“You do that?”
“No… but sometimes we don’t see it when others do it.”
“Mossad?” Omid wouldn’t answer. “Why don’t you just assassinate him?” Camp asked.
“He is not the only one within the many factions fighting for power in Iran. If not Ahmadinejad, then there will be others. He may not ultimately be the one who gets to press the button on the suicide vest that sends nuclear fire raining down on the heads of the Zionists… but someone will.”
Omid closed his eyes and laid back down as Camp rolled over to catch a few hours of sleep.
15
Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania
Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines had been driving for nearly an hour on old Highway 30, passing through Stonybrook and finally past the Smoketown Airport into Bird-in-Hand. The headlights on her Wrangler illuminated the reflective letters on the mailbox which read SEABURY CAMPBELL, SR. Even though it was a few minutes shy of 4:00am, the farmhouse kitchen lights were on as were the lights in the barn for the morning milking. Camp’s two sisters and their husbands kept the dairy farm going while Seabury supervised from his porch swing.
Ruth waved at the approaching headlights coming down the gravel driveway as she flipped four strips of bacon and fried two eggs over easy for Seabury. Leslie tapped on the door glass and walked in on her own.
“Good morning Ruth. Good morning Seabury.”
“Hello Leslie, how’s my favorite colonel doing?” Seabury asked as he got up and kissed Raines on the cheek.
“I’m doing great, and you sound great!”
Ruth placed a plate of bacon and eggs with white toast and a heaping slab of butter in front of Seabury.
“As you can see, Leslie, Seabury is quite faithful to the Mediterranean diet that Dr. Blauw prescribed.” Ruth’s sarcasm was not lost on Sea Bee.
“I’m not changing my life for this damn disease. I’m exercising more, but I’m going to eat what I always eat. For the love of God, I’m a farmer.”
Ruth put another slab of butter in the frying pan as it quickly sizzled to life. “Farmers grow and harvest Mediterranean fruits and vegetables too, Sea Bee. How do you like your eggs cooked, Leslie?”
“Oh, well I wasn’t planning on—”
Ruth broke two eggs into the pan. Raines knew that resistance was futile.
“How about sunny side up,” Raines said as she took a seat at the table across from Sea Bee.
“How old are you, Leslie?”
“Seabury Campbell! That’s rude. You know better than to ask a woman her age,” Ruth scolded as she dropped some bacon into the cast-iron skillet.
“That’s fine. I’m 39, but I’m feeling more like 59 since the injury. Takes a long time to recover and get back into shape.”
“You know, Junior is 41. You two are close in age.”
Leslie blushed and lowered her eyes as Ruth put a cup of coffee in front of her.
“You like cream, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where do your parents live?” Ruth asked as she pulled a fancy plate out of the cupboard and rolled the eggs and bacon onto the plate.
“Well… that’s a complicated story, Ruth. My father was killed in Vietnam when I was only two months old. He never saw me. He and my mother were not married when I was born. She was very young. They were both young. When my mother got the news, she cried for a few days than drove over to Lester’s house.”
“Lester?” Ruth asked as she put another slab of butter in the frying pan and cracked two more eggs for herself.
“Lester was my dad’s name, hence I got Leslie. Lester’s parents didn’t even know their son’s girlfriend was pregnant. My mother handed me over to my grandmother, said ‘good luck’ and walked out the door. She never returned.”
“That’s horrible, Leslie. Did you ever try to find her?”
“No… I’ve never even been curious. If she didn’t want me then, well, I guess I don’t want her now. But I was blessed with an incredible childhood. My grandparents are my heroes. They gave me more love than a human being deserves.”
“Are they still living?” Sea Bee asked as he added more butter to his toast.
“As a matter of fact they are. They still live in the same house they were married in, up in New Hampshire. My grandfather Karl just turned 90 years old. The man is amazing, and he still goes to work five days a week, eight hours a day. My grandmother is 89 years old. Lydia is slowing down a bit now, but she still keeps Karl fed and in line.”
Ruth smiled and nodded her approval and understanding.
“Karl sounds like he might be World War II era. Did he serve?” Sea Bee asked.
“That’s a story! He had been working in a hospital as an orderly after he and Lydia married. When he was drafted, they put him through training as a medic. I guess they figured medic-by-orderly osmosis or something. December of 1944, Karl was sent to the Ardennes Forest on the German-Belgium border.”
“Oh my, was he in the Battle of the Bulge?”
“He was, Seabury. He and the rest of the American divisions were so green, so new. They hadn’t seen any combat yet.”
Seabury grabbed Ruth’s hand and explained.
“Hitler chose the Ardennes Forest and purposefully left it soft, hoping to draw the Americans and British in,” Seabury recounted from his World War II history. “Then he sent in more than 250,000 men and hundreds of Panzers. It was a blood-bath.”
“Was Karl wounded, Leslie?” Ruth asked.
“Worse than that, Ruth, he was captured by the Germans and spent five months in prisoner of war camps. At first, he was taken to Stalag 9B at Bad Orb, Germany. But 350 of them were pulled out from the thousands of other POWs. If you were Jewish or even looked ethnic, you were given special treatment.”
“Is Karl Jewish?” Ruth asked.
“No, but he had a longer nose, a darker complexion, and the Germans decided he was ethnic enough.”
“Hell, I’ve got a schnoz bigger than an Amish buggy. Guess I’m Jewish, too.”
“Karl and his 350 buddies were put on railroad boxcars in the middle of winter and sent on a week-long journey with no sanitation, food or water to Berga-an-der-Elster, a little village maybe 50 miles south of Leipzig. Berga was a slave-labor camp that was full to capacity at 400 men, but with more than 1,000 it was unthinkable. They worked 12-hour shifts, slept two to a bed in lice-infested bunks, and were fed starvation rations as they dug tunnels into a mountainside for German munitions.”
“Oh, Leslie,” Ruth gasped.
“Seventy men of the original 350 died within the first two months. After the beatings and the work and limited rations, Karl weighed 84 pounds when the Americans finally liberated them in April of 1945, but not before the Nazis forced them on a 150-mile death march.”
The old farm kitchen was quiet. No one had any words to utter as all contemplated what a poor American soldier must have gone through almost 70 years before.
“Well, on that happy note, we have some work to do, don’t we Seabury?” Leslie concluded.
“I’ve never done anything like this, Leslie. I’m not a TV anchorman.”
Leslie laughed as she removed a small digital video camera from her backpack and a small tripod.
“No experience necessary, Seabury. I’ll set the camera on the tripod, press the RECORD button, and I’ll walk away. It won’t hurt at all.”
“You still think this is a good idea?” Seabury asked as he pushed his chair back from the farmhouse kitchen table.