The Capitol Game (10 page)

Like Selma, Jack sat quietly and allowed the men to recount the horrors of a day when by all reason they all should’ve been killed.

There was a reason for the prolonged story, though, and at the appropriate point the others fell silent and allowed Floyd to pick up the thread. He and Tom had been boyhood friends, after all; it was by now part of the tradition that he got to narrate the sad ending.

The battle had raged over five hours by the time Floyd weighed in with considerable drama. The team now was desperately huddled inside two small buildings on the far edge of the village. They were little more than huts, but the walls were thick mud
that swallowed whatever the Iraqis shot. The noise of bullets and explosions had long since grown monotonous. Evan and Willy were wounded, barely conscious; the tourniquets Jack had tied were all that kept them alive. A few others had been nicked and bruised, but nothing too severe. Ammunition was now precariously low, a few rounds, then they’d be throwing rocks and spitting at the Iraqis; Jack had long since given the order to fire only at the sure targets. Iraqi bodies littered the ground around the two buildings, including two large piles of corpses where the enemy had twice tried to outflank Jack’s position and rushed straight into lethal blasts from the claymore mines he had added to their packing list.

The only hope was to collect some of the Iraqi weapons from the dead in the large stacks. After telling the others to give him cover, Jack made a mad dash out the door, dodging a hailstorm of bullets and rushing to the piles of bodies, using the corpses for cover as he stripped their weapons and whatever ammunition he could grab.

Tom made a decision to join him. He dove out a side window, rolled a few times, then stood and sprinted for the second pile, where Jack was hunkered down, gripping a stack of weapons and ammunition. About ten yards from Jack, he went tumbling through the air and landed just short of the pile of bodies.

From Jack’s face, Floyd said, they knew Tom was hurt, and that it was real bad. Jack threw Tom over one shoulder, hauled the weapons and ammunition with his free arm, and sprinted for the building.

He laid Tom on the ground, distributed the Iraqi guns and bullets, then returned to kneel beside the fallen man. Tom hollered at him to ignore his wounds and get back to fighting. Jack instead yelled for Floyd to come over and didn’t need to explain why. There was nothing to be done; Tom only had minutes left.

He began talking about Selma and the kids. He said Selma had given his life meaning and happiness, and he swore he wouldn’t change a minute of it. He was sad he was dying, but happy he and Selma had created two lives, Jeremy and Lisa.

By the time Floyd finished, all the men were sniffling and acknowledging how Tom’s sacrifice had saved them all. He was a certified hero, they all agreed.

And it was all a big lie. The truth was that after five hours of unrelenting fire, Tom had snapped. Whatever it was—the direness of the situation, the ammunition dilemma, the hopelessness of Jack’s desperate effort to collect guns and ammunition—he just seemed to outrun his mental tether. When Jack made the dash out the front and drew all the Iraqi fire, Tom made a foolhardy sprint out the back, hoping to use the distraction and the cover of the sandstorm to make his escape.

He was cut in half by an angry hail of bullets before he got twenty feet. There had been no final words. No dramatic farewell, no last thoughts about Selma and the kids. They collected Tom’s bullet-riddled corpse after the fight ended.

At the time, the mood of the team was fury at Tom for trying to run out on them that way. But Jack gathered them all together and made them swear a solemn vow; Tom had a wife and kids, after all. Sure, in a moment of weakness he might’ve tried to escape, but they wouldn’t run out on him. They’d been through lots of tough fights and scrapes together. They wouldn’t let one moment of cowardice be his shameful legacy.

Now, after all these years, a number of the men had actually convinced themselves that Tom’s final act of heroism was a stone-cold fact, absolutely the way it happened. Selma thanked them for coming and for honoring the memory of her husband, then slowly the group began to break up and go their separate ways.

Finally, it was Selma’s turn and she asked Jack to walk her to the parking lot and see her off.

Outside, she took his arm and said, “Strange how that tale changes every four years.”

“Memory is a funny thing.”

“Yep. Last time, they all swore Tom went out the door for the weapons first. They said you followed him.” She was looking at Jack’s face with her eyes narrowed.

“They’re getting older, Selma. Another four years and Tom will
be wearing a blue cape, rushing the main Iraqi position, and pulling the weapons out of their living hands. How are the kids?” Jack asked, quickly changing the subject.

“Fine. Jeremy made the basketball team at Lafayette College.”

“I heard. He called me after the cut. And Lisa?”

“Got all her applications in. Straight A’s, that girl.”

“Gets it from her mother.”

“Who you kiddin’?” They both chuckled and continued walking in silence to the car. Selma had barely made it out of high school; her children would be the first of her family to graduate from college, much less such fine colleges. Lisa was hoping desperately for Princeton, Jack’s alma mater. She was smart, athletically gifted, popular, and best of all, a minority. The admissions people were making promising noises. Jack opened Selma’s door, but before she got in, she gave him a strong hug. “The kids and I thank you. Without that fund, I don’t know if they’d of got this chance at college. It means more than anything, Jack.”

“They all threw in some money to get the fund started.”

“Uh-huh.” Maybe it was true, maybe everybody threw a little cash into the Gaither kids’ college kettle, but Selma was not the gullible sort. At best the team might’ve been able to pinch together a few thousand dollars. They were all soldiers back then, living paycheck to paycheck, barely able to afford their car payments. And maybe, as Jack always swore up and down, his investment of that hoard might’ve fallen into a gold mine and multiplied a few times—but no way did he grow a few thousand dollars into half a million, enough for both kids to go to any college in the country, without a second thought to the cost.

“You’re a fine man, Jack Wiley. When are you gonna find a fine woman? The kids are always askin’ when Uncle Jack’s gonna settle down.”

Jack laughed. “You have a sister?”

“Yeah. A real uptight bitch. She’s too old for you. Already been married and divorced three times, anyways. Can’t hold a man.”

Jack smiled. “Can I have her number?”

B
ellweather was right. It was nearly five in the evening the next day when Jack called. Walters’s assistant, Alice, unfamiliar with his name, swore up and down her boss was out of the office and in any event was too busy to speak with him. But Jack loudly insisted that she interrupt whatever her boss was doing and mention his name.

Walters at that moment had a putter clenched in his sweaty palms, having just lined up a shot, when his cell phone rattled. He was on the back nine of the Army Navy Country Club, hosting two admirals and a high-level assistant secretary of acquisition from the Pentagon. A shipbuilding company down in Pascagoula, owned by CG, was a year late and now two hundred million and counting in cost overruns on a pair of Navy destroyers. Walters was using the occasion to talk them out of a full-blown audit, doing it the usual way, hinting at the job openings that were expected to come open right about the time the three men were in the window for retirement.

He blew the putt, an easy five-footer, threw down the putter, cursed, and jerked the phone off his belt. “What?” he yelled, wishing he could strangle the caller.

His knees almost went rubbery when Alice, after apologizing profusely for breaking his concentration, mentioned who was
calling. Alice’s predecessor had been fired only the week before. Divorced, three kids, a big mortgage, she was walking on eggshells, trying desperately to avoid that fate. The betting pool around the office gave her two weeks. Three at the outside.

Walters barked, “Put him through.”

A moment later, he heard magic. “Mr. Walters, I suspect you’ve heard about me,” Jack said in a very friendly tone.

Walters tried to smile into the phone. “Sure have, Jack. Couldn’t be sorrier about that stupid meeting with Ed Blank. What an ass.”

“I was hoping you and I could meet,” Jack said abruptly.

“Love to. Say when.”

“Okay, ‘when’ is tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes. I’m afraid my schedule’s gotten very cluttered.”

“Yeah, well, my schedule’s pretty loaded, too,” Walters snapped back. The idea that this uppity punk was busier than him was ridiculous. But he quickly regained his composure, and in a tone that was only mildly friendlier suggested, “Why not tomorrow? I’ll tell my secretary to find me an hour.”

“Tell her not to bother.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You know what it means. Good-bye, Mr.—”

“No… wait!” Walters nearly screamed. The clutch of admirals and the assistant secretary politely edged away.

Wiley made no reply. Not a sound, not a peep. At least he hadn’t hung up, though.

“Listen,” Walters said, trying not to sound desperate and failing miserably. “Maybe I can make time tonight.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, I can. What time?”

“I won’t be free until about nine.”

“Then nine it is.”

“And bring along some of your directors, Mr. Walters. This is a fast train. I want to be sure you can commit to a deal.”

Walters was fiercely tempted to tell him to cram it. Who did this guy think he was, ordering him around like some snot-nosed
junior executive? He worked up every bit of his nerve and said, “Sure, no problem. Where?”

“I’m in town, so how about your headquarters?”

Walters was about to reply when the phone line suddenly went dead. One of the admirals sank a thirty-footer. “Good shot, sailor,” Walters yelled over his shoulder. “Sorry, gotta go, boys, finish without me,” and he jogged back to the clubhouse, howling into his phone for Alice, the temporary assistant, to arrange champagne and snacks, and to contact three directors and tell them to be there at all costs.

Tell them the fifteen-billion-dollar man is back.

Dan Bellweather was personally awaiting Jack in the downstairs lobby when he arrived, alone, hauling a small black suitcase. Bellweather shook his hand with great enthusiasm, escorted him past the security people and up in the elevator to the tenth floor, where the spacious senior executive suites were located. “We’re glad you came back,” he happily informed Jack on the way up.

“I’m not exactly back, Mr. Secretary,” Jack replied, polite but poker-faced.

Bellweather smiled nicely. Oh yes, boy, you’re definitely back. After a moment, he said, “I understand you were a military brat.”

“I grew up bouncing around Army posts. Fun life.”

Bellweather could almost recite from memory the many places Jack had lived. “And you were in the Army yourself,” he noted, “and your father was a lifer. Why did you leave it?”

“The war was over. I did my part, time to enjoy the peace.”

“You mean make money, huh?”

“Sure, why not.”

“I admire that motive,” Bellweather said, and his smile widened and sparkled. Nice to see Jack had honorable ambitions.

They had reached the tenth floor and Jack encouraged Bellweather to step out first. After a fast trip down a long hallway, he ushered Jack into a large wood-paneled conference room where three other gentlemen in a mixture of thousand-dollar suits and blazers were picking at snacks on a side table and waiting.

“Jack,” Bellweather said, almost gushing with pride, “I’d like you to meet Alan Haggar and Phil Jackson, two of our directors. And of course Mitch Walters, our CEO.”

Like nearly every other CG director, Alan Haggar was a former high government official, a deputy secretary of defense, number two in the mammoth Pentagon hierarchy, who had left the current administration only six months before. He was short and flabby with a pinched face and narrow, indistinct eyes blurred behind thick bifocals: he appeared to have been hatched in a bureaucracy. His smile was tight, obviously forced and slightly nervous. He was the newest and, at forty-five, the youngest CG director.

To his right, Phil Jackson, a lawyer, had been a close confidant to many presidents—Republicans or Democrats, he went both ways—particularly when they got into legal trouble and needed a slick operator to stonewall, obscure, twist elbows, and finagle a way out. In a town loaded with powerful fixers, Phil Jackson had written the textbooks they all studied. He was tall, skeletally thin, entirely bald, stone-faced, with severely narrowed eyes that looked slightly snakish.

The four men quickly gathered around Jack in a tight huddle, hands were shaken, then Bellweather led Jack to a wall upon which hung twelve photographs in elegant gold frames. “Our directors, Jack”—he waved a hand reverently across the gallery—“I think it would be fair to say we’re led by a rather distinguished, illustrious group.”