Foreign Enemies and Traitors

by Matthew Bracken

  “Who are you?” Carson had spent the last three weeks dreading a sudden and unhappy end to his peaceful convalescence, and here it was.

  “That doesn’t concern you. We ask, you answer—that’s the only program tonight. Got it?” The mask had one slit across his eyes and another across his mouth.

  Carson tried to sit up on the couch, but was jabbed down by the carbine’s muzzle in his ribs. He had to address his tormenters while lying helplessly on his back.

  The man with the pistol asked, “What’s your name? I mean your real name.”

  He sighed. What was the point of holding out, or lying? Presumably, they’d already interrogated Zack. “Phil Carson.”

  The second masked man with the rifle asked, “So who is this Colonel Brice?” He held the laminated military ID card in front of Carson’s face.

  “He’s a dead man, or at least that’s what I was told. The card was made for me.”

  “By who?” asked the pistol wielder.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “So start telling it.”

  Carson repeated the truthful version of his shipwreck, detention and escape from Camp Shelton, as nearly as he remembered telling it to Zack. The two men listened quietly, occasionally asking questions about details.

  The man with the pistol changed tacks while Carson was describing the Christmas Eve drive up the eastern side of Mississippi. He held up a sheet of loose-leaf paper. “Where did you get this list?” Its many creases showed that it had been recently folded to postage-stamp size. Carson recognized his list at once, but it was not in his handwriting. It was an exact copy of his hidden personal contact sheet. Zack had sold him out.

  The masked man shook the page in Carson’s face. “What are you, deaf and dumb? We’re not playing around. Where did you get this list?”

  “It’s my own—I didn’t ‘get’ it anywhere.”

  “Who is on this list? I mean, who are these people? What’s your connection to them?”

  Carson’s mind spun. Now he risked compromising more people, endangering them through his carelessness. What a huge mistake it had been to carry a copy in clear text, uncoded, even if it was in miniature and—he had thought—well concealed. “They’re old friends.”

  “So you say. Don’t play stupid. Let me ask you again: what do these old friends have to do with you?”

  Carson hesitated, considering his words. “I knew some of them in the military, a long time ago. Some I met later.”

  Now the two masked invaders were quiet, and exchanged glances. The man with the pistol held the paper with his gun hand and pointed to a single line written near the bottom. “This one, right here. Can you read this name?”

  Carson fiddled on his narrow reading glasses, squinted at the list, and sighed. “Eric Vikersun. Viker, rhymes with biker, not Vikker rhymes with liquor.” The ditty giving the pronunciation of the name just popped into his head, after lying dormant somewhere in his brain for decades.

  The masked pistol holder nodded almost imperceptibly. “How did you know him?”

  Carson exhaled again, and continued. “Vietnam. He was in one of my my recon teams for a few months. Before he was medevacked out.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Oh…that would have been in 1970, I think.”

  “Where did it happen? His getting hit, I mean. Be specific, and don’t even try to bullshit me.”

  “Officially, or in reality?”

  “Try both.”

  “Officially, up around Dak To. We were staging out of Kontum. In reality, we were in southern Laos. Those cross-border missions were part of Operation Prairie Fire. That was all classified back then. It was classified for years and years after the war.”

  “How was he wounded?”

  “Mortar frag in his legs and back. They caught us on the LZ, on insertion. We barely got out. I caught some too, but not as bad. It was almost normal to get hit on the LZs by then. The NVA had most of the likely LZs indexed and wired—it was grim. Prairie Fire was just about finished by 1970. A lost cause, the way we were fighting it.”

  “Who else was on that mission?”

  Carson closed his eyes, thinking. There had been so many cross-border ops, and the recon teams frequently changed as men were wounded or killed. Typically, there would be three or four Americans and six or seven ’Yards. “Let’s see…I think…Chuck Miller, and Dick Fielding. They were the only other Americans on that one, I think. I could be wrong—there were a lot of missions like that, and it was a long time ago.”

  The second man leaned over and whispered into the masked ear of the man holding the list.

  “Tell me something else. What was Eric Vikersun’s nickname?”

  Carson replied without hesitation. “Eric the Red. But usually we just called him the Viking.”

  The man with the pistol nodded. “Describe him.”

  Carson closed his eyes again, remembering. “Real tall. At least six foot four. Kind of reddish-blond hair, I think, but it was usually cut short, of course. Blue eyes, for sure. What’s all this about Eric Vikersun? Why do you want to know?”

  The man dropped the list and pulled off his mask. He had long dark blond hair, a thick chestnut beard, and piercing blue-green eyes. “Eric Vikersun was my father. I’m Boone Vikersun.”

  “Viker, rhymes with biker,” Carson murmured.

  “You got it. But folks call me Boone.”

  Phil Carson stared in wonder for a few moments. “You know what? I think I met you before. You were just a kid, not even ten. It would have been at Fort Bragg, at the SOG reunion. I remember seeing Eric at the reunion, and that he had his boy with him—so that would have been you. I’m guessing it was in the late ’80s. How’s your father?”

  “My father’s dead. He died five years ago. Heart attack.”

  “Damn…”

  “Yeah. Look, I don’t remember meeting you at the reunion, but I heard of you. My dad thought a lot of you. You were in some of his best stories. I heard them since I was a kid. Maybe that’s why I joined up too, all of my dad’s old war stories. I put eighteen years in the green machine before this current shit storm came down. Airborne Ranger, Green Beret. The whole nine yards, from Kuwait to Kandahar. You know the drill. You were in it too, back in the day.”

  Carson nodded, looking at the face of the man who so strongly resembled his old recon teammate. It was like seeing a ghost in the flesh, except for the long hair and the beard. “You only did eighteen years instead of going for twenty? Did you voluntarily separate? Or did they RIF you out, get you during a reduction in force?”

  Vikersun grinned. “Neither. They wouldn’t let me separate, so I just walked away. I’m not sure what they call it these days, but they’re not sending me a paycheck anymore, that’s for damn sure. From their point of view, I guess I’m a deserter; they didn’t give me permission to leave. But the way I see it, most of the ones that stayed on active duty are traitors—at least the ones operating with the foreign troops sure as hell are. I walked away, so yeah, technically that means I deserted. But when foreign soldiers are running around Tennessee, well, I sure as hell ain’t staying out of that fight! This is my state. Eighteen years or no eighteen years. And I don’t care if our own president sent them in—Jamal Tambor’s a traitor too, as far as I’m concerned.”

  The second man pulled off his own mask, revealing the face of a young man in his mid-twenties, with medium-length wavy black hair and dark eyes. Unlike his older companion, he had only a week’s worth of stubble on his pale face.

  “I’m Doug Dolan. Nice to meet you, Mr. Carson. Boone told me some of his father’s war stories, after we got the message and decided to come down here. We just had to be sure you were the real thing, and not a plant.” He held out his right hand.

  Carson sat up on the sofa and shook the offered hand while studying the younger man’s features. Dolan seemed like a decent enough guy, at least on first impression. It stood to reason that the Viking’s son wouldn’t hang
around with any slackers or REMFs—Rear Echelon Mother F’ers. Zack had also quietly entered the room, looking sheepish, as if he wasn’t sure if he should apologize for bringing these armed visitors to the house without giving any warning.

  Boone stood up and stretched, holding his pistol straight out, and rocked his head from side to side, neck bones audibly cracking. He was wearing a long unzipped parka that extended almost to his knees. The hood was pushed back, revealing wild hair that covered his ears and stuck out in many directions. Like his equally tall father, Boone was an imposing figure with electric blue eyes and a reddish-blond beard. His rain parka was printed with one of the commercial hunting camouflage patterns, which looked like actual leaves and branches in a wet forest.

  He lowered his arms and unscrewed the suppressor from his pistol, rotating the metal tube seven or eight times before it came free. He pulled his parka aside and slid the pistol into a black holster beneath a compartmented combat vest. The black suppressor went into its own small pouch. His coat covered the vest and weapon when it fell closed. Then he looked down at Carson and said, “We can finish our little stroll down memory lane later on, but right now you’ve got to get up and get ready to leave. We’re moving out. I hope your ass is healed well enough so you can ride a horse. That’s what we’ll be doing tonight—a lot of riding. This house is blown. It’s not secure.”

  “How do you know?” Carson pushed the blanket off and swung his legs to the floor.

  “I really don’t see any good reason why you need to know that.” Boone paused, staring at Carson for a moment. “Ah, what the hell. Your getaway driver was picked up right after Christmas. The black medic. They know where you were dropped off, and that you were heading north, straight through here. If the word made it to me in Tennessee, there’s no telling who else knows. We can’t risk it, not after what happened to Zack’s father. It’s only a matter of time before they’re connecting the dots and kicking down that door over there. Or just dropping a rocket down this stovepipe, on general principle.”

  “What about Zack?”

  “He’s coming too. He understands. We had a long talk while you were cutting Z’s. It’s no good, him hanging around where all of his family died. And he knows how to contact us, so that makes it too much of a risk for him to stay, even if he wanted to. A risk for him, and for us too. This house was very useful, while it lasted. Great location. Zack’s father was a real patriot, an ideal courier, but shit…I guess his luck ran out. His getting nailed on this side of the border by a missile—that took us by surprise. We thought that was against the rules of engagement, but we’re figuring out that there aren’t any rules in this shitty little war. So we’re taking what we can carry on horseback and getting out right now.”

  “We’re moving tonight? The sky is clear…isn’t that risky?”

  “Have you looked outside lately? It’s snowing.”

  “Snowing?”

  “Yeah, snowing hard, low overcast. So we have to haul ass. Once it stops…”

  “Tracks.”

  “Exactly. And infrared—that’s even worse. As long as it’s coming down, we should be fine. They won’t put the drones up when it’s this bad. I hope.”

  Carson stood up and stretched. He said, “Okay, Boone, you’re the boss.” Then he put his hand out. “This is for your father—the Viking.”

  Boone Vikersun smiled and accepted the offered handshake. In his face Carson saw Eric the Red, decades before. Viker, rhymes with biker. The son was now probably pushing forty, about the age Eric was the last time he had seen him, over twenty years earlier at Fort Bragg. Boone the son was now older than the Vietnam memories of his father, eerily blurring and merging the two men into one in his mind. “So where are we going, roughly?”

  “Roughly?” Boone laughed. “Straight up into Tennessee, where else? That’s my state, and that’s where the whole shit storm is coming down. You’ll see for yourself, soon enough.”

  ****

  Jenny landed on her back hard, knocking the wind out of her. She moved each limb in turn and then her head; nothing seemed to be broken. She lay motionless for a moment, listening, and then she slowly sat up. The backpack lay a yard from her feet; the fur hat was still on her head. She was at the side of the mansion. A raised patio deck with snow-covered outdoor furniture was just a few yards to her right. She had narrowly missed landing on the wooden railing around the deck. If she had, she’d have certainly broken something, so she counted herself lucky.

  She slowly stood upright, looking all around as she brushed the snow off her backside. The closest of the bare oaks surrounding the mansion was about fifty yards down the slope. No soldiers or vehicles were visible on this side of the house. Pumping with adrenaline, she easily hefted the pack onto her back and walked straight downhill toward the trees, not looking back—hoping that any guard peering in her direction through the falling snow would see only another soldier.

  In half a minute Jenny reached the nearest oak, and once behind it she turned for the first time to stare back at the house. Flames leapt skyward from the windows on either side of the chimney, coloring the falling snow orange. The side of the house and the overhanging roof above the two windows were on fire. A pair of doors on the back of the mansion flew open, there was shouting and yelling. Soldiers stormed out, then turned to look up at the burning roof while throwing on their coats and hats. Jenny could see some girls mixed among the troops, all of them lit by the orange glow reflected off the blanket of snow. The soldiers’ attention seemed focused on the roiling flames above them. At least now the girls had some small chance to take advantage of the confusion caused by the sudden fire. While she watched, more fire exploded out of the third-floor bedroom windows. No one turned away from the fire to look downhill toward her hiding place.

  Jenny pushed the straps of the backpack further up on her shoulders and walked away. She continued down toward a stand of woods that grew in what appeared to be a small depression or valley. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, nearly covering the lawn of unmown grass and weeds. Her footprints were not obvious in the snow among the protruding tufts, as far as she could tell. If it continued snowing, her tracks would be erased after only a short while.

  Walking in the open, she tried not to think of a guard’s night scope being aimed at her back. In a few more seconds, she reached the covering line of bushes and low trees. Because it was winter, the thickly twined vegetation had receded enough for her to find a trail, and Jenny began to think that she might live to see another sunrise. She took one more look back up the hill. The entire top of the mansion was fully engulfed in dancing waves of fire reaching dozens of yards into the sky, outlined by the black fingers of the oak branches.

  ****

  Four horses were tied outside, saddled and ready to ride. Zack and the two visitors hurriedly loaded what supplies they could carry into bags and packs, and slung them across the horses in front and behind the saddles. The horses were huffing excitedly, stamping and blowing vapor through their nostrils while biting impatiently at their steel bits. The men were all dressed warmly in multiple layers, plus thick wool hats and gloves. Carson wore his complete military camouflage uniform, with long johns underneath, and the military-issue gore-tex parka on top. Doctor Foley’s 9mm Beretta was holstered on a web belt around his waist. Days earlier, he had found the web belt among the gear at Zack’s house, and modified a generic black nylon holster to take the Beretta. A velcro strap he had sewn onto it would hold the pistol securely in any position. Even while resting and recuperating, Carson had been preparing to leave, always improving his kit, and he was glad that he had been ready when Boone Vikersun arrived without advance notice. The unseen moon illuminated the clouds and the inch-deep snow on the ground, providing just enough light for them to see through the blowing flakes.

  “Do you need help getting up in the saddle?” asked Boone.

  “I’m about to find out,” replied Carson, lifting his left boot into the stirrup, and pullin
g himself up using the saddle horn for a grip. There was no easy method for him to mount the horse; he had to push and strain. The tight skin of his wound didn’t tear as he swung his right leg over the wide saddle and found the opposite stirrup with his right foot. The other three men had smoothly mounted up while he struggled aboard. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Boone addressed them all in a loud voice. “I’m leading. Carson, you’ll be second, then Zack, and Doug is going to be rear security. Phil, your horse knows what to do—you’ll be okay if you don’t mess up too bad. These are quarter horses, and nothing much spooks them. They don’t get ridden much in the winter, so they’re awful frisky. I’ll warn you now: they’re just dying to take off in a gallop, so hang on. I assume you know the basics of riding?”

  “I’m rusty, but yeah, I know what to do. Steer with the reins, like this. Pull back for slower, and kick for faster. I’ll be okay.” Just as long as my ass holds together, Carson thought. From this point on, he wouldn’t bitch or whine aloud, even if he bled to death. They’d know he couldn’t ride any further when his dead body fell from the saddle. Would he show weakness to the Viking’s kid? To another Special Forces operator? Never, not as long as he was alive. That’s just the way it was, within the ancient code of stoicism that defined their tribe. Even at his age. He’d die first.

  “Keep your head down and be alert,” instructed Boone. “We’re going to be riding under a lot of low branches, and a few bridges and tunnels even. If I holler duck, don’t wait to see what I’m ducking. Your horse will do all right—you just stay on the saddle.” While he was talking, Boone slipped night vision goggles over his face, and then pulled a bulky Icelandic knitted wool cap onto his head and over the NVG’s straps.

  Carson asked, “What’s his name?”

  “Who, your horse? Hell if I know. They’re not mine.”

  “You stole them?”