The Gamma Option Read Online Free PDF

have said if he had been permitted.
    Even with everything else considered, that was the only time he really hated the war, for not allowing him the dignity of rushing to his mother’s deathbed or at least attending her funeral. And though he tried, he was unable to remember what mission he’d been on at the moment of her passing.
    Blaine supposed the advanced ages of his parents had helped make him independent almost from the cradle. He had always gone his own way, never with the crowd, and spent many of his early years resenting his parents for being so much older than those of his friends. In later years he loved them even more for it. At the very least they were there. At the most, they had somehow helped mold him into the man he had become.
    He thought of all the high school sporting events his father had been unable to attend and how guilty he felt for preferring this to having the old man standing out among the other parents, looking more like grandfather than father. He thought of Matthew streaking down the sidelines to bring Reading School the rugby championship … with no parent to cheer him on, no face to pick out amidst the crowd. And if it wasn’t McCracken’s face, then whose would it be? Besides Henri Dejourner there was no one. Blaine had never turned his back on an obligation before, and this was no time to start. The boy was strong and brave and beautiful, but time might work as his enemy under the circumstances. He hadn’t gone through a Christmas alone yet, or a birthday. Blaine knew all about that and it was never easy.
    “I wish I could cry for you, Lauren,” he said over the grave. “I’m sorry we shared so little time. But I won’t abandon what we produced. You have my word on that.”

Chapter 4
    “YOU MET MY MOTHER IN England, then?” Matt asked as they took the fast train toward London from Reading the next morning.
    McCracken nodded. “I was over here for an extended time, almost a year.”
    “On business?”
    “Sort of.”
    The boy hesitated before speaking again. “Did it have anything to do with you being a soldier?”
    The question took Blaine by surprise and his face showed it. “What makes you ask that?”
    “The way you move. The way you look at people. I’ve studied a lot about soldiers.”
    “Yes,” Blaine told him. “I was in the army.”
    “Were you in a war?”
    Another nod. “Vietnam.”
    The boy looked genuinely proud. “Really? As what, sir? Please, do tell me!”
    “Only if you promise to call me Blaine. The story gets a little complicated.”
    “I’ll understand. I’ll try anyway.”
    Blaine didn’t want to lie, but he couldn’t tell the truth yet either, at least not the whole truth. “I was trained as a Green Beret.”
    Matt’s mouth dropped. “The Special Forces!”
    “We weren’t called that yet, but yes.”
    “They predated our Special Air Service. They were the first specially trained commandos in the western alliance since World War II.”
    “I was fortunate enough to miss that one,” Blaine said.
    Matt flashed a smile that quickly melted back into a questioning stare. “You said it was complicated.”
    “Well, yes.”
    “You started to tell me.”
    What the hell, Blaine figured. “How are you at keeping a secret?”
    “Good. Very good.”
    “Okay. Vietnam was a funny war because lots of people were running different parts of it. The army had its hands tied and that pretty much explains why we got pounded like we did. But an authorized faction of the army got together with the CIA and decided to run part of the war its own way. I was part of what they called the Phoenix Project. We did most of our work behind enemy lines and we never issued reports. Make sense?”
    “Wow,” Matt said. “But what did you—”
    Blaine cut him off. “That’s for another day, Matt, later.” Then, sensing the boy’s disappointment, he added, “I’ve still got some friends in the SAS by the way. Like to come out and see them train