Gateways. Part 40

He was still watching her, wondering how she was going to get out of Gateways, when his father's voice interrupted him.

"I hope you're not really thinking of going through with this."

Jack turned to find Dad standing on the porch, staring at him through the jalousies.

"You heard the whole thing?"

"Just the end. Enough to know that she's connected to what happened to me, and probably to the others who've been killed. But what was that about Carl? Carl the gardener?"

"One and the same."

Jack gave him a quick overview of what had happened-about the trip to the lagoon, and Semelee and her clan.

Dad was shaking his head. "You've only just got here, Jack. How did you manage to get involved in something like this in just a couple of days?"

"Lucky, I guess."

"I'm serious, Jack. You've got to take this to the police and the Park Service."

"That's not the way I do things."

"What's that supposed to mean? This is the second time you've said something like that."

"It's plain and simple, Dad: I promised Carl I'd get him back safely. Me. Not the cops, not the park rangers. Me. So that's how it's going down."

"But you didn't know the odds against you when you made that promise. He can't hold you to it."

"He's not," Jack said. He shook his head. "You wouldn't understand."

Dad rubbed his jaw. "I understand perfectly. And you know, Jack...the better I know you, the more I like you. Carl's not holding you to your promise...you are. I can respect that. It's d.a.m.n foolish, but I have to respect that."

"Thanks."

How about that? Dad did understand.

"But you can't go out there alone. You're going to need backup."

"Tell me about it. Know where I can find any?"

"You're looking at him."

Jack laughed. Dad didn't.

"I'm not kidding, Jack."

"Dad, you're not cut out for that."

"Don't be so sure." He pushed open the porch door. "Come inside. I need to tell you some things you don't know."

"About what?"

No matter what he was told, Jack wasn't taking an accountant in his seventies as backup, especially if that accountant in his seventies was his father.

"About me."

4.

Inside, Dad handed him a cup of coffee, then, before Jack could ask him what this was about, disappeared into his bedroom. He returned a minute later carrying the gray metal lockbox Jack had found back on Tuesday. He hadn't expected to see it again, but he was more surprised by what his father was wearing.

"Dad, are you kidding with that sweater?"

His father pulled the front of the ancient brown mohair cardigan closer about him. "It's cold! The thermometer outside my window says sixty-nine degrees."

Jack had to laugh. "The Sasquatch look. It's you, Dad."

"Never mind the sweater." He set the box on the coffee table. "Have a seat."

Jack sat across from him. "What've you got there?" he said, already knowing the answer.

Dad unlocked the box and flipped it open. He pulled out an old photo and pa.s.sed it to Jack: Dad and six other young guys in fatigues.

Jack pretended to study it, as if seeing it for the first time.

"Hey. From your Army days."

"Army?" His father made a face. "Those clods? These are Marines, Jack. Semper fi and all that."

Jack shrugged. "Army, Marines, what's the diff?"

"You wouldn't say that if you'd ever been in the Corps."

"Hey, you were all fighting the same enemy, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but we fought them better." He tapped the photo. "These were my wartime buddies." His expression softened. "And I'm the only one left."

Jack looked at those young faces. He pointed to the photo. "What are you all smiling about?"

"We'd just graduated Corps-level scout-sniper school."

Jack looked up from the photo. "You were a sniper?" He'd learned to believe in the unbelievable, but this was asking too much. "My father was a sniper?"

"Don't say it like it's a dirty word."

"I didn't. I'm just...shocked."

"Lots of people look on sniping with disdain, even in the military. And after that pair of psychos killed all those folks in the DC area a while back, so does just about everybody else. But those two weren't sniping. They were committing random murder, and that's not what sniping is about. A sniper doesn't go out and shoot anything that moves, he goes after specific targets, strategic strategic targets." targets."

"And you did that in Korea."

Dad nodded slowly. "I killed a lot of men over there, Jack. I'm sure there's plenty of soldiers walking around today who've killed more of the enemy-Germans, j.a.ps, North Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese-in their tours of duty than I did, but they were just shooting at the faceless foreign bodies who were trying to kill them. We snipers were different. We positioned ourselves in hiding and took out key personnel. We could have a hundred, a thousand soldiers milling around just five hundred yards away, but we weren't interested in the grunts. We were after the officers, the NCOs, the radio men, anyone whose death would diminish the enemy's ability to mount or sustain an attack."

Jack was watching his dad's face. "Sounds almost...personal."

"It does. And that's what makes people uncomfortable. They feel there's something cold-blooded about picking out a specific individual in, say, a bivouac area, sighting down on him, and pulling the trigger." He sighed. "And maybe they're right."

"But if it saves lives..."

"Still pretty cold-blooded, though, don't you think. When I started out, if I couldn't nail an officer or NCO, I'd go after radio men and howitzer crews. But I noticed that whenever I took a guy out, another would pick up the radio or jump in and start reloading the howitzer, and then I'd have to take them out as well."

Jack started nodding. "So you began going after their equipment."

"Exactly. Know what a .30 caliber hardball will do to a radio? Or to the sights on a howitzer?"

"I can imagine." Jack had a very good idea of the damage it could do. "Good for the junk pile and nothing else. You guys were using M1s back then, right?"

"Not us snipers. I was trained on the M1903A1 with an eight-power Unertl scope, and that's what I used. Made a couple of thousand-yard kills with that."

A thousand yards...three thousand feet...killing someone more than half a mile away. Jack couldn't imagine that. He tried to keep guns out of his fix-its whenever possible, but when the need arose he had no qualms about using them. Usually it was up close and personal, and never more than twenty-five feet.

A thousand yards...

"What kind of round were you shooting?"

"I got hold of a cache of Match M72s and I h.o.a.rded them."

Jack wasn't familiar with the round. "How many grains?"

Dad's eyes narrowed. "You shoot?"

Jack shrugged. "A little. Mostly range stuff."

"Mostly?"

"Mostly." He didn't want to get into that. "Grains?"

"One-seventy-five point five."

Jack whistled.

"Yeah," Dad said, nodding. "Penetrated eleven inches of oak. Nice little accuracy radius. I loved that round."

"Don't think I'm morbid, but...how many did you kill?"

Dad closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know. I stopped counting at fifty."

Fifty-plus kills...jeez.

"I thought I was hot stuff," Dad said, "really making a difference in the fighting, so I kept count at first. But by the time I reached fifty or so it stopped mattering. I just wanted to go home."

"How long were you there?"

"Not terribly long-most of the latter half of 1950. I was shipped into Pusan in August and what a major screw-up that was, mainly because the Army units didn't do their job. Mid September I was shipped to Inchon where I landed with the Fifth Regiment. By the end of the month we'd fought through to Seoul, recaptured it, and handed it back to the South Koreans. We thought that was it. We'd freed up the country, kicked those NK commies back above the thirty-eighth parallel. Job done, time to go home. But no."

Dad drew out that last word in a way that reminded Jack of John Belushi. He rubbed a hand across his face to hide a smile.

"No, MacArthur had the bright idea of pushing into North Korea so we could reunite the country. And there we found ourselves facing the Red Chinese. What a bunch of crazies they were. No respect for life, their own or anyone else's, just hurling themselves at us in human waves."

"Maybe what was facing them at the rear if they didn't do as ordered was worse than charging you guys."

"Maybe," Dad said softly. "Maybe." He seemed to shiver inside his cardigan. "If there's a colder place on Earth than the mountains of North Korea, I don't want to know about it. It was chilly in October, but when November rolled around...temperatures in the days would be in the thirties but at night it would drop to minus-ten with a howling thirty-to forty-mile-an-hour wind. You couldn't get warm. So d.a.m.n cold the grease that lubricated your gun would freeze up and you couldn't shoot. Fingers and toes and noses were falling off left and right from frostbite." He looked up at Jack. "Maybe that's the deep psychological reason I moved down here: so I'd never be cold again."

Christ, it sounded like a nightmare. Jack could see this talk was disturbing his father, but he needed answers to a few more questions. He pointed to the medal case restingin the bottom of the box.

"What's in there?"

Dad looked embarra.s.sed. "Nothing."

Jack reached in and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the case. "Then you won't mind if I open it." He did, and then held up the two medals. "Where'd you get these?"

Dad sighed. "The same time and place: November 28th, 1950, at the Chosin Reservoir, North Korea. The Chinese commies were knocking the c.r.a.p out of us. There seemed no end to the men they were throwing our way. I had a good position when what looked like a couple of companies of reds made a flanking move on the fifth. I'd brought lots of ammo and I took out every officer I could spot. Anyone who made an arm motion or looked like he was shouting an order went down. Every radio I spotted took a hit. Pretty soon they were in complete disarray, all but b.u.mping into one another. It might have been funny if it had been warmer and if my whole division wasn't being chopped to pieces. Still, they told me I saved a lot of lives that day."

"By yourself...you faced down a couple of Chinese companies by yourself?"

"I had a little help at first from my spotter, but Jimmy took one in the head early on and then it was just me."

Dad didn't seem to take all that much pride in it, but Jack couldn't help being impressed. This soft-spoken, slightly built man he'd known all his life, who he'd thought of as the epitome of prosaic middle-cla.s.sdom, had been a stone-cold military sniper.

"You were a hero."

"Not really."

Jack held up the Silver Star. "This medal says different. You had to have been scared."

"Of course I was. I was ready to wet my pants. I'd been good friends with Jimmy and he was lying dead beside me. I was trapped. They weren't taking prisoners there, and if I surrendered, G.o.d knows what they'd have done to me for killing their officers. So I hung in and figured I'd take as many of them with me as I could." He shrugged. "And you know, I wasn't that scared of dying, not if I could go as quickly as Jimmy. I hadn't met your mother, I had no kids depending on me for support. And at least I wouldn't be cold anymore. At that moment, dying did not seem like the worst thing in the world."

Fates worse than death...Jack understood that. But there was still the Purple Heart to be explained. Jack held it up.

"And this one?"

Dad pointed to his lower left abdomen. "Took a piece of shrapnel in the gut."