ACKNOWLEDGED.
Rocky Jackson cannot sleep. Her stateroom is cold, the restraining collar tight, and the constantly watching eye of the computer has become unnerving.
Gunnar is in the next room. Part of her yearns to go to him. She wants to feel his protecting arms around her, to hide within his warmth, but she has come to realize that he is not the same man she fell in love with seven years ago. The boyish charm is gone, replaced by a deep-rooted anger, perhaps fertilized by her own misgivings, her own distrust.
No … there’s definitely something else there, something haunting him from his past.
She gets up from the bed and turns on the lights. Rinses her mouth out, fixes her hair, changes her mind, climbs back into bed, stares at the ceiling, slams her pillow against the wall, stands, opens the stateroom door, and heads to Gunnar’s room.
Rocky stares at the door, then forces herself to knock. “Gunnar?” Without waiting for a reply, she opens the door and enters.
The lights are on. Gunnar is lying on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, rubbing what appears to be a welt on his right hip.
“Okay if I come in?” Without waiting for a reply, she enters and sits on the edge of his bunk. She lowers her voice. “I’m sorry, you know, for not believing you about selling Goliath’s schematics. I know you’re angry, but I think we need to put that aside for now and do something.”
“Do something? Like what?”
Rocky feels her blood pressure rising. “Jesus, Gunnar, Covah’s about to launch a nuclear missile.”
“First, I don’t see how we can possibly stop him with these collars on. Second, even if we could, I’m not sure I would.”
“Excuse me?”
Gunnar sits up, glancing at the scarlet sensor orb watching overhead. “I happen to like Simon’s plan. I think it’s inspired. In fact, I think it may actually do some good.”
“Are you insane? A million people are about to be fried alive—”
“A million Iraqi people.”
“You’re sick. This isn’t just the Republican Guard or a terrorist cell we’re talking about. You know as well as I do that Saddam tortures his own people to keep them in line. The majority who lose their lives are simply victims—”
“Victims who tolerate terrorism. Victims who hate the West and everything we stand for. Victims who support zealots that arm themselves with planes and bombs and kill our civilians. Screw this live and let live philosophy, Rocky. Saddam’s a lunatic who harbors terrorists and slaughters his own people, but he’s still only one man. Even victims have a responsibility to act. This murdering bastard should have been assassinated years ago. Simon’s giving the Iraqi people one last chance to do the right thing. I say shit or get blown off the goddamn pot. It’s time the Iraqi people killed Saddam and ended their own nightmare, once and for all.”
“And what if they can’t?”
“If they can’t, they can’t. But if they’re stupid enough to hang around and watch the fireworks, then they deserve to die.”
Rocky slaps his face.
Gunnar looks hard into her hazel eyes, rubbing his cheek. “You know what’s really bothering you, Commander? It’s not the potential deaths of a million people, it’s the fact that you may be one of the people who gets blamed.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Since when do you care about the Iraqis? Your priority has always been the military. Goliath was supposed to be a huge feather in your cap, all that was needed for you to become head of Keyport, maybe even the first female general. Now it looks like your career’s in the toilet and Simon’s got his three-fingered hand on the flusher. Too bad, too, ’cause old Papa Bear would’ve been so proud. My daughter the general. Raised her since she was just a cub—”
“So I was ambitious? So what? It beats crawling in the gutter, drinking yourself to death—”
Gunnar grabs her by her collar, swinging her around, pinning her backward onto the mattress. “You don’t know anything about me!”
“Let … go-”
“Want to know why I drank? I drank to stop the pain … to keep the anger locked inside. You don’t know dick about who I am or what I am. I’m the human version of Goliath—an American-made killing machine, trained with your tax dollars. I kill people, Rocky, that’s what I was programmed to do!”
He climbs off her. Turns away.
She sits up, panting, looking at him as if for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Not until you talk to me.”
He slumps to the floor, his back against the wall. “I can’t.”
“Why not? We’ll probably die soon anyway.”
“Probably.” He looks up at her. “It happened in Africa, about a year before we met. I was in Uganda on a peacekeeping mission. We were escorting a group of ICRC members to a village when rebels ambushed us. Two of our Red Cross team were killed by snipers. I managed to take out four rebels, the rest scattered.”
Gunnar’s gray eyes go vacant. “They were kids, Rocky, little kids. Two of the boys I shot were under ten. One boy was still alive … I picked him up … held him in my arms. A translator told me the boy had been captured by the Renamo, the Mozambique National Resistence. Rebels had caught him, his mother, and younger sister on a road just outside their village a month earlier. They forced the kids to watch while they hacked their mother to death with pangis, large knives. They brought the boy and his sister back to their rebel base. The leaders force the boys to fight each other for their amusement, the girls they make concubines. His younger sister was assigned to a soldier, who raped her twice a day. The boy was trained and indoctrinated into their army … given an M-16 and taught how to shoot. It’s fight or die. Since the children are more expendable than adults, they get all the nasty jobs, like checking minefields, or ambushing Red Cross teams like ours.” Gunnar pinches away tears. “Kid held onto my neck and died in my arms. I guess the soldier in me died with him.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah, it was. It’s like Covah said, I was trained to believe I was the cure, when in fact, I was just part of the disease. Children all over the world are being conditioned for violence … just like me. That little boy had no choice … but I did. I still do.”
“So you returned home, burned out, and joined the Warfare Center? That makes no sense.”
“You’re right. I should have just quit, but your father’s very persuasive, and I was swept up by the patriotism that followed the Trade Center attacks. Then I sort of fell in love with the director.”
She ignores the reference. “So, by destroying the GOLIATH Project, you hoped to gain what? Exoneration from God? A clear conscience?”
“I don’t know … maybe both. All I knew was that I had to do something. I was falling apart mentally … started getting these bad nightmares, right about the time I came back from the Pentagon.”
“I remember. Why didn’t you tell me all this then?”
“I don’t know. Guess I was ashamed.”
“But you talked to Covah about it?”
Gunnar nods. “After what happened to his daughters … I needed to, I don’t know—”
“Seek his forgiveness?”
“In a way.”
“And that’s when he told you to destroy Goliath’s schematics?”
“Yes.”
“Christ, Gunnar, the man set you up to take the fall, and you fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. You risked everything, our marriage, our future, our careers … our baby.”
He nods sadly.
“God, I hate you … I hate your selfishness.” Rocky shakes her head, tears in her eyes. “Did it even help? Did you feel better after wiping out my project?”