BLOWING IN THE WIND
by - Joyce
May 1998

DISCLAIMER: Frohike, Byers, Langly, Mulder and Skinner belong to CC and Fox Broadcasting and I am only borrowing them for a moment and will return them.  No infringement is intended.  All other characters are belong to me and may not be used without my express permission.

FEEDBACK: mab49@earthlink.net

SUMMARY: Frohike learns that some truths are better left unknown. This is the third story in this series. While not essential, reading the first story, "When Johnny Came Marching Home", will probably make things much clearer.

"How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?"  (Bob Dylan)
 

Today I discovered something I would rather not have learned. So, here I am, in the darkness drinking with my buddies whose names I trace with my fingers on The Wall. They are not silent, these old, old friends of mine. I hear their angry murmurs as I tell them what I have learned. Outrage, fury, despair leak out of the granite names into my cold fingers filling my tired soul with fire and a taste of damnation. Or, maybe it's just the scotch.

There is a fine line between knowing that my government is made up of bastards who regard the general populace as cannon fodder and lab rats and having absolute proof that they have used me and my brethren in arms as disposable experimental animals.

Damn them.

Damn them all to the fiery lakes of hell.

Byers came in as I was swearing at the computer. I passed it off as extreme irritation at a sticky security system on our hacking target of the month. I wanted to tell him, but couldn't. He is too fucking young to understand my horror when my little sideline hacking program broke into a very classified system and discovered the medical records of a certain Private Thaddeus Frohike along with the records of his platoon. In spite of alarm bells sounding in the system, I stayed long enough to download the entire file and two attached files. Then, in what I'll admit was an act of sheer fury, I sent a nasty little bug out to play with their system protocol. Mashed Potatoes, my favorite virus for turning an orderly computer system into chaos.

Sitting here in the dark, I wonder how I survived their little experiment. What made me different from PFC Samuelson or Sgt. Scherezinsky or even our medic, Alverson, whose disregard for proper uniform would make Langley look like a Harvard professor? 'Flowers' Alverson was the only man I knew who wore a peace symbol on his dog tag chain. The round that killed him plowed right through the symbol on its way to his chest. So much for peace.

Every one of my comrades dead, their blood staining the saturated soil of 'Nam. For what? I had thought, up until tonight, that it was for stupid national pride, a nasty taste for imperial expansion, or maybe just that our national leaders had watched too many John Wayne movies.

Now, I wonder and I'm very afraid.

The conspiracy we stumbled onto eight years ago in Baltimore seemed incredible, but well within what I thought our government was capable of perpetrating. It felt righteous to form our own little counter-conspiracy triad and even more righteous to disillusion a bright, young, naive FBI agent. Payback is a bitch.

I never thought of myself as naive. The jungles of 'Nam and the terror of too many patrols with too much luck burned any naivete to ashes long ago - or so I thought. Should have realized that deep down I was still that gallant knight riding to the fair damsel's rescue that go me into the hell of 'Nam. That side of me simply dug a very deep foxhole and hid. Wish to hell it had stayed hidden.

The park ranger gives me a hard stare, but says nothing. I suppose he is used to old men in scruffy leather jackets sitting against the Wall clutching half-empty bottles of scotch, muttering to the dead he cannot see.

In the distance, I can barely make out the neon light of the bar where all the vets hang out to remember and to forget in a haze of beer and Sixties rock. Normally, I'd be there, one more survivor drowning my memories. But not tonight. Not with what I know.

The lights of Washington blur into one confused halo surrounding the whited sepulchres gleaming in the night - Congress, FBI, and the ultimate phallic tribute to the Father of our country. All tombs, where vultures and carrion crows feast upon the dead they created.

Johnnie Walker Black - a fine companion, an old friend, who deadens my pain and flushes me back into the sewer of my memories. Nearly three decades of survivor's guilt has etched each detail of the day my unit died into my brain as deeply as the names carved into this Wall.

Every flashback, every nightmare raised anew the question of how I survived. When the nightmares left me awake in the early predawn hours, I would seek solace by hacking my way through the Pentagon's files, tearing the bastards' secrets out of their hiding places. Until tonight, I thought I wanted to know.

I saw shadows of the truth in the mirror of my memory. Now I am face to face with the living horror of that truth and all I want to do is damn the universe to hell.

"Frohike?"

A voice more accustomed to command than mild inquiry fires out of the darkness. I shake my head to deny any other reality but the pain I'm feeling. I don't want to talk with the living. My place is with the dead - there I belong. My name is written on this Wall in letters of fire and blood.

I feel someone sit down beside me. Obviously someone with a serious head cold if they can stay sober with the fumes pouring off of me. It's too much trouble to turn my head to see who presumes to console me. Besides, I can smell the starch in his shirt. Damn if I don't think the man starches his underwear.

"Whadda ya want," I growl, intentionally slurring the words in order to spew out a drenching wave of sodden breath in my savior's direction. Take that, I mutter to myself.

There is a sigh, cut short as the fumes hit him. I chuckle evilly and take another long swallow of scotch. The half-empty bottle is suddenly taken from my hands. Swearing I lunge after it, only to run into a large hand firmly holding me upright. After a moment, the bottle is shoved back in my hands, lighter than before.

"Get your own," I snarl.

"Later," he replies, still calm. Still controlled, damn him.

"Go away."

"No." His hand reaches over and encircles the bottle. Bloody big hands. I feel the tug, but this time I realize he is asking permission. With a shrug, I let him have it and listen as he takes another deep swallow. At this rate he's going to drink me sober.

"What happened, Frohike?"

"You work for them. You guess," I snarl or try to. I am entirely too drunk to snarl effectively. I suspect it comes out as a stout whine.

"Damn. Now I've got two of them on my hands," he answers and I really don't think he's talking to me. At least I hope not because it sure sounds as if he is pissed as hell at someone.

He grabs my bottle again and this time it comes back empty. Nearly pint of scotch gone in one swallow - it fucking isn't fair. Forlorn, I cradle another dead soldier in my arms and in a drunken haze I see the riddled body of Flowers convulsing my in my arms, baptizing me in his blood.

My tears fall with soft popping noises on the empty bottle in my arms as I try to remember not to remember. The twisting sound of a cork tearing out of a bottle barely makes a dent in the fog settling on my brain. The scent of raw hooch brings me back to full alert.

Shoving my glasses back up to my eyes, I peer at the looming shape of Walter Skinner sitting on the pavement before The Wall dressed in his FBI uniform of suit and tie and the crisp white shirt that serves as his personal banner. For a moment, I am convinced that the world has gone completely mad. Skinner and hooch, together in one place, boggles my scotch-soaked imagination. For some reason, I keep forgetting the Marine under that suit and tie.

"The bartender said you needed this more than the scotch," Skinner says with a resigned sigh. I understand. I'll argue with God himself, but not with the man who tends the bar by The Wall. Apparently Skinner is no braver than I when it comes to that man.

"For that matter, after the month I've had, you're not the only one," he adds with a note of loss and regret.

"Bad?" I ask before I screw up my courage and take the first cautious sip.

"SHIT!" I manage to breathe along with the fire and the brimstone I know must have followed the words out of my throat. This was the genuine article. Bad enough to scour clean the pots in Hell's kitchen and sweet enough to sell your soul for the privilege.

"Bad," is his response as he takes his own plunge into the sweet intoxicating nightmare of hooch. He gasps as the hooch sears his throat. The poor ranger is going to have apoplexy if he comes back to find the pair of us tangled together in a drunken stupor.

Skinner shudders as the raw alcohol high hits. I feel him slamming down his control. Bet it wouldn't do his career very much good to be found drunk by The Wall with a disreputable conspiracy nut like me. Wouldn't do me a whole hell of a lot of good either.

"How'd you find me?" I manage to ask after carefully forming the words in my brain before even attempting to let my tongue have a go at them. I am now very, very drunk, but it feels good. The memories can't get to me past the hooch. They are out there, just beyond the shadows, waiting. Fuck 'em. Let them wait.

"I received a phone call that an old friend needed my help. I must warn you that I have a very poor track record as far as helping people is concerned. I'm losing one man as we speak. He needed my help, my understanding. I lost my temper. I let the bureaucrats take over. The shadows damn near swallowed him whole." Anger shakes his controlled bass voice. "It's 'Nam all over again, Frohike. Charlie is picking off my men and I can't do a fucking thing to stop him."

I shift slightly to look at Skinner in the dim light. He looks like he was gazing into the pits of hell. I don't ever want to see the expression I see in his eyes, ever again. Damnation looks back at me and I shiver.

I think I know who he is talking about. Mulder's little vacation in the psych ward in Chicago was a warning to all of us who dabble in things the government doesn't want disturbed. Skinner was the one who sent him there, but I suspect if Mulder had taken up permanent residence, Skinner would have carried the guilt of failure for the rest of his life. Mulder is one of his men, under his command and, therefore, under his protection.

"It's always 'Nam. We simply traded a green jungle for a concrete one and the enemy in this one hides in the high-tech world of computers and hidden files," I reply with the careful seriousness of the extremely drunk.

"At least in 'Nam, the enemy wore a different face," he replies in a gasping rejoinder as he takes another swallow of the volcanic hooch.

"No. Charlie wore a different face. The enemy, however..." I pause, trying to come up with the words to tell Skinner how we were betrayed. Do I want to tear away the last of his faith in the government he works for? No, but he is not the man to endure living in ignorance, even if knowing the truth costs him his soul.

I feel Skinner's hard stare and wish he were just a tad more drunk. He has had just enough hooch to be dangerous.

"You want to know who the real enemy is?" I ask rhetorically. I continue to feel Skinner's eyes boring into my soul. "Our own bloody fucking government, that's who." I leave off coherent words and descend into a swamp of obscene and profane words I haven't used since 'Nam.

Skinner has gone dead still next to me. I can barely hear him breathe, but I feel danger radiating off of him. I feel the sudden urge to dig a very deep hole and pull it in after me. I've started something I have to finish. I can only hope Skinner remembers which way to point that anger of his. I have no desire to get caught in the line of fire.

"We were experiments. At least I was. Their own fucking guinea pigs. U.S. Army lab rats at your service, Sir!" I bark sarcastically. I honestly didn't think it was possible for him to stiffen further, but he does. Right now a solid oak two by four would be limp by comparison. Now I don't have any choice. I have to continue to spill the beans or Skinner will implode.

"We were nothing more than toy soldiers in a game. Operation Mismatch - a living hell for testing weapons, tactics, and a host of designer drugs."

I pause and take another cautious swallow of hooch, letting it sear my new-found knowledge into the marrow of my bones.

"I ... my buddies were a test to see if men exhausted by too little sleep, bad food, and the constant stress of too many patrols could counter an attack by fresh, highly trained ARVN troops. Seems simple. Typical government logic," I give Skinner a derisive, sarcastic laugh. He waits patiently for me to continue, but his eyes are black holes of gathering fury.

"Did I forget to mention the little assist we were given? One of Uncle Sam's wonder drugs. Supposed to kick exhausted men into an adrenaline high. Well, you saw how well it worked. They got their fucking answer, the murdering bastards," I curse helplessly.

With an effort I control my rage and bury it under more hooch. Leaning over, I offer the bottle to Skinner. He takes it and stares at it until I begin to think that he has turned to stone.

"No. I won't give them the satisfaction," he says in a voice so low I can barely make out the words. I understand, in a dim sort of way. The tightrope walker can't relax.

"It was all a game, then; pieces to be moved and the results noted," he comments quietly, in a deadly calm voice that sends shivers up my spine.

"A game," I agree. Then I look at him as a question occurs to me.

"If it was a game, how did you end up crossing paths with us. Luck? Design? God having a bit of fun?"

"My radio man transposed grid numbers. We were ten miles off our scheduled patrol zone. I took a reconnaissance squad to investigate the sounds of gunfire and encountered your firefight. I lost four good men that day. Sheer accident," he says in a voice that tells me that he doesn't believe in accidents.

"It goes back that far," I whisper to the angry shades of the men killed in that strange war.

"Damn them," Skinner breathes, staring at the lighted dome of the hallowed halls of Congress.

Nearly sixty thousand casualties to prove what, I wonder? How to breed a soldier that wasn't afraid. To create the perfect warrior? I had been raped and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

Angrily, I feel the tears start and scrub at my face. I want to rage and scream and exact a terrible revenge for the deaths of my friends, but all I have the power to do was cry. I understand how Mulder must feel. Bereft of all comfort in his memories, alone, harried on all sides by false memories and illusions broken and reformed until his entire mind is a kaleidoscope of truth and falsehood.

"And it continues," Skinner says, breaking through my self-pity.

He's right, of course. He usually is. Mulder is proof that their game continues. Maybe I'm proof as well. There has to be a reason that black bastard didn't blow all of us away in that warehouse eight years ago. Have our entire lives been one giant lie; programmed movements on a cosmic game-board?

"What happens when the toy soldiers don't play by the rules anymore?" I ask the stars. I feel Skinner tense suddenly as if expecting a blow. I feel an itching between my shoulder-blades; my spine already feels the bullet prepped and waiting to blow me away.

"What happens to them if they don't?" is his soft response.

I remain silent. I suspect the only man who can answer our questions is the one man neither one of us acknowledges to the other. Mulder is the answer and he haunts us with the dreadful truth that perhaps even our rebellion is planned for and incorporated into the game.

My bones ache as I force myself to stand. I'm getting too old to sit on cold stone steps in the soft spring air drinking myself senseless. Skinner rises up beside me in one long fluid motion like a tiger surging to its feet. Damn the man's ability to drink me under the table. Still, I note a certain careful control to his movements and hide a smile. Hooch will do that to you - sneak up and ambush you better than Charlie on his best days.

Skinner offers me the hooch. The clear liquid sloshes against the sides of the glass, offering to drown me in its waves.

"Leave it." I decline the gift with a shaky wave of my hand.

Skinner looks down at the bottle and then up at The Wall. I sense the hint of a smile that barely twitches his lips, but softens the killer-steel in his eyes.

I catch his drift and nod solemnly. Carefully I stretch to attention and face The Wall as Skinner goes into a rigid full attention stance before gently placing the open bottle against The Wall.

"To old memories and debts yet unpaid," I whisper. I'm not sure whether I have just pledged myself to vengeance or apologized for my helplessness to bring the truth into the light - maybe a bit of both.

"There is time. One day... I have to believe that the truth will be known, but the cost....," Skinner pauses and stares out over the Mall.

"Tell the Spartans that we lay here obedient to their will," I quote from a dusty memory. I don't like the image, but I feel a promise is owed to those whose names are chiseled into rock and memory.

"I prefer Dylan, myself; anger rather than resignation. It's past time for pretending. The truth is ugly, but the lies are uglier." His reply to my offhand comment is so brusque it almost snaps me to attention. Damn sergeants, I sigh to myself.

Without another word, he turns on his heels and strides off into the darkness. I wonder, later, if he meant for me to hear his next words or whether a stray breeze betrayed him.

"It's also way past time someone climbed back on his damned horse."

Should I warn Mulder about incoming friendly fire? Nah, he needs shaking up. So do Langley and Byers, for that matter. I think, as soon as I sober up, that I'm going to start digging our foxhole a hell of a lot deeper. Shit is flying and it doesn't care who it hits.

With a jaunty wave at the approaching park ranger, I slip back into the shadows. If I listen very carefully, I can almost hear the sound of a bugle call in the morning wind blowing around The Wall.

THE END

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