Mouse reached for the remains in his glass. Besides all the opportunities this war was providing career-wise, it was good for something else: he wouldn’t have to worry about the unrelated relation he’d met at a family baptism a few years ago. Jesus, Uncle Louie’s niece was homely. He was nothing special to look at himself thanks to his teeth and his jaw, but maybe he would rather have his balls cut off than have to worm his way out of a set-up with a two-ton mamma who could stop traffic with her face if she didn’t step in front of a bus first and total it.
Shit. The beer was gone. So was his second Bloody Mary. Nothing in Tony’s glasses neither. Double shit. He’d have to order another one—no, two—it was still two for one and even if he wasn’t a Jew, he was a thrifty SOB.
Maybe one reason Uncle Louie wanted to set him up with his wife’s fat, ugly niece. Mouse was good with money. He should have been a fuckin’ accountant.
He started to get up to place his order at the bar, then stopped in mid-rise.
That’s when he saw her. A new girl taking orders. She had golden skin and was small, of course, because she was a gook. They were all small. But God, what a face and beautiful, long, black silky hair.
Their eyes met.
She was coming his way.
He could hardly look at her she was so beautiful, and when she asked to take his order her voice was like an angel’s. Her English was good. She even called him “sir,” giving him the respect he deserved but didn’t always get. Mouse managed to mutter, “Two beers. Please.”
She bowed slightly, turned, and he stared, transfixed, as she moved from table to bar and back again, his two beers arriving on her little tray. She poured one in a tall, cold glass and when she smiled at him that way…When she said, “My name is Missy…”
That was fuckin’ it. Sure he’d had plenty of gook poon, but they were all whores. Who wanted to care about a whore, much less a gook whore? But this woman. This woman was so beautiful and so hot he was hard just watching her walk.
He followed Missy with his eyes everywhere she went. He guzzled both beers fast, just so she would come back. This time he didn’t avoid her gaze, even if she was so beautiful it was like staring at the sun—and when she asked if he wanted another…
BOING.
He could have been in one of those silly-ass cartoons, with his heart springing out of his chest. She smiled at him and he could only nod like a fuckin’ idiot.
Mouse did not recall uttering a single word beyond “beer…please” in their entire exchange before Missy again made her way back with her little tray and the two more beers he didn’t really want but had ordered anyway to get her back to his table.
That’s when she was stopped. The two loud assholes at the next table put their arms out, stopped her cold and took HIS BEERS for God’s sake, and one of the fucks started saying that he wanted a dance with her. Then the jerk got up, grabbed her, swung her around while his buddy whistled and swatted at her butt.
Fuckin’ A. Mouse pushed back his chair. Stood on surprisingly steady feet. He looked at her. She looked right back at him, straight in the eyes and mouthed: Help. Me. Please.
Mouse grabbed his empty, long-neck bottle, leaped forward, swung the fat end of the glass sideways at the asshole still sitting, broke his nose, and then planted the remaining jagged end down on the head of the guy pawing the girl.
His girl.
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly one of those Asian things where a man owes you his life forever once you save it, but Mouse knew in that moment that Missy was meant to be his.
The commotion brought out the old NCO and his flunkies. They knew Mouse. That got him out of any trouble. They threw out the two loudmouths, but then the old guy fired Missy on the spot.
Her pleading did no good. “But my family, they need money. Please. I make no more trouble, I promise. Promise!”
“Sorry, Missy, but you’re just too damned pretty. This is the second time you’ve brought trouble this week, and God knows we have enough of that without your help. I know it’s not your fault, so here…” The old NCO shelled out a stack of ones, a few tens—Mouse was counting with one part of his brain while the other wondered how he could knock out the NCO and steal the rest of his money to give Missy who was getting fired for being too pretty.
She took the money. Bowed. Said, “I so sorry. Thank you.”
Then she threw a look at Mouse that just melted him into a puddle of nothing, simply said again, “Thank you. You good man,” before turning, starting for the exit, back straight as a royal flush.
Mouse really admired that. And despite his methods for getting a job done, making a name for himself in the business, he liked to think he was a good man—at least in the ways that counted.
Missy realized that about him. Just as Mouse realized if he was dumbstruck before, he was shit out of luck now because she was taking every little piece of his heart right out the door with her.
“How can you fire her?” he demanded. “She didn’t do nothin’ wrong.”
“Listen, she’s a nice girl and I like her. Everybody does. Just a little too much. I know she needs a job, Mouse, but I’m no social worker. I got to let her go. You want to help? You offer her a job.”
Mouse remembered how she looked at him with those beautiful, exotic, dark eyes like he was her hero. Like she saw beyond the teeth he had hated for all the ridicule he took—until they started earning him some professional respect.
Well, just so happened he was getting promoted. And if Missy needed a job?
He was her man.
Chapter 8
It was 0700. Gregg and Izzy were at the 8th Field’s LZ as ordered, dressed as ordered, and nursing some major hangovers judging from their red-rimmed eyes. Or, JD supposed, it could be lack of sleep. His own extended lack of sleep was not evident in the mirror or in the mind and body trained to withstand conditions that would readily break 99.9 percent of the population—including Gregg and Izzy. But they were mentally tougher than most, tougher than even they realized, and he’d take that over physical endurance in a heartbeat. Plus, they were loyal to Kate, which trumped their distrust of him.
Or, maybe not. The nod of encouragement he gave as the chopper descended was met with a shaking head, a visible shudder. Well, JD supposed, he couldn’t blame them for their reluctance to get in after their last little adventure, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell them that this one was shaping up to be even more precarious. He needed them for reasons they would never guess, reasons that he had not even relayed to Phillip. They had spoken only an hour ago, made arrangements for sustaining communications. He had wondered if the little guy named Mouse, who didn’t look like much but had made one hell of a mess with that broken beer bottle at The Drunken Dragon, bore mention. His instinctive decision was no. It wasn’t that the guy was important, being so far down the food chain, but he wanted to protect his internal resources that Phillip didn’t have a direct line to himself. They were like stones on a Go board, part of his arsenal of gamesmanship. Or—were he playing a game of poker instead—he wouldn’t show his hand to a friendly rival, now, would he?
As much as he had always counted Phillip as an ally, he had begun to wonder if there were undercurrents of rivalry he should not ignore. That whole send off in the limo—“Wild predators like you don’t do well in domestication, no matter how alluring their keepers may initially seem”—hinted at more than a concerned warning. If Phillip’s true intent was to rescue Kate himself, by virtue of JD’s own hard work to get there first, it wouldn’t be the first time Phillip had taken credit for some mission he had overseen from a safe distance.
That had never bothered him before. JD knew it shouldn’t bother him now. So he told himself that the important thing was that Phillip was as invested in getting Kate back as the other man who loved her—correction, men, plural. He couldn’t forget about Gregg, glaring at him through blurry eyes as the chopper descended.
As for the meeting in the limo with Phillip, it wasn�
��t about Kate. She wasn’t even missing at that point. It was about keeping the poppy fields out of The Pale Man’s reach for reasons of national security. Kate’s subsequent kidnapping had only ratcheted up the stakes, albeit higher than Neil Armstrong taking his giant leap last July.
Kate wasn’t sure what day it was, what month, or how long she had been here. Wherever here was. All she knew, as she drifted in and out of consciousness, was that she was in a room without windows, so she had no idea if it was day or night.
Her head felt stuffed with cotton; so did her parched mouth. Kate touched it. At least she thought she did. Her hand felt detached and so did her brain. The skin surrounding her mouth was tender, as if she had been gagged, or had tape ripped off. She could see in the dim light emanating from the floor that her wrists were rubbed raw from the rope the snake faces had bound her with. Snake faces? Where had that come from? She touched a pink mark on her left wrist, where JD’s silver bracelet was missing. Which meant—what?
That you haven’t been here long enough for the marks to go away. That maybe you’re not hallucinating but—
A sound came from the door, just past the candles lined up and down like soldiers standing guard around the plump mattress she was on. That’s when she realized. Someone had undressed her. All she had on was a thin slip. Her ankles were sore, as if she had been thrashing against restraints. Yet a quick glance assured her both feet were free. This could be her chance to run—if only she didn’t feel so sick and dizzy.
A click came from the door which took forever to open. Time was elastic and she didn’t trust her body to cooperate with the fuzziness of her brain, shouting orders to get out, get out. Her nostrils quivered at the scent belonging to the cadaver-like, pale thing that liked to play with her hair. Yes. That she remembered.
He was entering the room now. He was calling to her, “Good morning, and how is my lovely Katherine feeling today? It’s early. My apologies, but we haven’t much time before our company arrives, and we do want to make you presentable for him, agreed?”
Kate commanded herself to pretend sleep. To endure whatever her keeper had in mind to make her presentable while she tried to clear her head, make some kind of a plan and take him off guard.
First came the feel of cold fingers applying something wet, thick, and soothing to her ankles. Then his ministrations moved upward. He stopped just above her knees, tugged her slip back into place to cover them up.
She heard the strike of palms, clap-clap, then faded out again. She was vaguely aware of make-up being applied to her face. Slightly more aware of a brush, then familiar, spider-like fingers caressing her hair.
Her stomach lurched. Her spine arched. She came off the mattress and so did the watery contents of her stomach, directly projected into a face the color of a porcelain plate.
At first he appeared stunned. But then he calmly produced a wash cloth that, for all she knew, he had bathed her with, and wiped his face. Tossed it onto a flickering candle. Smiled.
His teeth were the color of those of an aged tiger.
“Ah, sleeping beauty awakens. Would you care for some tea? With breakfast, perhaps, to replace what you’ve so generously shared with me, your host?”
Kate had difficulty forming the thought, the word: “Host?”
“But of course, how could you possibly think otherwise?”
How can I not? she wanted to say, but only managed to gesture to the candles, the windowless room. Her ankles.
“Oh, that! Please, believe me that things are not what they seem.” He took her hands in his, a gentle gesture that still felt revolting. “You were brought here for safe keeping. You were delusional when you arrived and the doctor I brought in determined you had been shot up with a dangerous amount of opiates. Heroin, he suspected.”
Her blurry gaze settled on what appeared to be a number of puncture marks on the interior of her arm. Clearly she was still doped up, but even a doped up nurse knew a recent injection site when she saw one.
“Yes,” he confirmed, “I’m afraid we were forced to administer a sedative. Actually, several over the past few days. But I assure you it was for your own good. You see, in your delusional state you tried attacking me.” He tapped the traces of a line of scratches on his face, just under his eyes. They weren’t normal eyes looking at her—barely a color at all—but it could be the candles making her think of a rabbit with irises pale as cotton candy. “And then you ran. So fast the men I sent after you nearly lost you in the jungle, and that would have been…” He sighed dramatically. “A tragedy. You see, my dear, we have a number of snakes in the surrounding area, many deadly. There is even a legendary, enormous Burmese python said to be a man-eater, but such a snake would at least have the courtesy to squeeeeze its prey to death before sloooowly taking its time to consume its nice, tasty meal.”
As if from a distance Kate heard JD’s voice reciting his favorite passage from The Jungle Book:
“Kaa was everything the monkeys feared in the jungle, for none of them knew the limits of his power, none of them could look him in the face, and none had ever come alive out of his hug.”
And then she was drifting again, dreaming, assuming reptilian shape even as she remained Kate the nurse, dissecting a very bizarre vision while it sounded as if another voice, the voice of the pale creature, was reading her a disturbing bedtime story.
“The python watches the girl. She is running. She runs well for a human. Long strides, eating up the ground along the jungle path. She looks determined more than frightened, although the snake can clearly scent the thick aroma of fear. She has made it further than she did the last time. The snake closes its eyes and its tongue and body can tell it everything that’s happening. The increased carbon dioxide means the girl’s heart and lungs are laboring. The scent of her sweat shouts that her adrenal, flight-or-fight system is pouring adrenaline into the body to counter her fear that she is slowly losing ground to the pursuit. Through the ground and up the tree and all the way out to the heavy branch where the massive snake rests there are tiny vibrations that say so clearly to the snake that there are four other predators in pursuit who are moving quickly, yet almost leisurely in their sureness of success, like a pack of wolves after a baby pig. There is no possibility that their prey will escape. It is easier, really, to let her run until her heart is bursting with exhaustion.
“She actually takes down the first human predator with a kick to the crotch and a crushing punch to his throat, but then the three others are upon her. They tie her and carry her back the way she came.
“The huge muscles of the snake stir. It begins to uncoil and then stretch and slide into the waning sunlight. The men have left behind their dying companion. The python blinks its pitiless, glittering red eyes. Yes, the girl would have been tasty, but the one she hurt will do…”
Clap-clap.
Kate could feel herself coming up and up from dark blue waters. No, they were the glass green of a 7 Up bottle. She must be swimming again in JD’s eyes.
Her own eyes hurt, pained from some light source beyond her lids. She forced them open to a slit.
Where am I now?
She lay in a very large and comfortable low bed with a filmy mosquito net and a ceiling fan turning slowly above her. The blades were carved teak. She turned her head to the right and looked through dappled light where, just beyond a balcony, she could see an exquisite garden filled with flowers. She heard a trickling fountain. A small breeze rustled the leaves and a wind chime faintly sounded.
Kate took a deep breath. For a moment she felt almost lucid and tried to get up, only to feel herself sinking again into a delicious blue dreaminess.
She dreamed of swimming with dolphins.
When she woke again the light had changed. It seemed late in the afternoon, almost evening. She could smell jasmine. This time when she opened her eyes, her vision was extraordinarily sharp. There were raindrops on the leaves just outside the open French doors. She wanted to kiss them, drink their dew.
But she was distracted by the sound of the fountain, the wind chime, and the sun making tiny prisms in the drops on the dark-green leaves. She inhaled the intoxicating scent of the flowers…
And something else. Cologne. The scent of aromatic grass. Guerlain Vetiver. How could she ever forget it? How could she ever forget him?
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes and she prayed she wasn’t hallucinating. She prayed he really had come for her. That he would rescue her and that the sound of his voice was real.
“My sweet love, I am so sorry,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. And it was there that he lifted her left hand and returned the silver bracelet to her wrist with a tender, apologetic kiss.
Chapter 9
Mouse could not believe his luck. When he’d first come to the Nam he was ready to hate everything about it, but he didn’t. He liked the smells, the movement, the colors, the exotic trees and plants, and the bright flowers everywhere. The women were beautiful and hey, he was a big guy here, walking around in his jungle boots and half a head taller than the gook guys. Man, did he love that. But if he’d thought things were good before, life had suddenly turned un-fuckin’-believably grrreat.
First the big promotion in the works. And then, to top that off, Missy was officially his. Not that they’d gone all the way. Hell, she wasn’t a whore; but that single, lingering kiss was like something from the movies after he walked her home from The Drunken Dragon. Down the neon main streets they’d gone, then winding through little back alleys, walking and talking and holding hands—hers so tiny, he felt like a GIANT holding it, fuckin’ A—and somewhere along the way he had offered her a job to make up for the one she’d lost for being too pretty. That’s when Missy came through big time, and he wasn’t talking T&A—at least, not yet. He could be patient for something worth waiting for, and the way Missy looked at him with those beautiful, exotic dark eyes, like he was her hero, made her worth the wait.
UNKNOWABLE (Murder on the Mekong, Book 2) Page 8
