Without Remorse (1993)

by Tom - Jack Ryan 08 Clancy

  "We're going?"

  "Tonight," Maxwell confirmed with a nod.

  Despite the expectation and enthusiasm, Kelly felt the usual chill. It wasn't practice anymore. His life was on the line again. The lives of others would depend on him. He would have to get the job done. Well, he told himself, I know how to do that. Kelly waited by the chopper while Maxwell went over to Captain Albie. General Young's staff car pulled up so that he could deliver the news as well. Salutes were exchanged as Kelly watched. Albie got the word, and his back went a little straighter. The Recon Marines gathered around, and their reaction was surprisingly sober and matter-of-fact. Looks were exchanged, rather dubious ones, but they soon changed to simple, determined nods. The mission was GO. The message delivered, Maxwell came back to the helicopter.

  "I guess you want that quick liberty."

  "You said you'd do it, sir."

  The Admiral clapped the younger man on the shoulder and pointed to the helo. Inside, they put on headsets while the flight crew spooled up the engine.

  "How soon, sir?"

  "You be back here by midnight." The pilot looked back at them from the right seat. Maxwell motioned for him to stay on the ground.

  "Aye aye, sir." Kelly removed the headset and jumped out of the helicopter, going to join General Young.

  "Dutch told me," Young said, the disapproval clear in his voice. You just didn't do things this way. "What do you need?"

  "Back to the boat to change, then run me up to Baltimore, okay? I'll drive back myself."

  "Look, Clark--"

  "General, I helped plan this mission. I'm first in and I'm last out." Young wanted to swear but didn't. Instead he pointed to his driver, then to Kelly.

  Fifteen minutes later, Kelly was in another life. Since leaving Springer tied up at the guest slip, the world had stopped, and he'd moved backwards in time. Now he was in forward motion for a brief period. A quick look determined that the dockmaster was keeping an eye on things. He raced through a shower and changed into civilian clothes, heading back to the General's staff car.

  "Baltimore, Corporal. Matter of fact, I'll make it easy on you. Just drop me off at the airport. I'll catch a cab the rest of the way."

  "You got it, sir," the driver told a man already fading into sleep.

  "So what's the story, Mr. MacKenzie?" Hicks asked.

  "They approved it," the special assistant replied, signing a few papers and initialing a few others for various official archives where future historians would record his name as a minor player in the great events of his time.

  "Can you say what?"

  What the hell, MacKenzie thought. Hicks had a clearance, and it was a chance to display something of his importance to the lad. In two minutes he covered the high points of BOXWOOD GREEN.

  "Sir, that's an invasion," Hicks pointed out as evenly as he could manage, despite the chill on his skin and the sudden knot in his stomach.

  "I suppose they might think so, but I don't. They've invaded three sovereign countries, as I recall."

  More urgently: "But the peace talks--you said yourself."

  "Oh, screw the peace talks! Damn it, Wally, we have people over there, and what they know is vital to our national security. Besides"--he smiled--"I helped sell it to Henry." And if this one comes off...

  "But--"

  MacKenzie looked up. Didn't this kid get it? "But what, Wally?"

  "It's dangerous."

  "War is that way, in case nobody ever told you."

  "Sir, I'm supposed to be able to talk here, right?" Hicks asked pointedly.

  "Of course you are, Wally. So talk."

  "The peace talks are at a delicate stage now--"

  "Peace talks are always delicate, aren't they? Go on," MacKenzie ordered, rather enjoying his pedagogic discourse. Maybe this kid would learn something for a change.

  "Sir, we've lost too many people already. We've killed a million of them. And for what? What have we gained? What has anybody gained?" His voice was almost a plea.

  That wasn't exactly new, and MacKenzie was tired of responding to it. "If you're asking me to defend how we got stuck with this mess, Wally, you're wasting your time. It's been a mess since the beginning, but that wasn't the work of this Administration, was it? We got elected with the mandate to get us the hell out of there."

  "Yes, sir," Hicks agreed, as he had to. "That's exactly my point. Doing this might harm our chances to bring it to an end. I think it's a mistake, sir."

  "Okay." MacKenzie relaxed, giving a tolerant eye to his aide. "That point of view may--I'll be generous, does have merit. What about the people, Wally?"

  "They took their chances. They lost," Hicks answered with the coldness of youth.

  "You know, that sort of detachment may have its use, but one difference between us is that I've been there and you haven't. You've never been in uniform, Wally. That's a shame. You might have learned something from it."

  Hicks was genuinely taken aback by the irrelevancy. "I don't know what that might be, sir. It would only have interfered with my studies."

  "Life isn't a book, son," MacKenzie said, using a word that he'd intended to be warm, but which merely sounded patronizing to his aide. "Real people bleed. Real people have feelings. Real people have dreams, and families. They have real lives. What you would have learned, Wally, is that they may not be like you, but they're still real people, and if you work in this government of the people, you must take note of that."

  "Yes, sir." What else could he say? There was no way he'd win this argument. Damn, he really needed someone to talk to about this.

  "John!" Not a word in two weeks. She'd feared that something had happened to him, but now she had to face the contradictory thought that he was indeed alive, and perhaps doing things best considered in the abstract.

  "Hello, Sandy." Kelly smiled, dressed decently again, in a tie and blue blazer. It was so obviously a disguise, and so different from the way she'd last seen the man, that even his appearance was disturbing.

  "Where have you been?" Sandy asked, waving him in, not wanting the neighbors to know.

  "Off doing something," Kelly dodged.

  "Doing what?" The immediacy of her tone demanded a substantive response.

  "Nothing illegal, I promise," was the best he could do.

  "You're sure?" A very awkward moment developed out of thin air. Kelly just stood there, right inside the door, suddenly oscillating between anger and guilt, wondering why he'd come here, why he'd asked Admiral Maxwell for a very special favor, and not really knowing the answer now.

  "John!" Sarah called down the stairs, saving both from their thoughts.

  "Hey, doc," Kelly called, and both were glad for the distraction.

  "Have we got a surprise for you!"

  "What?"

  Dr. Rosen came down the stairs, looking as frumpy as ever despite her smile. "You look different."

  "I've been exercising pretty regularly," Kelly explained.

  "What brings you here?" Sarah asked.

  "I'm going to be going somewhere, and I wanted to stop over before I left."

  "Where to?"

  "I can't say." The answer chilled the room.

  "John," Sandy said. "We know."

  "Okay." Kelly nodded. "I figured you would. How is she?"

  "She's doing fine, thanks to you," Sarah answered.

  "John, we need to talk, okay?" Sandy insisted. Dr. Rosen bent to her wishes and went back upstairs while nurse and former patient drifted into the kitchen.

  "John, what exactly have you been doing?"

  "Lately? I can't say, Sandy. I'm sorry, but I can't."

  "I mean--I mean everything. What have you been up to?"

  "You're better off not knowing, Sandy."

  "Billy and Rick?" Nurse O'Toole said, putting it on the table.

  Kelly motioned his head to the second floor. "You've seen what they did to her? They won't be doing that anymore."

  "John, you can't do things like that! The police--
"

  "--are infiltrated," Kelly told her. "The organization has compromised somebody, probably someone very high up. Because of that I can't trust the police, and neither can you, Sandy," he concluded as reasonably as he could.

  "But there are others. John. There are others who--" His statement finally penetrated. "How do you know that?"

  "I asked Billy some questions." Kelly paused, and her face gave him yet more guilt. "Sandy, do you really think somebody is going to go out of his way to investigate the death of a prostitute? That's what it is to them. Do you think anybody really cares about them? I asked you before, remember? You said that nobody even has a program to help them. You care. That's why I brought her here. But do the cops? No. Maybe I could scratch up information to burn the drug ring. I'm not sure, it's not what I've been trained for, but that's what I've been doing. If you want to turn me in, well, I can't stop you. I won't hurt you--"

  "I know that!" Sandy almost screamed. "John, you can't do this," she added more calmly.

  "Why not?" Kelly asked. "They kill people. They do horrible things, and nobody's doing anything about it. What about the victims, Sandy? Who speaks for them?"

  "The law does!"

  "And when the law doesn't work, then what? Do we just let them die? Die like that? Remember the picture of Pam?"

  "Yes," Sandy replied, losing the argument, knowing it, wishing it were otherwise.

  "They took hours on her, Sandy. Your--houseguest--watched. They made her watch. "

  "She told me. She's told us everything. She and Pam were friends. After--after Pam died, she's the one who brushed Pam's hair out, John."

  The reaction surprised her. It was immediately clear that Kelly's pain was behind a door, and some words could bring it out in the open with a sudden speed that punished him badly. He turned away for a moment and took a deep breath before turning back. "She's okay?"

  "We're going to take her home in a few days. Sarah and I will drive her there."

  "Thanks for telling me that. Thank you for taking care of her."

  It was the dichotomy that unsettled her so badly. He could talk about inflicting death on people so calmly, like Sam Rosen in a discussion of a tricky surgical procedure--and like the surgeon, Kelly cared about the people he--saved? Avenged? Was that the same thing? He thought so.

  "Sandy, it's like this: They killed Pam. They raped and tortured and killed her--as an example, so they could use other girls the same way. I'm going to get every one of them, and if I die in the process, that's the chance I'm going to take. I'm sorry if you don't like me for that."

  She took a deep breath. There was nothing more to be said.

  "You said you're going away."

  "Yes. If things work out I should be back in about two weeks."

  "Will it be dangerous?"

  "Not if I do it right." Kelly knew she would see through that one.

  "Doing what?"

  "A rescue mission. That's as far as I can go, and please don't repeat that to anyone. I'm leaving tonight. I've been off training for it, down at a military base."

  It was Sandy's turn to look away, back towards the kitchen door. He wasn't giving her a chance. There were too many contradictions. He'd saved a girl who would otherwise have certainly died, but he'd killed to do it. He loved a girl who was dead. He was willing to kill others because of that love, to risk everything for it. He'd trusted her and Sarah and Sam. Was he a bad man or a good one? The mixture of facts and ideas was impossible to reconcile. Seeing what had happened to Doris, working so hard now to get her well, hearing her voice--and her father's--it had all made sense to her at the time. It was always easy to consider things dispassionately, when they were at a distance. But not now, faced with the man who had done it all, who explained himself calmly and directly, not lying, not concealing, just telling the truth, and trusting her, again, to understand.

  "Vietnam?" she asked after a few moments, temporizing, trying to add more substance to a very muddled collection of thoughts.

  "That's right." Kelly paused. He had to explain it, just a little, to help her understand. "There are some people over there who won't get back unless we do something, and I am part of it."

  "But why do you have to go?"

  "Why me? It has to be somebody, and I'm the one they asked. Why do you do the things you do, Sandy? I asked that before, remember?"

  "Damn you, John! I've started to care about you," she blurted out.

  The pain returned to his face one more time. "Don't. You might get hurt again, and I wouldn't want that." Which was exactly the wrong thing for him to say. "People who get attached to me get hurt, Sandy."

  Sarah came in just then, leading Doris into the kitchen, for the moment saving both of them from themselves. The girl was transformed. Her eyes were animated now. Sandy had trimmed her hair and found decent clothes for her. She was still weak, but moving under her own power now. Her soft brown eyes fixed on Kelly.

  "You're him," she said quietly.

  "I guess I am. How are you?"

  She smiled. "I'm going home soon. Daddy--Daddy wants me back."

  "I'm sure he does, ma'am," Kelly said. She was so different from the victim he'd seen only a few weeks before. Maybe it did all mean something.

  The same thought came into Sandy's mind just then. Doris was the innocent one, the real victim of forces that had descended on her, and but for Kelly, she would be dead. Nothing else could have saved her. Other deaths had been necessary, but--but what?

  "So maybe it was Eddie," Piaggi said. "I told him to sniff around and he says he doesn't have anything."

  "And nothing's happened since you talked to him. Everything's back to normal, like," Henry replied, telling Anthony Piaggi what he already knew and following with a conclusion that he had also considered. "What if he was just trying to shake things up a little? What if he just wanted to be more important, Tony?"

  "Possible."

  Which led to the next question: "How much you want to bet that if Eddie takes a little trip, nothing else happens?"

  "You think he's making a move?"

  "You got anything else that makes sense?"

  "Anything happens to Eddie, there could be trouble. I don't think I can--"

  "Let me handle it? 1 have a way that'll work just fine."

  "Tell me about it," Piaggi said. Two minutes later he nodded approval.

  "Why did you come here?" Sandy asked while she and Kelly cleaned up the dinner table. Sarah took Doris back upstairs for more rest.

  "I wanted to see how she was doing." But that was a lie, and not an especially good one.

  "It's lonely, isn't it?" Kelly took a long time to answer.

  "Yeah." She'd forced him to face something. Being alone was not the sort of life he wanted to have, but fate and his own nature had forced it on him. Every time he'd reached out, something terrible had happened. Vengeance against those who had made his life into what it now was did make for a purpose, but it wasn't enough to fill the void they'd created. And now it was clear that what he was doing, all of it, was merely distancing him from someone else. How did life get so complicated as this?

  "I can't say it's okay, John. I wish I could. Saving Doris was a fine thing, but not through killing people. There is supposed to be another way--"

  "--and if there isn't, then what?"

  "Let me finish?" Sandy asked quietly.

  "Sorry."

  She touched his hand. "Please be careful."

  "I usually am, Sandy. Honest."

  "What you're doing, what you're going off to, it's not--"

  He smiled. "No, it's a real job. Official stuff and everything."

  "Two weeks?"

  "If it goes according to plan, yes."

  "Will it?"

  "Sometimes it actually does."

  Her hand squeezed his. "John, please, think it over. Please? Try to find another way. Let it go. Let it stop. You saved Doris. That's a wonderful thing. Maybe with what you've learned you can save the others without--w
ithout any more killing?"

  "I'll try." He couldn't say no to that, not with the warmth of her hand on his, and Kelly's trap was that his word, once given, could not be taken back. "Anyway, I have other things to worry about now." Which was true.

  "How will I know, John--I mean--"

  "About me?" He was surprised she would even want to know.

  "John, you can't just leave me not knowing."

  Kelly thought for a moment, pulled a pen from his coat, and wrote down a phone number. "This goes to a guy--an admiral named James Greer. He'll know, Sandy."

  "Please be careful." Her grip and her eyes were desperate now.

  "I will. I promise. I'm good at this, okay?"

  So was Tim. She didn't have to say it. Her eyes did, and Kelly understood how cruel it could be to leave anyone behind.

  "I have to go now, Sandy."

  "Just make sure you come back."

  "I will. Promise." But the words sounded empty, even to him. Kelly wanted to kiss her but couldn't. He moved away from the table, feeling her hand still on his. She was a tall woman, and very strong and brave, but she'd been hurt badly before, and it frightened Kelly that he might bring yet more pain to her life. "See you in a couple weeks. Say goodbye to Sarah and Doris for me, okay?"

  "Yes." She followed him towards the front door. "John, when you get back, let it stop."

  "I'll think about it," he said without turning, because he was afraid to look at her again. "I will."

  Kelly opened the door. It was dark outside now, and he'd have to hustle to get to Quantico on time. He could hear her behind him, hear her breathing. Two women in his life, one taken by an accident, one by murder, and now perhaps a third whom he was driving away all by himself.

  "John?" She hadn't let go of his hand, and he had to turn back despite his fear.

  "Yes, Sandy?" "Come back."

  He touched her face again, and kissed her hand, and drew away. She watched him walk to the Volkswagen and drive off.