Loose Cannon: The Tom Kelly Novels by David Drake Read Free Book Online Page A

“What happened?’’ he asked. Captain Laidlaw was shifting uneasily in his chair.
    “Nothing happened,” Kelly said. “That’s why I don’t want to see the guy shafted.” His smile flashed, as chill as a polar dawn.
    “All right, Mr. Kelly,” the general said as he stood, “I’ll take care of it. And now that that’s settled, I’m giving you the only order you’ll hear for the duration: stay off the sauce. Period.”
    Kelly snapped his eyes back to the Attaché’s. “I can handle it,” he said.
    Pedler leaned forward with his knuckles lost in the books and papers littering his desk. “Don’t bullshit me , Sergeant,” he said. “I’ve worked with juicers all my service life. Some of them aren’t oiled all the time, and some of them work better than a lot of the rest of us even when they are oiled. But you’re not selling typewriters now. If you drink the way you’ve been doing since the NSA fired your ass, you’re going to get a lot of people killed and you’re going to screw up the mission. Do I make myself understood?”
    Kelly stood up, thrusting the radio cord back in his pocket. “I hear you talking, General,” he said. “Now—I want a shower and a shave. Then we’ll get down to details.”
    Pedler nodded toward the door. “Have Oanh look up Morley for you,” he said. “He was supposed to take care of arrangements. Report back to Room 302 here at”—he checked a massive wrist chronometer—“1500 hours.”
    Kelly’s hands were full of his own gear, helping him suppress an instinct to salute. Sergeant. Well, he’d been one, a platoon sergeant when they booted him out. He’d refused all offers of warrant rank. Just didn’t want to be an officer, even a half-assed warrant officer. And now, by God, they needed him like they needed none of those brass-bound monkeys in the Pentagon. They needed Tom Kelly.

    When the door closed behind the civilian, the Naval Attaché coughed quietly for attention. General Pedler looked at him. “There’s something in this man’s restricted file that I think you ought to . . . note carefully, Wallie,” Laidlaw said.
    “Well?”
    “He, ah . . . it appears that when Kelly was in Vietnam he used to accompany troops on field operations as a matter of course,” the captain said. He flipped pages up over the binder clasp until he found the correct one, though the report was too clear in his own mind for any real need for reference. “Kelly’s duties, his assigned tasks at the time—this was 1968—did not require him to leave the base camps, of course.”
    “So he did things he didn’t have to do,” the general said with a snort. “Probably did a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to do, too. That’s water over the dam—and besides, it’s just that sort of thing that gave him the background he needs for Skyripper.”
    “No doubt, sir,” said Laidlaw acidly. “I’m sure there must have been some reason to decide that Mr. Kelly was qualified. In this case, however, Staff Sergeant Kelly—as he then was, accompanied a ten-man ambush patrol under a Lieutenant Schaydin. They dug shallow trenches and set up Claymores—directional mines—”
    “I know a Claymore just as well as you do, Captain. We used them for perimeter defense ourselves.”
    Laidlaw looked up. “Yes. They set up Claymore mines about 25 yards in front of their position. During the night, a sound was heard to the front. Lieutenant Schaydin raised his head just over the lip of his trench and detonated a Claymore. The mine had been turned to face the friendly positions. It sprayed its charge of steel pellets straight back in Schaydin’s face, killing him instantly.”
    Pedler shrugged. “All right,” he said, “the dinks had the ambush spotted and reversed the mines. Not the only time it happened.”
    “No doubt,” the naval officer repeated. “But one of the men reported to a chaplain that before the patrol set out, Sergeant Kelly had warned each man individually to