Dreamcatcher(73)

'Yes,' Owen said. He wondered again how much of his mind Kurtz could read. Certainly he could read the name currently in the front of Kurtz's mind, and supposed Kurtz wanted him to. Bosanski Novi.

4

They were on the verge of going, four gunship crews with Owen Underhill's men from the bus replacing the ANG guys who had brought the CH-47s this far, they were cranking up, filling the air with the thunder of the rotors, and then came Kurtz's order to stand down.

Owen passed it on, then flicked his chin to the left. He was now on Kurtz's private corn channel.

'Beg pardon, but what the f**k?' Owen asked. If they were going to do this thing, he wanted to do it and get it behind him. It was worse than Bosanski Novi, worse by far. Writing it off by saying the grayboys weren't human beings just did not wash. Not for him, anyway. Beings that could build something like Blue Boy  -  or fly it, at least  -  were more than human.

'It's none of mine, lad,' Kurtz said. 'The weather boys in Bangor say this shit is moving out fast. It's what they call an Alberta Clipper. Thirty minutes, forty-five, max, and we're on our way. With our nav gear all screwed up, it's better to wait if we can . . . and we can. You'll thank me at the other end.'

Man, I doubt that.

'Roger, copy.' He flicked his head to the right. 'Conklin,' he said. No rank designations to be used on this mission, especially not on the radio.

'I'm here, s . . . I'm here.'

'Tell the men we're on hold thirty to forty-five. Say again, thirty to forty-five.'    

'Roger that. Thirty to forty-five.'

'Let's have some jukebox rhythm.'

'Okay. Requests?'

'Go with what you like. Just save the Squad Anthem.' 'Roger, Squad Anthem is racked back.' No smile in Conk's voice. There was one man, at least, who liked this as little as Owen did. Of course, Conklin had also been on the Bosanski Novi mission in '95. Pearl jam started up in Owen's cans. He pulled them off and laid them around his neck like a horse-collar. He didn't care for Pearl jam, but in this bunch he was a minority.

Archie Perlmutter and his men ran back and forth like chickens with their heads cut off. Salutes were snapped, then choked off, with many of the saluters sneaking did-he-see-that looks at the small green scout copter in which Kurtz sat with his own cans clamped firmly in place and a copy of the Derry News upraised. Kurtz looked engrossed in the paper, but Owen had an idea that the man marked every half-salute, every soldier who forgot the situation and reverted to old beast habit. Beside Kurtz, in the left seat, was Freddy Johnson. Johnson had been with Kurtz roughly since Noah's ark grounded on Mount Ararat. He had also been at Bosanski, and had undoubtedly given Kurtz a full report when Kurtz himself had been forced to stay behind, unable to climb into the saddle of his beloved phooka horse because of his groin-pub.

In June of '95, the Air Force had lost a scout pilot in NATO's no-fly zone, near the Croat border. The Serbs had made a very big deal of Captain Tommy Callahan's plane, and would have made an even bigger one of Callahan himself, if they caught him; the brass, haunted by images of the North Vietnamese gleefully parading brainwashed pilots before the international press, made recovering Tommy Callahan a priority.

The searchers had been about to give up when Callahan contacted them on a low-frequency radio band. His high-school girlfriend gave them a good ID marker, and when the man on the ground was queried, he confirmed it, telling them his friends had started calling him The Pukester following a truly memorable night of drinking in his junior year.

Kurtz's boys went in to get Callahan in a couple of helicopters much smaller than any of the ones they were using today. Owen

Underhill, already tabbed by most (including himself, Owen sup?posed) as Kurtz's successor, had been in charge. Callahan's job was to pop some smoke when he saw the birds, then stand by. Underhill's job  -  the phooka part of it  -  had been to yank Callahan without being seen. This was not strictly necessary, so far as Owen could see, but was simply the way Kurtz liked it: his men were invisible, his men rode the Irish horse.

The extraction had worked perfectly. There were some SAMs fired, but nothing even close  -  Milosevic had shit, for the most part. It was as they were taking Callahan on board that Owen had seen his only Bosnians: five or six children, the oldest no more than ten, watching them with solemn faces. The idea that Kurtz's directive to make sure there were no witnesses might apply to a group of dirtyface kids had never crossed Owen's mind. And Kurtz had never said anything about it.

Until today, that was.

That Kurtz was a terrible man Owen had no doubt. Yet there were many terrible men in the service, more devils than saints, most certainly, and many were in love with secrecy. What made Kurtz different Owen had no idea  -  Kurtz, that long and melancholy man with his white eyelashes and still eyes. Meeting those was hard because there was nothing in them  -  no love, no laughter, and absolutely no curiosity. That lack of curiosity was somehow the worst.

A battered Subaru pulled up at the store, and two old men got carefully out. One clutched a black cane in a weather-chapped hand. Both wore red-and-black-checked hunting overshirts. Both wore faded caps, one with CASE above the bill and the other with DEERE. They looked wonderingly at the contingent of soldiers that descended upon them. Soldiers at Gosselin's? What in the tarnal? They were in their eighties, by the look of them, but they had the curiosity Kurtz lacked. You could see it in the set of their bodies, the tilt of their heads.