by Tom Clancy
“The things he said . . . ” Pam was looking down at the grass as she spoke. “I didn’t do any of that. I didn’t even think of doing it, and Albert was so innocent . . . but so was I, then.”
Kelly squeezed her hand. “You don’t have to tell me any of this, Pam.” But she did have to, and Kelly knew that, and so he continued to listen.
After sustaining the worst beating of her sixteen years. Pamela Madden had slipped out her first-floor bedroom window and walked the four miles to the center of the bleak, dusty town. She’d caught a Greyhound bus for Houston before dawn, only because it had been the first bus, and it hadn’t occurred to her to get off anywhere in between. So far as she could determine, her parents had never even reported her as missing. A series of menial jobs and even worse housing in Houston had merely given emphasis to her misery, and in short order she’d decided to head elsewhere. With what little money she’d saved, she’d caught yet another bus—this one Continental Trailways—and stopped in New Orleans. Scared, thin, and young, Pam had never learned that there were men who preyed on young runaways. Spotted almost at once by a well-dressed and smooth-talking twenty-five-year-old named Pierre Lamarck, she’d taken his offer of shelter and assistance after he had sprung for dinner and sympathy. Three days later he had become her first lover. A week after that, a firm slap across the face had coerced the sixteen-year-old girl into her second sexual adventure, this one with a salesman from Springfield, Illinois, whom Pam had reminded of his own daughter—so much so that he’d engaged her for the entire evening, paying Lamarck two hundred fifty dollars for the experience. The day after that, Pam had emptied one of her pimp’s pill containers down her throat, but only managed to make herself vomit, earning a savage beating for the defiance.
Kelly listened to the story with a serene lack of reaction, his eyes steady, his breathing regular. Inwardly it was another story entirely. The girls he’d had in Vietnam, the little childlike ones, and the few he’d taken since Tish’s death. It had never occurred to him that those young women might not have enjoyed their life and work. He’d never even thought about it, accepting their feigned reactions as genuine human feelings—for wasn’t he a decent, honorable man? But he had paid for the services of young women whose collective story might not have been the least bit different from Pam‘s, and the shame of it burned inside him like a torch.
By nineteen, she’d escaped Lamarck and three more pimps, always finding herself caught with another. One in Atlanta had enjoyed whipping his girls in front of his peers, usually using light cords. Another in Chicago had started Pam on heroin, the better to control a girl he deemed a little too independent, but she’d left him the next day, proving him right. She’d watched another girl die in front of her eyes from a hot-shot of uncut drugs, and that frightened her more than the threat of a beating. Unable to go home—she’d called once and had the phone slammed down by her mother even before she could beg for help—and not trusting the social services which might have helped her along a different path, she finally found herself in Washington, D.C., an experienced street prostitute with a drug habit that helped her to hide from what she thought of herself. But not enough. And that, Kelly thought, was probably what had saved her. Along the way she’d had two abortions, three cases of venereal disease, and four arrests, none of which had ever come to trial. Pam was crying now, and Kelly moved to sit beside her.
“You see what I really am?”
“Yes, Pam. What I see is one very courageous lady.” He wrapped his arm tightly around her. “Honey, it’s okay. Anybody can mess up. It takes guts to change, and it really takes guts to talk about it.”
The final chapter had begun in Washington with someone named Roscoe Fleming. By this time Pam was hooked solidly on barbiturates, but still fresh and pretty-looking when someone took the time to make her so, enough to command a good price from those who liked young faces. One such man had come up with an idea, a sideline. This man, whose name was Henry, had wanted to broaden his drug business, and being a careful chap who was used to having others do his bidding, he’d set up a stable of girls to run drugs from his operation to his distributors. The girls he bought from established pimps in other cities, in each case a straight cash transaction, which each of the girls found ominous. This time Pam tried to run almost at once, but she’d been caught and beaten severely enough to break three ribs, only later to learn of her good fortune that the first lesson hadn’t gone further. Henry had also used the opportunity to cram barbiturates into her, which both attenuated the pain and increased her dependence. He’d augmented the treatment by making her available to any of his associates who wanted her. In this. Henry had achieved what all the others had failed to do. He had finally cowed her spirit.
Over a period of five months, the combination of beatings, sexual abuse, and drugs had depressed her to a nearly catatonic state until she’d been jarred back to reality only four weeks earlier by tripping over the body of a twelve-year-old boy in a doorway, a needle still in his arm. Remaining outwardly docile, Pam had struggled to cut her drug use. Henry’s other friends hadn’t complained. She was a much better lay this way, they thought, and their male egos had attributed it to their prowess rather than her increased level of consciousness. She’d waited for her chance, waiting for a time when Henry was away somewhere, because the others got looser when he wasn’t around. Only five days earlier she’d packed what little she had and bolted. Penniless—Henry had never let them have money—she’d hitched her way out of town.
“Tell me about Henry,” Kelly said softly when she’d finished.
“Thirty, black, about your height.”
“Did any other girls get away?”
Pam’s voice went cold as ice. “I only know of one who tried. It was around November. He . . . killed her. He thought she was going to the cops, and”—she looked up—“he made us all watch. It was terrible.”
Kelly said quietly, “So why did you try, Pam?”
“I’d rather die than do that again,” she whispered, the thought now out in the open. “I wanted to die. That little boy. Do you know what happens? You just stop. Everything stops. And I was helping. I helped kill him.”
“How did you get out?”
“Night before . . . I . . . fucked them all . . . so they’d like me, let me . . . let me out of their sight. You understand now?”
“You did what was necessary to escape,” Kelly replied. It required every bit of his strength to keep his voice even. “Thank God.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you took me back and sent me on my way. Maybe Daddy was right, what he said about me.”
“Pam, do you remember going to church?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the story that ends, ‘Go forth and sin no more’? You think that I’ve never done something wrong? Never been ashamed? Never been scared? You’re not alone, Pam. Do you have any idea how brave you’ve been to tell me all this?”
Her voice by now was entirely devoid of emotion. “You have a right to know.”
“And now I do, and it doesn’t change anything.” He paused for a second. “Yes, it does. You’re even gutsier than I thought you were, honey.”
“Are you sure? What about later?”
“The only ‘later’ thing I’m worried about is those people you left behind.” Kelly said.
“If they ever find me . . . ” Emotion was coming back now. Fear. “Every time we go back to the city, they might see me.”
“We’ll be careful about that,” Kelly said.
“I’ll never be safe. Never.”
“Yeah, well, there’s two ways to handle that. You can just keep running and hiding. Or you can help put them away.”
She shook her head emphatically. “The girl they killed. They knew. They knew she was going to the cops. That’s why I can’t trust the police. Besides, you don’t know how scary these people are.”
Sarah had been right about something else, Kelly saw. Pam was wearing her halter again, and the
sun had given definition to the marks on her back. There were places which the sun didn’t darken as it did the others. Echoes of the welts and bloody marks that others had made for their pleasure. It had all started with Pierre Lamarck, or more correctly, Donald Madden, small, cowardly men who managed their relations with women through force.
Men? Kelly asked himself.
No.
Kelly told her to stay in place for a minute and headed off into the machinery bunker. He returned with eight empty soda and beer cans, which he set on the ground perhaps thirty feet from their chairs.
“Put your fingers in your ears,” Kelly told her.
“Why?”
“Please,” he replied. When she did, Kelly’s right hand moved in a blur, pulling a .45 Colt automatic from under his shirt. He brought it up into a two-hand hold, going left to right. One at a time, perhaps half a second apart, the cans alternatively fell over or flew a foot or two in the air to the crashing report of the pistol. Before the last was back on the ground from its brief flight, Kelly had ejected the spent magazine and was inserting another, and seven of the cans moved a little more. He checked to be sure the weapon was clear, dropped the hammer, and replaced it in his belt before sitting down next to her.
“It doesn’t take all that much to be scary to a young girl without friends. It takes a little more to scare me. Pam, if anybody even thinks about hurting you, he has to talk to me first.”
She looked over at the cans, then up at Kelly, who was pleased with himself and his marksmanship. The demonstration had been a useful release for him, and in the brief flurry of activity, he’d assigned a name or a face to each of the cans. But he could see she still was not convinced. It Would take a little time.
“Anyway.” He sat down with Pam again. “Okay, you told me your story, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still think it makes a difference to me?”
“No. You say it doesn’t. I guess I believe you.”
“Pam, not all the men in the world are like that—not very many, as a matter of fact. You’ve been unlucky, that’s all. There isn’t anything wrong with you. Some people get hurt in accidents or get sick. Over in Vietnam I saw men get killed from bad luck. It almost happened to me. It wasn’t because there was something wrong with them. It was just bad luck, being in the wrong place, turning left instead of right, looking the wrong way. Sarah wants you to meet some docs and talk it through. I think she’s right. We’re going to get you all fixed up.”
“And then?” Pam Madden asked. He took a very deep breath, but it was too late to stop now.
“Will you . . . stay with me, Pam?”
She looked as though she’d been slapped. Kelly was stunned by her reaction. “You can’t, you’re just doing it because—”
Kelly stood and lifted her by the arms. “Listen to me, okay? You’ve been sick. You’re getting better. You’ve taken everything that goddamned world could toss at you, and you didn’t quit. I believe in you! It’s going to take time. Everything does. But at the end of it. you will be one goddamned fine person.” He set her down on her feet and stepped back. He was shaking with rage, not only at what had happened to her, but at himself for starting to impose his will on her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Please, Pam . . . just believe in yourself a little.”
“It’s hard. I’ve done terrible things.”
Sarah was right. She did need professional help. He was angry at himself for not knowing exactly what to say.
The next few days settled into a surprisingly easy routine. Whatever her other qualities, Pam was a horrible cook, which failing made her cry twice with frustration, though Kelly managed to choke down everything she prepared with a smile and a kind word. But she learned quickly, too, and by Friday she’d figured out how to make hamburger into something tastier than a piece of charcoal. Through it all, Kelly was there, encouraging her. trying hard not to be overpowering and mainly succeeding. A quiet word, a gentle touch, and a smile were his tools. She was soon aping his habit of rising before dawn. He started getting her to exercise. This came very hard indeed. Though basically healthy, she hadn’t run more than half a block in years, and so he made her walk around the island, starting with two laps, by the end of the week up to five. She spent her afternoons in the sun, and without much to wear she most often did so in her panties and bra. She acquired the beginnings of a tan, and never seemed to notice the thin, pale marks on her back that made Kelly’s blood chill with anger. She began to pay more serious attention to her appearance, showering and washing her hair at least once per day, brushing it out to a silky gloss, and Kelly was always there to comment on it. Not once did she appear to need the phenobarbital Sarah had left behind. Perhaps she struggled once or twice, but by using exercise instead of chemicals, she worked herself onto a normal wake-sleep routine. Her smiles acquired more confidence, and twice he caught her looking into the mirror with something other than pain in her eyes.
“Pretty nice. isn’t it?” he asked Saturday evening, just after her shower.
“Maybe,” she allowed.
Kelly lifted a comb from the sink and started going through her wet hair. “The sun has really lightened it up for you.”
“It took a while to get all the dirt out,” she said, relaxing to his touch.
Kelly struggled with a tangle, careful not to pull too hard. “But it did come out, Pammy, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so, maybe,” she told the face in the mirror.
“How hard was that to say, honey?”
“Pretty hard.” A smile, a real one with warmth and conviction.
Kelly set the comb down and kissed the base of her neck, letting her watch in the mirror. Kelly got the comb back and continued his work. It struck him as very unmanly, but he loved doing this. “There, all straight, no tangles.”
“You really ought to buy a hair-dryer.”
Kelly shrugged. “I’ve never needed one.”
Pam turned around and took his hands. “You will, if you still want to.”
He was quiet for perhaps ten seconds, and when he spoke, the words didn’t quite come out as they should, for now the fear was his. “You sure?”
“Do you still—”
“Yes!” It was hard lifting her with wet hair, still nude and damp from the shower, but a man had to hold his woman at a time like this. She was changing. Her ribs were less pronounced. She’d gained weight on a regular, healthy diet. But it was the person inside who had changed the most. Kelly wondered what miracle had taken place, afraid to believe that he was part of it, but knowing that it was so. He set her down after a moment, looking at the mirth in her eyes, proud that he’d helped to put it there.
“I have my rough edges, too,” Kelly warned her, unaware of the look in his eyes.
“I’ve seen most of them,” she assured him. Her hands started rubbing over his chest, tanned and matted with dark hair, marked with scars from combat operations in a faraway place. Her scars were inside, but so were some of his, and together each would heal the other. Pam was sure of that now. She’d begun to look at the future as more than a dark place where she could hide and forget. It was now a place of hope.
6
Ambush
The rest was easy. They made a quick boat trip to Solomons, where Pam was able to buy a few simple things. A beauty shop trimmed her hair. By the end of her second week with Kelly, she’d started to run and had gained weight. Already she could wear a two-piece swimsuit without an overt display of her rib cage. Her leg muscles were toning up: what had been slack was now taut, as it ought to be on a girl her age. She still had her demons. Twice Kelly woke to find her trembling, sweating, and murmuring sounds that never quite turned into words but were easily understood. Both times his touch calmed her. but not him. Soon he was teaching her to run Springer, and whatever the defects in her schooling, she was smart enough. She quickly grasped how to do the things that most boaters never learned. He even took her swimming, surprised some
how that she’d learned the skill in the middle of Texas.
Mainly he loved her, the sight, the sound, the smell, and most of all the feel of Pam Madden. Kelly found himself slightly anxious if he failed to see her every few minutes, as though she might somehow disappear. But she was always there, catching his eye, smiling back playfully. Most of the time. Sometimes he’d catch her with a different expression, allowing herself to look back into the darkness of her past or forward into an alternate future different from that which he had already planned. He found himself wishing that he could reach into her mind and remove the bad parts, knowing that he would have to trust others to do that. At those times, and the others, for the most part, he’d find an excuse to head her way, and let his fingertips glide over her shoulder, just to be sure she knew that he was there.
Ten days after Sam and Sarah had left, they had a little ceremony. He let her take the boat out, tie the bottle of phenobarbital to a large rock, and dump it over the side. The splash it made seemed a fitting and final end to one of her problems. Kelly stood behind her, his strong arms about her waist, watching the other boats traveling the Bay, and he looked into a future bright with promise.
“You were right,” she said, stroking his forearms.
“That happens sometimes,” Kelly replied with a distant smile, only to be stunned by her next statement.
“There are others, John, other women Henry has . . . like Helen, the one he killed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have to go back. I have to help them . . . before Henry—before he kills more of them.”
“There’s danger involved, Pammy,” Kelly said slowly.
