The Price of Blood Part 51

"You didn't really hope to take down Cyrus and Bevode...with these scarecrows? And that?" She jerked her head at Trin who stood at the water's edge regularly checking his wrist.w.a.tch and shooting impatient looks up the slope at the trees near the three old graves.

"So now what?" said Broker, edging slightly toward the man with the rifle.

She smiled indulgently. "We're really not bad people once you get to know us. You just caught us in an extreme situation."

The urgent growl of an approaching motor vehicle carried to the beach. Behind them in the dunes. Broker saw that Trin heard it too. He snapped his head in a self-important gesture. Agreeing with something he had just said to himself.

"Okay," he yelled to Lola.

She grinned at Broker. "Mr. Trin is about to get the surprise of his life." She withdrew a compact, solid-state radio from her purse, whipped up the antennae, pushed the transmit b.u.t.ton, and said, "Come to Mama."

Nina had moved beside Broker. Her eyes trailed back toward the dunes. "You think...?"

But Broker was watching the guard, who was momentarily distracted, fascinated with the shiny radio. Broker swept out his foot, hooking the man's good leg and wrenching the rifle away as he toppled.

He hefted the rifle, covering Trin for a moment. Then they turned and sprinted up the slope. Broker heard Trin's warning yell, "Don't do it, Phil..." But they'd gained the crest and pounded past the surprised vets, who knocked over their pot of rice as they struggled to rise from their cookfire.

The trees were thickest a hundred yards away. That's where they headed. From the corner of his eye Broker spotted the gray van: Vietnam Hue Tours. Parked at the edge of the woods. He shot out his left hand, cautioning Nina, slowed his pace, and shifted the old bolt-action rifle up in his right hand, holding it like a long dueling pistol. His thumb fumbled on the unfamiliar safety. Breath coming in long ragged gasps. Nina not doing much better.

"Broker!" Nina.

Cyrus LaPorte stepped from the shadow of the trees. Red pirate bandanna. Real nonchalant in his pukka sahib desert duds. Another guy appeared. Hard-looking guy. Blue tank-top shirt, lots of muscle, no hat, short-cropped black hair. Had a rifle slung on his shoulder. The guy reached into the trees and pulled Trung Si into the sun-light. Not rough, like, C'mon...

What the f.u.c.k...

"Militia my a.s.s. We've been had," Broker panted, lurching to a full stop in the sand, rifle coming up smooth. Blue shirt first. Seventy yards. Couldn't miss. Casually, Blue Shirt unlimbered his AR-15. Why did they just stand there?

Broker found out why when he squeezed the trigger and the bolt snapped on an empty chamber. He yanked back the bolt and stared into an empty breech.

LaPorte came toward him, smiling, with his hands clasped behind his back. "You're not having a very good vacation, are you, Phil?"

72.

BROKER DIDN'T THINK IT COULD GET ANY WORSE. Then it did.

As they were marched back to the beach they heard more motors, loud, snarling, coming in over the water. Two st.u.r.dy rubber cargo dinghies cut through a lingering bank of mist, propelled by huge outboards. Lola jumped up and down on the beach like a cheerleader and waved them in.

Bevode stood in the prow of the lead boat, hatless, his oiled hair streamed in the sun. A mean black AR-15 was balanced casually on his hip and he had one foot up on the gunwale in a conqueror's pose. Tall, gleaming brown leather boots, jeans tucked in. Safari shirt. A thick braid of leather wrapped his shoulder. LaPorte's heirloom whip. He was smiling.

Trin's vets weren't. Seeing Bevode, they cl.u.s.tered in a group and jabbered among themselves. Trin, the mother-f.u.c.king traitor, was trying to calm them.

Intuitively Broker and Nina joined hands.

Before the first boat ran up on the beach, three men rolled out and dashed through the surf with AR-15s at the ready. Not Cajuns. More related to the Blue Shirt. The same cropped hair. They vibrated a pumped-up military narcissism that wouldn't be tolerated in veteran soldiers.

"Mercenaries," said Nina in a flat voice.

Their rifles covered Trin. Virgil's pistol had been his brief marshal's baton. Now he was forced to drop it. One of the mercs shoved Trung Si into the group of cripples. Trin began to protest at the rough treatment. The merc swiftly b.u.t.t-stroked him in the stomach and sent him sprawling. Fluent Vietnamese rippled from his lips. Under his direction, Trin and his men spread out and put their hands behind their heads.

"How'd I do?" Lola shouted to her husband.

"You were great," said Cyrus LaPorte. His eyes were fixed on the horizon over her shoulder.

She was grinning, but she also read something in Cyrus's cold manner. In the way Bevode ambled up the beach.

"Oh G.o.d," whispered Nina under her breath, going rigid. Her fingernails cut into Broker's hand.

"What?" said Lola. Cyrus had turned his back on her. He walked away, down the beach with his hands cupped meditatively behind his back. Lola spun and confronted Bevode. "Hey," she protested.

"Ain't personal, you understand," said Bevode.

Broker struggled with an inappropriate, disa.s.sociative thought. The day was too beautiful for this. Only Bevode looked inspired.

Lola started toward Cyrus. Bevode cut her off, and shoved her back with his rifle.

"Knock it off," insisted Lola, still smiling. "Jesus Christ, I did everything you wanted."

"You did fine," said Bevode conversationally as the rifle swung up. "Only problem is, Cyrus has enough maids. What he needs is a wife."

Crack. The rifle bucked. Broker jumped back. The shock of the gunshot pierced him like cordite needles. Bevode shot Lola at close range, between the ribs. She plopped straight back and down, heavily on her rump. It had happened so abruptly that her facial muscles were still untangling from a smile. Bevode pushed her over with his boot and, hardly looking, laid the muzzle into her thick black hair.

Broker turned his body to shield Nina when the rifle cracked again and Lola's head made a thump-dribble up and down on the sand.

Nina tore away from Broker and charged. Bevode watched her come. "Stay put, you," he joshed. "I mean it." A rifle barrel pinned Broker in place, jammed deep into his neck, up under his chin. It spoke English with a European accent. Belgian. French? "Don't even breathe."

Bevode danced back, taunting Nina, and giving himself time to drop one shoulder and uncoil the whip in a move he probably practiced in front of a mirror. Nina went in on instinct, her hands coming up, tendons raised, fingers arched.

Expertly, with perfect timing, Bevode let the whip snake out toward her and flicked his wrist. The lash snapped somewhere around her hips. She went down like a singed spider and Broker saw blood against her bare flank through the rent in her blue jeans.

"Told you to stay put," said Bevode.

Broker searched across the b.l.o.o.d.y beach for Trin's eyes. Trin had his head bowed. Did not raise it.

Bevode caught the eye play as he casually coiled up his whip. He sauntered toward Broker and stepped over Lola's body, careful not to dirty his boots.

"Broker, man, you should'a listened to Cyrus. He told you that ole Gunga had a habit of changing sides..."

Broker sat in the sand with his hands clasped behind his neck. Shock manacled his ankles, turning them to wood. He was having trouble breathing. His eyes took pictures that his brain wouldn't accept and the oxygen in his blood had gone on strike.

Bevode dragged Lola's corpse into the surf by the hair, swearing loudly when he lost his grip because part of the skull wobbled loose. Still swearing, he heaved the dead weight over the rubber gunwale of a dinghy so the legs dangled, feet in the water.

Then he pawed around inside the boat and came up with a long, plastic-hafted diver's knife. Swiftly he slashed the muscular clay of hamstrings and calves.

"Draw the fishies," he said, fastidiously stooping and washing his hands in the surf. He nodded to the green-faced Cajun at the tiller, who was striving to keep his breakfast down. "Take it a couple miles out and dump it."

The Cajun reversed the powerful motor and backed the boat into the gentle swells. The torn white trousers swayed over the gunwale and leaked twisted crimson stripes like a wet, dirty American flag.

Casually, Bevode nodded at the b.l.o.o.d.y drag trail at his feet and said to one of the mercs, "Rake up this sand. Cyrus don't need to see this s.h.i.t."

Then he walked up the beach and towered over Broker. Save the Whales had come ash.o.r.e in the second boat. He knelt a few feet away, with Nina, opening a first-aid kit.

Nina pitched on her back, supported on her elbows, trembling the full length of her body. And that was shock.

Save the Whales shook his head and eased down Nina's jeans. "Between you and Virgil you sure put some miles on this girl," he said laconically.

Bevode winked at Broker. "Don't worry, she's all right. I just nicked her. So what'd you do with my little brother?" he asked.

"He's gone into rice farming," said Broker, fighting to get the words from his dry mouth. "Organic farming. You know, where you dump human s.h.i.t in the fields."

"Well, he always had a problem, you understand. Drugs. I told him he should clean up his act. Wouldn't listen. So we found a way for him to be useful."

Bevode was totally relaxed, standing there, enjoying watching Broker appreciate the situation. He reached in his pocket and brought out a plastic flask of sun lotion. SPF 30. He dabbed it a.s.siduously on his face.

Broker braced himself, he was starting to shake. Bevode just smiled and walked away. He was in control. And Bevode knew that was harder for Broker than dying, knowing that Bevode was in control.

Slowly, pensively, Cyrus LaPorte walked back up the beach.

Trin was separated from the other Vietnamese and sat alone in the shade of a willow. Hands in his lap, he was lightly guarded, if at all. Bevode squatted and patted him on the head, got up, and walked back to where Nina sat sullenly trying to beat the shaking-bleeding, handled, filthy jeans pulled to her knees.

Save the Whales ordered Nina to remove her underpants. She refused so he did and she began to shiver while he inspected the laceration. He splashed on some iodine. She seemed to embrace the reality of the sting. Bevode ordered her to stand up. She pulled up her panties and stood. Then he told her to walk. She took a few steps. Blood and iodine trickled down her thigh and around her knee like veins in marble.

"See," he said, "she's just fine." In a gesture of crude possession Bevode laid the whip handle between her legs. With venom eyes, she drove her will into the sand and refused to shake. Bevode waited patiently, toying. She tried to spit, but she was too dry. He smiled. Despite all her conviction, she trembled uncontrollably.

Broker got to a crouch. One of the mercs put him down with a rifle b.u.t.t.

Save the Whales stepped forward and peeled down her pants again and slapped a tape compress along the ragged red pencil that ran below her hip up into her left b.u.t.tocks. Nina modestly pulled up her underpants and went to reach for her pants and Bevode, playfully, snagged them with the front sight of his rifle and held them from her.

"Uh-uh, I kinda like to watch you walk with blood on your a.s.s."

Broker's sight was fractured. More brilliant than normal but cracked. Trin still wouldn't meet his eyes. f.u.c.king Trin. Make a deal with the maggots eating your corpse.

Bevode was saying, "Now I got me a whole work crew of people who mostly walk funny."

Save the Whales tied Broker's hands behind his back. Then Nina's. Trin sat in the shade, his face a fixed mask, averted, unreadable. They didn't tie him up.

LaPorte came up the beach dragging his feet through the surf like General MacArthur, his hands still clasped behind his back. "Everything all right?" he asked Bevode crisply.

"Yes, sir."

"Take one of the boats. Run the gimps back to the house and clean it up. Take Louis along for the translating. I'll keep Trin here with me."

It was absolutely quiet on the beach. Just the lulling swish of the waves. LaPorte's men unloaded the remaining dinghy. They set up a camp table, chairs, and an umbrella and brought several large coolers ash.o.r.e. One of them unfolded the tripod of a surveyor's s.e.xtant.

The normal-sounding cadence of profanity carried from the water line. Men working in hot, humid conditions and b.i.t.c.hing. The sound pecked at walls of shock.

LaPorte walked over to Broker. "Pardon our little act. We are scouting hotel sites on the coast. You'll rest as long as it's light and be fed. Tonight, after we're reasonably sure no one is going to wander through, we'll get down to business."

He started to walk away, paused, and turned.

"I would have given her a divorce, you know. But she was...well, greedy," said LaPorte, slowly shaking his head. "And there was something else. She lied to me. Don't lie to me, Phil, and render service. You and the girl just might come out of this."

The vets were loaded into the boat and Bevode and one of the mercs motored them off up the coast. LaPorte sat with Blue Shirt and Trin at the camp table. They talked and drank from glistening green bottles they took from one of the coolers. LaPorte talked on a radio, presumably to someone on the Lola.

Nina's voice muttered, striving for control, "He's going...to have to change...the name...of his f.u.c.king boat."

Broker looked away. Every muscle fiber in her body struggled to contain the uncontrollable shivering. Patches of her skin shuddered. Sick dog jerky. Broker discovered that he couldn't look her in the eye.

Not physical. Pain she could take. No. He glanced at the pit site. The loose sand had settled into a slight concave depression. He'd brought her to within fifty yards of where her father lay...

He looked out to sea. His father had said that death approached with a slow deliberate tread. Gradually you got to see its features, know its habits.

Death wiggled on Bevode's leash, smack in his face, so close that he had to wait for it to back up a few feet to get a good look at it. Broker was ashamed that, in these first moments, he thought only of himself.

73.

BROKER CONFRONTED THE PARADOX OF HOPE during the benign interval of planning that followed in the aftermath of Lola's murder. Hope played hide and seek in the hot sun. Hope was fickle enough to root on the gallows steps.

Why were they allowed to live?

He and Nina were handled efficiently, like important merchandise. They were frisked and Broker was allowed to keep the gla.s.s vial. Then they were positioned apart so they couldn't communicate. But they were hand-fed water and energy bars by Save the Whales.

s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation carried to him. They would lay low for the day and see if there was a local reaction to Bevode's shooting. LaPorte sounded better informed now about the deserted nature of the place.

Trin.

Broker was blindfolded and was marched off the beach. His hands brushed the baking masonry of one of the old graves, where he was stored in the shade so he wouldn't spoil.

He lost track of time. The day broke down into simple experiences. When he sat, his tired body ached. When he lay down, it didn't hurt as much. He found himself creeping after the shade along the round walls, staying ahead of the sun. He was fed and watered and allowed to relieve himself. His bound hands were checked and loosened slightly. They needed him for his hands and his back.

To dig it up? They had more men, in better condition.

One of the European mercenaries gave him a cigarette. Communication was practical, without animosity, conducted on the level of skilled animal handlers. He waited, kenneled in his blindfold.

For Bevode, who would come out at dark.

Later, afternoon maybe, Broker heard LaPorte's voice getting louder, casually discussing his manpower problem. His tone had changed. Less anxious. In practical matters he consulted the one he called Marc, Blue Shirt: How close could they hazard bringing the vessel in to sh.o.r.e? How long would it take to ferry loads? How many men to hoist them with the winch into the cargo hold? The weather was always a worry.