Duty and Dishonor Read online

  The planes of the investigator’s face seemed to flatten, harden. He leaned forward, holding her eyes with his.

  “The recovery team also found a St. Christopher medal among Captain Hunter’s effects.”

  Her medal! Oh, God, her medal! A ragged moan rose in Julia’s throat. She caught before it fully escaped. Marsh’s eyes flickered at the muted sound, but his voice remained impassive as he delivered the final blow.

  “The medal has been identified as one you were given as a gift the night you arrived in Vietnam. We have statements indicating that you put it on that night and rarely, if ever, took it off.”

  For the first time, fear began to seep into Julia veins. Like an icy mist, it curled through her body and slowly, so slowly, replaced the shock that held her immobile.

  Her weapon and her medal. What else had they found? What else?

  “At this point,” the agent informed her, “I’m required to read you your rights. General Titus will act as witness. Then I'll escort you to a private office so my partner and I can take your statement.”

  Julia nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

  The investigator reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out a laminated card. He didn’t refer to it as he spoke the formal phrases. No doubt he’d performed this small task too many times to need the prop.

  “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to consult with an attorney.”

  Gabe!

  “Should you decide to answer our questions, your comments may be used in a court of law.”

  Julia heard the investigator’s words, but didn’t absorb them. A single, desperate cry echoed through her mind, drowning out all else.

  Damn you! I thought I was free of you!

  "If you'll come with me, Colonel."

  With a start, Julia realized that Marsh had finished reading her rights. His face revealed no hint of emotion, no acknowledgment that he’d just shattered her world. She turned to General Titus. Her one-time mentor might have been carved from stone.

  “You’re dismissed, colonel.”

  The curt dismissal cut through Julia’s numbed mind like a blade. Without another word, she brought her arm up in a salute and left his office.

  The general’s exec said something to her, but his voice didn’t register. Nor did the secretary’s pleasantry as Julia strode past her desk. She stepped into the corridor, then stopped abruptly. Still dazed, she couldn’t remember where they were supposed to go next.

  Special Agent Marsh gestured toward a door across the hall. “This way.”

  When they entered the small, private conference room, the single occupant rose. The statuesque black woman wore a well-cut, wine colored wool suit and a white silk blouse that could have tagged her as a senior civilian of some authority, but her face held the carefully neutral expression of a professional investigator.

  “This is Special Agent Barbara Lyles,” Marsh said. “She’s assisting me in the investigation of Captain Hunter’s death. If you’ll be seated, Colonel?”

  The OSI agents waited until Julia had taken a chair before seating themselves opposite her. Lyles retrieved a small tape recorder from her briefcase. Setting it on the table, she activated it with a touch of a polished nail.

  “Thursday, 22 December, 1545 hours,” Marsh stated succinctly. “Interview with Colonel Julia K. Endicott, conducted by Special Agents Ted Marsh and Barbara Lyles.”

  The tape whirred for a second or two.

  “For the record, Colonel, let me state that you’ve been apprised of your rights and have waived the requirement to have an attorney present at this interview.”

  Julia refused to allow the fear now coiling through her like a living, malevolent creature to show in her face. Belatedly, her instinct for self-preservation began to assert itself. Forcing herself to speak slowly and deliberately, she countered his statement.

  “For the record, Mr. Marsh, I retain the right to ask for an attorney any time I feel it necessary.”

  Something glinted in his alkaline eyes. Surprise, Julia guessed, although it was gone before her still stunned mind could interpret it. He pulled a small notebook from his suit coat and laid it on the table. He didn’t refer to it. As with the formal Miranda advisement, Special Agent Marsh obviously had the facts inside down cold.

  “We’ve been conducting an investigation into Captain Hunter’s death since his remains were identified several weeks ago. The purpose of this interview is to determine your awareness of and involvement in the events leading to his disappearance on or about June 12th, 1972. I’d like to begin with your account of your relationship with the deceased.”

  Julia’s chin lifted. Across the surface of the conference table, her gaze locked with the investigator’s. “I didn’t have a ‘relationship’ with the deceased.”

  “Then how would you describe your association with Captain Hunter?”

  The question pierced Julia’s waver-thin control. She closed her eyes, fighting a rush of long forgotten emotions. How could she describe what she’d felt for Gabe? How could anyone understand the fatal fascination she’d felt for the man who’d left his imprint on her soul?

  Julia didn’t understand it herself.

  She never had.

  Nor had she been able to fight it. Not from the first moment she’d stepped off the plane that terrible and glorious October and Gabe Hunter came swooping into her life.

  Chapter Two

  Tan Son Nhut Air Base, South Vietnam

  October 1971

  Grainy-eyed from lack of sleep and tingling with a mixture of nervousness and dread, Second Lieutenant Julia Endicott joined the stream of two hundred men and three women exiting the PanAm 707. As she stepped onto the metal ramp, the sights and sounds of South Vietnam slammed into her with stunning impact.

  Hot, heavy humidity sucked the air from her lungs and raised an instant film on arms left bare by her short-sleeved, two-piece uniform. Already sticky from her twenty-two hour flight, Julia raked a hand through her shoulder length hair to lift the heat from her neck. Through the haze shimmering above the runway, she caught a faint smudge of purple mountains rising up to touch rolling black thunderclouds. The storm had just passed, she saw, and left a steamy network of puddles evaporating in the morning sun. A line of verdant green foliage marked the edge of the cleared space at the end of the runways, but most of the objects within her immediate line of sight were tinted with the colors of war.

  Helicopters in camouflage blacks and browns lined the taxiways in untidy rows, dwarfed by big-bellied C-130 cargo planes. A monstrous C-5, the Air Force’s newest transport, was parked on a nearby apron, its nose lifted to allow a stream of armored personnel carriers to rumble out of its cargo bay. Across the runway, rows of fighter jets carrying both US and Republic of Vietnam markings huddled under concrete shelters. Military vehicles, crew buses, and fuel trucks scurried like ants along the runway. Their black exhaust added to the tang of aviation fuel that hung on the air like an acrid curtain.

  As Julia followed the slow-moving line of passengers down the metal stairs, the roar of a fighter revving up away battered her eardrums. She’d heard that Tan Son Nhut was the busiest airport in the world. Observing the whir of activity all around her, she believed it. A small shiver darted down her spine as she stepped onto the tarmac.

  She was here.

  Despite her mother’s fears, her fiancé's objections, and her own occasional doubts. Despite the fact that President Nixon was withdrawing more US ground combat forces every month, determined to end the war that had claimed so many Americans lives...including her father’s.

  She was here.

  Her heart pounding, she headed for the bus that sat patiently, its windows lowered to allow the muggy October moistness to circulate. Her stomach lurched she saw the wire mesh covering the open windows. From her father's letters, she knew the purpose of that mesh screen. It was intended to keep hand grenades from being tossed inside the moving vehicle.

 
A sudden squeal of tires yanked her attention from the bus. Julia and the rest of the new arrivals spun around as a Jeep screeched to a halt a few yards away. The driver, an Air Force captain sporting a luxuriant mustache well outside of regulation limits swung his legs over the side and levered himself out of the open-sided vehicle.

  “Hey, Lieutenant!” he shouted, his deep baritone carrying easily over the roar of aircraft engines.

  A tall, gangly Army officer with shiny gold bars on the collar of his khaki uniform shirt looked around. Hesitantly, he took a step forward. The pilot waved him back into line.

  “Not you. The one with the legs.”

  Julia stiffened. Her mouth thinned as the captain approached. Tall and broad shouldered, he filled every inch of his green flight suit. Even if she hadn’t seen the embroidered wings on his chest, the unmistakable swagger in his walk would have told her that he was a pilot. With his jaunty mustache, sun-streaked blond hair, and blue eyes glinting with deviltry, he exuded an air of cocky assurance. The epitome of a sky warrior, Julia thought wryly. She knew the breed.

  Although he outranked her, she made no move to salute him when he stopped in front of her. As an Air Force brat, she possessed an in-grained respect for military customs and courtesies. After the captain's crack about her legs, though, she didn’t consider that he rated any courtesies, military or otherwise.

  He didn’t appear to mind her breach of service etiquette. His mustache lifted to display gleaming white teeth as he raked her with a glance of unabashed male interest.

  “Welcome to Vet-Nam, Endicott. I’m Hunter, Gabe Hunter.” His grin widened, creasing his tanned cheeks. “Before you ask, it’s short for Gabriel. I’d better give you fair warning, though, I’m no angel.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask," Julia replied coolly. "And I didn’t need the warning.”

  He laughed outright and reached for her overnight case. “Now that we’ve got the rules of engagement out of the way, let’s go.”

  She swept the case behind her hip, out of his reach. “Go where?”

  “On your welcome tour.” He waved a hand in the direction of the Jeep. “Gabe Hunter and his welcome wagon at your service.”

  She hung back, not quite trusting the gleam in his blue eyes. “Do you perform this service for everyone, Captain Hunter?”

  He looked offended. “Of course not! But you don’t think any self-respecting air commando would let a sweet young thing like you step off a plane and wander around unprotected.”

  So he was a Special Ops type. That explained the unexpected welcome, Julia thought ruefully. Special Ops constituted a small, select community. She’d grown up in that community and had almost reentered through marriage before this assignment to Vietnam came through. She might have known that her fiancé's connections...her former fiancé's connections, she amended with a pang...would reach even here, some five thousand miles from his home base in the Florida panhandle.

  “I should’ve guessed Dennis would arrange something like this,” she murmured, half to herself.

  “No one like ol' Dennis for arranging things,” Hunter agreed.

  He took her arm to escort her toward the Jeep. His fingers were hard and warm on her bare skin, and more than a little possessive. Frowning, Julia pulled her arm free.

  She climbed into the vehicle as gracefully as her short skirt and wobbly heels would allow. Although she wore the blue and white pin-striped uniform well within the regulation two inches above her knees, its slim skirt wasn’t made for high steps and low seats. She caught Hunter’s unabashedly assessing glance and tugged the hem of her skirt down to cover as much of her thighs as possible.

  He tossed her overnight case into the back and folded his muscular frame into the driver’s seat. Shoving the gears into reverse, he draped an arm over Julia’s seat and thrust the vehicle back in a wide arc, away from the plane.

  “By the way,” he said casually, his breath a warm shock of sensation on her cheek, “who’s Dennis?”

  She leaned away from the circle of his arm and sent him a hard look. Unrepentant, he grinned at her and dropped his arm to wrap a fist around the gearshift. He let the clutch out, and the Jeep leapt forward.

  “All right, hot shot,” Julia shouted over the ear-splitting roar of a jet taxiing toward them on the parallel ramp. "Just who the heck are you?”

  “I told you, I’m Gabe Hunter." He waited for the fighter to roll by before speeding across the ramp toward a cluster of sandbagged buildings. “World’s greatest gunship driver.”

  “And you’re not the Angel Gabriel. I got all that. What I didn’t get was why you came out to meet me at the plane.”

  He whipped the wheel left, spinning the vehicle off the apron and onto the wide expanse of concrete that led to the aerial port building. Julia clutched the seat with both hands.

  “Your sponsor mentioned that you were arriving in-country today,” he tossed out when the noise behind them subsided to a manageable level. “I decided to come check you out. You check out pretty good, Endicott,” he added, waggling his sun-bleached brows in an exaggerated leer.

  The laughter in his blue eyes won out over her irritation at his high-handedness. Against her better judgment, almost against her will, she let an answering smile curve her lips.

  “You check out pretty good yourself, Hunter. Too bad I’m not interested.”

  “Sure you are, sweet thing. You just don’t know it yet.”

  She didn’t bother to argue. From long experience, she knew it how difficult it was to dent an air commando’s ego, much less his confidence, with mere words. She’d send him on his way as soon as he pulled up at the terminal.

  Her fine, shoulder-length hair whipped her cheeks as the Jeep dodged streams of moving forklifts loaded with web-covered cargo pallets. Tucking the stinging strands behind her ears, Julia forgot the man beside her and drank in her first glimpse of the war that was slowly tearing apart the social and political fabric of the United States.

  Transportation specialists in baggy green fatigue pants, their backs bared to the hazy sun and shoulders streaked with sweat, manhandled tons of stubborn cargo onto wooden pallets. The U.S. servicemen worked side-by-side with slender, dark-haired troops whom Julia guessed were their Vietnamese counterparts. The Vietnamese soldiers, her father had written in one of his letters home, were fierce fighters and tireless workers--when they wanted to be. Much like the Americans he commanded, he’d added.

  These troops worked with almost grim intent, Julia saw, as if desperate to get the incoming war material re-palletized and shipped up-country. She understood their urgency. President Nixon’s determination to conclude the long stalled Paris peace talks and take America out of this endless conflict meant the South Vietnamese had to stockpile all they could now, before their allies pulled out.

  Julia was so absorbed in the drama displayed on the tarmac that she didn’t realize the Jeep had driven right past the entrance to the squat, sandbagged terminal building. She twisted in her seat, frowning, as the busses disgorged the first waves of passengers from her flight.

  “I think that’s where I need to go,” she told Hunter.

  “I’ve already taken care of all your in-processing.”

  “They’ll need my orders,” she protested.

  “I got a copy of your orders from a buddy at Personnel and passed them to one of the guys working the processing line.”

  “But my duffel bag..." She waved toward a pallet of green, sausage-like bags stacked in neat rows beside the entrance to the terminal. "I’m supposed to take it through Customs.”

  “No sweat, kiddo. I filled out a Customs Declaration for you.”

  Julia gave a little huff of exasperation. Was this guy for real?

  His brows lifted at the sound. “You didn’t have anything to declare, did you?”

  “No, but...”

  “You’re not trying to smuggle in some grass or acid? Something the dogs might hit on?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped.


  “I didn’t think so,” he said smugly. "Not Iron Man Endicott’s daughter.”

  Julia’s annoyance at his presumption vanished instantly. “You knew my father?”

  “He was my squadron commander during my first tour, back in ‘67. I rotated home a couple of months before he was shot down.”

  Hunter either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the rattle of her swift, indrawn breath.

  “Your old man was one tough bastard. Threatened to Court-martial me over a slight difference of opinion regarding a target of opportunity.”

  A familiar hurt closed Julia’s throat at the memory of her father’s uncompromising views of black and white, right and wrong. There had been no shades of gray in Lieutenant Colonel Endicott’s world, no room for indecision or hesitation when it came to doing one’s duty.

  If Julia had inherited her dark green eyes, pale blond hair and inquiring mind from her mother, she’d been gifted with her father’s sense of loyalty and honor. That sense of duty was why she’d turned down a fellowship to Cornell’s prestigious graduate school of journalism. Why she’d broken ranks with her increasingly strident anti-war peers and accepted a commission in the Air Force. Why she was here now, over Dennis’s strenuous objections. Lt. Colonel Paul Endicott hadn’t finished his tour in Vietnam. Julia would finish it for him.

  Hunter broke into her painful thoughts. “The day after your father kicked my ass but good, I had to put my crippled bird down at a base that was taking hits from an entrenched mortar battery. Your father was flying a Gooney Bird then, one of the old, converted AC-47s. He dropped out of the clouds and went after that mortar crew with guns blazing.”

  “Did he get them?” Julia asked quietly.

  “Made one pass and blew the sonsofbitches into the next province,” Hunter confirmed cheerfully. “Best piece of airmanship I’ve ever seen, before or since. He was one fine pilot, your father.”