Call to Duty (13 page)

A bolt in the door slid back and Zack closed his eyes, feigning sleep. Someone entered the room and he was aware of a presence leaning over him. A sharp slap stung his face and his eyes blinked open. A man in a dark suit and carefully knotted tie was looking at him. “Mueller,” he announced, introducing himself as his expert fingers probed the bandage on his head and examined the marks on his face. “Yes,” the man said to someone behind him, “he has received a head injury. But that does not account for such a high fever.”

“Then what is causing it, Doktor,” an unseen voice said. Zack recognized the owner—the trench coated man from the train—a Gestapo agent. Instinctively, Zack realized that truth was his best defense and pointed to his right leg. The doctor produced a pair of scissors from his case and cut up the seam of Zack’s pant leg, laying open the bandage.

“Ah,” the doctor said, much more interested now.

“His papers say he has a head wound,” the Gestapo agent said. “There is no mention of his leg being hurt.”

The terror that gripped Zack drove away the last of the fog. Falling into the hands of the Gestapo was his worst fear. Again, the woman’s scream reached down the corridor, much louder now that the door was open. Was it Chantal? What had she told them? “Düsseldorf,” he muttered, thinking of the only logical reason for him to have another injury. Would the
fresh bandage convince them? What about the old bandage in his coat pocket? “An air raid, I was wounded on the train.” He let his mouth go slack and his gaze drift away.

“His accent is not German,” the doctor said.

“Yes, I know,” the Gestapo agent said, “that’s what made me suspicious. His papers identify him as being Dutch.” He turned and walked out of the room.

The doctor clucked his tongue and cut the bandage away. “Ah yes, sepsis. You are fortunate, my young Dutch friend, that the Gestapo provides its doctors with the best in medical supplies.” He cleansed the wound and examined it. “You need surgery, there are serious complications here.” He gave Zack a box of pills. “Sulfa” was all he said.

The Gestapo agent was back. “Bring him. The Frenchwoman confirms he was wounded during the bombing and the stationmaster at Cologne reported that she treated many of our injured.” There was the sound of disappointment in his voice. The doctor hastily bandaged Zack’s leg and helped him to his feet. Another man was waiting in the corridor and helped support Zack as he hobbled to another room.

Chantal was sitting in the room and looked up with relief when she saw Zack. Then he glared at the Gestapo agent. “Do you know who my father is?” she demanded.

“Yes, mademoiselle,” the agent said, “I know who you say you are. We are checking on that now.” He stomped out of the room, leaving them alone. Chantal gave a slight shake of her head, warning him to be quiet. It wasn’t necessary as every warning bell Zack possessed was in full alarm. The agent came back and dropped their passports, IDs, and travel papers on the floor. “All is in order,” he snapped.

“Since we have missed our train,” Chantal said, ice in every word as she picked them up, “perhaps you will provide the car you promised.”

“But of course, mademoiselle,” he said, giving her a withering look and holding the door open.

A few minutes later, the car dropped them back at the train station. Zack’s wheelchair was still where they had left it on the platform. Chantal helped him into it. “No one would touch it after seeing the Gestapo take us away,” she said.

“They’re first-class bastards,” Zack said. He saw her shudder.

“I saw a woman they were questioning,” she said. “You must have heard her scream. They made sure I saw her when they dragged her outside. She was naked and covered with burn spots…. She had piano wire tied around her neck.” She stopped, unable to talk. Then she forced herself to continue. “I think they were going to hang her.” There were tears in her eyes.

For a moment, Zack could see Chantal twisting naked, strangling at the end of a piano wire noose. The thought cut through him like a knife. “And they wonder why we bomb them.”

They waited in silence as another train drew into the station and stopped. Fresh-faced young soldiers clamored down, full of life and humor. Zack recalled the major and his veteran soldiers they had seen at Cologne. “They are not all the same,” he said.

“No, they are not,” Chantal said and wheeled him toward the train.

Chantal was kneeling on the floor of the train compartment in front of Zack stitching the leg of his pants that the doctor had cut open. An elderly woman traveling in the same compartment had lent her a needle and thread and watched in approval as Chantal finished the job, not waking the sleeping Zack. Chantal checked his temperature and was worried that it had not gone down. The sulfa drugs the doctor at the Gestapo headquarters had given Zack hadn’t taken effect yet. “His fever is worse,” she said.

“You are a good seamstress,” the old woman clucked, “as well as a good doctor. But this delay is not good. He needs to be in hospital.” Now there was stern disapproval in her voice. The train had been sitting on a siding for over four hours and the conductor would not let anyone off. “Surely, we can’t be too far from Baden-Baden,” the old woman said. She dropped her knitting into her traveling bag and stood up, determined to do something for the injured man. “Your trouble is you are too polite,” she told Chantal. “Your parents raised you correctly. I will find the conductor and resolve this.” The old woman marched purposefully out of the compartment.

“Where are we?” Zack said. He had been drifting in and out of sleep for a few minutes.

“I’m not sure,” Chantal said. “Somewhere near Baden-Baden.”

The name of their destination jolted Zack fully awake. His inner alarms were clanging furiously. “I don’t think we should go to Baden-Baden,” he said.

“I had never intended to,” she said. “My contacts are in France and it would be very difficult to get you out of the clinic once admitted.”

The elderly woman came back with the conductor in tow. “It is necessary to take proper care of this man,” she told the conductor. “You have delayed us too long.”

“I assure you,” the conductor said, “I have nothing to do with this delay.”

Chantal sensed that the conductor was wilting under the old woman’s onslaughts. “Where are we?” she asked.

“At Rastatt, ten kilometers from Baden-Baden. We will be moving soon. Please be patient.” He dug a map out of the small black notebook he carried jammed with schedules and tickets. “Here.” He pointed to a small town north of Baden-Baden that Chantal estimated was less than seven kilometers from the Rhine River and the French border. She made her decision.

“Herr von Duren’s fever is returning,” she announced, changing his cover name to “von” and implying that he was a member of the old German aristocracy. “I must get him to a surgery immediately.”

The conductor looked at Zack. “Surely he can wait until we reach Baden-Baden?” He had taken the bait and worry was in his voice.

The old woman turned into a fury and blitzed the conductor with a torrent of German that made Zack want to smile. The conductor beat a hasty retreat out of the compartment. He returned in less than fifteen minutes. “It is arranged,” he said, “for you to leave the train. You will be taken to a small clinic in Rastatt.” He helped Zack down the corridor and off the train where a small enclosed one-horse carriage was waiting for them. The old woman watched Zack settle in and when she was certain all was correct, she shook hands with Chantal in the formal German manner and wished them well.
She gave the conductor a sharp look of reproof and climbed back on board, her work done.

The horse pulling the carriage was as old and as decrepit as the driver and the sour smell of beer and dried sweat surrounded them both like a fog. The old man demanded they pay an outrageous fare before he would move. “It’s not far,” he said, leering at her. “The clinic is in a doctor’s house on the edge of town.” Without a word, Chantal paid him half, saying she would pay the rest when they reached their destination. She decided not to squeeze into the small cab and be subject to the driver’s foul odor. Instead, she walked beside the carriage as the old man headed the horse through the small town.

She shuddered from the cold and drew her cape around her, shutting out a sharp wind that blew harder as the evening darkened. “How much farther?”

“French,” he spat, not liking her accent. He tugged a flask out of his pocket and took a long pull at it. The horse plodded on and the old man emptied the small bottle. “
Scheisse
,” he muttered, cursing the French. “Too damn cold tonight to be hauling Froggies around.” He stopped in front of a
Gasthaus
, covered the old horse with a smelly blanket, and disappeared inside without a word. When he didn’t come out, Chantal went after him. She saw him sitting at a table buying drinks for two other men. The money she had just paid him was laying on the table.

Her frustration flared but she sensed that she would have to drag the old man out and that would cause a scene, drawing attention she did not want. She went outside and checked on Zack. His fever was getting worse. She snatched the blanket off the horse and wrapped it around them both, using her body heat to keep them warm. She hoped the driver would soon come out of his own accord.

When Zack started to shiver, she grabbed her purse and went back inside the gasthaus. The driver and his two mates were now visibly drunker. She marched up to the table and flung a handful of Reichsmarks down. “The rest of what I owe you,” she said and walked out of the smoke-filled room.

“
Leck mich doch am schwanz!
” he yelled after her.

Chantal blushed at the crude reference to fellatio as she rushed out the door. She heard someone sharply reprimand
the driver and say he was a worthless drunk. She climbed into the driver’s seat and unwound the reins. Before she could prod the horse into moving, the driver staggered out the door of the
Gasthaus
carrying a bottle. He jerked the carriage door open and yelled at her while he pulled himself into the seat. After pushing her aside, he dropped a full bottle of schnapps into her lap and grabbed the reins.

“
Strichmadchen
,” he muttered, calling her a whore, “you shamed me in front of my friends.” He whipped the old horse and they jolted down the street and crossed over a bridge that marked the end of the town. He hauled the horse to a halt and started to turn around. “
Polizei
,” he muttered, “maybe they should check your papers…”

Chantal grabbed the heavy bottle in her lap and swung, hitting him in the right temple. He slumped forward and the horse stopped moving. She hit him again in the same spot, feeling a reassuring crunch. She pushed the inert body out of the door.

Zack watched her through feverish eyes, slow to realize what was happening. “What are you doing?” he asked in English.

“Speak German,” she commanded as she dragged the unconscious man under the bridge. Zack staggered down to the ground and leaned over the rail in time to see her hold the driver’s head under the water. After what seemed an eternity, she let go and uncorked the bottle and poured most of it into the stream. “Maybe they’ll think this was an accident,” she said. “A drunk slipping and falling into the water.”

She scrambled back up the bank and helped Zack back into the seat. “Where are we going?” he mumbled, still speaking in English. His fever was getting worse.

She slapped him hard. “Speak German,” she ordered. He nodded and forced himself to think in German, not sure if he was mumbling or not. She started the horse down the road. “We’re very close to the border,” she explained, “and this may be our only chance to cross over.” His head nodded as he drifted into sleep and only the sounds of the horse’s plodding hoofs broke the silence of the night.

Zack awoke and a sudden panic gripped him. He didn’t know where he was. “I’m here,” Chantal said. “You’re safe.” Her words calmed him as he tried to push through the fever
that bound him. Slowly, he became aware that they were bundled up on a hard seat, sharing a smelly horse blanket and body heat. But he couldn’t recall her name. Then he remembered she had killed an old man. Why had she done that? Then he remembered, they were escaping from the Germans.

Through the trees he could see a wide river in the morning mist. “Where are we?” he asked, remembering to speak in German. “Your name is…”

“Chantal,” she answered, not worried about what he said as long as he did not speak English in his feverish state.

Zack forced himself to concentrate. “Dubois,” he said, completing her name.

“Can you remember you’re Jan van Duren?”

His panic came back as pieces of his memory came into focus. “Didn’t you kill him, too?”

“Yes.”

The simple answer stunned him back to rationality. “Why?”

“It was a mistake,” she said and turned away, looking across the Rhine and into France.

Navaree Sound, near Hurlburt Field, Florida

A gentle breeze drifted down Navarre Sound, touching the smooth surface of the Inland Waterway. It reached the causeway that crossed the sound and ruffled the palm fronds that marked the roof of the Pagoda, the tropical outdoor bar that was nestled on the sand next to the bridge. Underneath the branches, S. Gerald Gillespie found a seat at the bar among the other Wednesday night regulars who gathered for the volleyball league. Mike the bartender automatically drew a draft beer, dropped a wedge of lime in, and shoved it toward Gillespie. “Yo, Gill, playing tonight?” he asked.

“Not unless someone needs a fourth,” Gillespie answered. He wasn’t much of a volleyball player but was always available as a substitute. With a little luck, he thought, Allison’s team might be one player short and need a fourth. What a sacrifice, he thought, playing on Allison’s team, laughing at his own ineptness as the only male on the team of four. The league rules dictated that the teams had to be mixed with at least one female member and all the teams but one were made up of three males and one female. Allison, in her own contrary way, insisted on doing exactly the opposite.

The first two teams were warming up on the sandy court next to the beached catamarans and Gillespie moved over to the railing to watch. He liked the good-natured crowd that played at the Pagoda and they had readily accepted him into their midst, even though he was a klutz at volleyball. Everyone had a good time at the beach bar—it was Mike the bartender’s number one and most rigidly enforced rule.

Behind the volleyball players, the setting sun cast a golden shadow down the sound, creating a gentle glow. “Best sunsets in northern Florida,” the man leaning over the rail next
to him said. Two F-15 fighters from nearby Eglin Air Force Base arced across the sky in tight formation and the old frustration caught in Gillespie’s throat. I should be flying those, he said to himself.

Gillespie was still coddling his beer when the first match ended. He could see Allison’s team had its full complement of four and he secretly envied the lone male player who was surrounded by three of the best-looking women at Navaree Beach. Damn, he muttered to himself, why can’t I be that lucky. Unfortunately, women thought of S. Gerald Gillespie as “cute” and since he had bright green eyes, freckles, and red hair on top of his skinny five-foot four-inch body, he understood why they tended to pat him on top of his head. “Yo, Gill,” Mike the bartender called, “Donna’s Dynamos need a fourth. You up?” Gillespie gave an inward moan and joined the team led by Donna Bertino, a pixieish seventh-grade teacher who reminded Gillespie of her students. He lined up directly opposite Allison at the net, not exactly what he wanted.

On the fourth rotation, he found himself back at the net with Allison, totally distracted by the image towering over him. She was straight out of any issue of
Playboy
and what she did for her thong bikini was criminal. He had visions of his face buried between her large breasts. Donna, his team captain, served and the return was set up for Allison to spike. She jumped and reached high above her head, smashing the ball down onto Gillespie. The ball caromed off his head and bounced into the water over twenty feet away. Everyone laughed as Gillespie staggered about, claiming he had been taken advantage of. It was going to be a long game.

The game turned into an upset and the tough and wiry Donna spurred her team on, defeating Allison’s Amazons. Afterward, the winners, per Mike the bartender’s second rule, set a round of beers. Donna stood beside him on the sand and talked about the game, professionally dissecting his play. “Actually, you’re pretty good,” she told him. “You anticipate well and move faster than hell. But, you’re intimidated by the other players. Don’t let their height get to you.” She looked over his shoulder. “Oh, oh. Bimbo alert.” He turned and looked up into Allison’s beautiful face.

“Hope I didn’t hurt you out there, Carrot Top,” Allison said, giving his hair a playful scrub as she walked by.

“No problem,” Gillespie called to her back, wanting to stroke her perfect buttocks. He turned back to Donna. “Got to go. Early-morning flight at oh-dark-early. Thanks for the game.” He glanced in the direction of Allison before he made his way along the path to the parking lot, feeling very much like the defeated male. He was hopelessly in love.

Donna watched him go. “Men are so stupid,” she grumbled to herself.

The ungainly shadow came to life in the early-morning dark that enveloped Hurlburt Field. Slowly, and then with increasing speed, the six-bladed, seventy-two-foot diameter rotor of the MH-53J Pave Low helicopter beat at the air and became a blur as it picked up rpm. Then the shadow moved across the ramp into a takeoff position. In the cockpit, Captain S. Gerald Gillespie sat in the left seat, reading the before-takeoff checklist. As the instructor pilot for this mission, he also had to play copilot. “Checklist complete,” he told the lieutenant sitting in the right seat, the aircraft commander’s position. He called the control tower for a release and they were cleared for takeoff. The lieutenant gave the command and Gillespie reached for the throttles on the overhead panel and moved them forward. Because the aircraft was well below its maximum gross takeoff weight of forty-two thousand pounds, the Pave Low helicopter lifted easily into the air and flew across the incredibly even treetops of the pines that covered the terrain north of Hurlburt Field.

Gillespie monitored the instruments and the FLIR scope, forward-looking infrared, under his night vision goggles as they flew through the dark. He glanced over at the lieutenant who was also wearing a bulky pair of ANVIS-6 goggles. Although the NVGs, night vision goggles, were designed to enable the pilot to see outside visual references in the dark and still be able to look under them to see the instruments, it was difficult to constantly transition between the two. So Gillespie read the instruments out for the lieutenant, making things much easier. “Piece of cake,” Gillespie said over the intercom, trying to reassure the young pilot. Engine noise from the two 4,330-horsepower turbo shaft engines and the whirl
ing seventy-two-foot rotor reduced normal conversations to screaming matches without the intercom.

“Easy for you to say,” the lieutenant replied, tension straining his voice.

The flight engineer sitting between and slightly aft of the two pilots glanced at Gillespie and shook his head. The sergeant had flown with the lieutenant before and didn’t trust him. Gillespie knew what the sergeant was thinking—the kid flew by the numbers, relied heavily on instruments, and couldn’t fly by the seat of his pants. He was low on PT, pilot technique. Not good, Gillespie thought; in this squadron, you’ve got to be able to do it all.

The 20th Special Operations Squadron, better known as the Green Hornets, in the 1st SOW, 1st Special Operations Wing, flew the Air Force’s most sophisticated helicopter and ruthlessly trained to “conduct day or night low-level penetration into hostile or enemy territory to accomplish clandestine infiltration/exfiltration, aerial gunnery support, and reinforcement throughout the world.” At least that’s what the official paperwork said. For the generals and colonels, that meant the crews had to be carefully selected and trained, every mission deliberately planned on the ground, and above all, flying safety had to be paramount. Gillespie and the sergeant agreed with all that, as far as it went. But training and experience had added two other factors to their personal equations for success that caused the same generals and colonels to grind their teeth in their sleep and fear for their jobs. Gillespie and the sergeant knew that for a slow-moving, noisy helicopter to survive in modern combat, the pilot had to have an instinctive feel for flying the machine and every one of the six crewmen had to have balls that required specially designed skivvies to support.

In spite of his desire to fly high-performance fighters, his frustration at being a complete idiot on the volleyball court, and his unrequited lust for the tall and beautiful Allison, every inch of S. Gerald Gillespie’s small frame was packed with what it took to live up to the motto of the 1st SOW—Any time, any place. He didn’t know it, but the sergeant sitting next to him did.

Gillespie cross-checked their position on the inertial navigation set by map reading through the FLIR. They were on
course and close to the small clearing they had picked as their first LZ, or landing zone. “You should have the LZ on the nose, in sight,” he told the lieutenant.

“Tallyho,” he replied. “Jesus Christ! It’s too fucking small for a night landing!”

“Don’t panic,” Gillespie said. “It would be a helluva lot smaller without NVGs. You’ve done it before during the day and it hasn’t changed size just because you’re wearing night vision goggles. I’ll talk you through it.” With deliberate casualness, he kept his eyes on the FLIR, instrument panel, and outside references as he talked the pilot down. They touched down with a hard bump in the center of the clearing. “As advertised,” he told the lieutenant, “a piece of cake.” Even in the dim yellow glow of the instrument lights, he could see the kid was drenched in sweat. The sergeant only shook his head. “You want me to do the next one?” Gillespie said.

The lieutenant let out a heavy breath, ripped off the heavy NVGs, and leaned back in his seat. “Yeah,” he said, relief flooding over him.

They switched places. Gillespie waited a few moments for him to settle down. He should have never removed his NVGs. It was a bad sign and Gillespie used the time to think about what it meant. By squadron standards, the landing was routine and should have been a “piece of cake.” The lieutenant just didn’t have what it took to fly Pave Lows. He knew what he had to do and once they were back on the ground at Hurlburt, he would tell the young pilot, as gently as he could, that he should go fly somewhere else. If the lieutenant didn’t listen to him, he would drop a word into the shell-like ear of Standardization and Evaluation and they would rip him a new one. Standardization and Evaluation, better known as Stand Evil, was the group of officers and NCOs responsible for testing and grading all aircrew members in the wing. Their job was to make sure everyone could hack the mission and to have any poor performer reassigned to a less demanding outfit. They planned on having Gillespie join their ranks when he had a bit more experience as an instructor.

“Time to boogie,” Gillespie said, now certain that the best way to keep the lieutenant alive was to get him transferred out of the 1st SOW. “Comin’ up. Clear left? Clear right. Overhead?” The MH-53 seemed to take on a new life as it
lifted smoothly into the air, pivoted 135 degrees to a new heading, rose out of the clearing, and headed for their next landing zone. For the first time since they had left Hurlburt, the sergeant relaxed into his seat. Gillespie had “the touch.”

The officers sitting around the table in the conference room at the headquarters of the 1st Special Operations Wing, located a few blocks away from the flight line at Hurlburt Field, could sense the anger and frustration boiling beneath the surface of Colonel Paul “Duck” Mallard, the commander of the 1st SOW. Mallard had just returned from a meeting with his boss, the commander of Air Force Special Operations Command, known simply as AFSOC. AFSOC was one of the Air Force’s new commands, just over four years old, and was the air arm of United States Special Operations Command, or USSOCOM. They were worried, for Colonel Mallard was normally a cool and reserved gentleman, courteous to a fault, but always sure of what he wanted. Now something was wrong.

“Gentlemen,” Mallard said, his voice in tight control, “my boss at AFCOM just received a phone call from General Mado on the STU-Three.” The STU-III was a key-controlled, plug-in-anywhere, secure telephone that could carry top-secret conversations. Mallard paused to stare at his hands, composing his thoughts. No one had to explain who Lieutenant General Simon Mado was; they all knew he was the vice commander of USSOCOM, United States Special Operations Command, the unified command of the Department of Defense responsible for all special operations conducted by the United States military. They were all equally aware that AFSOC, Air Force Special Operations Command, which meant them, fell under the OPCON, or operational control, of USSOCOM.

To the average civilian it was all alphabet soup, but to the men around the table it was a vital question of command and control. The 1st SOW could only go to war when United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) ordered them to do so. And USSOCOM was commanded by an Army general who had definite ideas about special operations that did not include the Air Force. And even though his vice com
mander, Lieutenant General Simon Mado, was an Air Force general, Mado would not cross the Army general.

“No doubt,” Mallard continued, “you have all been following, with some interest, the recent kidnapping of Senator Courtland’s daughter. Apparently, the President is considering a rescue using special forces.” He let the news sink in.

“The only problem,” the colonel said, biting his words into clean little bullets, “is that we are not part of it.” He stood up and slapped his hands down hard onto the table. “It’s wrong to have a war without us!” He sat back down, once again in firm control. “Unfortunately, you can be sure no one at USSOCOM will press for our involvement.” The “no one” he meant was Mado. That was as close as Mallard would come to openly criticizing a superior. “However,” Mallard continued, “AFCOM has talked to Operations Training at USSOCOM and they have agreed to let us conduct intensive training at a forward location in Thailand.”

Four hours later, Gillespie found himself standing in a line with his crew and baggage waiting to be manifested onto an MC-130E. Major Eric “E-Squared” Eberhard, a pilot from the 8th Special Operations Squadron that flew the MC-130E “Combat Talon,” was harassing the clerks to “get the lead out” so he could load his passengers and take off. E-Squared Eberhard, who had absolutely no respect for duly constituted authority unless they could outfly him, grinned at Gillespie. “Got to keep the ground pounders on their toes.”