Warrior's Second Chance

by Nancy Gideon

  But Tag knew about love and how to share it. He’d learned during the summers he’d spent as a child, when he’d escape the boiling pot of anger and alcoholism in his home to absorb the quiet balm of his grandfather’s farm in rural southwestern Michigan. It was there he’d learned respect, devotion, pride and, most importantly, love. It had been his one haven until the old man passed away when Tag was thirteen. Then he found refuge in books. And finally with Barbara Calvin.

  Barbara had had no doubts where Tag McGee was concerned. Not a single one. It would be rough, but they would make it. She wrote to tell him about her situation and then waited for a call, a letter, a card, planning to wed him when he came home on leave that Christmas before the baby began to show in her senior year at high school.

  Nothing.

  No response whatsoever.

  Panic began to claw at her heart. Fear laced through her thoughts as the silence continued.

  And then it was Robert D’Angelo who came home that Christmas, not Tag McGee. He was the one who heard her desperate plight and offered a solution.

  She never heard from Tag. Never saw him again. Not since he’d stepped on that bus and out of her life. Away from his obligations. And her heart and faith had been broken.

  How could he not know? Some mistake? Some miscommunication that unfairly pulled their lives in two different directions, leaving them both isolated and alone, him in the wilds of northern Michigan, her in the confines of an empty marriage? The magnitude of those thoughts played about in her mind like the mocking irony of some Shakespearian romantic tragedy.

  Because her heart could no longer hold the possibility that circumstance, not intention, had kept them apart, when the first pinks of daylight colored the room she rolled toward the window to ask the questions that had tortured her for thirty years.

  Why?

  Why didn’t you answer? Why didn’t you come home?

  How could you not know?

  But he was gone.

  The chair was empty of even his body’s impression, as if he’d never been there at all. The coverlet was folded at the foot of the bed. She’d never heard him get up, let alone leave without a word.

  And now she would have to wait, holding those questions close to a newly hopeful heart. Hoping for what, she didn’t know. A new start? A second chance? Or just the opportunity to forgive and go on.

  That would depend upon McGee’s reaction to learning that Robert had fathered only their two sons. Tag was responsible for her eldest child, the daughter made between them, Tessa.

  In the early morning hour, the Mall was without the throngs of tourists. Frisbee tossers and picnicking families would arrive later. Vendors had yet to set up their wares. It was still some sixty minutes before the first of many commuters would burst from the subway exits like a swarm of anxious ants from a disturbed hole.

  It was there, next to one of those stations, that he hid in plain sight. He used the openness to his advantage so he had an unrestricted view while secreted in cloaking shadow. Then, right on time, a single figure emerged from the tunnel.

  “Colonel Kelly?”

  He was older, with gray muting the once fiery red of his hair, hair he still wore military short even though the combat drabs had long since been replaced by tailored suits. But the businessman attire couldn’t distract from the immediately alert pose that came from a man who’d once lived with danger.

  Tag’s former CO regarded him with an instant welcoming smile.

  “McGee, damned good to see you, son. Your call came as quite a pleasant surprise. I don’t get the chance to see many from our old unit any more.”

  “Yes, sir. Good to see you, too, sir.”

  “It’s not sir anymore. Just plain Mister.” He patted his middle. “That comes with retirement, twenty extra pounds and three kids. Did you know I married Su Lee Quan? I run the States’ side of her family’s import-export business now.”

  “I hadn’t heard that. Congratulations, sir.”

  Kelly sighed at the continued use of military respect but chose to ignore it. Ingrained habits died hard. He gave McGee a once-over, seeing little change from the toughly fit and mostly silent kid who’d been assigned to cover his rifle platoon. A few more pounds, a few more lines but the same unsmiling, get-right-to-business attitude. He and Allen were the sniper team, a shooter and a spotter, attached to his company as they went out on night operations, shadowing their patrols with their XM-21s, 3X9 Redfields and six-pound Starlight night scopes. They were called the unit’s thirteen-cent killers because their rifle cartridges cost Uncle Sam thirteen cents each. At first the men steered clear of them because what they did sometimes came uncomfortably close to murder, but to a man, they always breathed easier knowing the two of them were in position on some distant ridge watching their backs.

  “Are you here for Frye’s big night, too?”

  McGee hesitated.

  Could he trust this man with his doubts, his concerns? It had been thirty years. But in looking at him, all that time melted away to one indelibly imprinted image. That of then Lieutenant Patrick Kelly in jungle fatigues waving them to follow. And they had. There wasn’t one of them in his command who wouldn’t have followed him into hell. And they had, hadn’t they? He’d been a fair and competent leader who’d become a compassionate, caring friend. And he’d brought almost all of them home alive. Those he’d had to leave behind, he’d cried over without shame.

  Still, McGee was cautious.

  “You might say that, sir.”

  Kelly’s gaze narrowed. He was familiar with McGee’s conservative choice of words and was instantly suspicious. “But you didn’t say that. What’s on your mind, McGee? What brings you from wherever you’ve been holed up to call me away from my financial section this early in the morning?”

  “Chet Allen.”

  All traces of relaxed retirement fell from Kelly’s frame. He became flint and steel.

  Kelly had been a mother hen to his men without exception, promising to watch out for them as long as they stood by him when it counted. Allen shied away from that companionable attention, preferring the company of his two buddies from home and his own tightly held counsel. Like McGee, he’d been on the receiving end of one too many harsh and scarring parental disciplines.

  But where Tag appreciated a good man who deserved his allegiance, Chet distrusted all authority. He wasn’t a follower and he didn’t like rules. That put him and his CO on opposite ends more than once. But whatever differences they might have, they had stayed in the unit. No reports of misconduct ever made their way beyond those boundaries. Kelly took care of his own. And to a man, including a reluctant Allen, they respected him for it.

  But once Allen left his command, scary things had trickled back the way scary things tended to. Rumors he hated to hear but couldn’t dismiss.

  “I thought he was on his way to prison.” There was such regret and frustration in that brief statement. Such a waste, was what he didn’t say. “What’s he up to now? No good, I assume.”

  “He’s here in D.C. It has something to do with Frye, but I’m not sure which side the good doctor is on.”

  “Neither am I. And that’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

  “Sir?”

  “What do you remember about Tam Quan, my wife’s first husband?”

  A sudden low hum started inside Tag’s head. He blinked hard trying to discourage it. “He was your South Vietnamese counterpart.”

  “And he was assassinated along with his two young children while my wife watched. She recognized the man who killed them from a clip on the news a month or so ago, and she demanded justice for their unauthorized murders.”

  The buzz in his head rose to a roar. “Killed by whom?”

  “Allen. I’m part of an investigation to link that killing to Frye. Apparently Frye was indulging in a little black market child slavery and Tam found out about it. Frye sent Allen to silence him and his family. Fortunately, Su escaped and is now more than willin
g to testify.”

  The sound had grown to the cacophony of hot summer cicadas, shrieking maddeningly between his ears. It was a struggle to maintain a straight face, pretending nothing was wrong. But something was. Something was very wrong. So he asked, “Why pull me into this?”

  “Perhaps Frye thinks you know more than you’re saying about his profit-making tour in ’Nam. Do you, son?”

  It grew hard to breathe. Tension knotted in his belly until the need to retch was almost overpowering. Sweat, cold and slick, built on his brow. What did he know?

  “McGee?”

  Because he couldn’t find an answer to what was asked, he found another question. “Who gave Frye the order to use hypnotism to mess with our minds? We sure as hell didn’t agree to it.”

  The truth was worse than McGee expected.

  “He was using hypnotic suggestion to send our men after nonmilitary targets, then erasing their memory of what they’d done to cover his own agenda.”

  “He was using Chet. And me.” Icy cramps of nausea threatened to buckle his knees but he held firm against them. Was this Frye’s handiwork, as well, this sudden physical distress? His means of getting Tag to back away from anything that might lead him in the right direction? He breathed hard into it, refusing to succumb.

  “Not exclusively, but primarily. I’m sorry, son. I didn’t find out about it until you’d already gone home. That’s why I was trying so hard to find you. To make sure no permanent damage had been done.”

  McGee swallowed down the harsh laugh that would have sounded, well, crazy. Damage. His brain had been scrambled like a breakfast omelet. Kelly placed a bracing hand upon his shoulder, squeezing just firmly enough to snap him out of a nonproductive tailspin.

  “I tried to take care of you,” Kelly concluded.

  Uncomfortable with talk about his own weakness, McGee took another path, one that held few pitfalls.

  “Why does Frye want me dead? Rumor has it that Chet has a contract on me. Why? I don’t remember anything.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure there’s no residual recall? Frye never got the chance to do that final memory wipe on you the way he did D’Angelo and others. Maybe that’s why you’re such a threat. He’s afraid bits and pieces will come back to you. Maybe jumbled memories. Maybe in dreams. Things that might not make any sense to you. Anything like that, McGee?”

  Tag stared him straight in the eye and shook his head. “No, sir. Everything is squared away up here.” He tapped his temple and watched his CO give a sigh of frustration. Or relief.

  “There is one thing, son,” Kelly said carefully. “And I want you to think about this. Is there anything Allen might have said, anything you might have seen but just didn’t connect? Anything strange or out of line?”

  “About what, sir?”

  “The children. Su’s children. Their bodies were never found.”

  It was just a flash, a sliver of a second, like an image caught as channels were being changed. Two young faces, twisted in terror and wet with tears. The picture stabbed through his brain, a hot knife of pain and surprise. His rigidly schooled features betrayed neither. His tone was flat and neutral.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know anything about any children. The only targets I remember were military. Are you sure it was Allen?”

  There was a soft puff of sound. Wood on the frame of the subway tunnel splintered in the space between them. A bullet.

  Tag’s gaze swept the perimeter. He put the shooter at eight hundred to a thousand yards out. Only one other man besides himself could have made such a shot. Chet Allen.

  Patrick Kelly was gone, taking refuge back in the tunnel where no sniper shot could catch him. Instinctively, Tag faded back, as well, until his form was indistinguishable in the shadows. His mind was clear, the torturous pains gone.

  Frye. Frye had sent them out to kill civilians. The anguish lancing through him wasn’t falsely induced. Children. He tried to recapture their frightened faces but the image was gone, as if it had never existed either in dream or reality.

  Which was it? The answer was just out of reach, playing hide-and-seek in the fog-draped recesses of his mind. A mind warped by Frye’s direction.

  If Chet had murdered children, had he been sent out to do the same level of evil without conscious knowledge of it? If he was seeing their fear-stricken faces, had he been a witness to that ghastly crime? Was that why Frye wanted him dead? Or had he become a rogue soldier, a mercenary like Allen, with Frye just trying to heal the tears in his psyche?

  A dull throb began at the base of his skull.

  How could he return to Barbara with these questions unanswered? How could he spend another night listening to the soft lure of her breathing without wanting to excite it to a quickened pace beneath him? How could he hear the shift and twisting of her body without rekindling the feel of those silken swells and tempting hollows moving against him, with him? The look in her eyes said she saw him as some sort savior, some hero come to rescue her from her fears.

  What if he were as big a nightmare as Allen?

  He turned from that train of thought. What he did or didn’t feel or fear for Barbara wasn’t what he needed to focus on. Not until the riddle Chet drew him into was solved.

  Why didn’t Chet want him talking to Kelly? He was no fool. If his friend had wanted either of them dead, they would be.

  So, if Patrick Kelly was a wrong turn on the path Allen was coaching them down, which way was he supposed to go next?

  And then he heard a whispered step behind him. Wondering how someone had managed to get the drop on him without him knowing it, McGee started to turn, his hand going for the pistol he wasn’t supposed to be carrying. Then, words he could never remember afterwards whispered to him, coaxing him to drop his guard.

  Kingdom come.

  And everything went black.

  “How are you enjoying D.C. so far, Babs?”

  She’d pounced on the ringing phone, thinking it must be the inexplicably absent McGee. Hearing Allen’s voice turned that expectation to alarm.

  “Why are we here, Chet? I’m tired of this game. I want to go home to my family.”

  “Oh, but Barbie, we haven’t even begun to play yet. What did you think of Frye? Did you believe him? What kind of reward do you think he really deserves tonight?”

  “What did he do to you, Chet? To you and Rob and Tag?”

  “He made us do unimaginable things,” was Allen’s soft, chilling response. “Things that would haunt my conscience, if he’d left me one.”

  “Is that why we’re here? So you can clear your conscience?”

  A pause, then Allen’s easy laugh. “I sleep just fine at night. How about Mac? How’s he sleeping these days?”

  “How do you think, with your threats breathing down our necks?”

  “Not very conducive to romance. Sorry about that, Babs. Not exactly the reunion you expected.”

  Her forceful expletive must have shocked him for there was a long silence before his sudden, silky confession.

  “There was a time when that suggestion would have truly appealed to me. You had everything, Barbie doll. You had Robby and Mac and me wrapped around your fingers, so don’t tell me you don’t like to play games. Not when you’re a master at it. You always did look down that pretty nose at me, the same way Robby did when it came right down to it. Both of you, the perfect spotless society pair. But we know better, don’t we, Babs? You know all about secrets, how to keep them, how to use them to your best advantage. You know how to protect your own. That’s why it’s so much fun to have you in the game. You know what’s at stake and you’ll do anything to win.”

  “Who hired you to kill Tag? Does this have anything to do with Robert?” She was reaching, grasping for anything. Anything that would turn his taunting conversation away from the all-too-personal.

  “Robby was business and pleasure. You see, he only pretended to be my friend. The minute my image got a little too discolored for his future plans
, he turned on me, Barbara. The same way he turned on Mac to get what he wanted where you were concerned.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Allen only laughed. “Ticktock, Barbie. There’s a ticket at the front desk for you. It’s to the good doctor’s award ceremony tonight. Enjoy the show.”

  “Is Frye the one you’re after? Or is he the one calling the shots?”

  “Frye’s a vain fool. But he’s not an innocent one. Remember, not everything’s business.”

  The line went dead.

  Ticktock.

  Chapter 7

  Where was McGee?

  In her shimmery copper-colored gown, Barbara fit right in with the glitzy crowd waiting outside the Kennedy Center in the sluggish pool of limos and tour buses. But her anxiety set her apart from the other gala-goers. She wasn’t there to be entertained. She was there to be enlightened.

  No word from Tag. She’d left a note in the room and could only hope he’d stop in long enough to read it. Enjoy the show. Was there something here to see beyond the production readying inside? Her head ached trying to figure out the twists and turns of Allen’s merry chase. Was this just a way to get McGee in his sniper sites?

  No word on Tessa. She’d left a message with Michael to have her daughter call her cell, but so far no contact. And Jack hadn’t checked in with the office yet, either. Silence all around, leaving her stranded to pick her way through the sticky web of intrigue Chet was luring her into by herself. To what purpose?

  She moved down the sidewalk with the flow of invitees, pulled past the giggling group of young people examining the frieze with its rather graphic homoerotic poses and across the vehicle-plugged street. Then she heard an odd sound above the traffic and chatter. As a child of the sixties, she knew it immediately. The sound of voices chanting in protest.