Tom Clancy - Without Remorse

Food, nourishment, strength. He reached into a pocket, moving his hand slowly and withdrawing a pair of food bars. Nothing he'd eat by choice in any other place, but it was vital now. He tore off the plastic wrappers with his teeth and chewed them up slowly. The strength they imparted to his body was probably as much psychological as real, but both factors had their uses, as his body had to deal with both fatigue and stress.

At eight, the guard cycle changed again. Those relieved from the towers went in for chow. Two men took posts at the gate, bored before they got there, looking out at the road for traffic that would probably never come to this backwater camp. Some work details formed, and the jobs they performed were as clearly useless to Kelly as to those who carried them out in a. stoic, unhurried way.

Colonel Grishanov arose just after eight. He'd been up late the night before, and though he'd planned to arise earner, he'd just learned to his displeasure that his mechanical alarm clock had finally given up the ghost, corroded to death by the miserable climate. Eight-ten, he saw, looking at his aviator's watch. Damn. No morning ran. It would soon be too hot for that, and besides, it looked like it would be raining all day. He brewed his own pot of tea over a small army-type cook stove. No morning paper to read - again. No news of the football scores. No review of a new ballet production. Nothing at all in this miserable place to distract him. Important as his duty was, he needed distraction as much as any man did. Not even decent plumbing. He was used to all of that, but it didn't help. God, to be able to go home, to hear people speaking his native language again, to be in a cultured place where there was something to talk about. Grishanov frowned in the shaving mirror. Months more to go, and he was grumbling like a private soldier, a damned recruit. He was supposed to know better.

His uniform needed pressing. The humidity here attacked the cotton fibers, making his usually crisp blouse look like pajamas, and he was already on his third set of shoes, Grishanov thought, sipping, now at his tea and going over notes from the previous night's interrogations. All work and no play... and he was already late. He tried to light a cigarette, but the humidity had also rendered his matches useless. Well, he had the cook stove for that. Where had he left his lighter...?

There were compensations, if you could call them that. The Vietnamese soldiers treated him with respect, almost awe - except for the camp commander, Major Vinh, worthless bastard that he was. Courtesy to a fellow socialist ally demanded that Grishanov be given an orderly, in this case a small, ignorant peasant boy with only one eye who was able to make the bed and carry out the slops bowl every morning. The Colonel was able to walk out in the knowledge that his room would be somewhat tidy when he returned. And he had his work. Important, professionally stimulating. But he would have killed for his morning Sowetskiy Sport.

'Good morning, Ivan,' Kelly whispered to himself. He didn't even need the binoculars for that. The size was so different - the man was over six feet - and the uniform far neater than that worn by the NVA. The glasses showed Kelly the man's face, pale and florid, with a narrowed-eye expression to contemplate the day. He made a gesture to a small private who'd been waiting outside the door of the officers' quarters. Orderly, KeUy thought. A visiting Russian colonel would like his comforts, wouldn't he? Definitely a pilot from the wings over the blouse pocket, plenty of ribbons. Only one? Kelly wondered. Only one Russian officer to helptorturethe prisoners? Odd when you think about it. But that meant only one extraneous person to have to kill, end for all his lack of political sophistication, Kelly knew that killing Russians wouldn't do anyone much good. He watched the Russian walk across the parade ground. Then the senior visible Vietnamese officer, a major, went towards him. Another limper, Kelly saw. The little Mayor saluted the tall Colonel.

'Good morning, Comrade Colonel.'

'Good morning, Major Vinh.' Little bastard can't even learn to salute property. Perhaps he simply cannot make a proper gesture to his betters. 'The rations for the prisoners?'

'They will have to be satisfied with what they have,' the smaller man replied in badly accented and phrased Russian.

'Major, it is important that you understand me,' Grishanov said, stepping closer so that he could look more sharply down at the Vietnamese. 'I need the information they have. I cannot get it if they are too sick to speak.'

'Tovarisch, we have problems enough feeding our own people. You ask us to waste good food on murderers?' The Vietnamese soldier responded quietly, using a tone that both conveyed his contempt for the foreigner and at the same tune seemed respectful to his soldiers, who would not have understood exactly what this was all about. After all, they thought that the Russians were fast allies.

'Your people do not have what my country needs, Major. And if my country gets what she needs, then your country might get more of what it needs.'

'I have my orders. If you are experiencing difficulty in questioning the Americans, then I am prepared to help.' Arrogant dog. It was a suffix that didn't need to be spoken, and Vinh knew how to stick his needle into a sensitive place.

'Thank you, Major. That will not be necessary.' Grishanov made a salute himself, even sloppier than that given him by this annoying little man. It would be good to watch him die, the Russian thought, walking off to the prison block. His first 'appointment' with the day was with an American naval aviator who was just about ready to crack.

Casual enough, Kelly thought from several hundred yards away. Those two must get along fairly well. His scrutiny of the camp was relaxed now. His greatest fear was that the guard force might send out security patrols, as a line unit in hostile country would surely have done. But they were not in hostile territory, and this was not really a line unit. His next radio message to Ogden confirmed that everything was within acceptable risk limits.

Sergeant Peter Meyer smoked. His father didn't approve, but accepted his son's weakness so long as he did it outside, as they were now, on the back porch of the parsonage after Sunday evening dinner.

'It's Doris Brown, right?' Peter asked. At twenty-six he was one of his department's youngest sergeants, and like most of the current class of police officers a Vietnam veteran. He was within six credit hours of completing his night-school degree and was considering making an application to the FBI Academy. Word that the wayward girl had returned was now circulating through the neighborhood. 'I remember her. She had a reputation as a hot number a few years back.'

'Peter, you know I can't say. This is a pastoral matter. I will counsel the person to speak to you when the time is right, but -'

'Pop, I understand the law on that, okay? You have to understand, we're talking two homicides here. Two dead people, plus the drug business.' He nipped the butt of his Salem into the grass. 'That's pretty heavy stuff. Pop.'

'Even worse than that,' his father reported more quietly still. 'They don't just kill the girls. Torture, sexual abuse. It's pretty horrible. The person is seeing a doctor about it. I know I have to do something, but I can't -'

'Yeah, I know you can't. Okay, I can call the people in Baltimore and fill them in on what you've told me. I really' ought to hold off until we can give them something they can really use, but, well, like you say, we have to do something. I'll call down first thing tomorrow morning.'

'Will it put her - the person - in danger?' the Reverend Meyer asked, vexed with himself for the slip.

'Shouldn't,' Peter judged. 'If she's gotten herself away - I mean, they ought not to know where she is, and if they did, they might have got her already.'