“Sounds sexy.”
“Today it is. And it has absolutely nothing to do with training troops and aircrews or sustaining combat readiness.”
“Exciting, too, eh?”
Jake Grafton gave Tarkington a skeptical look.
“Well, at least we’re pentaguys,” Toad said earnestly, “ready to help chart the future of mankind, along with a thousand or so equally dedicated and talented Joint Staff souls. Makes me tingle.”
“Pentaguys?”
“I just made that up. Like it?” The lieutenant’s innocent face broke into a grin, which caused his cheeks to dimple and exposed a set of perfect teeth. Deep creases radiated from the corners of his eyes.
The captain grinned back. He had known Tarkington for several years; one of Toad’s most endearing qualities was his absolute refusal to take anything seriously. This trait, the captain well knew, was rare among career officers, who learned early on that literally everything was very important. In the highly competitive world of the peacetime military, an officer’s ranking among his peers might turn on something as trivial as how often he got a haircut, how he handled himself at social functions, the neatness of his handwriting. For lack of a neat signature a fitness report was a notch lower than it might have been, so a choice assignment went to someone else, a promotion didn’t materialize…. There was an acronym popular now in the Navy that seemed to Jake to perfectly capture the insanity of the system: WETSU — We Eat This Shit Up. One battleship captain that Jake knew had even adopted WETSU as the ship’s motto.
Toad Tarkington seemed oblivious to the rat race going on around him. One day it would probably dawn on him that he was a rodent in the maze with everyone else, but that realization hadn’t hit him yet. Jake fervently hoped it never would.
“So what am I gonna be doing around here to thwart the forces of evil?” Toad asked.
“Officially you’re one of thirty junior officer interns. For a while, at least, you’ll be in my shop assisting me.”
“How about them apples!” Toad’s eyebrows waggled. “I’ll start by drafting up a memo for you to fire off to the Joint Chiefs: ‘Shape up or ship out!’ Don’t worry, I’ll make it more diplomatic than that, take the edge off, pad it and grease it. Then memos for the FBI and DEA. We’ll—”
“We’ll start in the morning at oh-seven-thirty,” Jake said, rising from his chair. He looked around again, taking it all in. “What do you think of this place, anyway?”
“All these different kinds of uniforms, it looks like a bus drivers’ convention.” Toad lowered his voice. “Don’t you think the Air Farce folks look like they work for Greyhound?”
“I’ll give you the same advice my daddy gave me, Tarkington, when he put me on a bus and sent me off to the service. Keep your mouth shut and your bowels open, and you’ll do okay.” Jake Grafton walked away.
Toad grinned broadly and settled back into his chair.
“I couldn’t help overhearing your insensitive remark, Lieutenant,” the lieutenant commander at the desk across the aisle informed him.
Toad swiveled. The lieutenant commander reminded him of his third-grade teacher, that time she caught him throwing spitballs. She had that look.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“Our friends in the Air Force are very proud of their uniform.”
“Yes, ma’am. No offense intended.”
“Who was that captain?”
“Captain Grafton, ma’am.”
“He was very informal with you, Lieutenant.” The way she said “lieutenant” made it sound like the lowest rank in the Guatemalan National Guard. “Here at Joint Staff we’re much more formal.”
“I’m sure.” Toad tried out a smile.
“This is a military organization.”
“I’ll try to remember,” Toad assured her, and stalked off toward the men’s head.
Henry Charon eased the car to a stop in front of the abandoned farmhouse and killed the engine. He rolled down his window and sat looking at the overgrown fields and the stark leafless trees beyond.
The dismal gray sky seemed to rest right on the treetops. The crisp air smelled of snow.
He had followed the dirt road for four miles, just a rut through the forest, and made it through a mudhole that he had explored with a stick before he tried it. There were tire tracks that he thought were at least a month old, left by deer hunters. Nothing fresh. That was why he had selected this dirt road after he had examined three others.
He was deep in the Monongahela National Forest, four hours west of Washington in the West Virginia mountains. Henry Charon took a deep deep breath and smiled. It was gorgeous here.
He pulled on his coat and hat and locked the car, then walked back along the road in the direction from which he had come. He inspected the remnants of an apple orchard and the brush that had grown up on a two-acre plot that had once been a garden.
When he had walked about a mile, he left the road and began climbing the hillside. He proceeded slowly, taking his time, pausing frequently to listen and look. He moved like a shadow through the gray trees, climbing steadily to the top of the ridge, then along it with the abandoned farm, which was somewhere below him on his left. He intended to circle the farm to ensure there were no people nearby. If there were he would hear or see enough to warn him of their presence.
As he moved Henry Charon examined the trees, noting the places where deer had browsed, feeling the pellet droppings and estimating their age. This was his first outing in the hardwood forests of the eastern United States. He felt like a youngster again, exploring and greeting new things with delight. He saw where the chipmunks had opened their acorns and he spent five minutes watching a squirrel watching him. He examined a groundhog hole and ran his fingers along the scars in a young sapling that a buck had used to rub the velvet from his antlers earlier this autumn. He heard a woodpecker drumming and detoured for a hundred yards to glimpse it.
He had been in the fourth grade when he found a biography of Daniel Boone in the school library. The book had fascinated him and, he admitted now to himself as he glided silently through the forest, changed his life. The years Boone spent alone in Kentucky hunting wild game for furs and food and avoiding hostile Indians had seemed to young Henry Charon to be the ultimate in adventure. And now, at last, he was in the type of forest Boone had known so well. True, it wasn’t the virgin forest of two hundred and fifty years ago, but still …
He was thinking of Boone and the hunting years when he saw the doe. She was browsing and had her back to him. He froze. Something, instinct perhaps, made her turn her head and swivel her large ears for any sound that should not have been there.
Henry Charon stood immobile. The deer’s eyes and brain were alert to movement, so Charon held every muscle in his body absolutely still. He even held his breath.
The gentle wind was from the northwest, carrying his scent away from her as she sampled the breeze. Satisfied at last, she resumed her browsing.
Slowly, ever so slowly, he stepped closer. He froze whenever her head position would allow his movement to be picked up by her peripheral vision.
He was only twenty-five feet or so from her when she finally saw him. She had moved unexpectedly. Now she stood stock still, tense, ready to flee, her ears bent toward him to catch the slightest sound.
Henry Charon remained motionless.
She relaxed slightly and started toward him, her ears still attuned, her eyes fixed on him.
Surprised, he moved a hand.
The deer paused, wary, then kept coming.
Someone tamed her, he thought. She’s tame!