Chapter 6 - OPERATION NIGHT GLASS
Walter finally told them the name.
Operation Night Glass.
Not classified anymore.
Not officially real either.
A small American advisory team had been attached to a covert evacuation effort involving intelligence assets, local families, and stolen military payroll records.
Walter had been a major then.
Thomas Bennett was a communications specialist.
Robert Voss was supposedly their commanding captain.
On October nineteenth, Thomas discovered Voss was selling evacuation names.
People on the list were disappearing before American teams reached them.
Walter confronted Voss.
Voss denied it.
Then their compound was attacked.
Walter ordered an evacuation.
Thomas stayed behind to restore communications.
Walter went back for him.
He found Thomas shot.
Dying.
Or so Walter believed.
"I checked his pulse."
Michael said, "Apparently badly."
Walter accepted the insult.
"I was bleeding too."
He had carried Thomas toward an extraction point.
Then an explosion separated them.
Walter woke in a field hospital.
His report said Thomas Bennett died.
Voss died.
Three others died.
Walter signed it.
Daniel asked, "You saw all the bodies?"
"No."
"Then why sign?"
Walter looked at him.
"Because I wanted to go home."
No heroic excuse.
No secret order.
He had been exhausted, injured, and afraid the operation would swallow more people.
He signed what intelligence officers placed in front of him.
That decision haunted the room.
Michael asked:
"Who brought my father home?"
Walter looked at the cassette.
"I don't know."
Then Daniel noticed handwriting on the tape case.
A date.
A motel name.
Room 17.
Walter knew the motel.
It had been demolished twenty years earlier.
Michael said:
"My mother kept one thing from that room."
He brought out a motel Bible.
Inside, a sentence had been underlined.
The first letters of seven marked verses spelled:
NOT TOMMY.
Michael's face went white.
May you like
His mother had known.
