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  For almost a week they had been getting ready for the strike. It was normal Navy business to go through the preparations for combat and then have them called off, usually about a day ahead of the planned encounter. But this time it had been different from the beginning. Hilliard and Winters had quickly recognized that there was a seriousness in the senior officers that had never been there before. None of the usual larking around and nonsense had been tolerated in the tedious and boring checks of the planes, the missiles, and the guns. The Nimitz was preparing for war. And then yesterday, the normal time for such a drill to be called off, the captain had gathered all the officers together and told them that he had received the order to attack at dawn. Winters’s heart had skipped a beat as the commanding officer had briefed them on the full scope of the American action against Libya.

  Winters’s last assignment, just after evening mess, had been to go over the bombing targets with the pilots one more time. Two separate planes were being sent to bomb the residence where Gaddafi was supposedly sleeping. One of the two chosen pilots was outwardly ecstatic; he realized that he had been given the prime target of the raid. The other pilot, Lieutenant Gibson from Oregon, was quiet but thorough in his preparations. He kept looking at the map with Winters and going over the Libyan gun emplacements. Gibson also complained that his mouth was dry and drank several glasses of water.

  ‘Shit, Indiana, you know what’s bothering me? Those flyboys will be in the battle and we’ll be stuck here with no role unless the crazy Arabs decide to attack. How can we get into the fight? Wait. I just had a thought.’ Lieutenant Hilliard was still talking nonstop. It was after three o’clock and they had already gone over everything associated with the attack at least twice. Winters was feeling lifeless and enervated from lack of sleep but the astonishing Hilliard continued to exude exuberance.

  ‘What a great idea,’ Randy continued, talking to himself. ‘But we can do it. You briefed the pilots tonight, didn’t you, so you know who’s going after what targets?’ Vernon nodded his head. ‘Then that’s it. We’ll tape a personal “screw you” to the side of the missile that’s going to get Gaddafi. That way part of us will go into battle.’

  Vernon did not have the energy to dissuade Randy from his crazy plan. As the time for the attack drew closer, Lieutenants Winters and Hilliard went into the hangar on the Nimitz and found the airplane assigned to Lieutenant Gibson (Winters never knew why, but he immediately assumed it would be Gibson who would score a missile on the Gaddafi enclave). Laughingly, Randy explained to the fresh ensign on watch what he and Vernon were going to try to do.

  It took them almost half an hour to locate the right plane and then identify the missile that would be the first to be launched against the Gaddafi household.

  The two lieutenants argued for almost ten minutes about the message they were going to write on the paper that would be taped on the missile. Winters wanted something deep, almost philosophical, like ‘Such is the just end to the tyranny of terrorism’. Hilliard argued persuasively that Winters’s concept was too obscure. At length a tired Lieutenant Winters assented to the visceral communication written by his friend, DIE, MOTHER-FUCKER, was the message the two lieutenants inscribed on the side of the missile.

  Winters returned to his bunk exhausted. Tired and still a little unsettled by the magnitude of the coming day’s events, he pulled out his personal Bible to read a few verses. There was no comfort in the good book for the Presbyterian from Indiana. He tried praying, generic prayers at first and then more specific, as had been his custom during critical moments in his life. He asked for the Lord to guard his wife and son and to be with him in this moment of travail. And then, quickly and without thinking, Lieutenant Vernon Winters asked God to rain down terror, in the form of the missile with the taped message, on Colonel Gaddafi and all his family.

  Eight years later, sitting in his office at the US Naval Air Station in Key West, Commander Winters would remember that prayer and cringe inside. Even then, in 1986, just after he finished the prayer, he had felt weird and disoriented, almost as if he had somehow committed a blasphemy and displeased the Lord. A brief hour of sleep that followed was torturous, full of dreams of hideous gargoyles and vampires. He watched the planes leave the carrier the next morning at dawn in a dreamlike trance. His mouth had a bitter metal taste when he mechanically shook Gibson’s hand and wished him luck.

  For all those years Winters had wished that he could have rescinded that prayer. He was convinced that God had permitted that particular missile carried by Gibson to take the life of Gaddafi’s infant daughter just to teach Winters a personal lesson. On that day, he thought as he sat in his office on a Thursday in March 1994, I committed sacrilege and violated your trust. I overstepped my bounds and lost my privileged position in your sanctuary. I have asked for forgiveness many times since then but it has not been forthcoming. How much longer must I wait?

  6

  Vernon Allen Winters was born on June 25, 1950, the day that the North Koreans invaded South Korea. He was reminded of the significance of his birthdate throughout his life by his father, Martin Winters, a man who was a hardworking, deeply religious corn farmer in Indiana at the time Vernon was born. When Vernon was three years old and his sister Linda was six, the family moved off the farm and into the town of Columbus, a white, middle-class town of thirty thousand or so in south central Indiana. Vernon’s mother had felt isolated out on the farm, particularly during the winter, and wanted more company. The Winters’ farm provided a nice cash profit. Mr. Winters, by now almost forty, put most of the nest egg aside as security for a rainy day and became a banker.

  Martin Winters was proud to be an American. Whenever Mr. Winters would tell Vernon about the day of his birth, the story would inevitably centre around the news of the start of the Korean War and how it was explained to the nation by President Harry Truman. ‘I thought that day,’ Mr. Winters would say, ‘that it was surely no coincidence. The good Lord brought you to us that special day because of his purpose for you. And I bet he meant for you to be a protector of this wonderful country we have created….’ Later, banker Winters would always see to it that the Army-Navy football game was one of the key events of the year and he would tell his friends, particularly when it became obvious that young Vernon was a good student, that ‘the boy is still trying to choose which of the academies to attend’. Vernon was never asked.

  The Winters family lived a simple midwestern life. Mr. Winters was moderately successful, eventually becoming the senior vice-president of the largest bank in Columbus. The family’s chief social activity was church. They were Presbyterians and spent almost all day Sunday at the church. Mrs. Winters ran the Sunday school. Mr. Winters was a deacon and voluntarily managed the church finances. Vernon and Linda helped supervise the smaller children at Sunday school and were responsible for the special Bible displays on the notice-boards in the kindergarten and primary school rooms.

  During the week Mrs. Winters sewed and watched soap operas and sometimes played bridge with friends. She never worked outside the home. Her husband and her children were her job. She was an attentive, patient parent who deeply cared for her children and tirelessly chauffeured them to their many activities throughout their years of adolescence.

  Vernon played all sports in high school, football and basketball because it was expected of him, baseball because he loved it. He was above average at all sports, not outstanding at anything. ‘Activities are important, particularly sports,’ banker Winters often told him approvingly. ‘The academies look at much more than your grades.’ The only significant decision that Vernon had to make in the first eighteen years of his life was which of the service academies he preferred. (Mr. Winters, being cautious, was prepared politically to secure a nomination for Vernon to any of the academies. He strongly urged Vernon to think about applying to all three just in case.) In his junior year at Columbus High School, Vernon took the Scholastic Aptitude Test and made such a high score that it was obvious he wo
uld be able to pick his own favourite. He chose Annapolis and was not questioned about the reasons. If he had been, he would have answered that he just liked the idea of himself in a Navy uniform.

  Vernon’s teenage years were remarkably linear, particularly considering that they occurred at a time of great social turmoil in the United States. The Winters family prayed together for hours after the Kennedy assassination, worried about local boys in the Vietnam War, remarked with concern when three prominent high school seniors refused to cut their hair and were expelled from school, and attended a couple of church-sponsored meetings on the evils of marijuana. But all these anxieties were outside the daily harmony of the Winters family. Music by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones did penetrate the controlled Winters culture, of course, and even some of the protest songs sung by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were played on Vernon’s stereo. But neither Vernon nor his sister Linda paid much serious attention to the lyrics.

  It was an easy existence. Vernon’s closest friends were all from families like his. Mothers did not work, fathers were bankers or lawyers or businessmen, almost all were Republicans (but a patriotic Democrat was accepted) and believed fervently in God, country, and the entire litany that ends in apple pie. Vernon was a ‘good kid’, even an ‘exceptional kid’, who first drew attention to himself by his performances in the annual church pageants at Christmas and Easter. The pastor of their church was a great believer that reenactment of the birth and crucifixion of Christ, performed by the children of the town, was a powerful way to reconfirm the faith of the local citizenry. And Reverend Pendleton was correct. The Columbus Presbyterian Church pageants were among the highlights of the local year. When the church congregation and their friends saw their own children acting in the roles of Joseph, Mary, and even Christ, they became involved in the depicted events at an emotional level that was virtually impossible to achieve in any other way.

  Reverend Pendleton had two casts for each pageant, so that more children could participate, but Vernon was always the star. When he was eleven years old Vernon first portrayed Christ in the Easter Pageant and it was mentioned in the religious column of the Columbus newspaper that his tortured dragging of the cross had ‘captured all of man’s suffering’. He was Joseph at Christmas and Jesus at Easter for four years running, before he became too old and therefore no longer eligible for the pageants. The last two years, when Vernon was thirteen and fourteen, the role of the Virgin Mary in the ‘A’ cast was played by the pastor’s daughter, Betty. Vernon and Betty were together quite often while rehearsing and both families were delighted. All four parents made no secret of the fact that they would generously approve if, ‘assuming God wills it’, the Vernon-Betty friendship eventually matured into something more permanent.

  Vernon loved the attention he received from the pageants. Although Betty was touched deeply by the religious aspects of their performances (she remained truly devoted to God, without wavering, through everything in her life), Vernon’s joy was standing by his proud parents after each performance and soaking up the praise. In high school he gravitated naturally toward the small drama activity and was the lead in the school play every year. His mother supported this over his father’s mild objections (‘After all, dear,’ she would say, ‘I don’t think anyone is really going to think Vernon’s a sissy when he’s playing three sports’) and because she also vicariously enjoyed the applause.

  During the summer of 1968, just before he entered Annapolis, Vernon worked in his uncle’s cornfields. Only a little more than a hundred miles away there were riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, but in Columbus Vernon spent his summer evenings with Betty, talking with chums and drinking root beer at the A&W Drive-in. Mr. and Mrs. Winters played miniature golf or canasta with Vernon and Betty from time to time. They were delighted and proud to have ‘good clean kids’ who were not hippies or drug victims. All in all, Vernon’s last summer in Indiana was ordered, constrained, and very pleasant.

  As expected, he was a model student at Annapolis. He studied hard, obeyed all the rules, learned what his professors taught him, and dreamed of being the commander of an aircraft carrier or a nuclear submarine. He was not outgoing, for the big city boys seemed way too sophisticated for him and he did not always feel comfortable when they talked about sex so casually. He was a virgin and he was not ashamed of it. He just didn’t feel the need to broadcast it around the US Naval Academy. He had a couple of dates a month, nothing special, just when the occasion called for it. After a blind date early in his junior year with Joanna Carr, a cheerleader at the University of Maryland, he took her out several more times. She was vivacious, lovely, fun, and modern. She drew out the best in Vernon, made him laugh and even relax. She was his date for the weekend of the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

  (During his entire time at the Academy, Vernon went home every summer and every Christmas to Indiana. He always saw Betty Pendleton when he was home. Betty graduated from high school and entered a nearby state college to study education. Once or twice a year, on special occasions such as the anniversary of their first kiss or New Year’s Eve, Betty and he would celebrate, in a sense, by doing a little something intimate. Like petting chastely or kissing lying down. Neither of them ever suggested any variation in this well-established routine.)

  Vernon and Joanna were joined for the weekend by another midshipman, the closest acquaintance that Vernon had at Navy who was still not quite what one would call a friend, Duane Eller, and his date from Columbia, an extremely loud and pushy girl named Edith. Vernon had never spent much time around a New York City girl and he found Edith absolutely obnoxious. Edith was violently anti-Nixon and anti-Vietnam and, despite the fact that her date for the weekend was going to be a military officer, seemed anti-military as well. The original plan for the weekend had been decidedly proper, even backward, given that it was 1970 and casual intercourse was not unusual on college campuses. Vernon and Duane were to share one motel room and the two girls another. Over pizza the night before the game, Edith frequently insulted both Joanna and Vernon and Duane did nothing to intercede. Seeing that Edith was annoying Joanna, Vernon suggested to Joanna that it might be easier if the two of them shared a room instead of following the original game plan. She readily agreed.

  Vernon had made no sexual advances toward Joanna on the four or five dates they had had together. He had been attentive, had kissed her good night a couple of times, and had held her hand most of the evening on their last date. Everything had always been extremely proper, but there had never actually been any opportunity for intimacy. So Joanna really didn’t know what to expect. She liked this handsome midshipman and had thought, a couple of times, about the possibility of the involvement developing into something serious. But Vernon was not yet anyone extra-special for her.

  Just after they made the room change (which a drunken Edith made more difficult by embarrassing them and herself with lewd comments), Vernon very carefully apologized to Joanna and told her that he would sleep in the car if she were offended. They had a typical Holiday Inn room with two double beds. Joanna laughed. ‘I know you didn’t plan this,’ she said. ‘If I need protection, I can order you to your bed.’ The first night they enjoyed watching television and drinking more beer in the room. They both felt a little awkward. At bedtime they shared a couple of almost passionate kisses, laughed together, and then went to separate beds.

  The next evening, after the post-game dance sponsored by the Naval Academy at a downtown Philadelphia hotel, Joanna and Vernon returned to their room at the Holiday Inn just before midnight. They had already changed into their jeans and Vernon was brushing his teeth when there was a knock on their door. Joanna opened the door and Duane Eller was standing there, a gigantic grin on his face and his hand clenched around some small object. ‘This stuff is fuckin’ fantastic,’ he said, thrusting a joint into Joanna’s hand. ‘You’ve just got to try it.’ Duane withdrew quickly with a wild smile.

  Joanna was a bright young woman, but it did no
t occur to her that her date had never even seen a joint, much less smoked one. She herself had smoked marijuana maybe a dozen times over a four-year period, beginning in her junior year in high school. She liked it, if the situation and the company were right; she avoided it when she couldn’t have control of her environment. But she had enjoyed the weekend with Vernon and she thought this might be a perfect way to loosen him up a little.

  Under almost any circumstances Vernon would have said no to any offer of marijuana, not just because he was against all drugs, but also because he would have been terrified that somehow he would be discovered and eventually thrown out of Annapolis. But here was his lovely date, a mainstream American cheerleader from Maryland, and she had just lit a joint and offered it to him. Joanna quickly saw that he was a grass neophyte. She showed him how to inhale and hold in the smoke, and eventually how to use a clip (one of her hairpins) to finish it off. Vernon had expected to feel as if he were drunk. He was astonished to find that he felt more alert. Much to his own surprise, he began reciting ee cummings poems he had been studying in Lit. And then he and Joanna began to laugh. They laughed at everything. At Edith, football, the Naval Academy, their parents, even Vietnam. They laughed until they were almost crying.

  An overpowering hunger attacked Vernon and Joanna. They put on their jackets and walked out into the cold December air to find something to eat. Arm in arm they paraded down the suburban street, finding a convenience store that was still open about half a mile from their motel. They bought Cokes and potato crisps, packets of sweets and chocolate. Joanna opened the crisps while they were still in the store. She put one in Vernon’s mouth and they ‘Mmmed’ while the checkout clerk laughed with them.