Leon Uris (48 page)

If, God forbid, you and Zachary decide to go your different ways, you must return to us. We are what we are, family.

Your loving and sorrowing father,

Horace

Raised as a princess, the princess knew how to read between the lines.

It was her father, all right. Once he got a wedge in, he’d get over his newfound humility in short order. The letter was pretty to hear, but inside lurked a thousand greedy, air-sucking tentacles.

Yet.

Amanda could not dismiss it out of hand. There was a desperate chance that it could help her keep Zachary.

“He’s offering you the empire,” she said, not believing the sound of her own words. “He knows how strong we are, together.”

Zach paled.

“Father’s new light-of-day bluff should be called. And you and I together, solidly bound, can change a lot of things at Dutchman’s Hook.”

“And turn Inverness into a house of joy,” Zach said.

“If this is not the end of the line for us, Zach, then we are going to have to fight like hell.”

“Starting life in a conspiracy.”

“Zach, we can do it!”

“And while we’re at it, change the direction of the stars. The only ship I want to build is a flat-bottomed, steel-skirted boat thirty feet long that can land a platoon of Marines with a measure of protection.”

The letter seemed to turn dirty in her hands. Horace Kerr’s words were encrusted in lies. He’d never change, and Zach was shaken and she became shaken.

She put it in the fireplace and let its evil smoke stream up the chimney.

“For God’s sake, man, please just let me be a Marine’s wife!”

“Just as you would hate yourself for taking me to Inverness, I’d hate myself for taking you into the Corps.”

There, it was said, cold, point-blank.

She wanted to argue that she’d make it work, to come with him when she could, to hell with the stings of the navy and Marine wives, and when he was away, start up a small girls’ academy, and bear it when he was gone because it would be pain worth bearing, or, even if he went into combat,
I could raise the children,
and the more she argued with herself, the blacker the horizon appeared.

What? Bust his career up because he’d spend his married nights longing for her and erode his function as a commander?

And you, Amanda, how long will you live in the shadows of fear and loneliness before you turn old? If I love him as I must love him, I must let the man go or tell the kids, your daddy is gone, he’s a Marine and he loves you very much, but Daddy is very important and we must hold up our end of things.

“The glass slipper doesn’t fit, no matter how I try to squeeze it on my foot,” she said at last.

“I cannot fill your needs, Amanda.”

“You can more than fill my needs, only you are already married, Captain.”

Zach backed down on the hearth and she came within touching distance.

Voices from the Nebo Abyssinian Baptist Church, with Sister Sugar’s riding above them all.

“I’ll not close the book until you tell me why he has come into this place with us.”

“I . . . uh, don’t know what you mean.”

Amanda clenched her fists and shrieked to the rafters. “Paddy O’Hara! I know you’re hiding up there in the rafters! Paddy! Come down! Your son is hurting!”

“Just because I became startled for a moment when I didn’t see you.”

“Paddy! Tell him to stop lying to me!”

Zach came to his feet and raised his hand but did not strike her. He walked away feebly. Amanda went to the four-poster, picked up a blanket and folded it, and went up to the loft.

Zach collapsed into a big chair, motionless and mute, not hearing, not seeing, fearing the waves of fear that engulfed him.

Amanda crawled to a place where she could see down and not be seen and wrapped herself up tightly and stuffed it all down.

Come ye home,

Come ye home,

Come ye home when the cruel war is done!

Come ye home, home, home,

Come when the cruel war is done!

The grandmother’s clock croaked the hour . . . and another hour, another hour, and then it became so still, they could hear each other’s breath.

Now darkness outside and the fire burned low. A soggy rain tapped on the roof.

“Amanda?”

“Yes?”

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Aye, I’m cold.”

“I put some logs on the fire. Are you after coming down?”

“I’ll come down.”

He was on the feather bed as the fire flared, and had spread some pillows about to make it an easy place to talk. He patted the feather bed and she came alongside.

“I’ll tell you now,” he said softly.

•
44
•

This rite of passage gladdened the old men’s hearts like no other. Now they could take off their own kits and rest easy. The mysterious force that bound them was coming to a close in a perfect circle.

Paddy O’Hara had given them each their lives, and Paddy’s fine son had been nurtured. The future was now engaged by Zachary. It was a vague future, only a promise, but—in strong hands.

Tobias Storm formed up a second AMP class, then retired as a major but remained on hand as a civilian adviser. AMP’s first graduates were gaining attention. For the third class, a pair of midshipmen from Annapolis as well as a pair of West Point cadets were coming to study at the Marine barracks.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Wally Kunkle’s transfer to Zachary’s First Rovers, Fleet Marine Force, was a hell of a way to close out his own career.

Forty years before, at the Philly Navy Yard, Paddy O’Hara had pulled a bloodied-up little street urchin from a boxing ring and
given him a place in the barracks on the deck near the stove to sleep. He was the drummer boy alongside Paddy at Bull Run.

He had been a kid brother to Paddy, in a manner of speaking, standing in for the four brothers who had been lost in the Irish famine. Perhaps the Gunny was a surrogate son to Paddy until Zach was born. He burst with pride to be Zach’s gunny on this important mission.

And Benjamin Malachi Boone? That peculiar piece of personnel was accomplishing what he had been ordained to accomplish. Although sixty-five years stared at Ben, there was no retirement parade in view.

Rumor had it that the new commandant would be a full colonel. If so, Ben, the senior major in the Marines, would be promoted to lieutenant colonel and stationed in place to protect the flanks of Zach’s mission to the Amnesties.

Zach was their pride.

When the front-door knocker was heard, their three faces smiled. What a hell of a picture the lad cut.

Toasts.

And came time for them to catch their breath.

Ben had a big surprise. The army had set up a warehouse in Colón, Panama.

“We don’t know what the political situation will be when we build that canal, so they’re loading supplies in for future use. It could be that a rebellion has to be staged in Panama to snatch the isthmus away from Colombia, or there could be a strongman at the head of Colombia who wants to play ball, or there could be some kind of democratic movement, or we may make a deal with banditos in the hills to guard our passageway. Whatever the event, arms to support whoever will be ready in Panama, ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Mischief of the highest order.

“In this cache, Krag-Jorgensen rifles and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition. A hundred of these rifles will be ‘borrowed’ and sent to you. It could be ten years before the army even knows they’re missing.”

“Hey, we’ll drink to that!” So filled they were with their own glee that they had not noticed that Zach appeared to be ill. The Gunny saw it first.

“You all right, Captain O’Hara?”

Zach studied the patterns of the rug, then looked to one another and they grew apprehensive. Zach took an envelope from the high cuff of his glove and handed it to Major Ben.

“What’s this?”

“My resignation from the Corps,” Zach answered.

“What the fuck did you just say?” Ben asked.

“I am resigning. It is within my purview.”

Tobias cleared his throat. “We Wart-Hogs were known for our pranks in the past.”

Zach did not answer. Each man reacted, stunned, puzzled, in dread.

“I love you people,” Zach rasped. “I love the Marine Corps. I love her more.”

“Jesus Christ!” Tobias cried.

Ben came nose to nose with Zach and Zach stared dead ahead, unblinking.

“You don’t know the seriousness of what you’re saying, Zachary. The admiral-in-chief of the United States Navy and the commandant of the Corps handpicked you. If you don’t take this command, there can be only one deduction, that the author of ‘Random Sixteen’ doesn’t have enough belief in his words to stand behind them. ‘Random Sixteen’ will be impeached, trashed.”

“Indeed”—Tobias entered the fray—“you’d be branded as a coward in Marine’s clothing. You shock me, Zachary.”

“I realized that this moment would fall heavily on you,” Zach said.

“Maybe you think my time in China was a big gas. I’ve got a hundred stab wounds in my back and two thousand nights of longing to come back to my country. Maybe you think I didn’t freeze my nuts off in Alaska. You have been singled out, spoon-fed, and
coddled by the Corps since you were born. Thank God Paddy O’Hara isn’t alive to see this moment.”

Zach continued to look directly ahead with the passionless face of a tin soldier guarding a national monument. “I know this is hard to take,” he managed.

“Hard to take! This is a big-time fucking!” Tobias retorted. “Can’t you see what’s been done for you? You have been given a chance to change the way the world thinks. No one has that kind of chance. Change the way the world thinks.”

Gunny watched this lashing and remained silent. In a long moment, Ben and Tobias caught their breaths.

“A dog ran over the trolley tracks and the front wheels cut off the tip of his tail, so he turned to see what was happening and the back wheels ran over his head. Don’t lose your head over a little piece of tail,” Tobias preached.

At last the Gunny spoke up. “Tell them why, Captain O’Hara.”

Zach faded. “I’m done in,” he said. “I have nothing left to give the Marine Corps.”

“Nothing left? You haven’t even worked up a sweat!” Tobias said.

Ben beat his fist on the desktop, his face filling with horror. “Oh, my God,” he said.

“I’m done in,” Zach repeated.

“It’s all so fucking clear,” Ben said. “In the back of my mind I’ve always had fears about this guy. Look at him. He says he’s done in. Zachary O’Hara has used you and you and me and the Corps and everyone in his life and every day of his life to pull the con of the century. Zachary O’Hara knew from the day he was born that the Corps was there to serve him. This guy has the brain and the looks and the big name. His life has been a clever, stunning charade. This boy is slick.”

Ben filled his mind to overflowing with Zach’s treachery and he reeled between disbelief and rage.

“His tactics began the day he enlisted, with great fanfare and,
oh yeah, the tears over his father’s grave. Well, let’s put Little Precious on guard duty at the Washington barracks. He’s about the biggest showpiece the Corps has left. And we three. Get him into AMP. We owe his daddy! And brilliant young Zachary swoons us into a commission and swoons me into taking him to the War College. That was his dirty plan. Newport. Playing the brokenhearted fool, he cruised subtly and with the sly glance and the wispy touch until every virgin heiress on Mansion Row was in heat. You should have heard the phone calls I got begging me to bring him to their parlor.

“George Barjac pleaded with me to talk Zach into the tobacco business and was ready to throw Lilly into the bargain. But Zachary didn’t want to get involved in a setup with too many sons and sons-in-law.

“And, oh yes, Admiral-in-Chief Langenfeld was ready to swap a battleship for this . . . this piece of shit. Having surveyed the situation, no way Zach O’Hara would spend two years in a Caribbean shithole.”

“You’re yellow! You’re a coward!” Tobias roared.