Chapter 7 - Shadows on the Base
The silence in the Colonel's office was broken by the sharp, electric chime of Harrison's desk telephone.
Harrison didn't look at it immediately. He was staring at the yellowed onion-skin paper, his fingers resting an inch from the envelope as if touching it would initiate an explosion.
The phone chimed a second time. A third.
Harrison pressed the speakerphone button. "Colonel Harrison."
"Sir," the voice of the brigade adjutant came through the speaker, tight and clipped. "We have a situation at the division headquarters. Major General Sterling is on the line from the Pentagon. He’s asking about an unauthorized civilian visitor in the 326th footprint."
Harrison's eyes flicked to me, then to Jesse Vance. "Did General Sterling specify the nature of his inquiry?"
"Sir, he stated that the Vance family legal representatives contacted the Chief of Staff's office forty minutes ago. They claim an individual has arrived at Fort Campbell intending to disrupt the memorial delegation arriving for General Vance's dedication ceremony. The General is ordering that any unauthorized persons be removed from the installation immediately."
Jesse Vance let out a low, dangerous laugh from the window. "They're moving fast, Colonel. The old man isn't even in the ground yet, and his lawyers are already sweeping the porch."
"Thank you, Adjutant," Harrison said calmly. "Inform General Sterling's aide that I am currently conducting an operational review with an official guest of the regiment. I will return his call when the briefing concludes."
"Sir? The General specifically stated—"
"You have your answer, Captain," Harrison snapped, cutting the line with a sharp tap of his finger.
He looked up at me. The bureaucratic caution that usually sits behind the eyes of a lieutenant colonel competing for brigade command had completely vanished.
"Captain Braddock," Harrison said, "what happened to the other fourteen men? The ones you dragged through the culvert?"
"Ten of them died over the next twenty years," I told him, looking at the rain that had finally begun to streak the office windows. "Agent Orange, liver failure, suicides, car wrecks. War doesn't stop killing people just because the shooting ends. But four of them are still alive."
I reached back into my purse and pulled out a small, lined index card with four names and telephone numbers written in my tight, school-nurse cursive.
"One runs a bait shop in Biloxi," I said. "One is in a wheelchair in Des Moines. One is a preacher in eastern Kentucky. And the fourth," I looked directly at Staff Sergeant Reese, "is a retired Master Sergeant living forty miles down the road in Dover, Tennessee. His name is Frank Miller."
Reese’s head snapped up. "Miller? The Specialist who was in the dining hall... Specialist Miller?"
"Her grandfather," I said softly. "She didn't tell you, did she? She’s twenty years old. She enlisted as a combat medic because Frank told her that the 326th was the only unit in the United States Army that knew how to stand its ground when the world went to hell. When you were standing over my table calling me 'Grandma,' that girl knew exactly who I was. But she didn't say a word because she wanted to see if her own sergeant was the kind of man her grandfather fought for, or just a boy wearing a costume."
Reese looked as if someone had driven a bayonet through his ribs. He closed his eyes, his breath hitching in his chest, the shame of that dining hall table burning through him like battery acid.
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"I disgraced him," Reese whispered, his head hanging low. "I disgraced my grandfather. I disgraced the crest."
"No, son," I said, reaching over and placing my hand firmly over his trembling forearm, feeling the rigid muscle and the ink of the eagle tattoo beneath the fabric. "You made a mistake because nobody ever taught you that the real strength of a soldier isn't in how loud he barks. It’s in who he's willing to bleed for. Your grandfather understood that. Now you have to decide if you do."
