by Don McQuinn
Ordway said, “Twenty percent. Norfolk south and New Orleans east. Whatever price we can get.”
The man looked his way. “Last white I talked to said he was part of an organization. Big deal. You mixed up with them?”
“No. I’m like you. Out for number one.”
The phrase generated a flick of the studying eyes from Ordway to Miller and back again. “Best not be one of them. Soon’s I get ready, I squash them mother-fuckers.”
“I hope so. Less competition.” Ordway left to study the walls, leaving the negotiations to Miller.
Knowing everything was going by the numbers, Miller still wanted to call his partner back, but instead he squatted, Vietnamese-style, and haggled. In a moment he was enjoying it. A minute later he was imagining the discussion was real, that he was arguing for first claim on the drug business throughout what had been the Confederate states. Grudgingly, twisting and complaining, he watched his percentage waste away to fifteen, his empire whittled to seven states. When it was done he was tired and yet there was a sense of elation, a feeling of something important going forward. He was just starting to wonder why that should be when the man spoke again.
“Now tell me exactly how this shippin’ thing is supposed to work.”
Ordway whirled from his study of the pictures. “No fuckin’ way, man. We’ll pick up the stuff whenever you say and deliver it wherever you want it, but the only two people who know about it when it’s in our hands is Miller and me.”
The man smiled, the expression clearly false. “You two really somethin’. You think I hand over ten, twenty, fifty kilos and you give me some kind of fuckin’ receipt?”
“Money up front,” Ordway said. “We put enough money in a bank to cover the purchase price. When we deliver, you give us our percentage. If the shipment gets lost, we’re out our end, plus the money.”
“That’s sweet. And what if you all take the stuff and never show up again?”
“No way. I couldn’t skip if I wanted. I’m a businessman, with responsibilities. Miller can’t skip and let you grease his cousin. You got hostages, man.”
While they continued to argue, Miller concentrated on his own emotions, still puzzled over why he should feel so high over what was nothing more than a simple scam. The idea of so much money and power was exhilarating, but there was something more going on in his head, if he could just grasp it. The man on the bed fumbled beside it for a second and came up with a cigarette. When he lit it, the flame reflected from his eyes and Miller was seeing the glass stare of his dead sister. More than anything in the world he wanted to see the man on the bed wearing the same look.
“Willy?”
Anxiety covered the word and he smiled at Ordway to dissipate it. “Just thinking,” he added.
Ordway nodded, failing to dislodge the remnants of a frown. “You hear what he said? He’s going to run a check on us. He needs some information.”
“Sure.” The sense of purpose surged through him so fiercely Miller feared it would show. He studied his boots. “You gonna run a security check, like J-2 does it?”
The man laughed. There was a change in it. Miller analyzed it, wondering if something like the new feeling he’d discovered in himself wasn’t being mirrored. When he looked up, the man wore a new smile, as well.
The right corner of his mouth lifted up and the left dropped. It was a cruel, confusing picture, reminding Miller of the two masks they showed at movies and stage plays.
The man was saying, “I surely will run a security check on you. You in the big leagues, dudes. I got a man in Special Branch. In a couple weeks, I know more about you than you momma.”
Miller wanted to be sick. Special Branch. Ties to CIA, MIS, the embassy, everywhere. If the man had a rat in the Special Branch files, it was all over.
He answered the questions automatically, each piece of information enlarging the cold hollow in his stomach.
He cursed the inner voice that had cheered for a kill. Why had it forgotten to remind him this prey shot back?
But he had to keep pushing. As long as he could.
Chapter 30
The dark shade of the quiet side street was soothing and Winter reflected that it was even more welcome than usual. Taylor’s report necessitated something to alleviate it. He glanced at him as they strolled, pleased by the other’s stoic acceptance of Trung’s threat.
“He said nothing about anyone else? The ones who picked him up? Tho? Chi?”
Taylor said, “No. Charlie’s probably got a full book on the Vietnamese. He was really out of control for a few seconds. I think if he could identify any other Americans, he’d have let it slip then.”
Sunday mornings the streets in the neighborhood of the zoo were almost free of traffic. Winter liked to walk them then, denying the decline that assailed his eyes, enlisting his memory to tell small lies about the present. It was helped by the smells of trees and cooking and masonry warming in the sun and his own Sunday-best cleanliness. As he thought about that, he looked to the right, up a cross street, and caught sight of an armored personnel carrier belching across a distant intersection and harsh truth broke through to his interior view.
He looked away, too late, thinking how, in the early days when the city grew hectic, a man was assured it would drop back to repose. Now the spasms were more and more frequent and the subsidence left the level of ease more and more behind. Still, these were the mornings when an effort could usually remind him of what used to be.
He choked off his reminiscence.
“This could get pretty messy, Tay. The only thing keeping his mouth shut is that he knows I’ll have him killed if he opens it. Sooner or later that’ll wear off or someone connected with Binh will scare him worse than we have.” He stopped abruptly, driving a fist into his palm. “I know what Binh’s doing. He’s hiding out and waiting for this thing to resolve itself. Our sources tell us the VC are all screwed up. Even with Trung free, they don’t know if we’ve turned Tu, or what. They’re working overtime to find out. And there’s a helluva split over Binh. They don’t know if he’s gone sour or not, and they can’t find him to check.”
“And if Tu dies without talking, if he knows anything, everything cools off and we’re back to zero.”
Winter made a small gesture of helplessness and they turned to walk up a different street.
Taylor said, “Let me take a crack at Tu.”
A smile worked across Winter’s face, but disappeared when he saw Taylor’s seriousness. “You think you can improve on Tho’s work?”
“Not the way he does things. But I think I can reach Tu.”
The smile broke clear and Winter joked to take the sting out of it. “Thinking about appealing to Tu’s better nature?”
Taylor’s answering look was defensive. “Harker was saying Tu seems to want to be a martyr. Let me work on that. What can we lose? Tho’s going to kill him in a little while, regardless.”
The smooth delivery of the statement snapped Winter’s head around. Taylor’s manner was bland, although a flash of alarm sparked through his eyes at the suddenness of the response. It faded as quickly when no outburst accompanied the movement.
That troubled Winter. He couldn’t be sure if Taylor was being satirical or demonstrating a change in his own attitude. He remembered the man’s first night in-country, his reluctance to embroil himself in the underside of the situation. What would have happened if he’d been left alone to do his quiet little job? Even at that stage he’d shown a cold acceptance of killing as part of being a soldier and he’d since then amply demonstrated he could kill in anger. This new view, that a man’s death should be considered inevitable, a part of the way of things and therefore inconsequential, was deeply disturbing. It was a vast, repugnant difference.
Winter brushed the thought away. The frustration of the Binh thing had him seeing hidden meanings in everything. He told himself some callousness was natural in this business. Hell, it was a necessity.
“What do you ha
ve in mind?” He heard the gruffness in his voice and hoped it would be misconstrued as skepticism.
Taylor shook his head. “No sir. I want a free hand and privacy. You’ll have to trust me.”
“You ask a lot. Tho’s going to flip when I ask Loc to deal you in.”
“Use your charm.”
Winter grunted. “Wise ass. Big deal. Secrets. You better be right.”
“Hey, I didn’t guarantee anything.”
The smile Winter turned on Taylor was meant to cut. “I expect results. I’m feeling the pressure. Now you get some.”
Taylor looked blank and Winter explained. “It’s part of the draw-down. I haven’t even told Loc, although he’s heard a rumor, so keep your mouth shut. The General says, unofficially, the Unit gets no replacements from now on.”
The husband’s always the last to know, Taylor thought, and said, “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” An anger that made him shiver pounded along his muscles. “It’s so stupid! Always the goddam maneuvering and the deals!” He stopped, then continued more calmly. “MACV is to ‘exercise selectivity’ in its attrition. The Phoenix program, the Marine CAP work, the MI effort—all to be allowed to expire of normal rotational attrition, or some such bullshit. The assholes in D.C. say we’re too mixed up in the politics of the war, as if it was anything but politics. They say we have to concentrate on military operations until we clear all our forces. Then they wonder why we’re taking casualties. That’s what makes Binh so important! If we can catch him and some like him, maybe even turn them around—if we could eliminate the terror and have some goddam peace.”
Winter broke off at the look on Taylor’s face, the polite pretense of interest a veil across preoccupation. Instead of angering him, it made him feel old and afraid. He set about reconstructing his normal mental pattern for this walk. Instead, his eyes sought the grimy windows, his nose burned from the tree-killing haze, and his ears admitted nothing but the hack of helicopters and rumble of trucks.
Taylor said, “We’ll be out of business in no time. Kimble—”
Winter cut him off, resenting the younger man’s insistence on mundane practicality, his refusal to even consider the larger issue. “We’ve got one important operation. The other is superfluous. We go for Binh.”
“Colonel, we may not have time. Allen leaves in days, Kimble’s right behind, then there’s Ordway. You’ll be down to a skeleton crew.”
“I’m aware of the personnel situation.” He sounded pompous and couldn’t help it. “It means we work harder. It means I’m depending on you to get something from Tu. Harker’ll have to dig up something with his contacts out in the countryside. We push until we get a break.”
“Or until we break.”
The small joke only added to Winter’s growing frustration and he snapped in spite of himself. “I may see the humor in that after we’re successful, but not just now.”
Taylor’s chin moved forward and his shoulders inched upward. “I understand, sir.”
“Fine.”
Having killed the conversation and ruined the morning, Winter set a course back to the jeep, Taylor acknowledging his lead with studied indifference. He stole a glance at the Major and was startled to see a gray—no, a couple of gray—flecks in the thick black hair. It was an odd awareness. He tended to think of him as a younger man. Today, the civilian clothes heightened the image. Bright colors seemed to suit him. Looking again, trying to be objective, he saw good skin tone and a stride that told of good condition. The lines in the face were the true indicators. Though they were sharpened by a justifiable irritation now, they were so clear he wondered at himself for not paying more attention lately. There was age there. And, yes, by God, cynicism he’d not seen before, layered on the indignation. He’d been far too short with his best man. The only decent lead they had came from him.
Apology swam in his imagination, the words rearranging themselves, seeking a face-saving pattern, until he wearied of them. In the dull silence, he sought reasons for his behavior.
The need to capture Binh wasn’t the whole thing. He knew that instinctively and logically. After all, he’d been frustrated before and there’d been no reaction like this. Why did he feel so pressed for time? The question bothered him back to the jeep and even though the conversation came alive again on the ride back to MACV, his attention remained on his inability to read himself. When he was finally alone in the office it bothered him further to realize that this kind of introspection and self-interrogation was becoming more and more a part of his daily life. It would have to stop. It wouldn’t have happened today, but for his intentional hiding out the day before, when Taylor wanted to find him and report about Trung. He asked himself if he’d been slowing down, taking off too much or not really committing himself when he was in the office. He resolved to keep a closer watch on his own activities.
Down below in his office, Taylor was surprised to find Duc at his desk, muttering to himself and flipping through a stack of 3x5 cards. Several other stacks tottered nearby.
“What’s going on?”
“Goddam homeworks,” Duc spat. “Colonel Tho say ever sons bitch ever speak Tu, he’s want know.”
“You shouldn’t get so mad. You lose all your English.”
“Sorry ‘bout that.” Duc refused to be cheered. “I need computer.” He jabbed at a stack and misjudged. A foot-high pile of cards cascaded to the floor. He stared, then ran through his vocabulary of English obscenities and shifted to Vietnamese until that was exhausted. Taylor helped pick up the cards.
“Winter’s going to give me a shot at Tu,” he said.
Duc whirled to face him. “You work with Tho?”
“No way. All by myself.”
A dark frown twisted the round face and Duc’s whole body seemed to check. “Tho be—” He clamped his jaws and returned to picking up cards.
“You too?” Taylor said. “Everybody’s more worried about Tho’s feelings than Tu’s information. I thought we were all on the same side, working together.”
“Not that. You embarrass Tho if make Tu speak.”
“I don’t think Tho’s that childish.”
Duc’s eyes worked in an angry wince. “Not child, not behave like child. His job question Tu, learn what Tu knows. Not your job. You make Tu speak, Tho look bad.”
“All I want is to win. What difference if my idea works or Tho’s?”
Duc heaved his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug as they got to their feet. “Maybe no difference. Maybe Tho feel same-same you. Also maybe you fall on ass, make him look pretty good.”
“You two arguing again?”
They turned to see Denby standing in the doorway.
“No argue,” Duc said. “I try explain he crazy but he too crazy unnerstan’.”
“Understand this.” Taylor gave him the finger and turned from Duc’s amusement to Denby’s prim disapproval.
“I came by on business.” His tone implied that Taylor’s behavior had somehow sullied his mission. “I wanted to let you know Kimble’s orders are in. He’ll be leaving the same day Ordway rotates. I think that means you’ll have to arrange any technical assistance we’ll be needing.”
Taylor glanced at Duc and, seeing his head averted while he rearranged papers, indicated Denby should step into the hallway. Ushering the heavier man toward the front door, Taylor spoke with low-pitched urgency.
“I heard about the non-replacement thing. I don’t think we ought to discuss it in front of the Vietnamese for a while, do you?”
Denby’s eyelids fluttered furiously, but he said nothing, continuing to walk.
Taylor went on. “I’m not going to bring it up to the Old Man—he’s got enough on his mind just now. I think I can get any tech help we need, anyhow. When it seems like the right time, will you tell him that?”
Denby gulped back indignation. That toady bastard Allen! After all the warnings to keep his mouth shut, he races off to spill his guts to a fucking jarhead. Mealymouthed jarh
ead, at that. “Will you tell him that?” my ass. Winter’s the kind to kill the messenger bringing the bad news. Let him learn some other way.
“When the opportunity comes up,” he said judiciously. “However, if you feel it’s important, don’t hesitate to talk it over with him. No need for formality, not in a small unit like this.” He glanced around conspiratorially. “Let me give you a tip. If you should discuss it, remember, it’s all a rumor. That’s the best reason for keeping it back from the zips and it’s an even better reason for not letting the Old Man know where you got the information.”
Taylor blinked and opened his mouth, only to be cut off by Denby. “Just keep the whole thing under your hat,” he said, and stumped out into the sunshine. Taylor stood for a few seconds, trying to understand what was going on, then returned to his office, telling himself no one really knew anything. He joined Duc in putting the cards back in order.
Out in the courtyard, the insistent heat added to the emotional fire in Denby’s scandalized frame and in seconds he was wet, walking with his arms dangling out from his sides and legs straddled to avoid irritating the heat rash speckling his crotch. He hated heat rash. He escalated that to a package, hating the heat rash as a manifestation of an all-inclusive hatred for Vietnam and all things Vietnamese. He reviewed the scope of it as he walked and broadened it to include bigmouthed bastards who sucked up to people to learn secrets and then blabbed like small-town gossips.
Who could’ve thought it? Goddam Allen. All polish and smiles and bullshit, laughing behind other people’s backs. Rich prick.
A group of Vietnamese troopers straggled past as he left the Unit compound and moved toward the main gate. Each of them looked him over coolly, none offering a smile of recognition, much less a salute. When they were past, he broke wind thunderously, denying the temptation to turn around and enjoy the effect. Incompletely mollified by their imagined responses, he refused to return the salute of the gate guard, satisfying himself with a bored nod. He heard the man hawk and spit as he waited for a break in the traffic.
