The Price of Blood Part 50

Five tense minutes pa.s.sed. Then a low whistle sounded from the beach. Trung Si swung up on his crutch and waved his rifle. The cripples pushed themselves up and went down on line. Broker and Nina followed.

The place had been trashed. Shards of crockery and utensils were strewn in the trampled vegetable garden. Trin and his men gathered at the flagpole next to the porch.

Nina's fingers spasmed on Broker's biceps. Her nails broke the skin.

In the moonlight they could make out the legless ma.s.s of the flute player's body. Trin held up a fuel oil lantern and Trung Si lit the wick. The soft yellow light revealed that the dead man's neck was grotesquely stretched in a noose knotted in the flagpole lanyard. A chopstick had been pounded almost out of sight into his left ear.

"Meeow." A low growl thickened the inflection of the voices around the flagpole. Smoldering dark eyes swung toward the three white people in the yard. Lola shied back, straining against the tape on her wrists. Nina grabbed her by the hair and shoved her forward and forced her to her knees in front of the flagpole.

Flies stormed around Lola's face and she averted her head from the barnyard stench. Trung Si swore. They saw that the Viet Cong flag had been taken down. It lay in the dirt, filled with feces. More flies cl.u.s.tered in black twitching furrows on the dead man's body. Among the crawling insects they saw patches of skin upbraided, hanging in flaps.

One of the vets began brushing the flies away. Another steadied the corpse while another cripple cut the rope with a machete. Slowly they lowered the body to the earth.

Broker exhaled. Whipped and lynched. You find gold, you pay in blood. The flute player and Billie Holiday could have played a duet.

Trung Si tapped Broker on the shoulder and pointed out to sea. At first Broker thought he was pointing at the stars and then he picked out the faint regular line of electric lights hugging the horizon. A boat lay off the coast.

Then Trung Si spoke to Trin and Trin swore vehemently in his native tongue. Not in the heat of anger, but out of something much deeper and deliberate and sinister.

"That man. Trung Si was on his way back from hiding our boat. He saw them leave. Six white men in a power-boat. They carried AR-15s. That man had a whip."

Then he moved in a certain scary way and Broker, who believed that Vietnamese all hid deadly stingers under their friendly smiles, braced himself.

The gravity knife appeared in his hand and the long blade pressed against Lola's cheek, snaked it up under her gag, and cut it. He ripped the tape from Lola's face.

"Jesus Christ," gasped Lola. "Do something about the smell."

"Lying b.i.t.c.h!" Trin slapped her face. Then he placed his tennis shoe in her back and pushed her off her knees, face forward into the reeking flag. Her neat white outfit wasn't white anymore.

Trin squatted and yanked Lola's hair, bringing her face up level with his. "Talk. Fast."

Lola struggled to her knees and shook off Trin's hand with an arrogant toss of her head. She stared at the murderous circle of faces that ringed her.

"I don't know."

"How'd they find this place?" demanded Broker.

Lola, finding herself in close proximity to excrement and the cloying bronze-sweetness of human blood, screamed it this time, "I don't know!"

An angry debate erupted among the vets in Vietnamese. Trung Si shouted at Trin. Trin shouted back. They had formed a circle around Lola.

Nina shivered through another spasm of delayed shock, clinging involuntarily to Broker's arm. In a hoa.r.s.e whisper, she said, "Something's wrong."

Broker nodded. They were in the dark, outside the circle. There were times when body language said it all. They overheard Trin seethe at Lola in English, "People are dead, that changes things."

Broker and Nina shifted uneasily.

Trin issued crisp orders in Vietnamese. Two of the vets pulled Lola away. Trin turned to Broker and Nina. "We have to get out of here."

"Your turn to talk," Broker said pointedly to Trin.

He regarded him through lidded eyes. "You wanted to lure them in. I told her that if she'd give us Nina back, we'd bring her along and show her where it is. She didn't say anything about this." He curled his lips at the carnage surrounding them. His face was utterly cold and foreign. He'd locked them out.

Nina and Broker remained silent while the vets tended to their dead comrade. The lantern light caught on a now familiar glint. His mouth had been stuffed with gold rings. Several of the glittering circles dropped from his lips like round, dead words.

With peasant practicality the vets held the body upside down and shook it gently, cleaning the gold from his mouth.

"This is my fault. I let them get a step ahead of us," said Trin slowly.

Across the yard Trung Si was talking in a steady intense voice to his housemates.

"It's time to wake up that militia post," said Broker.

Trin nodded. "Trung Si will take the van. We'll go ahead and wait near the site. On foot. We can't take the truck, we'd need the lights and lights would give us away." Trin went into the house as they talked. One of the vets stuffed items in two roomy backpacks. Broker saw the little gla.s.s vial, undisturbed, on the shelf. He put it in his pocket.

Trin slung one of the packs to his back. He tapped Broker on the arm and pointed to the other one. Broker put it on.

"Food. Water," said Trin.

"We need weapons," said Nina.

Trin did not respond. He held Trung Si's deer rifle, the b.u.t.t resting on his hip. He made hurry-up motions with his free hand. Just before they extinguished the lantern, he turned to Broker. He did not make eye contact.

"Lola has a radio to direct them in."

"What?"

"In her purse. I'm sorry, Phil." Trin pulled his shirt aside and drew a shiny 9mm pistol. So Virgil had had a gun after all. "Do as I say and it will turn out all right."

Broker glanced out to the sea, to the faint running lights on the vessel. The lights looked back like multiple all-knowing eyes. He sagged. He had violated Trin's basic rule...

He had trusted Trin.

They left Trung Si at the van. Trin removed Lola's purse from the back. Slowly Trung Si turned the vehicle around and drove away with the lights out. Broker and Nina filed off through the dunes. Trin walked behind them, the pistol hanging in his hand.

70.

THE MARCH THROUGH THE DUNES TOOK FOREVER. They had to stop frequently. Artificial legs weren't meant to go cross-country. Broker didn't like it. The silence. Lola had been gagged again. Her two guards walled her off. Trin trod at the back of the tiny column with the rifle and the pistol.

"What the f.u.c.k's going on with him?" whispered Nina.

"I don't know. Are you strong enough to run if you have to?" asked Broker.

He could feel her wince in the dark. "That bad?" she said.

"It's possible," said Broker. He shifted the pack to ease the straps cutting into his shoulders.

The man hobbling behind them muttered something. Broker heard his machete blade zing casually against some brush. The sound made the tiny hairs alert on his neck. Under guard, along with Lola.

He wondered if Trin had decided to f.u.c.k a bunch of white people. Lure Cyrus in. And then dump all the hon-keys in one hole. Broker's mind raced. Christ, he's after Cyrus's boat? He wants it all.

Paranoia gamboled from the stunted shadowy trees and brush and joined the line of march. They hobbled past familiar landmarks. The abandoned hamlet and then the Spartan ranks of North Vietnamese headstones. Not far ahead they heard the waves breaking on the sand.

Communication was now exclusively in Vietnamese.

Machetes and wickedly curved rice sickles very much in evidence, the vets indicated that they should stop and rest in the cover of the three old round graves on the bluff above the cove. The packs were opened and food and water were doled out.

Trin stayed aloof. Not speaking. A shadow in the moonlight, he'd handed off the rifle to one of the vets and kept the pistol handy.

"It's down there?" asked Nina.

"About a hundred and fifty yards," said Broker.

"Maybe we shouldn't get spooked. It could work," said Nina, speaking with her mouth full. They scooped rice and fish from banana leaves with greasy fingers and washed it down with bottled water. Fuel. Their eyes had totally adjusted to the dark. The moon cast the surrounding terrain in silver relief.

"If he puts the militia up here, they have a perfect field of fire down that beach." Her voice was absent, practical.

"Yeah," said Broker. "But will we be up on the bluff here or down on that beach when the shooting starts?" He focused on Trin's shadow. He'd freed Lola's hands. And returned her purse. Now they were walking together down to the beach.

The man with the rifle hobbled over to them and casually tapped the muzzle against Broker's knee.

"Watch it," said Broker.

"Yes," said the man politely, his smile delineated in the moonlight. Then he chided them in Vietnamese, "Ngu. Ngu." For emphasis, he transferred the rifle to one hand and reclined his cheek in the palm of the other. "Ngu."

Broker nodded. Exhaustion took precedence over anxiety. "Whatever happens, we need some rest."

As the man with the rifle stood guard or watch over them-or both-they squirmed, getting comfortable in the warm sand at the base of the old cement wall.

"How're you making out?" he asked.

"I'm hurting some," she said frankly, "and I still have those downers in my veins, but I can hack it."

Anger snaked in his chest. "I've done everything...wrong," he blurted.

"Shhh," she said, touching her finger to his dry lips.

He threw his arm protectively around her and she curled into his chest. Physical necessity almost immediately plunged them into a deep sleep...

Beside a grave, on the pirate beach, in the graveyard of the iron elephants.

71.

THEY WOKE UP TO A DAMP WHITE WORLD OF SAND and fog and the tang of burning wood. The vets had a cookfire going. A larger fire crackled on the beach. No one seemed particularly concerned about concealing themselves.

Nina squinted and made a face. "Doesn't look like our numbers have increased during the night."

Broker busied himself with pouring sand from his filthy socks. He put his busted-up tennis shoes back on and laced them tightly. Amazingly, the pain in his thumb had diminished since Trung Si had applied his gunk.

Trin was nowhere in sight.

Through his stiffness, Broker smelled the blessing of brewing coffee. They were fed steamed rice and dirty gla.s.ses of coffee. The coffee was good. Nothing else was.

They sat and shared a cigarette in the cover of the willows, ragam.u.f.fins behind a clean sand dune.

Where was the militia?

Somewhere, away from their beach, there were governments and courts of law and the police. All of which Broker had avoided in order to deal directly with Nguyen Van Trin. On the beach there was only their pounding hearts, sweat, the itch of sand fleas, and the stink of betrayal. A fiery salmon sky streaked with lavender started to burn through the mist.

Two hundred yards away they could now see Lola LaPorte wander up and down the beach, picking up driftwood and adding it to the fire. A short compact figure walked the water's edge and that was Trin. Gradually the mist lifted and then the sun broke the line of the sea like the blazing helmet of an approaching giant. They could see the boat, a white blur on the horizon.

"The Lola," said Nina with cold pride at her retention of detail. "She's a hundred-five footer. Norwegian steel pilothouse research vessel. Built in 1960. She has a fancy yacht interior, heated and air-conditioned cabins for a crew of ten. Caterpillar diesels. Two generators, an emergency backup. She has a seven-thousand-mile range at ten knots. She cost LaPorte seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars five years ago."

"Subtract Virgil and he could still have a dozen guys counting Bevode," speculated Broker.

"They drove me down from Hanoi in the Mercedes and I was blitzed. Never saw more than two or three at a time," said Nina.

"You know," said Broker, glancing around, "we're real exposed out here. Where the h.e.l.l is the militia?"

"I'm not a big fan of AK-47s, but we could use a couple dozen about now," said Nina, gnawing her cracked lip.

"I don't think we should stick around to find out." Broker stubbed out his cigarette and dusted sand from his palms. They stood up and stretched. The silent, walnut-faced cripple with the rifle motioned them toward the beach. Trin stood a hundred yards away. Lola was closer.

She looked up, smiled, and called out, "Good morning, Vietnam." It was written across his chest.

"Trin's out of pistol range. I think I can get that rifle. Then we head for the trees. Fast," said Broker under his breath to Nina.

"Just say when."

Because Lola had spoken, Broker steered toward her. She watched him approach, hands on her hips, with the wind in her hair, like a tarnished stainless-steel madonna. She had marvelous recuperative powers. The spot under her right eye where he'd hit her was hardly bruised.

Broker stopped ten feet from her. Nina lagged a little behind. The guard labored to keep up on his artificial leg. He came up on Broker's left side. The rifle hung casually in his hands at arm's length. Not real alert, this guy.

Lola folded her arms and smiled. "Well, how do you like the big time, Minnesota?" she said with a confident edge to her voice.

"You know, I almost trusted you," said Broker.