Alanna. Maybe you’ve never been beaten down so far you couldn’t separate right from wrong. Looking back on it, I realize I should have insisted on an investigation that would put the blame squarely on Tim Thornton. Hindsight is always more accurate,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“So you’ve lived with this cover-up during the rest of your military career,” she said. “And you’ve taken the brunt of Senator Thornton’s hatred because he thought you caused Tim’s death.”
“Yes, and the ironic thing is that ever since Bob became a general, he and Senator Thornton have constantly been at each other’s throats over the defense budget. I guess everything goes full circle.”
Alanna straightened up, recalling the bitter feuds between the senator and the military in the finance committee. “You don’t mean General Robert Green?” she breathed.
“Yes.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “See how messy a political problem it has become?”
She had automatically put her hand against her breast. “My God,” was all she could stammer out. “Can you imagine the scandal that would explode on the Hill if this ever got out? The senator is a dove, and he hates the military for so many reasons. If his son’s memory were dragged through the mud that way, he’d become rabid in his hatred.”
Matt got to his feet, taking both her hands and pulling her up. “It would be political disaster for the military,” he agreed grimly.
“And it might ruin your career and reputation, too,” she stammered, looking up at him worriedly.
He laughed softly, sliding his arms around her hips and drawing her against him. “I’ve only got two years left, honey, and there isn’t much they can do to hurt me now. The only reason I continue to take Thornton’s abuse is because I’m what is known as a ‘short-timer’ now. I can see the end in sight, and I have the strength to bear that load until I get my discharge papers.” He leaned down, caressing her lips in a long kiss. As he drew away he muttered, “Besides, I’m in love, and I’m happy for the first time in many, many years. And your love and understanding will make it easy to carry this damned albatross the last two years.”
Chapter Thirteen
Alanna stood in the foyer of her apartment, unable to move away from Matt. It was late Sunday evening, and she was feeling tired, but happy.
“Look, you get some rest, lady,” Matt ordered gently. “I’ll call you tomorrow evening, and we’ll make some plans for the next week. Fair enough?
She thrilled to even the slightest touch of his hand upon her body. How could a weekend go so quickly? It all seemed like a beautiful dream that was fading away, and now she was beginning to wake to the cold, harsh reality of living once again. But he was standing there, that arresting gaze caressing her with unspoken love. Mustering a small smile, she nodded. “It sounds wonderful,” she whispered.
“Good. Maybe, if we get lucky, I can steal you away to my home in McLean for next weekend. Deal?”
Her heart thudded at his husky invitation. “I’d love that, Matt.”
* * *
The senator’s office was in a flurry of preparations as Alanna entered the suite of bustling, busy rooms. Aides and secretaries were walking quickly back and forth, and the air was charged with an indefinable electricity. She stopped by Peggy’s desk as a matter of habit to pick up her weekly assignments.
“What’s going on?” she wanted to know.
“Plenty, believe me,” the secretary responded, giving her a full smile.
Alanna had never particularly cared for Peggy. Why was it that when Peggy smiled like that it brought a picture of a barracuda to mind? Shifting her briefcase to her left hand, Alanna asked, “What’s on my agenda for the week, then?”
Peggy reached into her bottom left drawer and pulled out a heavy manila envelope with Alanna’s name neatly typed on it. “You mean two weeks, my dear. Here are your airplane tickets and a packet of information on your assignment. The senator was so pleased with your lobbying efforts in California that he’s sending you to the state of Washington to confer with several companies that have defense contracts with the federal government. You’ll be meeting with representatives of several major aeronautics corporations and gathering data that he needs in order to develop a
better picture of the defense budget request due up for vote in the next several months. All the info is there. You’d better rush home and pack a bag because I’ve got you leaving on an eleven-thirty flight to Seattle.”
Alanna moaned inwardly, staring at the packet. Without a word, she turned and went to her office, picking up pertinent telephone messages and then leaving the Hill. Disappointment transformed her ebullient mood into a spiraling depression. Two weeks away from Matt? Her heart twinged with real pain at the thought of the unforeseen separation. She set her briefcase down after entering her apartment and went directly to the phone. Dialing Matt’s office, she was connected with his secretary.
“I’m sorry, but Colonel Breckenridge is in a meeting all morning. May I take a message?”
Alanna caught her lip between her teeth, unsure. What if certain people over at the Pentagon found out that she had called? Would it create an embarrassing situation for Matt? The story he had told her on Sunday was fresh in her mind, and she wanted to protect him from any possible problems. “No—no thank you. I’ll just try at a later time. Thanks.”
To her despair, when she got to the airport she discovered she had not packed her personal telephone book, which contained his home phone number. In her hurry to catch the flight, Alanna had literally thrown her clothes into a suitcase and called a taxi. It had been a miserable oversight on her part. His home phone, she found out, was unlisted. Once in Seattle, Alanna was caught in meeting after meeting, and the few times she tried to call Matt’s office, he was not at his desk.
Finally, the following Friday, she got a chance between meetings to place a call to the Pentagon.
“I’m sorry,” his secretary answered crisply, “but Colonel Breckenridge will be out of his office until Monday. May I take a message?”
Alanna grimaced, her fingers gripping the phone more tightly. “No—I, uh, guess not.” She slowly let the phone drop back down on the receiver cradle, staring at it for a long, long time. She threw herself into her meetings, using both Saturday and Sunday to cut short the number of days she had to spend in Seattle. The men and women she met with were only too happy to hold business discussions in the evening, as long as the senator’s office picked up the tab. Alanna neither read the newspaper nor watched television because of the accelerated itinerary. By twelve each night, she fell into an exhausted sleep, too tired to care what was taking place in the world around her.
Captive of Fate Page 18