Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

“What the hell’s this all about?”

“It has its origins with the American people, who want to wage war without casualties. When the words friendly fire emblazon the headlines, half-truths will tarnish one of the great moments in our military history. But we had to advertise to the terrorists that we will hit them again and again.”

“The truth is, sir, our people were killed by one of our cluster bombs.

That’s the truth.”

“We are not playing semperfi and buddy-buddy, Gunner. Remember that your hero, Jeremiah Duncan, as well as myself, has had to feed the Congress a little.”

Quinn wobbled to his feet. His head throbbed now. Horseshit! The Corps comes first. He tilted his carafe of water, spilling it, missing the glass.

“You’re telling me to lie, sir?”

“Oh, hell, no. Just be creative with the truth. We weren’t raised that way, but our countrymen expect us to be saints, to be sparkly clean and pure. All the shit you had to go through to train and carry out a raid against terrorism. Now you’ve still got to justify it. And the press can be as bloodthirsty as the enemy. From what Jeremiah told me about you, you’ll know how to handle it.”

Keith Brickhouse troweled on the mortar of honor and duty and set the bricks of responsibility on his shoulders. Quinn had a sense of capability, a calm feeling of his own capacity.

Although Quinn wanted to walk to the conference room, Mandy would not let him. She wheeled him in. It was not only the wound, but he had expended blood and stamina unconditionally, and his entire body needed revitalizing. The flight from Urbakkan had demanded his final ounce of strength. He had borrowed too much strength from his own willpower, and it had debilitated him with recurring migraines.

The commandant and Senator Sol Lightner came in and took seats at the conference table. The committee lawyer looked up from the table, half rose, and nodded.

Quinn detected an adversarial relationship at once. V. VINCENT ZAC CO his card read: SPECIAL COUNSEL. The card was undersized but expensive, as was Vincent himself. Formfitting suit, Hoover collar, and the big mustache that small men of the world wear to send a message of their macho. The handshake told Quinn that the counsel had not made his way up through hard labor.

Senator Lightner was honored, honored, honored. He purred on, “We ought to have this little visit before the President’s news conference tomorrow to see if we are all on the same page. I think informality is the order of the day. Now, you do understand, Gunner, that hearings are a usual way of life in the Congress, and you might be asked the same questions later, under oath.”

Jesus, Quinn thought, the last clone of Senator Claghorn on Fibber McGee and Molly, or was it Fred Alien*? A senator’s senator, with honey-drawn banter. Hearings that ensure legislators a role in the separation of powers.

Lightner returned to his seat, lit a cigarillo, and nodded to Zacco,

whose papers were rustling in anticipation. Zacco cleared his throat

repetitively, tuning up. He oozed out a question or two to give a false impression of gentleness and feigned innocence.

Quinn’s guard went on alert.

Vincent led Quinn through his acquaintance and relationship with the late Major General Duncan, his joining the RAM unit, and an “understanding” of Quinn’s role in the raid.

Quinn explained that there were separate entities within the company:

namely, the fighting section, the front cabin men and command, and the aircraft itself. Quinn’s job had been to coordinate the three and oversee the training schedules. In addition, Quinn had worked on the logistics of possible future targets. Quinn had also had his voice in all meetings and a hand on every piece of equipment that flowed to the Marines and had been tested for the SCARAB.

“In actual fact,” Zacco said, “you were not only second in command, but the general’s complete staff.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Quinn answered. “This was his manner of operation, to travel light. Likewise, every man in the unit had a second, third, and fourth skill. Everyone knew how to handle every weapon we carried, and so forth.”

“But a drop in rank straight down from major general to Marine gunner? No disrespect, but shouldn’t there have been a stronger chain of command? Perhaps a colonel directly under Duncan?”

“Well, unfortunately,” Quinn said, “the man who could answer that is no longer here. However, and fortunately, it worked so well that we were right.”

Brickhouse allowed a meager smile to form up.

“”Kiss,” General Duncan would say.”

“”Kiss,” indeed!” Brickhouse retorted.

“It stands for, Keep It Simple, Stupid,” Quinn retorted.

The corners of Brickhouse’s lips smiled higher.

“I know you are hesitant to give an opinion, but wouldn’t you agree that Duncan was a maverick and played a maverick’s game?” Zacco asked.

“I’ll give you my opinion,” Quinn replied. “In my opinion,

Jeremiah Duncan was the greatest Marine I ever met.”

“And men tended to follow him blindly.” That was V. Vincent Zacco’s first mouse turd, Quinn thought as he stared at the counsel’s beaver-squirrel-rat glint. “Let me take that a bit further. Didn’t he have the officers’ helmets wired so he could move you around like robots?”

Quinn laughed out loud. “Duncan made suggestions. The man on the scene made the decision. Our network gave us unity. We moved like a chorus line. Blindly? Hell, this was one of the best trained and informed group of men in any of the services. As far as the missing colonel in the chain of command was concerned, we obviously didn’t need him.”

Lightner’s cigarillo ash grew longer on his frozen face. Zacco switched quickly to the savagery and overkill of the raid.

“The facts on the ground were clear,” Quinn said. “We were compelled to fight in a walled-in, tight area. Our first strike was not only to take as many of them out as possible, but to inflict confusion. We weren’t high on enemy blood, sir. We just didn’t want anyone to get a lucky shot at the SCARAB.”

“So,” Zacco shot back quickly, “many Iranians came out to the middle of the courtyard and tried to surrender.”

“Yes, but maybe you’d like to tell me what we were supposed to do with prisoners.”

“So you massacred them!”

“Not exactly, sir. We were ordered to shoot over their heads and drive them away from the plane, then keep them pinned down.”

Christ! Quinn thought, how could Duncan have made decisions knowing he’d be grilled by Congress later on.

Sol Lightner’s ever kindly Kris Kringle expression was tainted by his wart hog eyes above his hanging jowls.

Zacco then attacked the speed at which the raid was put together. Was it not a sloppy affair, throwing in men not trained properly for the particular mission?

“The very cornerstone of the unit was advance preparation and development of a line of skills. This was guaranteed by drill after drill after drill. Duncan and his pilots checked out the SCARAB for nearly two hours every time it was flown. The systems were pushed every which way in training. The great strength of the SCARAB herself has been proved by her murderous flight to and from the target.”

Quinn had warded off every attack with the ease of a fencing master.

“Shouldn’t we take a little break?” the senator said, knowing his doberman had worked the questioning in to the critical areas, ones that Quinn could not talk around.