Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

He felt better when he put on his flannel robe and went down to his study. He got out a bottle of scotch and sat in front of his marble fireplace. Drinking and watching the fire die, his mind drifted back twenty years. Had it been that long? Every moment of that horrible, tragic day seemed so vivid to him, still so very real. When he swallowed, he could taste the same sourness he’d tasted when he’d first realized the Huey he’d permitted to fly into a hot LZ was going down.

He remembered thinking that he didn’t have to worry: Matt Stark was the pilot. Steelman had one month left on his harrowing year-long tour and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The grunts felt secure when he was flying their slick.

This mission should have been easy and safe: the resupply of a platoon-First Lieutenant Samuel Ryder’s platoon-in a cold LZ. What could happen? But the landing zone had turned hot and no one had told Stark until it was too late-and they were shot down.

“No one’s fault,” Ryder mumbled aloud in the silent study. “It was war. Anything could have happened.”

Although he was the officer in charge, Ryder had been too dazed and terrified at first by what was going on to notice even that the Huey was receiving ground fire. The slick went down.

There was nothing even Matthew Stark could do.

Ryder remembered screams-heard them still in his nightmares. Too late, he’d rushed toward the downed slick…and he still could feel the icy grip of Otis Raymond as the door gunner had pushed him aside so a lieutenant wouldn’t get torn to bits by AK-47 bullets.

The survivors were picked up by a search and rescue team and taken back to base camp. As a platoon leader, Ryder had faced the Viet Cong and the NVA, but he’d never been so afraid for his life as at the moment when he’d had to face Matt Stark. But the Steelman, his young, knowing face showing no emotion, had only looked at Ryder with those black eyes and not said a word.

With commanding officers buzzing around him demanding to know what the hell had happened out there, Stark hadn’t made excuses or assigned blame to anyone other than himself. He accepted responsibility for his ship and its passengers. He had been in the pilot’s seat, no one else.

“We got shot at,” he said. “There’s a war going on out there, you know.”

The event, however, had scarred him as much as anyone, and as far as Ryder was concerned, Stark’s actions proved it. He didn’t go home a month later, but extended and got himself transferred-to Cobras for a while and then to a scout helicopter-the Hughes OH-6A Cayuse or Loach. He was assigned to a hunter-killer or “pink” team, with its primitive, effective strategy. The Loach-the hunter-would go in and draw fire to locate the enemy. Then the killer-the new Bell AH-1G Cobra or “snake”-would come in with guns blazing. The work, especially for the hunters, was dangerous; scout losses were huge. But they didn’t carry passengers, and CW-2 Matthew Stark and SP-4 Otis Raymond, who’d stayed with his hero Steelman, had survived.

Sam Ryder, back home in Florida, had hoped they wouldn’t.

Now, pouring himself another glass of Scotch, he put them out of his mind, his ability to repress well developed. He had to forget Steelman and Weasel; he had to make himself unavailable to Phillip Bloch. Regardless of what Matthew knew or didn’t know, he had no proof-nothing he could print. And he’d have to be very, very careful before he printed anything about Sam Ryder; there was history between them. Stark wouldn’t want to be accused of mounting a witch hunt.

Nothing had to happen. All Ryder needed was for Bloch to get hold of the Minstrel’s Rough. Then, at last, he’d be satisfied and get out of Ryder’s life.

Bloch had to get hold of the Minstrel.

But what will he do to get it? You gave him the names of the Peperkamps. He can find them. He can find Juliana.

“Juliana.”

Her name came out as a breath. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? She couldn’t be involved with this mess; she could have nothing to do with the Minstrel. Bloch had no reason to go after her.

Unless he has reason to believe she has the stone. He won’t be satisfied until he’s positive she doesn’t. Until he knows none of the Peperkamp women has the Minstrel, including Juliana.

Ryder inhaled deeply, then slowly swallowed a mouthful of Scotch. He had to hope Bloch would go to the mother and the aunt first and one of them would lead him to the Minstrel.

Besides, what Bloch did or didn’t do was not Sam Ryder’s responsibility.

He poured himself another glass of Scotch and took it to bed.

Catharina set her plastic bucket down hard on the sidewalk in front of her bakeshop. Hot soapy water splashed out onto her sneakers, but she paid no attention. It was early, just after dawn, and cold. She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket and knelt down, her heavy corduroy pants worn at the knee from this very ritual. Every other morning she scrubbed the sidewalk from the door of her shop out to the curb. It was an old Dutch custom. Adrian and Juliana teased her about having the cleanest patch of sidewalk in New York. Twice she’d almost been arrested for her odd activity. Yet Catharina was convinced a clean sidewalk helped business. And even if there was no financial gain to be made from her efforts, New York was never so quiet as it was in early morning. She could think then. Dream. Remember.

But this morning she worked quickly because it was cold and furiously because she was trying so desperately not to think, not to dream, not to remember. Rachel…Senator Ryder…Juliana…Wilhelmina… Johannes. My God, what was happening to her world?

Again…

Despite the cold and the ungodly hour, the man was out there, across the street, watching, not caring that she knew he was there. He was young, dark, and fine-featured, not very tall, and he wore clothes that didn’t make him stand out in the upper-income neighborhood. This morning’s outfit was a pair of heavy corduroy pants and a lambskin jacket. Nevertheless he looked tired and uncomfortable, and she’d thought, madly, of walking over to him and inviting him inside for coffee. But she remembered how young and innocent so many of the Nazis, Dutch as well as German, had looked, and she stopped herself.

Behind her, she heard a soft, distinctive laugh, and she paused, thinking she must have imagined it. It was a laugh of dreams and memories and a girlhood so short, so long ago, that every moment of it was etched in her mind, that much sharper, that much more bittersweet.

Hendrik…

Then the laugh came again, and Catharina tossed the brush into her bucket and rolled back onto her heels. She started to tuck a stray white-blond hair behind her ear but remembered her heavy rubber gloves, her hands warm inside them. Her nose felt cold and red. But as she looked up into the warm blue eyes of Hendrik de Geer, the years fell away. She saw none of his deep wrinkles, none of the scars the years had left, saw only the dashing, brave young man he had once been, at least to her.

“Aren’t you ever afraid?” she asked him.

“Only for you, sweet Catharina,” he’d told her, and she’d believed him.

“You’re amazingly clean,” he said now in English, “even for a Dutchwoman.”

“It’s my mother’s influence.” Her voice was hoarse and unnatural from the tension and an overwhelming sadness, not for the past that had been, but for the past that might have been. She spoke, too, in English. It helped to anchor her in the present. “Mother was always so busy with the Underground Resistance, you remember? I was the youngest, and so I kept house. I wasn’t very good at it, but Mother was an exacting woman and I learned quickly. If she found a loose button on a shirt, she would tear off all the other buttons, too, and I would have to sew them all back on.”