UNKNOWABLE (Murder on the Mekong, Book 2)

by Rivers, Hart;

  Since honesty had worked so well to get the conversation started, I decided it may still be my best ploy. “I want to kiss you,” I told her. “I have never kissed a girl before, except my mother. She has been dead a long time and I miss her, but I don’t want to kiss you like that anyway. You have given me very good advice and I am grateful for your generosity. I will be even more grateful if you tell me how I might earn a kiss.” As she studied me she smiled. I would later recognize the look she gave me as “disarmed.” Although she was not an opponent but a challenge, Sun Tzu was correct when he said that the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Might war and girls be much alike that way?

  As it turned out, yes. She told me she would teach me how to kiss a girl so the girl wanted more kisses, and we arranged to take a walk outside the gates the next day so she could go about her tutelage. I was an eager student and she was a committed teacher who eventually decided our lessons should go to the next level. It seemed that she liked the excitement of wind and fire more than the safety of sweet brook water after all. While I was quite enthusiastic about all this learning outside the temple gates, something odd began to happen. This girl, who was so disinterested in me before, became increasingly possessive, and more interested in me than I was inclined to return. Perhaps she was talking to the other girls, or perhaps as I gained more confidence about how to talk to them, about how they liked to be kissed and touched, those other girls also found me more appealing.

  Whatever the cause, now I was the boy all the girls wanted. After an altercation between the first girl and a new rival for my affections, Teacher wanted to see me. I told him almost everything, leaving out the parts that were too private, and he was silent for a long while. At first I thought his silence indicated disapproval. But then Teacher finally nodded and said I held great promise in ways that required a special quality that could not be borrowed or bought, and had been known to be more persuasive, and more dangerous, than the stealthy strike of a blade.

  An arrangement was made for my continued education, only now the teachers were courtesans, and even a geisha. The courtesans were backed by centuries of study in the Yin-Yang butterfly school of physical love and seduction—and in the geisha’s case, fine conversation and entertainment. There was much more to it all than I ever expected. Early on I discovered that while satisfying several women in a single night might sound like the most amazing assignment a young man could be given, in reality it is exhausting, humbling, and often physically impossible. What women required to be truly satisfied went far beyond the bedchamber door, and I had the great fortune of being graced with very patient teachers. Although subjects such as physiology and aphrodisiacs and technique were a matter of course, the real education came in better understanding the often confusing, frustrating, and entirely fascinating internal landscape of women. Men were not nearly as complex; after all, I was one, or was working my way toward that distinction.

  The art of seduction took all this to another level. What I liked about it most was how it embodied rules and strategies and counter-moves, so in ways it was very much like playing a game. One that went beyond the bedroom and could just as easily be found in high-level boardrooms, behind closed doors where matters of state or international concerns are decided, or judicial parlors where a single life’s outcome may hang in the balance. Although sex is not a necessary component of seduction, nor the other way around, they share commonalities, so that my training in the first strengthened my natural aptitude as a snake charmer of humans. Make no mistake, seduction, like charm, is subtle, compelling, persuasive. It is the shadow behind the screen; the whisper behind an ear. The one being seduced should never be aware they are being manipulated by an indirect form of power, such is their pleasure in the illusion the seducer has woven to entrap them.

  Seduction is much like discreetly dispensing a highly addictive drug to those who fall under its calculated spell. But what I would come to learn is that being the dispenser of the drug, or even becoming the drug itself, does not make one immune to certain consequences, or the threat of falling for seduction’s own kind of addiction.

  Chapter 22

  It was just going to be a short chopper hop to where they would meet up with yet another boat on their seemingly endless trip up the Mekong, with a seemingly endless supply of GIs in need of counseling, and not just for drug addiction. Izzy knew more often than not the drugs were coping tools for deeper issues, like getting Dear Johned after being drop kicked into a scary jungle, when a few months before you’d been making out with Suzy in the backseat at a drive-in.

  He knew all about that since his fiancée had dumped him almost as soon as he’d gotten deployed. It turned out to be for the best since Margie was in his life, but he honestly felt as though he was going through withdrawals himself without her usual supply of letters.

  JD had hinted that he was hoping to have that remedied when they reached their next stop, which was ample reason for Izzy to grin and flash a peace sign at Gregg and JD as they lifted off, just the three of them plus the two pilots and a gunner in the latest Bell UH-1 chopper, a Huey. Izzy had come to like the chopper hops, the sudden lift, the acceleration. They had taken off later than expected but the pilots assured them they would arrive before nightfall.

  They hadn’t been flying long, maybe fifteen minutes, and Izzy had his head out the door, enjoying the view of the jungle flowing beneath, when the rapid sound of bullets—pow, pow, pow—was followed by a loud whoop, whoop, whooping, and then JD yelling, “The engine’s been hit. Izzy, strap in!”

  It was hard to tighten their seat belts with the chopper descending at a terrifying rate, and Izzy wondered if his face looked as stricken as Gregg’s. Even JD wore a grim expression when one pilot yelled, “Lost the engine and the tail rotor, too, hold on!”

  Izzy could see red lights flashing on the instrument panel as they slowly spun to the right, then whirled in faster and faster circles, plummeting down, down, down, with nothing but jungle below, nowhere to land and then—

  The jolt had the impact of a head-on Mack truck collision, only it was their chopper slamming into treetops and sending the main rotor blade through the cockpit. The huge blade was like an angled guillotine, decapitating both pilots in one slicing strike. The now unmanned chopper continued falling over and down on its right side, while pure adrenaline and the momentum of ten thousand pounds of metal in freefall kept Izzy more frozen to his seat than the hastily cinched belt strapping him in.

  Suddenly JD was up and reaching over to grab the survival radio out of the vest pocket of the headless pilot right in front of him. Izzy didn’t even realize they had stopped their mad tumble from the sky until JD shoved him out of his seat. The buzz in Izzy’s ears mingled with a sound as if they were in a kettle filled with oil, and big kernels of corn were popping like crazy from the heat put to metal.

  JD shouted, “Get out, Izzy, right now. Get out! Get moving, we’re on fire!” Even as JD said it, he and Gregg were going for the wounded gunner while Izzy fought through the inertia and paralysis gripping him. He somehow followed JD’s order, got out, and dropped to the jungle floor. But when he tried to reach back in to help drag out the gunner—Connor, that was his name—Connor didn’t want to leave without his M60, and the medical kit came flying out the door instead. No sooner did Izzy catch it than JD grabbed Connor, bleeding heavily from his scalp and face, a gaping wound through his right triceps, and ordered, “Izzy, run straight at that broken tree on the left!” As Izzy ran, he glanced back to see JD wrapping his belt around the top of Connor’s arm as a tourniquet. In seconds JD and Gregg were running with the injured gunner between them, catching up to Izzy. “Okay, we have to get to the river bank,” instructed JD. “Faster!”

  Behind them came the sound of bullets, lots of bullets hitting the chopper from the other side, then BOOM! The heat of the explosion licked like a hot tongue from hell at their backs while they raced for their lives into the dark green cover, under the jung
le canopy.

  “Keep moving, keep moving! I’m sending out a signal in case there’s a chopper nearby to pick it up.” With the radio in one hand, Connor supported by his other while Gregg did his part, JD kept them going at top speed until they all finally broke through the trees and onto shore.

  The Mekong lay low and brown and big. There was an odd metallic taste, like copper, in Izzy’s mouth; his senses felt extraordinarily heightened, as if he were hallucinating a wide, sandy beach where a chopper could actually land, while out of the radio came a voice speaking as if in telegraph code: WHAT IS YOUR STATUS?

  JD responding: HUEY XRAY 234 DOWN. BOTH PILOTS DEAD. WE HAVE GUNNER WOUNDED NEEDING EVAC AND THREE OTHERS. WE ARE ON THE BEACH. THERE IS ROOM FOR YOU TO COME IN.

  Radio: ON THE WAY. CAN SEE SMOKE FROM YOUR CHOPPER.

  JD: WE ARE DUE WEST OF THAT ON RIVER.

  Radio: WE ARE GOING TO BE ON THE WATER LINE COMING UP THE RIVER RIGHT AT YOU.

  Izzy was down on his knees in the muddy sand. He must have automatically gone into ER mode because there was Connor, the gunner, lying in front of him, along with the medic bag he’d forgotten he was even holding as they raced from bullets and an exploding chopper that had violently toppled from the sky with them in it.

  The mere fact they were alive was miraculous.

  Izzy’s breathing steadied. He was on familiar territory now. He pulled out compresses from the medic bag, quickly wiped Connor’s profusely bleeding scalp wound. Due to the density of nerves and blood vessels attached to the fibrous connective tissue, even a minor cut in the head area could lead to extensive blood loss, and such was the case here. Izzy quickly pulled the skin flaps together and butterflied them, then turned his attention to where JD had belted the torn triceps. The damage didn’t end there; the shrapnel wound on Conner’s cheek was ragged; his ear was barely hanging on to the side of his head.

  His pupils were enlarged; his breath came in rapid pants. Skin clammy, his color wasn’t good. He looked as if he was about to vomit, but instead started mumbling incoherently. They had lost the pilot, now Connor was going into shock.

  “Oh no you don’t, not on my watch,” Izzy told him, told himself, his voice sounding eerily calm to his own ears. “Connor, Connor, come on now, stay with me. Listen to me, you’re okay. I’m a doctor and you’re not too bad. Talk to me.”

  “I…?”

  “You’re going to be okay. Let me hear you say it.”

  “Okay…?”

  “That’s right.” Izzy kept talking to him, saying what Connor needed to hear while going through the medic bag for the bare essentials to temporarily patch him together, but before he got further than taping down the ear, the jagged, shrapnel cut to his cheek, a distinct whop, whop, whop, whop sounded from the dusky sky. And with it, escalating shouts from the darkening jungle.

  Help coming for them from one direction, the VC coming for them from the other.

  As the chopper came into view Izzy could only wonder what kind of courage it took to fly into a certified death trap where one aircraft was already down and they could be the next.

  JD furiously waved his arms and from the radio emerged the sweetest words Izzy had ever heard: WE HAVE YOU IN SIGHT. STAND BY.

  Skimming the bloody, sunset-colored water, the huge aircraft, a Chinook, rapidly decelerated. As it did, from the jungle came a barrage of heavy fire, but still the Chinook lowered until it landed on the sand, so precise and so near they were steps away from the back ramp opening.

  While the three of them raced to carry Connor onto the chopper, the Chinook’s own gunner laid return fire into the jungle. Bullets flew overhead, just missing them while the aircraft took the hits, with more return hits from the gunner spraying into the tree line nearest their position on the sand.

  In the same millisecond the four of them made it into the Chinook, it was lifting off, the pilot swiftly flying low-level along the river, and then using the trees upriver for cover. They flew in near darkness to the closest helipad, where medics were waiting and unloaded Connor to get him directly into surgery.

  Izzy was still trying to process what had happened while he and Gregg and JD stood there, shaking hands with the crew and one of the pilots of the Chinook, who introduced himself as Alaska. If it hadn’t been for them…

  “How do we thank you?” Izzy searched for words to express his gratitude and came up short. “Our firstborns, half my income for the rest of my life?”

  Alaska just laughed, said, “Hey, it’s what we do, that’s all. But they do have bottomless glasses at the club if you’re buying.”

  No sooner had they survived a night with Alaska than it was back to business as usual. The latest drug group being held was in the mental health clinic of the 935th KO near Saigon. It was basically a mirror image of the one 275 miles north in Nha Trang at Camp McDermott—the same metal desks on a concrete slab floor, walls made out of fly screen with green sand bags half way up the walls. The same metal roof on which the rain poured down. The same circle of chairs surrounding Izzy and Gregg, with the same looking GIs in various degrees of deterioration.

  Izzy glanced around the latest group and knew how enormously lucky he and Gregg were to be here instead of dead on a beach or burned alive in a chopper. Still, he tried not to feel as despondent as these guys looked. When they were alone, Gregg was struggling to keep desperation at bay himself. Not that anyone else would ever guess it from the way he did his thing, and kept doing his thing, group after group after group—getting the guys comfortable until they opened up. Then JD completely fooling them all again with a different disguised “druggie” look. Then hooking up afterwards with the other hardcore “druggies” in search of the ever elusive contact that would lead them up the food chain to the river pirates who had kidnapped Kate.

  If that was the real story. The longer this went on, the more obvious it became there was a lot more at work here than the bang, bang, bang and boom, boom, boom JD had initially spelled out. As far as Izzy could tell, other than offering the equivalent of a Band-Aid to the mostly strung-out GI’s in need of rehab triage, they weren’t any further ahead than when they started their search for Kate.

  As usual, he and Gregg hung around and talked privately with a few of the guys, making sure those seeking help would be set up with additional counseling once they left. They hadn’t taken off on their own for any sightseeing excursions since My Tho, but this close to Saigon, it was awfully tempting.

  “Excellent work, Dr. Kelly,” Izzy told him once they were back in their latest assigned bunk room, this one upgraded to something better than the regular. They actually had a private shower. Two beds, on which they sat across from each other now, with just enough space between them for a little refrigerator against the wall. It had been filled with cold Pepsi. Izzy tapped his bottle to Gregg’s.

  “Thanks, Iz. And nice of JD to come through on the Holiday Inn.” He swung a bottle-wielding hand to encompass their modest quarters, luxurious in comparison to most of the others they had bunked in, while even those were pure five star compared to what the grunts sloughing through rice paddies and jungle terrain had for rest and shelter.

  “He came through on something else, too.” Izzy pulled out the stack of letters from Margie that JD had slipped to him earlier. All but one he had already ripped through, too needful of what they offered to be patient, but he had kept one intact to open later. It was certainly more than Gregg had to anticipate.

  Izzy felt a little guilty for having so much to be grateful for when his best friend did not.

  “Damn, does the bastard always have to go screwing with how much I really can’t stand him?” Gregg’s smile was weary but sincere. “Of course, if he really wanted to mess with that, he would’ve thrown in a bottle of Jack to go with the Pepsi—or, not to go with the Pepsi. Straight from the bottle works for me. Especially if we have to get on another chopper.”

  Guilt, Izzy thought, wasn’t always such a bad thing. Like any good Jewish boy, his mother had
raised him on it.

  He produced the evidence of his guilt from the rucksack where he’d stashed it.

  “Only the best for you, my friend. Now let’s crack this open and see what we can figure out, since clearly what we are doing is not working—at least as far as Kate is concerned.” Izzy started to say more, but didn’t want to be the first to give voice to the most obvious concern—that the longer they went without finding Kate, the higher the risk they never would. Hope was a precious commodity, and he was not stealing that from Gregg. Instead, he ventured, “I’ve decided that even if JD is almost certainly withholding valuable information from us, Kate is not just a ruse to cart us along for other devious purposes. I think she really is missing and that much is legitimate. What concerns me is that he’s continuing with a game plan that hasn’t produced the desired results—and for JD to remain on a failed course of action is not like him at all.”

  “I know.” Gregg took a sip, wore a momentary expression of bliss, and then passed the bottle of Jack back to Izzy’s side of the aisle. “Did you notice his left eye twitching earlier?”

  “Yes. And considering his need, and his exceptional ability to maneuver situations and people to his benefit, it must be maddening to him not to be able to control one of his own muscles. I’m sure it’s from stress, lack of sleep, the usual suspects for eye spasms.” Izzy took his turn, then back the bottle went to Gregg. “I’ve actually wondered if we should offer him some counseling.”

  Gregg made a strangled sound in mid-gulp and nearly spewed what was left in his mouth. “Sorry, sorry,” he managed between Jack-laced coughs while he pounded his chest. Once he caught his breath, he didn’t just laugh, he roared. “You actually think Mr. Smoke-and-Mirrors would confide in us? Hell, Izzy, he doesn’t even tell us where we’re going from one day to the next, or what he’s doing while we lie low in whatever room he has us stashed away in. I mean, thank God we have each other and get along, but—”