Read Online Ride the Tiger by Lindsay McKenna - Free Book Online Page B

down on something they really needed or wanted. Over the years, five children have grown up, gone to the university in Saigon and now have professional lives. I’m proud of what we do to help them.”
    â€œYou treat your people the way we do ours back on our family ranch in Texas,” Gib said. “Our manager is from Mexico, and we’ve helped put his six kids through school.”
    Dany tilted her head. “And is everyone in your family a farmer?” She liked the idea that Gib was ultimately a man of the land.
    â€œYes and no. Jim, my younger brother, joined the marines and followed in my footsteps. He’s scheduled to fly F-4 Phantoms out of Tan Son Nhut in five months, right after I rotate out of here. Travis is a year younger than Jim, and he’s a navy doctor currently stationed at Norfolk, Virginia. I understand he’s trying to volunteer to get over to Nam, but the navy’s telling him that only one military member of a family can be in a combat zone at a time, so I don’t know if he’ll make it. My sister, Tess, is over here as a U.S. AID specialist and works with three villages not far from here. She’s in a civilian capacity, so the military rule doesn’t apply. The family kinda broke up after Mama died. Our foreman, Miguel Ferrari and his wife, Vivi, take care of the place in our absence.”
    â€œWill you ever go back to them and ranching?”
    Gib shrugged. “When my six years were up, I could have gone back to ranching. But flying helicopters got into my blood. I decided to put in my twenty years with the corps, instead.”
    Something hopeful shattered inside of Dany. If Gib loved flying and the marines that much, there would be no place in his personal life for the land. Or for someone like her. The thought was crazy in the first place, Dany chided herself. “You like what you do?”
    At the puzzlement obvious in her eyes, Gib guessed what she was really asking. “I like flying. I don’t necessarily like war, Dany.”
    Relief cascaded through her. “I think war is horrible,” she said. “It’s wrong. I don’t care what the politics or the reasons are. Taking another human life is unconscionable.”
    Gib toyed with the pen in his hands.
    â€œHow do you feel about it?” Dany demanded.
    â€œI believe in defending freedom, Dany. Communism is overrunning Vietnam. If we can make a difference for the people here, I feel it’s worth it. If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have volunteered for a second tour.”
    â€œBut you fly a gunship, designed for killing.”
    He met and held her accusing green gaze. “I see my aircraft as a way to protect the ARVNs and marines on the ground,” he said softly. “To defend a village against an attacking VC or NVA force, or a MASH unit that’s under fire, is okay in my book. A gunship is an offensive weapon, but it’s also a defensive one.”
    She shuddered. “You don’t look like you enjoy killing.”
    â€œI don’t. Most men don’t.”
    â€œHow can you live with it, then?”
    His mouth twitched with pain. “Some nights I don’t sleep well,” he admitted. “I lie awake justifying what I do. I try to look at the positives of the situation, at the lives I’ve saved by being the intervening force, not the lives I’ve taken.” His eyebrows dipped and he studied the pen. “I don’t enjoy it, if that’s what you think. I don’t like taking a life. But I also won’t allow the lives of innocent people, civilian or military, to be taken, either. Not if I can help it.”
    Dany heard the underlying anguish in his tone. There was a hidden vulnerability to Gib Ramsey, a surprising layer that she wouldn’t have expected to find in a man of war. The look of torture in his eyes when he talked about his sleepless nights tore at her heart.
    â€œPerhaps,” Dany