Chapter 11

Thirty years ago...

"They're not telling us everything," Sam said as they walked back down the hall.

"Of course not," Charlie said with a shrug. "It's Top Secret. We probably won't know until we're actually there...wherever there is."

"I don't know. I don't like this, Charlie. We don't get to know who's calling the shots. We don't get to know the mission. We don't even get to know the location. How are we supposed to be adequately prepared for something that is kept so secret we don't get to know what it is? I don't like it."

"You could have said no."

Sam was shaking his head before Charlie finished speaking.

"No. When I got into special ops, I took an oath, and I'm sticking with it. This is just feeling less like special ops and more like black ops." He paused and looked around. No one was close by. "This much secrecy makes me wonder if it's something that shouldn't be done. Maybe this is illegal."

"Careful what you say and who you say that to," Charlie said in a low voice. "If you're wanting to make admiral, you have to learn to toe the line. I don't think these people will be too happy about being crossed...or questioned."

"I know how to toe the line, Charlie, but I also know how to question whether the line is in the right place, and I'm not sure this one is."

"If you feel that way about it, I'll volunteer to be on site. You can be base."

"It won't make a difference. They've already made their choice." Then, Sam forced a smile. "Besides, we both know who's better at roughing it. You're much too delicate to risk your pretty face." He patted Charlie's cheek.

Charlie swatted his hand away.

"Don't get carried away, old man. Seriously, though, it's going to be dangerous out there. You've got a family, and you know that Naomi won't want you doing this."

"I know. That's why I'm not going to tell her...since I don't know anything right now, anyway."

"Yeah. We've got six months to prepare for the unknown."

"Let's get started."

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Present...

"Sam, Ed is on the phone."

Sam just sighed and stared out the hotel window.

"Take a message, Naomi. I'm not in the mood to talk about work."

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not work Ed wants to talk about, and you know it."

"Not sure I want to talk about that, either," Sam said, but he straightened and turned around.

Naomi was looking at him sympathetically. She raised her eyebrows and held out the phone. He nodded and took the phone.

"Hey, Ed."

"Doesn't sound like it's going well," Ed said.

"For me, it hasn't really started, but...I'm worried about Tim."

"Tim? Why? They couldn't possibly pull him into this, could they? He was, what, three when all this happened?"

Sam smiled. "Seven, actually. No, he's...pulled himself into it. I can't tell you more than that."

"No need. I don't know all of what's going on, but I do know that, whatever the situation is, you must be the one in the right. I can't imagine you doing anything that was genuinely, morally wrong."

"Ed, did Naomi put you up to this? Calling me to boost my self-esteem?"

Ed chuckled. "No. Not a chance. I'm just a smart guy."

"Smart because you know I'm innocent or smart because you knew to call and give me a boost without Naomi telling you, first?"

"You can choose. Don't worry about us up here, Sam. We can handle the rest of the semester."

"And more?"

"If necessary. Sam, I know you can't tell me much, but is there anything you can tell me about all this?"

"That if it goes to trial, you may be pressured to fire me."

"That bad?"

"Yeah."

"Well, then...let me quote your idol: 'You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.' Winston Churchill didn't have it easy, but he got Britain through World War Two."

Sam couldn't help but smile. Ed didn't often fall into quoting. He let Sam do it.

"I didn't realize I still had them. I thought thirty years was enough time to get rid of them. I mean, couldn't they just all be dead by now?"

"It's never enough time to get rid of real enemies. Just like real friends. No time is enough."

"That seems to be the case this time."

"Sam, your job is waiting for you. Whenever you can come back. It'll take more than a court martial to get me to want to get rid of you."

"Thanks, Ed."

"No problem. Just focus on what you've got to do. That'll be enough, even for you."

"Bye, Ed."

"Bye, Sam."

Sam hung up and looked at Naomi.

"So did you call him?"

Naomi smiled. "It doesn't matter whether I did or not. You feel better."

"Marginally."

"I'll take that, for now."

"We still haven't told Sarah," Sam said. "And now, with Tim gone, too..."

"Yeah. She'll be very upset, but she also can't get back here easily and there's nothing she can do to help with this."

"She'll still be ticked off that we never told her," Sam said.

"But not in the same way Tim is. And how much will we tell her about what Tim is doing?"

"As little as possible," Sam said. "But we'll have to say something to her. We can't hide the fact that Tim is UA."

"Definitely not. We might have a chance of talking her into staying in England until and unless there's an actual trial."

Sam nodded. "Yeah. She won't really want to be here, but she'll feel like she should want to be here. Unlike Tim who genuinely wants to be here and is forcing us to involve him." He chuckled a little. "How in the world did we end up with two so incredibly different children?"

"We're just lucky, I guess," Naomi said. "Of course, I feel like they came with their own personalities. We just had to figure them out. Thankfully, they gave us that time."

"Of course, we're still figuring them out."

"Yes, we are. That's what keeps it exciting. I'll call Sarah tomorrow and let her know the basics. I'll try to convince her that she won't be betraying us to stay in England and we'll go from there."

"Sounds good."

Sam turned back to the window and stared out at the darkening skies.

"Where do you think he is?"

"I don't know. He said that he would be moving around a lot. Where he is today isn't necessarily where he'll be tomorrow."

"I still hate that he's doing this, and I just wish I could stop him. What if I just gave in?"

"Gave in?"

"Threw myself on the mercy of the military tribunal. No trial. No chance for Tim to ruin his life trying to save mine. It would be over so quickly that Tim wouldn't have time to go too far."

"No. Sam, you can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because it would be wrong, and it wouldn't help Tim," Naomi said, firmly. "It might stop him from throwing away his career, but it wouldn't stop him from ruining his life. I don't agree with what Tim is doing, but you know as well as I do that trying to stop him like that isn't going to work. He'd keep going and he'd only be more desperate to save you because you'd be in prison. Maybe you're right and they wouldn't go for the death penalty, but we don't know how far this will go, and I won't see you extradited for something you didn't do simply because the only other witness is a lying piece of–"

"Don't start that again, Naomi," Sam interrupted. "We don't even know if Charlie is still alive."

"It doesn't matter whether he is or not. I'll never forgive him. Never. He sat by your hospital bed, made us think he cared, but in the end, none of that mattered. All he cared about was saving his own skin, never mind what it could have done to you...and he didn't even have a family. He knew that by ruining your life, he'd be ruining ours, too."

"I'm not enamored with him, either, but let's not make things more complicated by thinking about him, too. If we never see him, we don't have to think about him, either."

"What if they find him and use him as a witness again?"

"We'll deal with that, if it happens," Sam said. "But I'd be surprised if they used him. He was part of the operation, too. If they use him as a witness, he'll be asked very difficult questions by my lawyer. They know that."

Naomi took a breath and calmed down.

"All right. We'll try to stay away from that topic."

"Good," Sam said.

Then, he looked out the window again. How far would Tim really be willing to go?

How far had he gone already?

x.x.x.x.x.x.x

Tim sat back and looked at his screen. His father's military file was interesting in more ways than one. From a completely personal point of view, it was interesting to see what his father's military career had been like. Tim had never felt comfortable asking for details, even when he was older. Knowing, as he had, that his father's time in the Navy had ended badly, it had seemed wrong to ask about it. It seemed like it was reminding him of a time he wanted to forget. Whether it was true or not, Tim had felt that way and so being able to get all these details was a big change.

He could see when his father's service had begun, his exemplary performance in the NROTC, his graduation, his promotions.

One thing that didn't surprise Tim, but that he hadn't really known, was that Sam had been on the fast track. He achieved every promotion at the earliest time possible. His work in special operations had begun before he'd been promoted to Commander, but the information on those missions was still classified, although not all of them were Top Secret.

He wasn't really thinking he'd get the information he'd need from his father's 201 file, but he had the chance to get some other names.

For instance, Sam had been recommended for promotion to Commander by Rear Admiral Thomas Jackson. He didn't know who had been on the promotion board, but Sam's rise through the Navy ranks had been as quick as it could have been. In fact, this Admiral Jackson came up more than once in Sam's file. He seemed to have been involved in multiple aspects of Sam's military life.

Curious, Tim looked up Thomas Jackson. It had been thirty years. Obviously, he'd be retired, but was he still alive?

Quickly, Tim found the file and was disappointed. Rear Admiral Jackson had died about eight and a half years ago.

The question now was which way to go next. Tim looked at his father's file again. Maybe the next step would be to find out just what Sam had done as part of the special ops missions. He'd been involved in them for about five years. No wonder Tim didn't have any real memory of his dad doing anything else.

For now, though, his battery was running low, it was getting dark and he knew he should start thinking about sleep. However, he wasn't exactly excited about the prospect of sleeping in this rundown shack. He knew it was his choice. He knew that he had expected this. It was just that the reality of it was difficult to deal with. He really wasn't that kind of guy. Scouting experience notwithstanding, he just didn't really enjoy roughing it.

Still, this was the best he had. He would deal with it. Besides, with a roof over his head, this would not be considered roughing it by anyone with even a modicum of real camping experience. The roof might be in danger of falling in on him, but it was still a roof. There was a floor beneath him. There was a door he could close. This wasn't really roughing it. He was just being a wimp.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn't really eaten anything all day. So he shut down his computer, turned on a flashlight, got out some snacks and water and sat on the floor to eat.

As he did so, he couldn't help wondering just how long this would take. Could he last as long as it might take to resolve everything satisfactorily?

"Yes," he said aloud. "I'll do whatever it takes, for however long it takes. I have a roof over my head and if the food isn't great, it's enough. That's all I need."

He supposed that if he got sent to prison, at least the food would be better than this.

At the same time, his stomach churned a bit at the thought of serving time. Cops didn't tend to do very well when imprisoned with, potentially, some of the people they'd helped put away. If he did get caught and when he did turn himself in, he couldn't imagine that he'd be treated with much sympathy. Why would they be easy on him? He would not only be breaking the law, he'd be doing so in order to break up their plans. All in all, he couldn't see that anything would turn out well for him in the long run.

"But it will for Dad and that's what matters," Tim said aloud, hoping that he would keep believing it. He couldn't lose his resolve, couldn't stop before the task was completed.

He finished eating and cleaned up the wrappers. He didn't know how much wildlife was in these parts, but he did know that there had been bears here in the past. He didn't really want to invite any extra problems...like getting mauled by a bear. So he took the wrappers, put them in a sandwich bag and then carried them outside and stored them in a box at the edge of the clearing. Hopefully, that would keep any unwanted visitors away from the shack. Then, he hooked up his laptop to the battery for recharging. It should take a few hours, and it would be safer to have it out in the trunk. That task done, it was almost full dark and he went back inside to get ready to sleep. He unrolled his sleeping bag. It was plenty warm enough and the pad would give him a little bit of protection from the hard floor. He climbed into his sleeping bag, pulled a pillow over and turned off the flashlight.

Immediately, the cabin was plunged into darkness. And this was real darkness. Because of the trees, very little light was present, not even from the night sky, because the trees blocked out that light as well as any lights from civilization. It felt too dark. Tim was used to lights, even just as a faint glow, no matter the time of day or night. It felt like there was absolutely no light at all. It made him more than a little nervous.

Sternly, he told himself that there was no reason to feel like that. He wasn't a child afraid of the dark. He wasn't in danger. He was just lying on an old, rotting floor, in the middle of nowhere, attempting to keep his life as normal as possible...while ignoring all the things that made his life normal.

But none of that mattered. He would not let himself become distracted by things not being comfortable.

He closed his eyes (not that it made much of a difference) and tried to get to sleep.