He was glassy-eyed and incoherent, an empty whiskey bottle in the floor at his feet, when Karen returned from playing bridge.
The following day, he called the hospital in California and was told that Captain Schuler had been released. After a few more attempts, he reached Dutch's parents. What he learned from the copilot's father was disconcerting.
"The Air Force said he needed total rest," reported the elder Schuler, a high school coach who had been inordinately proud of his son's tennis accomplishments. "They sent him to a place in Idaho. I guess you'd call it a resort. It's back in the mountains with no telephones, no radio, no TV."
Roddy knew exactly the sort of place. Like the hunting lodge he had visited with his father back in his boyhood days. Good food, fresh air and total isolation. Evidently Dutch had been plagued by more than an occasional nightmare. He wondered if Schuler had been close to losing it altogether. Surely he hadn't believed that story about his aircraft commander forgetting or disregarding instructions to monitor a different alternate channel. It was absurd. Idiotic.
But a few weeks after the interview with the investigators, he learned to his complete dismay that others, much higher up, had indeed believed. First was a news story that indicated the plumbing in the Pentagon's storehouse of secrets had sprung one of its famous leaks. According to an unnamed source, someone's dereliction of duty had caused the tragic loss of the helicopter in Iran. Finally, after demands from Congress and editorial flights of fancy in the press, the Air Force identified the culprit as the senior pilot, Colonel Warren P. Rodman.
Roddy's life had been on a roller coaster ever since he opened his eyes that morning at the hospital in Wiesbaden. It had been mostly downs, but there were a few ups — notably the restoration of his face to a near normal appearance and the first timid movement in his leg after extensive therapy. But this news seemed to shove him onto the final downhill slope.
The disagreements with Karen intensified, mostly over his drinking. In the past he had always been calm, composed, undaunted. It was devastating to Karen to watch helplessly as he seemed to come completely unglued. One afternoon when he complained that she had hidden the Scotch, she blurted, "Damn it, Roddy!"
That got his attention. She seldom used four-letter words.
"You may need a crutch for your leg, but you don't need one for your mind. That booze will land you in the gutter, and I'm not getting down there with you."
He gave her a caustic look and said in an equally bitter voice, "This damned leg is going to keep me from flying. So what good is my lousy mind, as fuzzy as it's been anyway?"
She shook her head vigorously. "Flying isn't the beginning and the end of the world, Roddy."
"Maybe not your world."
10
The motto of the Air Force Special Operations Command was "Air Commandos — Quiet Professionals," but the final chapter of Operation Easy Street proved anything but quiet. The mission's spectacular failure had been loudly chortled by Iran and mercilessly hashed and rehashed by the American media. A court-martial growing out of the operation would normally have been held in secret, but the editorial writers and TV commentators had demanded that whoever was responsible for the loss of nearly a dozen soldiers and airmen should be held publicly accountable.
The large room at Hurlburt Field set aside for the military court activities looked almost pristine in its lack of decor, not a single picture of a flyer or an aircraft, neither a map nor a poster, nothing to relieve the boredom of solid white walls. It was not by accident. The Secretary of the Air Force had decreed that nothing should be done that might contribute to the "media circus" everyone feared. Nevertheless, the room was crowded with a large contingent of news people, plus a variety of uniformed attendants and functionaries. The trial opened on an unusually hot day in May with the air conditioning system toiling overtime to maintain everyone's cool.
Colonel Rodman, in dress uniform with all his ribbons arrayed colorfully beneath the silver wings on his chest, walked hesitantly into the room with the aid of a cane, heavily favoring his left leg. He took his seat at the defense table while his wife, a solemn but striking figure in a simple pink dress, moved into the first row of chairs behind him. She sat rigidly, her face like a porcelain mask that might shatter at any moment. Things were at the breaking point between them, but to abandon him now would have been unforgivable. Though the girls had wanted to come, it was exam week in college, and Roddy had insisted they remain at school.
The ten members of the court-martial filed in, led by Brig. Gen. Elliott Wintergarden, a prematurely gray officer with the confident stride of a man who had long since carved his niche in the pantheon of fighter jocks. He looked about the room with eyes as cold and blue as the skies in which he had earned his reputation.
The charges were read, accusing Colonel Rodman of "gross negligence" in monitoring a communications channel he had been ordered to change, resulting in the loss of his aircraft, the death of four aircrew members and six passengers, and of "recklessly disregarding his duty as aircraft commander" by failure to advise his copilot of the change in communications procedures.
Roddy faced the court and pleaded "not guilty" to both charges.
The prosecution was represented by a smooth-talking colonel named Ralph Finch, a military lawyer who prided himself on his convictions. He had been hand-picked by the Air Force Judge Advocate General. A short, balding man who looked as though a cigar belonged in the corner of his broad slash of a mouth, Finch called General Philip Patton as his first witness.
The Chief of Staff had the guarded look of a beleaguered cavalryman riding into an Indian camp. He was highly suspicious of the press and knew he could not afford the slightest slip. They would have his scalp in an instant. Beginning with a self-serving explanation that much about the operation was still classified, he briefly described the Easy Street mission. He was then asked by Colonel Finch about the purpose of the primary and alternate communications channels.
"Command and control are among the most vital elements of any military operation," Wing said in a pedantic tone. "Since a mission of this type required the aircraft to maintain total radio silence, command was necessarily a one-way street. The aircraft commander, Colonel Rodman, had the responsibility to carry out the mission according to the Air Tasking Order, unless instructed over the secure channel to deviate from it. He was given both a primary channel and an alternate, should problems develop with the primary."
"And did you give Colonel Rodman instructions to deviate from the mission as planned?" Finch asked.
"I did. When I had reason to believe the mission had been compromised, the President was informed. He ordered the mission terminated immediately. I made the radio call myself, three times, instructing Colonel Rodman to abort the mission."
"Was the radio call made on a channel different from what was called for in the Air Tasking Order?"
"Yes," Patton said. "There was a problem with the scheduled communications satellite. We were assigned an alternate channel on a different satellite."
"And was this communicated to the defendant, Colonel Rodman?"
Wing Patton's heartbeat ticked up a notch and he took a deep breath before answering, recalling the crumpled, doodle-scarred note in the White House Situation Room wastebasket. "I gave the information to Major Juan Bolivar, who communicated it to Colonel Rodman just prior to takeoff."