Eternity Base (4 page)

While Conner was spending her afternoon at ballet class, Sammy was catching tadpoles and playing war. She'd learned the pleasures of solitude, and her present position could be seen as a direct result of that. Conner, on the other hand, had taken a different path; her position as newswoman had had early seeds.

The age difference between them had loomed large when their dad was reported as missing in action. Sammy was devastated. She had been close to him; to Conner he was a distant symbol.

The four years between them had become an unbridgeable gap when Sammy got her driver's license. That was the year Sammy discovered that living and moving fast were inexplicably entwined. She had climbed into the '64 Mustang and never really looked back at the twelve-year-old girl dressed in taffeta and lace, tap-dancing to a tune Sammy would never understand. That summer Sammy, always a bright student, rejected the idea of college in favor of the Records Center. She'd had her own demons to exorcise, and the Records Center had beckoned with a possible solution.

Sammy had avoided her mother; she filled her days with work and her nights with men who would never be her father. When she finally realized that no man was better than the wrong man, she attained an uneasy peace with herself. She knew she could take care of herself—her dad had taught her that early on. Once she understood what was causing the many bad relationships, she stopped them like snapping her fingers.

Conner was tough too, but in a different way. She was driven to succeed, but Sammy wasn't sure her sister knew where that drive was taking her or if it would make her happy. Sammy was sure Conner would figure herself out eventually; it would just take time. She also knew she shouldn't judge her sister, since she herself was still struggling with an old ghost—one that the mention of the acronyms MACV-SOG and MIA had sparked in her today.

Sammy turned away from the memory-laden bookshelf, grabbed a package of instant noodles from the cabinet above the stove, and poured the contents into the boiling water.

N
ATIONAL
P
ERSONNEL
R
ECORDS
C
ENTER,
S
T.
L
OUIS,
M
ISSOURI, 23
N
OVEMBER 1996

It had come to Sammy in the midst of watching Conner's first hour stint on the news, early in the morning with only the reflection from the small bulb on top of the aquarium mixing with the flickering glow of the TV. The organizational records of the 67th Engineers might not have yielded the information on where B Company had truly gone, but there was another avenue to pursue, albeit a more risky one. Watching her sister's discourse on the latest pathetic world situation, Sammy had made up her mind to pursue that route.

Now, back at work, she was following through on her decision. She went to the aisle where the files for the 67th Engineers were located, pulled the 1610 TDY order, and flipped it over. More than forty names were listed on the back—the men of B Company. Sammy copied the names of the four officers onto an index card and slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

So far she had done little more than scratch at the surface, using unclassified data that was simply lying on the shelves and stored in the computer. Now, for the first time, she was stepping over the line. She had seen other workers do it for various reasons, mostly checking out personnel records of someone they knew; although forbidden by the rules of the Center, this usually was unofficially tolerated.

After her first year here, Sammy had asked Brad to help her pull all the classified information on her father's last mission. What they'd found had agreed on the surface with Stanton's book, but the records were sketchy, which had bothered her. She discovered that her dad had been on a four-man special reconnaissance team named Utah, composed of two Americans and two indigenous personnel. She found out the name of the other American on the team, only to learn that he'd been reported as missing in action more than two months prior to her own father's disappearance. There was no explanation on the records for this time difference, nor had there been any reply from the Pentagon to her many letters.

That kind of gap in the records didn't surprise Sammy anymore. She had found more than enough documents that disagreed with the commonly accepted view of many of the events of modern history. And there was the fire that had destroyed the top two floors of the Records Center in 1973. It had burned the personnel records for those men involved in the government's nuclear testing in the late '40s and '50s and also the records for those troops exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam. The destruction of the records was convenient when the government was faced with numerous lawsuits involving ailments claimed to result from those two government actions.

Over the years, Sammy had kept quiet about several discrepancies that might have embarrassed the government. The link between Eternity Base and MACV-SOG was beginning to get under her skin, however. There were too many facts that just didn't fit, and it was too similar to her father's case.

She had finally given up trying to find the "truth" concerning her father's disappearance when she'd realized how anxious it made her mother. Whether her mother's desire to keep the past buried was an attempt to avoid personal pain or to protect the pride of her new husband, Sammy was never sure. Sammy had even managed to forgive her mother for the ultimate betrayal—having her father declared legally dead so she could marry Nelson Young, M.D. That was the same year Sammy left home, so her stepfather had never assumed much of a role in her life.

Conner, on the other hand, had been only twelve and had accepted Nelson Young with love and exuberance to fill the gap created by her father's two tours of duty in Vietnam. Nelson, in turn, gave her his name and a fine education. He'd made the same offer to Sammy, but she had turned down the latter because she thought it was a package deal. Sammy now knew that Nelson would never have insisted she take his name in exchange for his love and support, but she also realized that there was more to it: she hadn't wanted his fathering and had let him know it. It was a decision she had made out of youth and pride and loyalty, and although she now knew it had been the wrong decision, she didn't regret it.

Sammy pushed her chair away from her desk, clearing her mind of memories and focusing on the present. She left the Records Center and took the elevator. She was sure Brad wouldn't miss her. He knew she put in more than her required forty hours a week, and he didn't begrudge her the flexibility to take care of personal business once in a while.

The seventh and eighth floors of the building now housed RC-PAC; the Reserve Component-Personnel Administration Center. Entering the foyer on the seventh floor, Sammy pulled her ID card out of her wallet and showed it to the guard at the desk. She was waved through into the hallway where secure doors stretched off in either direction. Sammy's access card wouldn't work on these doors, so she picked up one of the phones hanging on the wall and dialed.

"RC-PAC. Tomkins here."

'Tom, this is Sammy."

"Hey, how you doing, wild woman?"

"I'm in the hall."

"I'll be right out."

She hung up the phone and waited. Soon a set of doors whisked open and a short, balding man stepped out. His face broke into a wide smile as he walked up to Sammy. Handing her a visitor's pass, he guided her into the room.

"What brings you to my part of town? Misplaced some social security records?"

Sammy waited until the doors shut before answering. She'd worked with Tomkins dozens of times in the past; RC-PAC transferred the records of military personnel over to the Records Center every fiscal quarter when the designated individuals were no longer to be held in the reserve files.

"I need to check on a couple of people."

Tomkins gave her a curious glance. "What for?"

Sammy sighed. "That damn computer. We've got some gaps in the database and Brad wanted me to check it out." It was weak, but she also knew Tomkins would do just about anything for her on the off chance she might finally agree to date him. She hoped it didn't come to that. He was one of those men who needed female attention like a leaky raft needed air: Sammy knew she could pump him up every day, but he would never be strong enough to float on his own. She had long ago learned the bitter lesson that people who couldn't stand on their own made miserable partners in life, dragging you down with them.

"So how're the fish?" Sammy had invited Tomkins to her apartment once for a small party for some of her coworkers, an invitation he had made much too significant.

"Still breathing."

"Uh-huh." He led her into a larger room—an above-surface, miniaturized version of the Records Center. All the records for military personnel no longer on active duty, but who were or had been part of the reserves—either in a reserve unit or the IRR (Individual Ready Reserve)—were kept at RC-PAC. "OK. What do you need?"

Sammy pulled out the index card. "I need whatever you have on these folks."

Tomkins looked over the names. "Army, eh? All right." He led her to his desk. "Take a seat." He punched into his computer for a few seconds, then the printer whirred. He grabbed the printout. "I'll be right back."

Sammy licked her lips nervously as he disappeared into the labyrinth of records. She remembered when two of her fellow workers had unearthed information on Ferdinand Marcos in the Records Center. At a party one of them casually mentioned what they'd found to a reporter for the New York Times. Once the media got hold of the information, the publicity train had run down the tracks. Marcos's fabricated history of being a resistance fighter in the Philippines during World War II had gone up in smoke. That had been fine for the media, but the two workers were no longer employees of the government.

"I've got 201 files for the first two." He handed them over and disappeared again.

Sammy opened up Capt. Louis Townsend's record. He had been the commander of B Company from April 1971 through January

1972. His Officer Efficiency Report (OER) for the time period of Eternity Base made no mention of the base and made it sound as if he had been in Vietnam his entire tour of duty. He even had a Bronze Star for the Vietnam tour. The citation read:

For numerous heavy construction engineering assignments under adverse conditions in hostile territory.

She looked at the other file. It was Lieutenant Freely's—the picture taker. His record held no hint of Eternity Base either. Tomkins returned with the other two lieutenants' records and Sammy went through them. Nothing in either one referred to Eternity Base or cold weather or held even the slightest indication that the men had been deployed out of Vietnam for four months in 1971.

Tomkins was sitting on the other side of the desk, pretending to look at his computer screen. When Sammy closed the last file, he raised an eyebrow. "Find what you needed?"

Sammy shook her head. "No."

"Maybe if you tell me what you're looking for, I can help you find it."

Sammy closed her eyes and thought furiously. "How about medical records?" Medical records for military personnel were considered government property; when an individual went off active duty, the entire folder for his career time was sent to St. Louis.

Tomkins stood up. "Yeah, we got the active duty ones for those people. You want all four?"

While he was gone, Sammy wrote on her index card the last known addresses for the four officers. She had just finished when Tompkins returned. She found what she was looking for in the second folder: Lieutenant Freely's. The entry was hand written on a diagnostic form dated 19 November 1971:

SM suffering from severe frostbite, second and third digits, left hand.

The consulting physician's name was typed at the bottom of the page: Doctor John Reynolds, Major, U.S. Air Force. She had two more pieces of the puzzle, although it wasn't clear where they fit:

Freely hadn't gotten frostbite in Vietnam. And why had he been treated by an air force doctor and not an army medic?

"Do you have any records on an air force major—name John Reynolds? He was a doctor. Social security number 185-35-9375."

Tomkins typed for a few seconds and then looked up. "Nope. You have it all. He got out of service in '75. Died in '83."

With these new items, Sammy took her leave quickly, short-circuiting Tomkins's attempts to make conversation. She already knew the next thing she had to check.

"Want to go to lunch?" Brad stopped by her desk.

"No thanks," Sammy answered.

Brad didn't leave right away. He perched on the edge. "Are you all right?"

Sammy looked up in surprise. "Of course."

Brad shook his head. "I don't know. You've been acting a little weird lately. Are you sure everything's OK?"

Sammy gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "Everything's fine, Brad. Just a little tired, that's all. I watched my sister on the news late last night and didn't get much sleep."

"How's she doing?"

This time the smile was true. "She looked really good."

Brad stood. "Well, when you talk to her again, give her my best wishes. She seems to really be on the way up."