One bright, chilly morning toward the middle of December, Roddy sat in his wheelchair beside a window in the den, actually a spare bedroom that Karen had given a homey, informal look. The house was located just off the Gulf of Mexico in a convenient spot for visiting seagulls. Roddy watched two well-fed birds waddle across the lawn like a couple of fat slobs with beer-bellies. Then suddenly they lifted their wings and took off. Those slobs can fly, but I can't. He slumped deeper into the chair.
"That was Mary Jane Marks on the phone," Karen said as she walked into the room. She wore a white sweat shirt emblazoned with red poinsettias and a Santa-style red and white cap, its peak flopped to one side.
He hadn't even noticed the phone ring. Nobody called him much anymore. "What did she want?"
"She and Dan want us to join them at the club Friday night."
Colonel Daniel Marks was commander of the 1st Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt, the outfit Roddy had flown with in Operation Desert Storm. Marks' wife and Karen were close friends.
"I'm not going over there in this damned wheelchair," he said irritably. He couldn't stand any more patronizing from guys with two good legs and faces that bore scars from nothing worse than a razor nick suffered during the morning's shave. Anyway, the thought of dinner turned him off. He seemed to have little appetite except for liquid refreshment. Thank God they had taken him off the medication that had kept him away from Scotch.
"If you don't come out of hiberation soon," she said, "you're going to drive both of us nutty."
"You think I'm crazy?"
She grinned. "I'm not quite ready to sign the commitment papers."
"If Dan Marks wanted me to go, why didn't he call me?"
"Don't be silly," she said, trying to humor him. "Mary Jane is his social secretary."
"Well, tell her my calendar is already full for Friday night." He wheeled his chair around to face the TV, grabbed the remote off a table and switched the channel to CNN. The picture showed a former Beirut hostage smiling and waving from a balcony at the painfully familiar hospital in Wiesbaden. "Enjoy yourself," he mumbled caustically at the picture. "To try and get your ass out of there, Barry Nickens and a bunch of damned nice guys died for nothing."
"Roddy!" Karen gasped, shocked. "That man had nothing to do with your accident."
Accident, hell! It was a damned ambush. Of course, she was right about the hostage. Negotiations had finally brought the captives' release in Lebanon, but that dull ache inside him, a nameless pain that would never quite let go, demanded a pound of flesh for what had happened in the abortive effort to obtain their freedom. And he still had no idea who or what to blame.
Seeing his hang-dog look, she shook her head. "I'm going to the Commissary. Can I bring you anything?"
"You can stop at the package store and get another bottle of Scotch."
Legs spread in a defiant stance, she jammed her fists against her hips. "You'll have to go get it yourself. I don't intend to contribute any further to your downfall."
Karen could not believe what was happening to him. He seemed so far removed from the man she had fallen in love with the day of their explosive introduction. It happened on the sidelines at a football game while Roddy was playing wide receiver for the Air Force Academy and she was a cheerleader for the University of Tennessee. In the fourth quarter, Roddy had caught a pass just inbounds, his off-balance momentum propelling him into a gaggle of cheerleaders. He sent Karen sprawling. He jumped up, helped her to her feet and gasped, "Are you okay?" After the game, he had sought her out to be sure she was not injured. The rest, as they say, was history. She still loved him, but he no longer seemed the same man she had met and married. That crash had not only broken his bones, it had broken his spirit.
9
Roddy made inquiries through Special Operations Command Headquarters, to which he was assigned for administrative purposes, but had managed to learn no additional details about how the Easy Street mission had been compromised. "The matter is still under investigation," was the only comment he could get out of the Pentagon. It was an embarrassment Washington would as soon forget.
Unable to focus his growing bitterness on anything else, Roddy directed it at the most convenient target, his wife. The strain between them experienced a welcome reprieve during the holidays, thanks to the arrival of Renee and Lila on Christmas break. The lively pair kept the household in such turmoil there was hardly time for the usual arguments.
Roddy awoke on Christmas morning in a particularly surly mood. His head hurt. His leg ached. He had just doubled the pillow behind his back to prop himself up when Lila came bouncing into his bedroom all smiles, a cushion stuffed beneath her red sweater, a long white cotton beard dangling from her chin. She promptly "ho, ho, ho'd" him into a fit of laughter. It was a sound seldom heard the past few months.
"You look ridiculous in that get-up," he said.
"No more ridiculous than you look in that bed." She grabbed his arm and began tugging him into the wheelchair. "Let's go, Daddy Claus. It's Christmas!"
Renee had been born just before Roddy left on an overseas tour where families were not allowed and did not meet her father until she was a year old. When Lila came along, he tried to make up for what he had missed before. The result was a confirmed daddy's girl. During the holidays, Karen dropped a few hints to Renee about her problems with Roddy but didn't dare say anything to Lila.
The new year brought a return to his bouts of depression, marked by a brooding silence, stimulated by a sense that he had lost control over his destiny. He got a hint of what lay ahead during a curious visit in late January by a man he knew only as "Greg." Roddy sat propped up in bed, two pillows cushioning his back, trying to make up his mind whether it was worth the effort to get up, when Karen appeared at the bedroom door. Towering over her was a familiar face topped by thick sandy brown hair, rumpled from the gray tweed Scottish cap now gripped in one hand.
"You have a visitor," his wife said soberly. "Do you want me to help you up?"
Roddy frowned dismally. He knew she meant well, but he despised hints in front of outsiders that he couldn't take care of himself.
"Don't bother to get up, Colonel," said the visitor. "I can't stay long."
"Come on in, Greg," Roddy beckoned, waving an arm at a rocker near the door. "Pull up a chair and sit down. This is a surprise."
That brought a barely noticeable softening of the man's features, which were notable only in their lack of distinction. "I'll have to agree with you there. I'm not much on social calls. But, then, you were never just an ordinary pilot."
Roddy shook his head with a grim smile. "I'm afraid I'm not any kind of a pilot now." He noticed his wife still standing in the doorway. "Would you fix us some coffee, Karen? As I recall, this fellow could put it away about as well as me."
Greg looked around at her. "Don't go to any trouble—"
"No trouble," she said, turning away. "I have a fresh pot brewing in the kitchen."
Roddy remembered the tall, husky man as a passenger on several flights in places that were decidedly unfriendly. He had both dropped him off and picked him up. It was obvious to Roddy that he was CIA, though Greg never said more than he was employed by a "federal agency." On one occasion, he had been dressed as a Navy commander. The last time he flew on Roddy's Pave Low, he commended the aircraft commander on being there at the right time and "running a tight ship."
"I'm sure you know the story on what happened in Iran," Roddy said sullenly.
"Probably a little more than you do."
Roddy perked up at that. "I haven't been able to get anything out of the Pentagon. I can understand how somebody over there might have tipped the mullahs to our operation, but with all our sources… " He shrugged as his voice trailed off.