Chapter 31

Saturday, 17 October 1998
1045 PDT
The Superior Sandwich Café
La Jolla, CA

The moment that Harm and Mac stepped inside the café, Tina rushed over to Harm.

"Harm, It's wonderful to see you again."

"It's good to see you, too, Tina. You look great."

Harm gave Tina a hug, while Mac stood by carefully monitoring the pair for any hint of romantic intent; past or present.

Tina moved to greet Mac. "Sarah, it was so nice for you to arrange this lunch for the three of us."

"My pleasure. And please, call me Mac. All of my friends do."

"What a lovely dress, and I adore those shoes."

Mac was wearing a knee length white and silver linen dress along short healed silver pumps. Although not wanting to appear over dressed for lunch, Mac took pains to ensure that she looked her best.

"Thank you. It's just something I threw on before leaving the house," Mac said casually, having worn nearly her entire wardrobe during the 7 days in La Jolla. "I must say that look wonderful in your dress."

"It's sweet of you to say that." Tina was wearing a white wrap dress and sandals, with her long blonde hair in a large loopy ponytail.

Even without heels, Tina was considerably taller than Mac, who continued comparing herself to other women.

Tina shifted her attention back to Harm. "Frank told me about you're father. I'm terribly sorry. All of us held out hope that he'd come home."

"I appreciate that."

"How did Trish take the news?"

"My mother has been dealing with it quite well. Better than I have," Harm admitted.

"Trish is fortunate to have Frank for support."

"Frank has had a mild heart attack." When Harm saw the concern on Tina's face he quickly added, "There's nothing to worry about. Frank will recover completely. In fact, he's coming home this afternoon"

"That's a relief."

"Now, let's all go inside and have our lunch," said Mac.

The cafe's interior was reminiscent of a Parisian café, with most of the seating outside and facing the ocean.

Once they arrived at their table, Tina took an inside seat and then set her bag down in the empty chair next to her.

Good girl, thought Mac, who took the inside seat directly across from Tina, while Harm sat down next to her.

Their server arrived; a pretty Vietnamese girl who reminded Harm of Bian, and surprised when Harm began speaking to her in Vietnamese.

When their small talk dragged on, it became obvious to Mac and to Tina that the girl was flirting with Harm.

"Let's order, Harm. I'm hungry." Mac's tone made it clear that the language lesson was over.

Harm and Tina each ordered Greek salads, while Mac bucked the vegetarian trend and ordered the double-deck club sandwich boasting Turkey, Ham and Bacon.

"I want extra mayonnaise on the side," Mac instructed the waitress, who by now was nervous to be near her.

"Something to drink?" the waitress asked Harm.

"Sam Adams Pale Ale."

"Iced tea for me," said Tina who touched the table and added, "Two years clean and sober."

"I'll also have iced tea," said Mac, who offered congratulations to Tina, but said nothing else.

The lunch conversation was pleasant. Harm and Tina caught up on recent events, as well as their mutual friends, none of who Mac knew. Nevertheless, it was interesting for Mac to picture Harm having a life before the Navy.

Harm's phone rang. "Excuse me ladies. It's my mother," and Harm stepped back inside the café to take the call.

Tina smiled. "Harm loves his mother so much. My relationship with my own mother has always been strained."

Once again, Mac offered up nothing about herself. "So, Tina, what was Harm like in school?"

"When I met Harm in the 7th grade he was tall and thin, and terribly shy."

"Shy? You're joking?"

"Most of us had gone to elementary school together, so Harm arrived as something of an outsider. He barely said a word to anyone, and seldom spoke up in class."

"Having heard him drone on in the courtroom, that's hard for me to imagine. What was it that finally got Harm talking?"

"During the fall of Saigon, a substitute teacher declared that the war in Vietnam had been criminal, and that anyone who had fought in Vietnam should be tried for war crimes. Harm then demanded to know where the teacher had been during the war? When he admitted to having had a student deferment, I honestly thought that Harm was going to hit him. Their argument became so heated that they went to the principal's office to finish. Our principal was a veteran of WWII and Korea. Harm came back to class, but we never saw that substitute teacher again."

Mac smiled. "Score a victory for Harmon Rabb Junior."

"Quite a few kids in our class had fathers or older brothers who had served in Vietnam. They thanked Harm for speaking up. I honestly think that was what brought Harm out of his shell."

Tina reached into her bag and removed her ninth grade year book. She passed the book across the table to Mac, who insisted that Tina sit down next to her.

As they turned the pages, Tina pointed out several photos of Harm; looking much younger and very thin, but was easily recognizable, despite his surprisingly long hair.

"Once Harm was out of his shell, he proved to be a natural leader. Harm became involved in student government, and he was the captain of the baseball and basketball teams. No one had ever captained two sports teams before."

"You liked Harm, didn't you?"

Mac's question was pointed. Tina didn't appreciate it, but she shrugged it off. "I admired Harm because he made everyone around him better. My grades had slipped so badly that if I didn't receive at least a B in biology I'd be held back a year. Luckily, Harm was made my lab partner."

"Harm did your assignments for you?"

Tina was shocked by the suggestion. "Harm would never do that, although he did dissect my frog- poor little Kermit. Everyone thought that I was just a dumb blonde with big boobs. My parents believed it, my teachers believed it, even I began to believe it. Harm assured me that I could do the coursework and at the end of the semester I received a B. That was my highest grade ever in any subject."

You're barking up the wrong tree, MacKenzie. Harm and Tina were good friends, but that was all.

Tina began describing the beach and pool parties she and Harm attend with their friends, as well as their trips to Big Bear Lake for swimming and boating during the summer, and skiing in the winter.

"One spring we all went to Cabo and the next spring we went to Hawaii. One summer we stayed at Frank's vacation home in the Bahamas."

It was an affluent lifestyle which Mac knew nothing about, and could barely comprehend.

"Tell me about Harm's girlfriends," Mac asked point blank.

"He didn't have any."

"I find that hard to believe."

"There were plenty of girls who wanted to date Harm. The girls on the cheerleader squad made a bet as to which one of them would be the first to sleep with him."

"And?" Mac demanded.

"It didn't happen. And not one of those girls could keep a secret."

"Surely there was someone," Mac insisted.

"Harm was completely focused on getting into the Naval Academy, and of course, finding his missing father." Tina bit her lower lip. "When Harm came back from southeast Asia he looked like he'd been through hell."

Harm returned to the table. "Tina, my ears are burning. I hope you didn't beat me up too badly with Mac."

"Tina spoke very highly of you," said Mac. "Is Frank on his way home?"

"There's been a minor issue at the hospital and Frank's discharge has been delayed. He's fit to be tied, but he should be out in a couple of hours. Tina, my mother asked if you could join us at our house?"

"I don't want to impose."

"My mother was adamant. She wants to talk to you."

"Unless Trish has changed, she's not one to be questioned. Of course I'll come to the house."

Now that Harm had returned to the table, their pretty Vietnamese server began hovering.

"It seems that we have time to kill. Let's go out and stretch our legs," Mac suggested.

"I have an idea," said Tina. "Let's walk to the used clothing store where I work. It's not far from here. They have a nice selection of clothes, and I get a 15% employee discount."

"In that case, lead on." Mac looked at Harm and snapped her fingers. "Harm, get the check."

While Harm reached for his wallet, the two girls walked out of the café together.

Inside the clothing shop, Harm continued feigning interest while Mac and Tina began looking through another rack of coats.

"Harm and I are heading back to DC tomorrow. The weather will be chilly, so it wouldn't hurt to pick up something warm," said Mac.

Harm felt his phone vibrate. Thinking it might be his mother, he took the call.

"Mac, it's Captain Boone on the phone. This will be important. You'll have to excuse me," and Harm stepped outside the shop.

"Is that your commanding officer," Tina asked Mac.

"No, Captain Boone is a Rabb family friend. The Captain flew with Harm's dad during the war. I've met him on a few occasions."

"Is he a nice man?" Tina asked.

"Captain Boone is a fine officer and a decorated combat pilot."

"But is he a nice man?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," and Mac shifted her attention back to the coats.

"Hello, Tom. Thanks for calling."

Already expecting the worst, Boone cut to the chase. "Your email said that you had news about your dad."

"My father's status has been changed from MIA to KIA. He died on the ground at the crash site."

Boone was incredulous. "That's a load of horse shit."

"Tom, this is straight from the DoD. Mortuary Affairs has had boots on the ground."

"Where is your father's body?"

"It was deemed non recoverable," Harm answered.

"How convenient."

"Let me send you the full report."

"Send whatever you like, but I'm not buying into it. Your dad was alive on the ground. Al and Bill and I heard his voice. I was the last person to speak to him...unless you have."

"Tom-"

"It's no secret that you and Mac were in Russia. ZNN reported the MiG crash. Were the two of you there looking for your dad?" Boone had heard the rumors of American POWs being moved out of Vietnam and taken to the Soviet Union, but he had never believed them...until now.

Harm's silence spoke volumes.

"Harm, I'll abide by any protocol, sustain any story, and keep any secret. If you've found your dad, I have to know!" There was a desperate edge on Boone's voice which Harm had never heard before.

It's barely been a week and the cover story is already falling apart. Webb was a fool to imagine that this fairytale could work.

"I've known you all of my life, Tom, and I've never lied to you. Not even when I was little boy." Harm took a deep breath. "I have not met with or spoken to my father in Vietnam, Russia, or anywhere else. The last time that I saw him alive was in the summer of 1969 when the Ticonderoga left San Diego for Yankee Station. The circumstances surrounding his death will be argued, but they can't change the fact that he's dead."

There was a long pause during which Harm was sure that Boone had muted his phone.

Boone came back on the line sounding composed. "How did Trish take the news?"

"Stoically, as you would expect. Good news or bad, my mother seldom shows emotion, or not if there's anyone around to see it."

Boone thought back to sitting at the kitchen table with Trish while he explained the circumstances of the shoot down. At the conclusion of their conversation, he was the one who broke down, not Trish.

"Your mother is an incredibly strong woman. Are the two of you making plans for your dad's memorial service?"

"I have some ideas of my own, but I want to talk them over with my grandmother. Mac and I are going to the farm next weekend. What's your status for the next few months?"

"I'm TDY to the Washington Naval Yard. I'll be shuffling papers until it's decided whether I'm taking a step up the ladder, or being kicked out the door."

"You'll get your star, Tom. You've more than earned it."

"In the meantime, I'm staying with Tinker Taylor and Cassie. Tink wanted me to say hello to you."

"Give Captain and Mrs. Taylor all the best from me." Harm couldn't imagine addressing his old squadron CO as Tinker or Tink; which were shortened from Tinkerbell when Taylor was a nugget on Yankee Station.

"Bill and Vicki Ross are coming for dinner tomorrow night. If you'd like, I can tell Bill and Vicki the news about your dad, unless you want to call and talk to them personally."

"What would you tell them?"

Boone was angered by the insinuation. "I would tell them exactly what you first told me, that he's now listed as KIA."

"I'm sorry, Tom. What I said was uncalled for. Of course I want you to be the one to tell Bill and Vicki about my dad. Maybe all of you can sit around the table tomorrow night and tell old stories about him. I always enjoyed listening to those stories."

"I promise you that we will do that. Right now, give my condolences to Trish, and please tell Mac that I said hello. She and I got off to a bad start aboard the Seahawk. That was my fault."

"Of course I will." Harm couldn't ignore Boone having omitted Frank.

"Before I go, Harm, let me give you some free advice. Start taking positive steps in your relationship with Mac. Otherwise you run the risk of ending up as a lonely old guy like me with nothing in his life but the Navy, and no naval career can last a man's lifetime."

"I appreciate it, Tom. You've always been a good friend. To my father and my mother, and to me. Goodbye."

Tony Taylor was waiting in the parking lot and watched as Tom Boone slowly walked towards him.

"How did it go?" Taylor asked.

"Hammer is dead. KIA on the ground in North Vietnam," Boone said in monotone.

"We all held out hope that by some miracle he'd come home. At least now we have closure."

Boone shook his head. "Not for me."

"Tom, there has to be more to this than the shoot down. What is it that's been tearing you apart for 29 years?"

"Do you remember the Bob Hope tour group meeting with us in the wardroom of the Tico?"

"Of course I do."

"Harm and I were seated next to Jenny Lake."

"Big brown eyes and big boobs. What's not to like about that? I ended up sitting next to Les Brown, the bandleader."

"Harm and Jenny went off alone together. When Harm returned to our cabin, I confronted him."

Back on Yankee Station, the Ticonderoga was beginning it's turn into the wind and was slowly building up speed to launch four aircraft for an Iron Hand mission. LT Tom Boone could feel every movement of the ship beneath him.

"Harm, how could you do something like that?" Boone declared.

"If it bothers you so much, maybe you should be flying with someone else."

"I can't believe that you could be so petty."

"I'll talk to Buzzard Bryant (the CAG) and have Grits made my wingman. How does that grab you?" Harm said in a nasty tone.

Boone froze at the suggestion.

Harmon Rabb was the squadron's star. Harm could choose any wingman he pleased, while Tom Boone was considered to be a fuck-up and was among the least popular members of the squadron. No one wanted to fly with Boone, except for his best friend, Harmon Rabb.

"Please, Harm. Don't do this to me," Boone pleaded.

Harm looked at his watch. "It's too late to make operational changes. I'll talk to Buzzard after we trap. While I'm doing that, you can pack your bags and your share of the Scotch...then get out." Harm spun around and walked to the ready room.

"Harm...Harm!" Boone shouted after him.

Back in the parking lot, Tony Taylor saw that Tom Boone had gone slightly pale. "I can understand how you felt, Tom, but did anything actually happen between Hammer and Jenny Lake?"

"Master Chief Davis spotted them exiting one of the fan rooms on the hangar deck. Those rooms are rarely accessed except for maintenance, and have lots of noise to cover up any suspicious sounds. Harm and Jenny were still dressing when Davis spotted them."

"The Master Chief said nothing to Hammer?"

"Davis respected Harm too much to confront him, much less report him. Instead, Davis told me about it."

"You could have left it alone. After all, Hammer would have never seen that girl again. Why get involved in what was just a onetime fling?"

"It's because Harm had what I wanted- and still want. It made me angry that he would cheat on Trish."

"Christ almighty! Rather than worrying about Harm banging that singer, you should have been more concerned over your own desires for his wife." Boone glared at Taylor, who took a deep breath. "Does anyone else know about Hammer and Jenny Lake?"

"No one but you and I and Davis."

"Master Chief Davis has Alzheimer's and can't remember having been in the Navy. I'll never tell a soul, so unless you and I bump into Jenny Lake, it's over and done."

"You don't understand," Boone implored. "This means that Harm died angry with me."

So, that's it! If Hammer was found alive, Tom believed he could set things right between them. With Hammer now KIA, that can never happen.

Boone continued. "Harm's aircraft was in for maintenance on Christmas Eve. As the element leader, when his bird was out of service he'd fly mine and I'd fly the alternate. When I reached the flight deck, Harm and Hoot were strapping into 052. It was a hanger queen with so much time in the shop that they'd raise her to the flight deck twice each week just to give her some sun. I should have been flying that plane and not Harm."

"Then you'd be dead."

"No. Harm and I weren't flying the same mission profile. Bill and Al had the Shrike's (anti-radiation missiles), I had the countermeasures pods, and Harm was the bait for the SAM's. I didn't have to make the kinds of maneuvers that Harm had to do in order to avoid the missiles. He needed the better of the two aircraft, not me."

"That's conjecture. No one ever knew if the NVA would pull the trigger and send up a missile. I flew on Iron Hand missions without a single SAM launch."

"There's more. What I said to Harm in our cabin might have upset him to the point that he lost his concentration. Then, once the SAM's were launched-".

"Don't go there, Tom!" Taylor warned. "Once the mission was underway, anything that had taken place back on the Tico stayed on the Tico. From what I know about Hammer, he was too professional to play it any other way. The aircraft is a variable which you can't take into account. Of course Hammer would have felt more comfortable in his own bird, all of us do."

Boone nodded his head. "I'd like to think that. This has been gnawing at me for almost 30 years."

"My gut feeling is that after you and Hammer had trapped, everything said in the heat of the moment would be forgotten. By then the Bob Hope tour was long gone, so following the debrief the two of you would have gone to your cabin to break out that Black Label, just like you always did." Boone gave Taylor a quizzical look. "We all knew about the Scotch, we just couldn't figure out how the two of you got it aboard!"

"I still wish that Bob Hope and his troop had never come aboard the Ticonderoga. I tossed all of my Jenny Lake records into the garbage. To this day, I won't listen to her music. As for getting the Scotch aboard ship, I'll tell you that secret at dinner tomorrow night."

"Then how about this? I have a couple of Jenny Lake records back at the house. Lets go home and smash her records to smithereens and then get drunk, on my Scotch," Taylor suggested.

"I read you loud and clear. Thanks, Tink. I feel better by finally getting this off my chest."

"You could have talked to Bill or Al or Gary. They knew Hammer much better than I did. Back in '69, I was just a lowly nugget on my first deployment."

"It's difficult for me to talk to any of them about Hammer, or the shoot down." Boone remembered those conversations turning into ugly arguments.

"I can understand. After all, you and Hammer, Gary, Bill and Al were a tight little group."

"The five of us had a lot of fun together, but Hammer was the one who kept me out of trouble. Without him I would have been locked in up in four different jails in four different countries. I think they're still be looking for me in Hong Kong."

Taylor laughed. "It's a shame that I never had the chance to fly with Hammer. Of course I flew with Little Harm on the Midway during the Gulf War. He was damned fine pilot...up until his eye problems."

"I flew with Little Harm aboard the Seahawk."

"Who was better in the air? The father or the son?"

Boone looked Taylor in the eye. "Little Harm has the full skill-set, but his dad took it to another level. When I was flight testing the F-14 at Miramar, one of Hammer's teammates on the Blue Angels told me that team has never seen anyone else who was that good."

"Roger that," answered Taylor. "Ready to head for home?"

Boone nodded, and once the two men had strapped into Tony Taylor's Dodge Viper GTS, Taylor laid down a sheet of rubber in the parking lot.