I wanted to have a part in loading the boat, simply because if I knew where things were being placed and an emergency came up, then there’d be no delay in getting to what was needed. Not that the entire mission wasn’t just a rolling emergency. But, even more important than that, I had to reach my wife and then Tony.
The drive down the Overseas Highway, U.S. Highway 1, was uneventful except for the time it took, the truck’s lack of air conditioning and a radio, as well as the noise the diesel generated at high RPM. The car was a much more comfortable way to travel. I was glad, though, that I was enduring the discomfort and not the rest of the team. Quincy, Rosley, and Nash had all thrown in on the mission, as I’d guessed they would, although I was unsure about whether such a large team really needed to be exposed to potential danger. We’d left in the morning hours from Miami to arrive in Key West by late afternoon. The traffic had been difficult, and the truck was barely able to run at the upper speed limit of fifty-five. So much of the highway was two-lane, as well, which made passing with little acceleration capability a problem. The view was stunning at first, but grew old and boring as the hours ground by.
Upon arrival, the car with the others having dutifully followed the truck, pulled in behind us at the wharf where the boat sat bare and uncovered as it had been left.
“Mind if I ride in the truck next time?” Rosley said, walking up to me. “We rode smelling that exhaust the whole way, and all I want to do is puke.”
“I never thought of that,” I replied, surprised, “it’s a new car, doesn’t it have an air filter for the passenger cabin?”
“It’s not a Mercedes, as you must have guessed,” Rosley said, her acidic tone coming right across at me.
“All right,” I replied, breathing out heavily. “What do you want to make it right?”
“Not sleeping on this boat with a bunch of snoring, stinky men,” she said, making me wonder about the veracity of the diesel exhaust story, but I let it go.
“We’re all staying in the hotel tonight on the budget for this operation,” I replied, catching her by surprise. “You get a private room with nobody nearby if that’s what you want. I’ll be in a suite by the corner up there,” I pointed to the corner edge of the building where my room would allow me to view the boat at its moorings in the harbor complex. Docked and not moored, of course.
I walked away and went over to the back entrance of the hotel. Telephones lined one side of the lobby wall. I made my call.
“I’m here, back in Miami at your hotel,” I said to my wife.
“You’re not telling me,” she replied, taking my breath away. “I know that you aren’t telling me what’s going on. You’re there with Nguyen, Kingsley, and the rest, and you’re doing something so dangerous you can’t tell me because you think I’d say no.”
“Not exactly,” I lied in reply.
“Then tell me now,” she said.
A silence reigned over the scene for minutes, as my mind raced to try to figure out what to tell her without compromising the mission.
“You can’t tell me,” Mary said, breaking the silence. You can’t tell me because this isn’t a secure line,” she went on, having a solid understanding of how communications in the CIA really worked.
“True,” I replied, feeling a sense of relief for the first time since starting the call.
“You’re looked at as much more important and valuable than you think you are,” she followed up. “Do you have any idea of how dangerous a situation they may put you into because of that? They use you to perform risk operations, so they don’t have to, and I sense that you are doing that right this minute. I can hear it in your voice, your tone, the caution in the way you’re talking to me.”
I was so surprised that I pulled the receiver away from me and stared down at it. How could this distant woman know so much with so little to go on, and be so accurate in her conclusions?
“Look,” I finally managed to say into the receiver. “I’m going to be fine. I have a team, and the goal is not that difficult or dangerous.”
“That’s not what Commander Marcinko says,” Mary shot back.
I was shocked to the point where I had no response. I just stood there, phone in hand, and thought about what she’d said. Marcinko had been in communication with my wife, and not just personally, but about the mission.
I was taken completely aback.
“What did the commander say?” I asked, trying to deal with tamping down my emotions as well as possibly learning what was really on Marcinko’s mind.
“He said that you’re the best team leader he’s ever worked with, so what does that mean about what you’re doing with him?” Mary replied.
I lowered the receiver to my chest. The reversal of my feelings was hard to deal with. While I was feeling jealous, it appeared that both my wife and Marcinko were working to help me in not only the mission but in life.
“I’m working with him here, I’ll admit,” I replied, not being able to think of something more intelligent and cogent to reply.
“Would you please listen to him?” my wife went on, her words piercing me like small spears. “He knows this stuff you are doing, and he wants your attention in listening to him. I know you think you’re the smartest person on the planet, but please pay attention to his experience at this sort of thing, or whatever sort of thing it is.”
“Look, Mary,” I said, getting hold of myself. “They simply want me to go to a place and make sure things there are the way they’re supposed to be and then come home. There’s little real risk,” I lied.
“I called Allen Weh,” she said, which stopped me cold.
I’d told Weh the complete truth to ensure he’d take his plane and leave. And it would never have occurred to me that he might say anything about the mission to my wife. I waited for her to say more. If Weh revealed the details of the mission, even to Mary, then the mission was over as far as I was concerned.
“And….” I replied to the silence after her words.
“He really cares about you and what you’re doing, so try to let him help us.”
I sat silent, thinking. Here was this guy, wanting my wife in the worst way, but working to help me survive and complete the mission successfully with him as a part of it. The situation was so foreign to me.
‘You’re right,” I finally breathed into the receiver. “He’s doing his part in the best way. I’m going to follow your advice.” I was already doing that but I left that out of the phone call. How Marcinko had gotten my home number bothered me a bit because he’d had to go through some complex devices to find it, as it was unlisted. His interest in Mary, however, was as much a blessing as it was a potential curse.
I hung up the phone and dialed the CIA in Washington, D.C., gave my identification number, and then waited to be connected to an on-duty agent.
It took Tony five minutes to get connected.
He didn’t care in the least when I mentioned Marcinko’s contact with my wife.
“That’s personal stuff between you, your wife, and him,” he said, stunning me into silence.
“But how can that be allowed?” I asked, astounded.
“It’s not allowed, as you put it, but do you want to make a big deal out of it since the mission is everything right now and about to kick off tomorrow morning?
Do you really think anybody brought in to investigate this wouldn’t severely compromise the mission and all the players, including you? Is this the kind of thing that you want to pursue, which will also, incidentally, make it look like you’re trying to bail out on the mission?”
I hung up the phone, following the procedure Tony had become accustomed to using. I sat down on a nearby bench and tried to think. My control officer had plenty of respect for me, but only if I followed direct orders. My wife had plenty of love and respect for me, but refused to be ‘trapped’ inside a marital contract that had never been spoken, written, or required in our marital vows. I thought about my ‘agents’ assembled for the mission. Were they not the most loyal, silent, and obedient humans I’d ever had in my life? And then my mind went back to the
A Shau Valley. What was the good or the long-term effect of having people who were totally dedicated, courageous, and loyal, if they ended up dead?
I knew then that I had to make a special place in my new life for men like Marcinko. Nguyen and Kingsley were uncommon ‘gifts from God’, but most were not. Nash, Rosley, Quincy, and the rest were not such gifts but might grow to be such.
The ‘crew’ gathered in the lobby around me as I finished my conversation with my wife. I told them that we would depart the wharf at six the next morning and get some needed sleep.
Everyone departed to their rooms except for Nguyen, who stayed right with me until we were alone in the lobby.
I sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, and he sat down beside me, which surprised me.
“How’s it going?” I asked, not being able to think of anything else to say.
“We are a long time coming,” Nguyen replied, again surprising me.
“Thanks for all you have done and do,” I said, sincere in my approach to the extraordinary man.
“It’s the compensation,” he said, which I didn’t really understand.
“What are you talking about?” I asked my enigmatic friend.
“The cash you pay just doesn’t exist out in the real world of America.”
I was shocked.
“You stay with me for the cash?” I asked, so surprised I almost couldn’t contain myself.’ ‘
“Cash good,” he repeated, reverting to a pigeon English sort of the language.
“But not all,” he went on, allowing my heart to beat again.
“So, why did you come back, move here, and find me? ” I asked.
“I find you because you were you, and now are you again,” Nguyen said, his voice solid, flat, and true. I’m with Junior once more, and I need him in my life.”
Nobody called me ‘Junior’ in my life, returned to the ‘land of the round eyes,’ since I’d come back. Only one in the hospital in Oakland had anybody had the temerity to mention that name to my face, and the result had not been pleasant for her at the time, although I considered myself much better at the time now, and considering the source, of course.
“Thank you,” was all I could get myself to say. Nguyen had paid his dues down in the valley and now, again, at my side.
The dawn came without much emotion and with just the edge of sunshine on the eastern horizon. I was up for it, never having slept beyond six-thirty in the morning since the time in the A Shau Valley.
I went downstairs from the room and found a coffee cart already loaded with supplies. I got a cup, supposedly of Lion Hawaiian coffee, and went to sit out and enjoy the sunrise. The mission could not help but roll through my mind. How had such a ragtag team become so important but so potentially expendable to the Agency? I wanted to lean over to the ‘Princess’ phone next to my bed and call my wife, always there to counsel me no matter what, but I couldn’t do it. I lay there and realized just how small a person I could be. It was Marcinko, and I was jealous. I knew I had no solid, concrete reason for such a conclusion, but that didn’t seem to matter to me as I set myself up to go back into combat again, a combat that the same person I was feeling bad about would never let me go into if she knew.
The morning came in silence. I needed no alarm. At six a.m. every morning, since the valley, since the hospital stays, and since working out some kind of unidentifiable program to survive PTSD, it was automatic to me.
The morning air was humidity-filled but not unpleasant as I wandered the lobby, not wanting to wake anyone from the team. The point of departure would come soon enough, and there was no set time to begin the operation. I smiled at the formality of Marine Corps operational training, where all the details of communications, supply, and so much more were worked out and discussed before a mission was kicked off. And then there’d been the valley, real combat, where none of those very important planning functions had been set aside.
I got up and prepared myself for the day. I knew, while looking at myself shaving in the mirror, that the mission was going to go down as the strangest I’d ever be likely to participate in, but that didn’t really matter. Money had been committed, budgeted, and spent in huge amounts, and that was not going to go unnoticed, no matter how high in office the origin of the person who’d ordered it was.
My first move, after getting dressed and ready, was to call Tony to see if the three-ring circus without rings was really going to kick off.
I sat on the edge of the unmade bed and braced myself before dialing.
The number rang through as it always did, and upon giving my agent code, I was immediately connected to Tony, no doubt waiting for the call.
“Are you ready?” he asked, before saying anything else
I almost asked him ‘for what’ but didn’t. We were a go.
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