Free No Shelter by Robert Swartwood Page B

Holly.”  
    I shut the door.  
    “Take a seat.”  
    “I’d rather stand.”  
    He looks up from his computer screen for the first time, giving me a hard look.  
    I return the hard look and say, “Let’s just get this over with.”  
    He stares at me for another moment, this man in his late fifties with intense eyes and somber face and gray hair shaved in a crew cut. He’s wearing his uniform with the three stars, and for an instant I’m reminded of the first time I met him and he only had two stars, the both of us on the other side of the world, when he walked into the room the MPs had locked me in after they arrested me.  
    Walter keeps staring, not saying anything, so I decide to break the silence.  
    “Going to the Pentagon today?”  
    “I have to make an appearance once in awhile. And apparently a known terrorist was hit in Las Vegas over the weekend. I need to be briefed on that.”  
    Walter typically wears suits; he only wears his uniform for special functions, meetings, or when he has debriefings at the Pentagon.  
    “Well?” I say after a moment.  
    “Well what?”  
    “Goddamn it, Walter.”  
    “Hmm.” He glances down at his screen, moves the cordless mouse around, then shuts the laptop. “‘Goddamn it, Walter.’ I guess that’s appropriate enough for the situation.”  
    “What do you want me to say? I fucked up. I’m sorry.”  
    He stands up, turns away from me, stares out the window with his hands behind his back.  
    “No, Holly, you didn’t fuck up. The mission was a success. The target was eliminated and the prize was recovered and brought home safely.”  
    “If I could go back and change things, I would.”  
    “Don’t be childish.”  
    “But—”  
    He turns away from the window suddenly. “Scooter is dead. There’s no changing that.”  
    “I never should have gone out there.”  
    “You mean Vegas or to that compound in the middle of the desert?”  
    I say nothing.  
    “We’ve been here before, Holly. At this same exact spot, this same exact conversation. And to be quite frank, I’m tired of telling you the same thing again and again.”  
    He moves around the desk, walks up to me and places his hands on my shoulders. This close I can smell his aftershave and the Listerine he’d gargled after brushing his teeth.  
    “You never used to be like this. You always followed the rules. You always knew not to involve yourself in anything but the mission. But ever since what happened two years ago you’ve been on this ... this gradual decline. I’ve tried to ignore it, hoping you’d wake up to reality, change back to what you used to be.”  
    I shift my eyes away from his. “And what did I used to be?”  
    “A great soldier.”  
    “Walter—”  
    “What was your ultimate goal in going out to that compound? Please, Holly, enlighten me.”  
    I’m quiet a moment, remembering the cold darkness, the sand crunching beneath my feet, the guards’ house and the ranch house and the rows and rows of cots, the sheets smelling of body odor and sweat and desperation.  
    In a very quiet voice I say, “I don’t know.”  
    “Okay,” Walter nods slowly, taking his hands away from my shoulders. He moves back to his desk and leans against it, crossing his arms. “So what you’re telling me now is that Scooter’s death was in vain. There was no ultimate purpose for what you were doing, so in his coming to give you backup, he essentially died for nothing. Now tell me—is my logic wrong?”  
    “Those girls were slaves out there.”  
    “I know they were, Holly. But so are a million other girls all over the world. And guess what—you can’t save all of them.”  
    “But—”  
    “Besides, you couldn’t even save the ones you tried to save Saturday night.”  
    I look at him again. “What?”  
    “Almost every single girl there was an illegal. When the police arrived, so did INS. Those girls were sent back to Mexico.”