Filed to story: American Sniper: The Last Round (Carl Oliver) Book PDF Free
“And now I drink,” said the general, “to my brave compadres and to the glorious future of our two nations.”
“Hear, hear,” said Hugh Meachum.
Fuck you, thought Shreck.
The next morning, waiting for the helicopter that would take him to the airport for the jet back to the United States, Shreck stood in the meadow before the great house and looked at the sea. It was a gray day, windy and moist, with a chill in the air surprising for the tropics. The chill made him think of the mornings in Korea, when he’d been just a kid, and all the times he’d sworn in Korea that no matter what happened to him, he’d never be cold again in the morning.
But he felt cold.
“
Colonel, you are all right?”
It was General de Rujijo, now in his camouflages with his black beret. The high-polish Colt automatic hung in a shoulder holster under his left arm.
“I am fine, sir,” said Shreck.
“You look under the weather, Colonel.”
“No sir. Not at all.”
“Good. I have a little present for you. From my very own archives.”
He snapped his finger and an aide brought over a briefcase. The general reached inside and pulled out a black plastic box that Shreck recognized as a videotape cassette.
“I record all my battalion’s operations,” said the general. “For training purposes. This is a copy of the action on the Sampul River. You should find it educational, how well our troops mastered their lessons.”
Shreck had an impulse to smash the man’s skull in. But he smiled grimly and took it from him.
“I have many more,” said the general. “You may have that one.”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
The general smiled with courtly dignity, saluted and when Shreck returned the salute, he turned and walked away.
Shreck looked at his watch; the chopper was late, nothing ever happened on time in this goddamned country.
“Colonel, you seem especially morose today.”
Of course it was old Hugh, who was never quite as drunk as he seemed, even if, at eleven A.M., he had a gin and tonic in his hand and a pinkish hue to his face.
“That asshole just presented me with a tape of the Sampul River job. I guess the point he’s trying to make is that we’re all in this together, like it or not. If he goes down, the tape reaches somebody important and we all go down.”
“The general is a practical man.”
“It makes me sick that a motherfucker like de Rujijo thinks he’s got us. He reminds me of some of those shit-ass gook generals in their fucking jumpsuits who made it out in seventy-five with a couple of hundred million bucks in the sack.”
“Raymond, I’ve always appreciated your tact. You never say what you think, do you?”
“I don’t get paid to think, Mr. Meachum. I didn’t go to Yale, like you did. We both know that.”
“Of course not. Well, the general. The general has his uses. He’s a dreadful man, a war criminal most certainly. A great importer of la coca?na. But he and he alone was not responsible for what happened with the Panther Battalion troops on the Sampul River. We made that mess, too. You, Colonel, too. You were there. Those were your trainers in the field. And, if we are to be responsible adults, we must clean it up.”
That didn’t really satisfy Shreck of course: it was too easy.
“We did what we did,” he said, “in perfect awareness of the consequences and the risks-and the costs. We did it because we believed in the long run it would save far more lives than it took.”
“Indeed we did. That, after all, is the sort of calculus they pay us for, isn’t it? But that same principle extends to this last operation, which you implemented so well in New Orleans. It costs us two men-an intellectual bishop with a surprisingly intractable moralistic streak, and a beat-up war hero who’s a complete gun nut. If we don’t use those men, and somehow the archbishop’s will prevails and it comes out about Panther Battalion, and who did what and why, then the left and the right in this bloody little country will never ever get together. There will be no treaty; the fighting will go on, the thousands will continue to die-“
“Come on, Mr. Meachum, that’s not what worries you. What worries you is that the lefties might win here, even as communism is crumbling or has crumbled all over the world, and we’ve kicked ass bigtime in the Persian Gulf. That’s what sticks in your craw.”
The old man smiled one of his mischievous Meachum smiles, then faded behind a mask of remoteness.
“Well, Raymond, believe what you will and for whatever reason you wish. But agree with me on this one sound operating principle. That this man Oliver must be found and destroyed.”
“We’ll get him.”
“Speaking of which, I had an idea. The Electrotek 5400. State of the art, is it not?”
“You know it is.”
“It seems a shame to let it sit up in New Orleans until the general figures out how to get it back through customs. It occurs to me how very useful it might be to you in your quest.”
“Jesus,” said the colonel.
“Yes, I thought you’d be pleased. You see, Raymond, even though you don’t think so, we do take care of our own. We always have. We always will. And I’d destroy that tape if I were you.”
“I will,” said Shreck, looking at the goddamned thing in his hand.