Pale Blue

by Mike Jenne

  “I am, sir.”

  “It’s a stand-by assignment, sort of a preemptive contingency mission,” explained Fels. “If you take the job, you’ll go back over to Vietnam, where you’ll put together a team to execute a search and rescue operation with limited or no notice.”

  Glades had been around long enough that he could read between the lines. Apparently, someone or something would be flying over Vietnam in the very near future, and it was obviously imperative that it—whoever or whatever it was—did not fall into enemy hands. He strongly suspected that the subject was the son or nephew of some high-ranking general or admiral trying to log some combat time before the curtains dropped completely. It was certainly logical; after all, John McCain, the son of a senior Navy admiral, the former Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command, had been a prisoner of the North Vietnamese since 1967.

  To avoid a similar situation, Fels was probably coordinating the expedient mission as a personal favor to someone high up in the food chain. Such arrangements weren’t at all uncommon; the average American taxpayer would probably be amazed to know how many significant military activities—including major operations—took place only as the result of a friendly handshake between old acquaintances.

  “Sir, am I to assume that this contingency is for someone in particular?” asked Glades.

  Fels nodded. “It is, but you won’t be exposed to that information unless there is an actual requirement to execute. To be honest, I seriously doubt that it will come to that, but we would like to have an ace in the hole just in case.”

  “So I’ll be assembling a team? If that’s the case, sir, I would like an opportunity to pitch this to a few guys. Most of them are stationed at Bragg, but a couple are assigned to the Ranger Department at Benning.”

  “So these are all Army people?” asked Fels.

  Glades nodded.

  “Nestor, write down the names of the men you want,” replied Fels. “But I’ll warn you: this is a very sensitive, close-hold mission that will rely almost exclusively on Air Force resources and personnel. Everything has to be kept strictly on the QT, so I seriously doubt that I will receive authorization to let you talk to anyone on the Army side. Sorry.”

  Glades pulled a notebook from his breast pocket, removed it from a thick plastic pouch, and used a pencil to jot down a list of names. He tore the page from the notebook and handed it to Fels. At this point, he strongly suspected that this mission was not entirely on the up and up.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Fels, frowning as he examined the list. “But don’t get your hopes up. But, on a positive note, you can have your pick of any of the men assigned here at the 116th Wing. Let me caveat that, though; a lot of our men have already departed Eglin, and they’re scattered all across the planet.”

  Glades contemplated the offer. Most of the 116th’s guys were at least as competent as the some of the men he had fought with in Vietnam, but he was still extremely leery of potentially staking his life on strangers. He had worked with a handful of Fels’s men in Haiti just a couple of years ago and felt comfortable with working with them again, especially if this was only a contingency operation.

  “Okay, sir. If that’s the case, I have a few names for you. I’ll definitely need a medic or possibly two. How about Steve Baker? He’s a PJ.”

  Fels consulted some papers in a folder and then shook his head. “Baker was a PJ, but he’s left the Air Force. He’s at the University of Maryland, finishing his degree, with plans to go on to medical school.”

  “Ulf Finn?”

  “Finn is still here. I’m sure he would be up for the challenge.”

  “Captain Lewis?” asked Glades, somewhat reluctantly.

  “Died in a helicopter crash last year. Very unfortunate.”

  Glades scratched his head. “I have one more name. Matt Henson? I think he was one of your logistics support contractors.”

  Fels riffled through his paperwork for almost a minute and then replied, “Right after the mission in Haiti, Henson got bit hard by the PJ bug. He returned to active duty with the Air Force and went straight into the pararescue training pipeline. He’s a fully qualified PJ, currently assigned to the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand.”

  “So Henson’s off limits, sir?”

  Grinning, Fels replied, “Not necessarily. I’ll make a few calls and see if his services can be made available.”

  Milton, Florida

  4:47 p.m., Thursday, November 9, 1972

  Glades stood next to the washing machine, stripping off his filthy fatigues, when Deirdre arrived home after picking up the kids from their post-school activities. With his mud-caked web gear and rucksack heaped in one corner, and his boots and uniforms piled in another, the tiny laundry room was in shambles.

  “You’re home early,” she said cheerfully, strolling in with a wicker basket jammed with dirty clothes and football uniforms. “I didn’t expect you any earlier than tomorrow afternoon. Everything all right at the camp?”

  Standing naked before her, he gave her a quick kiss and nodded. Turning around, he said, “Would you mind checking my back for ticks?”

  “Oh, Nestor, darling, you’re so romantic,” she replied, nudging the door closed with her elbow. “Check you for ticks, dear? You just sweep me off my feet with such sweet talk.”

  Looking back over his shoulder, he grinned. “I’ll make it up to you after I grab a shower.”

  She laughed. “Well, it might have to wait until we put the kids to bed. So, Ness, will you have to go back to work tomorrow? Is there any chance you’ll be home in time for the big game?”

  “Niceville Eagles? I wouldn’t miss that one. And to answer your question, no, I’m not going back to work in the morning, or this weekend, either.”

  “Really?” she asked, lighting a kitchen match. She blew it out and held the hot tip to a tick burrowed into the small of his back. In seconds, the squirming tick dropped to the floor. “And why would you not be going to work this weekend, my love?”

  “I have a mission. I fly out on Monday morning. Vietnam. I’ll be gone about five months.”

  Deirdre gasped. “Vietnam?” she mumbled. “No…”

  Although he didn’t expect her to be overcome with joy, her reaction wasn’t what he anticipated. Usually, she exhibited a seemingly nonchalant attitude about his comings and goings. After all, she was the daughter of a professional soldier in the toughest regiment in the British Army. She was descended from a long line of soldiers and soldiers’ wives; the women in her family had been sending men off to battle for generations, all the way back to the Gaelic and Celtic eras. They had probably developed their detached demeanor as a defensive mechanism against the prolonged anguish of waiting for their warriors to come home, and the terrible grief when they didn’t.

  Glades turned to face her and was taken aback by the shocked look on her face. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

  “I had a dream last night,” she replied, leaning against the dryer and slipping down to the mud-streaked linoleum floor. “Really, it was more of a nightmare. Nestor, it just really spooked me. I woke up crying.”

  Glades suspected that, given Deirdre’s ancestral background and the fact that she had spent her childhood and most of her teen years watching her father’s SAS troopers leave for dangerous places, and then watching as many did not return, she probably possessed something of a sixth sense about such matters.

  “Was I killed in your dream?” he asked, sitting down beside her. He cupped her head in his hands and felt her warm tears on his bare shoulder.

  “No,” she stammered, trembling against his chest. “Much worse than that: you were captured. Nestor, we’ve talked about this, and as much as I could accept you being killed, the thought of you being captured just terrifies me. I just don’t think I could bear it.”

  “Tell me: in your dream, did you see me being taken prisoner?”

  “No. Actually
, I never saw you at all.”

  “Then why did you think I was captured?”

  Tears streamed down her face as she replied, “Because in my dream, I saw the inside of a cell in a POW camp, and your name was written on the wall.”

  16

  WESTBOUND

  Dayton, Ohio

  3:30 p.m., Saturday, November 11, 1972

  Grasping a bouquet of lilies and a bottle of white wine, Ourecky lightly rapped his knuckles on the front door. He hadn’t seen Bea or Andy since returning from the final mission, and he was both anxious and apprehensive.

  Bea opened the front door quietly. “Shhh,” she whispered, pressing her finger to her lips. “Jill is asleep, and the little ones are also down for a nap.”

  “Okay,” he replied, handing her the flowers and wine. “For you.”

  “Oh, thank you, honey,” she said quietly. “Beaujolais? My favorite!”

  He stooped over to slip off his shoes and then stood to hug her tightly. “I missed you, Bea.”

  “I miss you always, Scott,” she answered. “Come on in.”

  In his stocking feet, he padded after her as she guided him to the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry about General Tew,” she said, taking down two wine glasses from the cupboard. “I wish that I could have gone to the funeral, but….”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How was his wife? It sounded like it was all so sudden. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was just a wreck.”

  “Not as much as you might think,” answered Ourecky, opening the bottle with a corkscrew. “I guess that you hadn’t seen him in a while. He definitely wasn’t in the best of health. As for his wife, she seems to be taking it in stride. I talked to her briefly after the funeral, and I think she was really surprised that he had lived as long as he had.”

  “Well, it’s sad. He was such a sweet man.”

  Smiling, Ourecky said, “I don’t know if I would necessarily describe him as sweet, but he was a good man, a good boss.”

  “So, does that mean Virgil Wolcott is in charge now?” she asked, holding out the stemmed glasses.

  “No, they’ve brought in a Navy guy,” he answered, pouring the wine. “Admiral Tarbox. I don’t think you’ve met him.”

  “Navy? Interesting.”

  “It’s part of a big consolidation,” he explained. He sipped the warm Beaujolais and frowned; he wasn’t nearly as fond of it as she was. “To save money, the Department of Defense is combining some programs. Mostly, it’s to cut down on duplication of effort. Of course, with the Navy assuming control, there will be some big changes. A lot of folks will be laid off here at Wright-Patterson, and most of the…uh…test operations here will shift to California.”

  “California? Really? I suppose there are worse places to be.”

  “I suppose. I’m going out there next week.”

  “Permanently?” she asked, setting her glass on the counter. “I thought…”

  “No, next week is just a visit. Just a couple of days.”

  “Well, how about the election?” she asked, gesturing toward a dog-eared McGovern flyer taped to the front of the refrigerator. “Are you going to be able to vote?”

  “Yeah. I’m not supposed to leave until Thursday.”

  “So, since you finished that last big test, aren’t you done here?” she asked, filling a glass vase with water from the tap. She took an aspirin from a bottle on the counter, crumbled it in a spoon, and poured the white powder in the water. “Are they going to make good on Mark Tew’s promise to send you to MIT?”

  “Not immediately,” he replied. “I have to stay here for a few more months.” He glanced at her face as she arranged the lilies in the vase; her expression clearly conveyed that she wasn’t happy.

  “I suppose they have to squeeze just a little bit out of you,” she said. She drained her wine and then refilled both glasses. “Some things never change.”

  “Bea, I’m confident that I will eventually go to Cambridge,” he said, changing the subject. “It will probably be around the end of March. I thought we might fly up to Boston some weekend soon and start looking around for an apartment and…”

  She sighed, shrugged her shoulders. “Scott, how many times have I heard that story? And it always ends up the same: you’re right on the verge of going, and then there’s an urgent call from Virgil Wolcott, and you vanish yet again.”

  “But this time it will be the real thing.”

  “Sure it will be, Scott, but the Air Force has promised this same thing, over and over, but has yet to deliver. Why should it be any different this time?”

  “It will be. I promise. Virgil says I’m going. We will just have to wait a little longer than I had expected.”

  “I can believe you, Scott, but I don’t have much faith in Virgil’s word. Until you’re finally free of him, I don’t think that anything will ever change.”

  Quickly changing the subject, he asked, “I did tell you that Drew’s gone, right?”

  “You did. When you called last week. He going overseas?” she asked. “Isn’t that what you said? Vietnam?”

  He nodded. “He’s training in California now. He probably won’t leave for Vietnam until next month at the earliest.”

  “But isn’t the war all but over?” she asked, fingering the silver peace symbol dangling from a thin chain around her neck. “I just don’t understand why the Air Force is making him go now. Aren’t we bringing our guys home?”

  He wasn’t sure how he could possibly explain to her that Drew had been relentlessly lobbying for this opportunity as long as Ourecky had known him. And the Air Force definitely wasn’t sending him. In fact, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force had personally decreed that Carson not go, so it was a safe bet that he would blow a four-star gasket if he ever discovered what was going on behind his back.

  Holding the wine bottle in one hand and her glass in the other, she nodded toward the living room. He followed her, and joined her on the couch.

  “If it’s any consolation, Bea,” he said, “I suppose that you can see that I won’t be working with Drew anymore, so…”

  “That’s beside the fact, Scott. As much as I don’t want you flying with Drew, I don’t want him going overseas. It’s not just Drew. I don’t want anyone to go. I think too many guys have been killed and hurt over there as it is, and I don’t think anyone has any real clue what it was all for. It all just seems so tragic.”

  They both turned as they heard a faint noise in the hallway. Rubbing sleep from his eyes, sucking his thumb, dragging a well-worn blanket in his wake, Andy waddled into the living room.

  “Andy, look who’s here,” announced Bea.

  Squealing with glee, Andy dropped his blue blanket, ran to Ourecky, and jumped headlong into his outstretched arms. “Daddy!” he cried.

  “How is he?” asked Ourecky, gripping him tightly.

  “He misses you. Otherwise, he’s fine. Besides, he has a new best friend. He and Rebecca are thick as thieves.”

  “Rebecca?” he asked.

  “Jill’s little girl. She’s a year older than Andy. I’m not looking forward to when we leave here and I have to tear them away from each other. That’s going to be traumatic.”

  Ourecky smiled to himself. Her comment was a favorable sign; although she had not otherwise said anything about it, Bea was obviously thinking of the time when she would come home. Maybe there was some hope for the future. He smiled at Andy, kissed the top of his head, and held him closely.

  A few minutes later, Rebecca joined them. Yawning, clutching a Raggedy Ann doll to her chest, she plopped down on the floor amidst the scattered toys. With shoulder-length raven hair, she looked like a younger version of Jill.

  Andy wiggled out of Ourecky’s lap to join his playmate. “Well, that sure didn’t take much,” he commented, watching them frolic. “I guess I’m all but forgotten now.”

  “Don’t take it so personally,” noted Bea. “It’s not just you. Both of us might as well be invis
ible at this point.”

  “Boy, you weren’t kidding. Those two sure get along well,” he observed, watching as the two children noisily romped on the floor.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” she replied, laughing. “They’re inseparable, like two peas in a pod.”

  “So what happens to her when…”

  “When Jill dies?” she asked matter-of-factly. “Jill’s mother will keep her. Jill has already been to a lawyer to draw up the papers. It’s in her will, also.”

  Hand in hand, Andy and Rebecca approached the coach. “Can we have a popsicle, Aunt Bea?” asked Rebecca, grinning. “We’ll share it.”

  “It’s too close to supper.” Bea shook her head. “I don’t want you two to spoil your appetite.”

  “What are we having?” asked Rebecca, smoothing her doll’s crown of yarn hair.

  “Spaghetti and meatballs.” Bea gazed toward Ourecky and smiled. “Can you stay for dinner?” she asked, lightly touching his forearm.

  “Spaghetti and meatballs? How could I possibly resist?” Ourecky grinned at her and then looked at the children. Suddenly, he started coughing as he noticed something he hadn’t seen before. Rebecca’s eyes were crystalline blue, almost unnaturally so, just like…

  “Are you all right?” asked Bea. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  He gulped down the remainder of the water. “Those eyes,” he gasped, staring into Rebecca’s face. “Her eyes. They look just like…”

  “That’s right,” noted Bea. “Scott, I love you, but for such an intelligent man, sometimes you’re not very observant. We’re pretty sure that Drew is her father. I can’t believe that you’re just now catching on. You’ve seen her before this.”

  “I guess I just never made the connection before,” he muttered. “I can’t believe that Jill could put herself in such a situation.”

  “Jill? You can’t believe that she put herself in such a situation? Like she did it all by herself? Are you that quick to let your buddy Drew off the hook?” Have you ever heard that expression ‘There but for the grace of God go I?’ Well, I’ve done plenty of stupid things myself, and I can tell you that there have been moments in my life when I could have been in exactly the same circumstances as Jill. I was just very fortunate.”