I called Tony, and before he could say a word, I read him the riot act about his inclusion of Marcinko on the mission in any way.

“You done now?” was all he responded with.

“I breathed in and out deeply.  Marcinko and the others, including the clerical staff, had gone off to Sadie’s Restaurant to eat a Mexican lunch that no sane human, other than a native New Mexican or Native American, could stomach without some kind of medication for the chili heat.  Sadie’s had been a bowling alley with food on the side, but its food service had consumed the rest as it was so popular.  The old woman who’d done the cooking died, but, extraordinarily, the replacement cooks were just as good.  I’d heard Pat state, in the background from my conversation with Tony, that she was grabbing the petty cash folder, which meant I was also paying for everyone’s lunch.  Marcinko was insidiously the cleverest opponent I’d ever faced, even scorning my wife with his phony macho charm.

“Marcinko led the Navy Seals, and there’s no doubt about that,” Tony said. “He served with marginal distinction in Vietnam, sort of like you but without all the medals.  But the big thing is that his presence will assuage the Navy, which is behind the entirety of the mission, and they asked for him to be included.”

“In what role?” I asked, shaking my head as I talked.

“You will remain the team leader of this mission,” so don’t worry about authority concerns.  “Discuss it with him,” Tony went on, “He seems unreasonable, but he’s really not, and at his age he wants back in for a bit.”

“This whole mission, Tony, continues to make no sense at all.  What are we looking for, and what are we going to run into that takes a Navy flotilla and now a former Navy SEAL who wants to come in out of the cold…and he’s not that old either to be in that situation.  I just don’t know, Tony, what to make of all this strangeness and mystery.

“Ask him, as I believe he’s there waiting to be asked,” Tony said, before hanging up in his usual abrupt style.

I hung up the phone as Marcinko eased around the door jam and walked in, having no doubt heard every word I’d spoken.  So much for secret, encrypted telephone calls.  I’d already learned from Pat that there were almost no secrets that stayed secrets in the office, but nobody said anything about it.

He sat down, took out a cigarette, and lit it with one of the Zippo lighters that the Gunny used to have down in the valley.

“Before we begin here,” I said, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice at his refusal to stop smoking, “Your role is communications specialist, not executive officer

“No smoking here, as you well know,” I informed him.

He lit the cigarette and took a long inhalation before blowing the smoke across the desk.

“They tell me that I’m working for you now, although I don’t think I can be part of the rather phony insurance game here.”

“The insurance game, as you call it, is why everyone is here, why I’m the team leader on this mission and not you.  Don’t forget the evacuation company or now the UFO debris offices either. All of that has come through me.  I don’t want you to order anyone around, particularly Nguyen and Kingsley, or they won’t be so kind the next time there might be an altercation.”

“They took me by surprise that day,” Marcinko replied, staring hard at me, before we both started to laugh.

“Yes, I’ve been there too,” I said, never being able to forget my first night in the valley. “What is it we’re after on this mission? I asked, “Since everyone but the team leader seems to know already.”

Marcinko fidgeted a bit and did not answer.

“I know it’s some sort of broken arrow,” I filled in, “and I know that means the warhead in question, and there must be a warhead, has fallen into the wrong hands.  Without arming instructions, however, I’ve worked long enough on recoveries to know that the warhead is basically inert without them.”

“If it were ours,” Marcinko replied, his voice very low and quiet as he took another hit from his cigarette.

“My God,” I breathed out, my knowledge of foreign nuclear or even atomic warheads perfectly non-existent.  “So, they want the warhead recovered from this island and brought to them, whether it is armed or not, with us, the people doing the hauling, totally in the dark about it.  The Navy is standing off in the distance and not sending in SEAL Team Six because they don’t want to lose ships or their own personnel.  Is that about everything?”

“Just about, although nobody is talking like that,” Marcinko replied, reaching across my desk to put his cigarette out in the small slant of my Mont Blanc pen display that had cost me a thousand dollars in Seoul.  It was made of resin, so I had no idea what the damage would be, although it was black, which would help.  He was so obnoxious it was almost funny, but not quite.

“How much does it weigh, and what dimensions do we have?” I asked.

“Unknown, although it is believed to be a SAD pack, in other words, man-portable, like our Davy Crockett cannon rounds.  They weigh in at about 75 pounds and deliver a yield of about a kiloton or more.”

“Has to be Soviet,” I murmured.  “They would be the only ones with the technology for that small a device.  Who in hell got their hands on a Soviet nuclear device and then got it transported with nobody knowing to within less than a hundred miles from a major American city?”

“Not germane to the mission,” Marcinko replied, his tone smooth and soft, like we were talking about some sort of food served in a local restaurant.

“Why do you want to go, knowing what you and I now both know?” I asked.

“Don’t want Americans to die without warning,” Marcinko said.

“Oh, please,” was all I could get out to that answer.

“Okay, this is my chance to get myself back with the Navy for things that I did, which basically got me cashiered.”

“I thought you retired with honors,” I said, shaking my head about the things I had no idea about at all.

“You got a parade but not me,” he said, sounding rueful.

“I got a parade for the medals,” I replied, not wanting to talk about that at all, particularly since I was technically still in the Marine Corps but not getting paid or any benefits other than access to just about anything I wanted or needed access to.

“For that alone, you’re willing to risk your life?”

“You can’t understand because you didn’t experience what I did, and then this result of living my life in veiled disgrace.”

I realized that the man truly had no idea of what I’d been through, and I lived every night in a disgraced state that would never be able to be removed by some external operation or service conferring forgiveness down upon me for some ridiculously dangerous act of contrition.

“Why should I continue?” I asked the man in front of me, being totally serious in listening to his answer.

“Because if you don’t, then I stand in to take over.”

I looked at him across the top of my mess of a pen holder.  He had no idea.  Nguyen and Kingsley would never go with him on such a mission, and they’d know what it was about because I’d tell them.  Maybe Nash was foolish enough to go if he was informed.

“Go get a cup of coffee while I get hold of Tony,” I said to Marcinko, who immediately got up and left the office, like he was truly accepting my command of him.

Tony came on the line immediately, and I knew he was waiting for the call.

“Well, this is an interesting one,” I began, but got no farther.

“He doesn’t know all the details, so hold your horses.  You find the device, which we have good intelligence on its location under that island, and then we blow it in place without screwing with it or transporting it anywhere others might be harmed if it goes off somehow.”

“What about us?” I replied, mystified about why anyone would take such a mission, much less the combat-hardened team we really were.

“I looked at this case from every which way, and, in fact, Doctor Bethe is standing by to talk to you about the physics involved and the likelihood of any problems from the device.  We think the chances are so low as to be non-existent, or I would have told you earlier.”

“What is it that we get if we live for performing this totally safe mission where a Navy fleet is gathered offshore at what must be a measured distance of great safety? Tell me no more.  What’s in it for us?’

“What do we want?” I said, shrugging into the receiver.  “Oh, paid off houses, job security, benefits, and regular pay for Nguyen, Kingsley, and me would like to somehow be a part of the tech area that’s got to be working on the artifact.  If we live, I mean.  If we don’t, then a million to our survivors each and the rest too.”

“That might be hard to sell upstairs, particularly since not many up there have a clue about this.  If they did, then they’d probably want the device to study to see what the Soviets have put together that’s so small, or even if it would work.  We can’t have any of that, so they need to be informed after the mission is a success.”

“Or failure,” I added, wondering how I was going to sell this one to my wife, or if I would.  Her almost certain ‘no’ would not be acceptable to the forces I was playing with, nor to the forces that were playing with me.

There was no answer to be given to Tony, and both of us knew it.  I called in Kingsley and Nguyen and broke the news to them about the mission, but neither even needed to be asked if they were all in.  We three just knew it.  Nash was a different matter, as were Quincy and Rosley, but they would be at risk, so they had to have a say in whether they would go or not. I had no idea what saying no to such a mission would entail, but it certainly would not be career-building whatsoever.

Once everyone was on board, I called Tony again and related the good news to him with one reservation.  I wanted Marcinko in one of the choppers overseeing the landing and the results of it, and I wanted the Cobras to be able to strike the Quonset huts with their rotary machine guns to make certain there was nobody inside either of them that might be a threat to us.  Marcinko didn’t fit with the crew I’d assembled for the boat incursion, although he could certainly act as an air advisor, as he was so well experienced himself in clandestine landings and operations once onshore.

“You don’t want me on the boat,” Marcinko said, not as a question.

“You don’t fit, but you can make a difference in handling Naval communications and watching over us in the air.

“I think it’s more personal than that,” he replied.  “I think you just don’t like me.”

“This isn’t high school, and no, I don’t like you any more than you like me,” I said, “All you like about me is my wife.”

“There’s truth in that,” he replied, sounding somewhat mollified for no good reason I could think of.

“But this mission is fraught with problems.  What is the fortified hole they are talking about, which has the device at the bottom of it?  Is it so unstable that whoever put it there wanted to ensure that a small explosion, if that can ever be called that when such a device is triggered, would not come to the notice of the entire Miami coastline?  And why the secrecy if that might be the case?

I was going in with a small team of relatively inexperienced members not trained for nuclear recovery at all, even if such recovery included blowing the device up in place.  We’d all be lightly armed but with massive firepower in the air and at sea, with ‘battle stations’ orders given well before the landing began.

The decision not to tell Mary had been made, so nothing went wrong there as we all prepared to depart the next day aboard Wen’s plane, which would stay down in Miami for the duration until we came home.  The plane was capable of landing at the Key West facility, but the trust and loyalty of those who worked there had been badly damaged, with the pilot turning against us for reasons still unknown.  The likely answer was for money from the drug runners, not to mention the fact that the pilot and his associates might be flying the drugs up from out of Colombia.

Key West was just beyond the real danger area if there was a nuclear explosion, especially a small one.   I didn’t feel it necessary to warn the pilots or Weh himself.  His work in the DIA might allow him to know something was going on, but not to make it too clear.  Nobody wanted to talk about the mission or what it entailed, probably because of the potential it had to quite literally blow up in everyone’s face.  Since he’d gotten what he asked for, a good chunk of the endless budget, I didn’t expect to hear from him.

The flight down to Miami took off at six in the morning.  I didn’t get much sleep and felt that the others probably were in the same shape.  Amazingly, the plane had coffee, although there was no attendant to serve it.  Rosley, in her entertaining way, made believe she was the stewardess, although her rough, rugged outfit didn’t fit the picture at all.

Midway through the flight, Allen Weh came out of the pilot’s cabin.  I’d forgotten that he was a pilot, which meant he was likely in the right seat as copilot just to see what we were up to with his plane.

“Colonel Marcinko,” he said, moving to shake hands.  He then nodded at me without offering his hand and sat down in the only empty seat facing mine.

“Thought I’d ride along in case you need me,” he said with a fake smile.

I noted that he’d left the crew cabin door open.  I pointed at it, and Rosley caught on and moved to close it.

“I know you have a boat at Key West, and there’s an airport there, so why don’t we just make the landing there. I can get clearance in no time at all for that slight adjustment.”

“I didn’t want you on this flight, Colonel,” I said to him, directly and with some force.

“Well, it’s sort of still my company, and this is a company plane,” he replied, his expression not friendly at all.

“This isn’t about ownership, this is about risk of life itself,” I said, causing Marcinko to stare over at me, his eyes blinking in surprise that I would say anything that might reveal the mission.

“What in hell are you talking about?” Weh asked, suddenly uneasy at the strange attitude everyone was showing.

“You’re DIA, and you have top secret clearance that’s current,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes.

“Yes, that’s true,” he answered, but did not ask anything else.

I watched a look of alertness come over him as he began to realize there was something dark and dangerous going on inside the cabin.

“You didn’t have a need to know, however,” I pointed out, “so you weren’t told.”

“Told what?” he asked, as if he didn’t really want to know the answer to his question.

“Some miles off of Key West, at a small, nameless island, there’s a broken arrow stored, and we have no idea whether it is armed or not.  Key West could be in the CEP, circular area of probability, for the device might take in all of Key West, and hence why we aren’t risking the wonderful loan of your aircraft to fly it there and wait for us to come back, if we come back.”

“CEP,” Allen mused.  You’re using that to describe how terminal might be the distance from the ignition and explosion,” he went on, impressing me with the amount of knowledge he had, even though I was misusing the acronym in my way, so he might understand the potential danger.

“You’re going to recover this ‘device’ as you call it?”

“Yes, with the Navy’s help and some Marines too, that’s about it.”

“So, you were trying to protect me?” he suddenly concluded.

“We are still trying to do that this minute,” I informed him.  Fly the plane straight back to Albuquerque once we deplane and wait there for whatever results you may hear about or, if things don’t go right, see on the news.”

“This is the sort of stuff you really do?” he asked, slowly rising to his feet.

“No, not at all,” I replied, “we sell life and medical insurance all over the world, this is just a minor side job.”

Nash and Kingsley both started laughing quietly.

“Colonel,” Weh said to Marcinko, “you’re a part of this too?”

“No, they’re trying to teach me how to sell insurance too, but I’m having a hard time.”

“Very funny, I thought better of you.” Weh turned and went back into the crew cabin, gently closing the door.  Seconds later, the plane accelerated and began to climb.

“I think he’s taking us up to maximum altitude and speed,” Nash said.  I don’t think he wants to be exposed any longer than he has to be.”

“I wonder why he thought better of you?” I asked of Marcinko.

“I have no idea,” he replied, “His mistake to make.”

With Weh back in the crew cabin, I decided to tell the others about what was in it for them when the mission was over, which shocked all of them, although it appeared to me that only Nash and Rosley really believed it would be true, that the Agency would live up to such promises.

“If the Navy’s involved, then it’s true,” I said.  “The Navy will appreciate the risk they are not having to take and the cost we are saving everyone if we pull this off.  One ship or sub lost would be a thousand times more expensive, and then there would be the Navy casualties.”

I hadn’t thought of that aspect of the situation from the Navy’s point of view.  “Besides,” by the time this is done, Colonel Marcinko here will have this all reworked as a SEAL team mission success.”

“That’s perfect, what a cover, and you, Marcinko, get to be the hero of the whole thing.”

Marcinko stared over at me, and I watched the wheels go round in his head as he thought about all of it.  Slowly, the first genuine smile the man had ever directed toward me came my way.  Even though the mission’s success would be cloaked, which would be good for our cover, it would serve to almost completely wipe away whatever stain the Navy had laid down upon him, or he’d set himself up for in the first place.  He’d never get SEAL Team Six back, but he could get a great part of his honor back, at least from an external viewpoint.

The plane landed in Miami but never shut down its engines as the pilot and Weh remained inside the crew quarters while we deplaned with our gear.  It was rolling again before any of us reached the private aircraft port, since there was only the hangar and a few rooms servicing that part of the busy tourist-driven airport.

A Navy truck stood near the hangar.  It would be loaded with the radios we needed to communicate with each other and the Navy, along with the other gear I’d requested from Tony.  I had no doubts that they would come through, although I remained in doubt about the exact location of the device and how we were to access it or lay explosives or whatever.  Marcinko headed for the truck and was met by an officer dressed in combat fatigues.  He came right back toward me after meeting with the officer for only a few seconds.

“We won’t need a rental.  The truck will take us and all the stuff to the boat.  We need to talk to your control officer about the rest of the mission and my participation with the Navy. Communication hasn’t been the strong suit here, and some things have to be made clear before the boat ever leaves the dock.”

I was surprised and grudgingly gave a silent nod to Tony.  Marcinko was good at what we were doing, and his experience far outweighed my own.  I felt like I was taking his orders as we climbed into the truck and headed over to the lounge nearby.  Nash, Marcinko, and I would ride inside for the trip while the others took the rental that had been left in the parking lot when we came out of the airport to head home earlier.  For the first time, I felt like the mission might just work the way it was planned.

I needed to call my wife and report in.  Communications with the Agency would have to be made in the clear, which might prove difficult since any discussion about fissionable or fusionable bomb components or locations could instantly turn into an international public relations nightmare.  But the calls would have to wait until we got to Key West.  The small private lounge at the airport was empty.  I wasn’t sure whether that was because of us or another reason.  It just seemed odd, but was acceptable.