Paul McKellips - Jericho 3

“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.

“Well, sir, you said that you don’t want Camp to know while he’s serving in Afghanistan. You may be right; it may distract him from his mission. But he’ll be upset that he wasn’t told,” Raines said as she took her fancy plate to the sink.

“Don’t you worry about those, Leslie, you two get to work,” Ruth added as she gathered up the coffee mugs.

“Leslie, do you think Junior tells us everything he’s doing over there in the war? Or do you think he holds things back so his mom and dad won’t be upset?”

Raines couldn’t look Seabury in the eyes. She knew he was correct, but she knew Camp would want to know, and she knew he would be upset. It seemed like the best thing to do.

“Dr. Blauw said that since you were older when the Alzheimer’s was detected, it may progress fairly rapidly… you may get worse, faster. Now’s the best chance, Seabury, to tell your son what you’re feeling… what you’re going through.”

“Let’s get going while I’m still sharp. Things get a bit fuzzier as the day gets older.”

Seabury grabbed his red jacket off the hook behind the kitchen door and his John Deere cap.

“Honey, where are you going? Leslie has the camera in the house,” Ruth said not sure if Seabury’s mind was fading already.

“I want to film this in the barn. It’s where my boy and I spent most of our time together.”

Seabury walked out the door and headed to the barn. Leslie grabbed the camera and tripod and followed out the door.

Seabury pulled a milking stool over in front of the stalls. The barn was empty now that all of the cows were out in the pasture grazing. Leslie put the camera on the tripod.

“Ready?”

Seabury nodded.

Raines pushed the record button and verified the framing. She backed up, waved, and walked out of the barn. As she was closing the barn door she heard Seabury start to speak.

“Hello, son… this is your daddy… Seabury Campbell, Senior… that makes you Junior… well, I’m not sure how to start this so, here goes… I’ve got some bad news.”

ISAF Headquarters

Kabul, Afghanistan

General Ferguson returned to his office at 2330 hours with his two coffee-pouring majors waiting for the telephone call. It was 1400 hours back at Langley, an odd nine-and-a-half hours behind. Ferguson knew that Langley had no intention of being inconvenienced with an off-hours call, so it was his job to suit up and go back to the office before retiring for the evening. Whatever the issue was, it was worthy of a late night call.

The call finally rang in on Ferguson’s desk. The telephone was right next to him, but he motioned for one of the majors to answer it.

“General Ferguson’s desk. Major Spann speaking… yes, sir… please hold, sir.”

Spann put the call on hold and handed the phone to Ferguson. He shuffled through some papers he hadn’t been looking at before the phone rang, then finally took the call off hold and answered with his ‘busy’ voice.

“Ferguson.”

“General Ferguson, this is Special Agent Daniels, and I have Agent Fallon Jessup with me. My apologies, sir, for the lateness of the call.”

“What can I do for you this evening?”

“Sir, you’ve already received our classified briefing regarding the shipment on Russian rails heading toward Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. There’s another component that may or may not be related, but I wanted to bring it to your attention. Actually, we met with Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Raines at Fort Detrick, and she asked if you had been informed.”

“I’m listening.”

“Sir, Agent Fallon Jessup here. Two commercial mosquito misters were sold by an Illinois company to the city of Hamburg, Germany. The sprayers were stolen out of the warehouse in Hamburg, and the serial numbers showed up at a port in Jakarta, Indonesia. The police in Jakarta tracked the sprayers down to a black market importer who sold them to an unknown party in Islamabad, Pakistan.”