Blood Lines (ncis)

by Mel Odom

  “Why do you say that?”

  McGovern lit up another cigarette from the butt of his previous one. “To understand that, you’d have had to be there. You’d have had to be in that jungle, fighting Charlie. Everybody I knew that was over there was afraid.” He paused. “Except this kid Hinton.”

  “He wasn’t afraid?”

  “Nope. Not a day he was over there. Probably not the night Country shot him either.”

  “Why?”

  “The way I figured it, Hinton thought he had a direct connection to God himself. You could tell it too, the way he came over there and sat down in the middle of us. Like nothin’ and nobody could touch him.” McGovern shrugged. “Or maybe he just felt safe because Country was sitting there with us. Anyway, he sat down, looked us all in the eye, and ordered a soda pop. Like he was Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke or something.”

  Maggie waited. The hardest part of conducting an interview was knowing when to be quiet and let silence make the person being interviewed talk.

  “After we had a round or two,” McGovern said, “Victor suggested we go hunting. And that’s when things started to get real interesting.”

  53

  ›› Intensive Care Unit

  ›› Las Palmas Medical Center

  ›› El Paso, Texas

  ›› 0815 Hours (Central Time Zone)

  “Hunting?” Shel asked.

  His daddy nodded but didn’t look at him.

  “For what?” Shel tried to imagine, couldn’t, and gave up.

  “Victor didn’t say,” Tyrel answered. “Just told us there wasn’t nothing like being out in the jungle at night.”

  “You’d run night maneuvers before.”

  “Yep. But we’d never run night maneuvers with Victor Gant. Everybody talked about him like he was a ghost out in the jungle. I wanted to see him in action. See if he really knew that much more than I did. My daddy taught me how to hunt at night. We used to go coon huntin’ down in the hollers all the time when I was a kid. When I got older, Daddy taught me how to take deer during the daytime and how to track a coyote at night. I was a whisper in the darkness.”

  Shel listened to his daddy talk. In all the years that he’d known the man, Tyrel had never talked so much about what he’d done. Others had told Shel stories, but Tyrel wasn’t one to abide bragging. If he’d been talking to his daddy for any other reason, Shel would have been happy to sit and listen.

  “So we all went and got our rifles,” Tyrel said. “Then we slipped through security and went out into the jungle.”

  “Hinton went with you?”

  “Yeah. That’s where I…” Tyrel stopped speaking for a moment. “He didn’t come back that night. He died out there.”

  “Why did he go?”

  “I don’t know.” Tyrel’s voice was dry and paper-thin.

  “Did you ask him?”

  “No. I was twenty-one years old. I was scared to be going, but I was excited too. I was going with Victor Gant. A genuine penetration team legend. There was nothing that coulda kept me from going that night.” Tyrel paused. “Except knowin’ how it was all gonna turn out.”

  ›› Highway 19

  ›› Qui Nhon, Vietnam

  ›› 2207 Hours

  ›› October 15, 1967

  An hour after leaving the cantina, Tyrel was still drunker than Cooter Brown. He figured an hour of walking would have put him near to rights, but he was still having trouble seeing straight. And walking straight for that matter.

  They were three miles out from Qui Nhon when Victor Gant called a break.

  “How are you boys feeling?” Victor asked.

  Everybody answered that they were feeling fine except for Denny. He’d been kind of hanging back from the crowd even though he’d agreed to come. Watching Denny now, mad at himself because he couldn’t sober up enough to take care of himself and wasn’t quite drunk enough to forget about being afraid, Tyrel didn’t know why Denny had come.

  “That’s good,” Victor said, “because now we’re going to do exercises.”

  “Exercises?” Denny asked.

  “Yeah,” Victor said. “A few night maneuvers.” He looked at Tyrel. “Country there said he wanted to learn to be a better soldier. Tonight I’m giving lessons.”

  “Country needs to be in bed,” Denny said. “He’s three sheets to the wind as it is.”

  Fat Mike jabbed Denny in the chest with a big forefinger. “You think him bein’ drunk is any different than bein’ out there in the jungle for four or five days? Dude, you don’t get no sleep out there. You’re too busy tryin’ to grow eyeballs in the back of your head to sleep. You think sleep deprivation is any different than being drunk?”

  Denny didn’t say anything.

  “Glad we got that cleared up,” Victor declared. “We’re going to divide up into teams for this. Country, you’re with me.”

  Tyrel’s chest swelled with pride at having been chosen. He took a fresh grip on his M14 and walked unsteadily over to join Victor.

  “Hinton, you’re with Fat Mike.”

  Denny wasn’t happy about that.

  “Hey,” Tyrel said, “I’ll see you in a little bit, okay?” He winked at Denny to show him he was having fun.

  ›› Atwater Apartment Building

  ›› Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  ›› 0924 Hours

  “Wait,” Maggie said, trying to understand everything that had happened on the night of October 15, 1967. “Victor Gant took men who’d been drinking out into the bush to run maneuvers?”

  McGovern smiled slyly. “No. You see, that’s what he told Country and Hinton. He figured that’s the way they’d tell it when they got back to camp.”

  “Then what was really going on?”

  “Victor was using the maneuvers as a cover,” Remy said.

  McGovern grinned hugely and touched a finger to his nose. “My man here knows the score.”

  “Then why was Victor out there?” Maggie asked.

  “Back in those days, Victor had him a black market and drug scam going with a Kit Carson named Tran.”

  “Tran who?” Maggie asked.

  “I don’t know. Victor didn’t let anybody except Fat Mike up in his business. And I don’t know if he told Fat Mike the truth about everything.”

  “So why was Victor out there?” Remy asked.

  “Man had to pick up a delivery,” McGovern said. “He was supposed to get it on the way into Qui Nhon, but the dude who was supposed to deliver it wasn’t there.”

  “Why wasn’t he?”

  McGovern sighed. “That’s another question I can’t answer. All I know is that Victor was using those two cherries to cover up what he had going on. If anybody asked, they’d just say they were out running maneuvers. Only that ended up all wrong.”

  “What went wrong?”

  “I went with Country and Victor. The three of us hit the jungle. I was pretty high. In addition to the drinking we’d been doing, I’d been smoking reefer like a mad dog.”

  “So Country wasn’t the only one wandering around messed up out in the dark?” Remy asked.

  “Nope. Most of Victor’s crew stayed messed up back in those days. How else do you think we made it through all those operations?” McGovern took a drag off his cigarette. “Where the wheels come off was when Country went to take a nature call and saw Tran’s boy slippin’ around in the jungle.”

  ›› Highway 19

  ›› Qui Nhon, Vietnam

  ›› 2241 Hours

  ›› October 15, 1967

  While he stood there in the bushes taking care of business, Tyrel tried to get his thoughts together. The fog that had filled his mind back at the cantina was not only proving unshakable but seemed to be growing steadily worse.

  That was when he saw the Vietnamese man gliding through the forest.

  Tyrel froze in the brush the way his daddy had trained him to. Animals could only see in black and white, and people were so used to looking without actu
ally seeing that only movement really drew attention. Tyrel had tried to get that point across to other soldiers out in the jungle, but not many of them listened to him.

  The Vietnamese man was a soldier. Tyrel knew that from the easy way he moved through the trees and brush. If the moon hadn’t dusted him silver for just a split second while he’d been moving, Tyrel knew he’d never have seen him.

  Unfortunately Tyrel had also lost sight of Victor and the other guy, the African-American one. McGowan. Something like that.

  Easing into motion, Tyrel picked up his rifle and stayed within the bush. He moved slowly and cautiously. The adrenaline pumping through his body sobered him up a little, he thought, but his vision was still double and blurry.

  At that moment, Victor seemed to materialize out of nowhere beside him.

  “Where are you going?” Victor whispered, so close he was breathing in Tyrel’s ear.

  “Charlie,” Tyrel said, his heart thumping in his chest. “Got Charlie in the jungle with us.”

  Victor looked around. “You sure?”

  Tyrel nodded slowly. “Saw him. Saw him myself.” He licked his lips. “Might be more’n one of ’em.”

  “Just slow down,” Victor said calmly. “Just slow down, and we’ll figure this out right enough. Follow me.” He slid into the brush.

  Slow and easy, regretting every beer he’d had, Tyrel followed. He was amazed at how fluidly Victor moved through the jungle. There was so much darkness around them that Tyrel almost couldn’t see the hand in front of his face. He didn’t know how they were going to find Charlie in the brush without getting themselves killed.

  Where’s McGowan?

  ›› Atwater Apartment Building

  ›› Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  ›› 0933 Hours

  “I saw Victor and Country creepin’ through the brush,” McGovern told Maggie. “Didn’t know what they might be doing other than maybe playing war games. But I knew Country was tense. You could see that in every line in that white boy’s body.” He shook his head.

  “Where were you while this was going on?” Remy asked. He didn’t care for McGovern. He’d known too many men like him back in New Orleans. His grandma had tried to keep him away from such men, but that hadn’t always been a battle she’d won.

  Remy glanced at Maggie to check and see how she was taking everything in. She watched McGovern and didn’t seem in any way concerned.

  “I was takin’ care of Victor’s business,” McGovern replied. “He had a shipment of black tar heroin comin’ from Tran. Victor shipped packages like that out of Qui Nhon all the time. We all made money on it.”

  Revulsion filled Remy.

  “Business like that was easy,” McGovern said. “All you had to do was be willing to share a bit.”

  “And Victor was?”

  “Victor always was. Man liked him some money, but that wasn’t what he was all about. He liked havin’ people look up to him. To get that kinda attention, you gotta be willing to give in order to get. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Remy did. “Yeah. I know.”

  “What went wrong?” Maggie asked.

  McGovern took a drag on his cigarette and breathed out a cloud of smoke that rolled across the small living room. “Hinton. He musta got lost in the darkness.” He shrugged. “Probably wasn’t his fault. Fat Mike didn’t like him, and he probably ducked out on Hinton to let him fend for himself at the wrong time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, that’s when Country shot Hinton. While he was jumpin’ at ghosts he thought he was seeing in the jungle.”

  54

  ›› Highway 19

  ›› Qui Nhon, Vietnam

  ›› 2244 Hours

  ›› October 15, 1967

  “Keep my six,” Victor ordered. “I’ll watch what’s up ahead. You just cover my six.”

  Tyrel turned sideways as he followed Victor. That way he could watch along their backtrail and protect their flank.

  “You stay close, Country,” Victor said. “You just stay close and be cool. I’ll get us out of this.”

  Afraid his voice would crack if he spoke, Tyrel instead chose to say nothing. He kept the M14 snugged into his shoulder, ready to raise it up at a moment’s notice.

  “Where’d you see this guy?” Victor asked.

  “To the left,” Tyrel said. And his voice did crack. He felt embarrassed.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Country. I’ll get you out of this.”

  Tyrel knew they shouldn’t have been there. He should have stayed back at the base, crawled into his rack, and slept it off. Instead he had to be stupid and prideful.

  A light flared in the darkness.

  “Look out!” Victor warned.

  Tyrel twisted to track the light at once. He had just a momentary glimpse of the Vietnamese man sighting down a rifle not more than sixty or seventy yards away.

  “Rifle!” Tyrel called as he brought his M14 up and started firing. He got four shots off before Victor Gant dropped a hand on the rifle and told him to stop shooting.

  “Just hold up,” Victor whispered. “Let’s see what we’re into here.”

  Breath ragged and hot against the back of his throat, Tyrel stared into the darkness where the Vietnamese soldier had stood. Nothing was there.

  Then a figure ran across the darkness to where the Vietnamese soldier had been. It took Tyrel a minute to recognize the man as McGowan.

  ›› Atwater Apartment Building

  ›› Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  ›› 0937 Hours

  “I was the one what found Hinton,” McGovern said. “He was lyin’ up in them bushes where Country said he saw the Vietnamese soldier. Hinton had been shot twice. Once in the face and once in the neck. It was an awful mess, but I seen worse while I was over there.” He slapped his useless legs and cursed. “I had worse done to me while I was over there.”

  “What about the Vietnamese?” Remy asked. He didn’t let McGovern’s physical disability touch him. Men of his ilk were skilled at using infirmity to get sympathy. Remy knew that from watching all the panhandlers back in New Orleans when he’d grown up.

  McGovern raised his shoulders, then dropped them. “Don’t know. The only Vietnamese guy I saw that night was Tran’s man.”

  “Do you think that was who Country saw?”

  “Man, I don’t know what Country thinks he saw that night. All I know is that when I got over to where he was shootin’, that poor boy had checked out. When Country got over there, saw what he’d done, he absolutely freaked.”

  ›› Highway 19

  ›› Qui Nhon, Vietnam

  ›› 2251 Hours

  ›› October 15, 1967

  When he stared down at Denny’s ruined face, Tyrel got sick. He turned away from the dead man and heaved into the nearby bushes. The sour taste of vomit filled his mouth and he stank of it.

  Victor’s hand rested on his shoulder. “Go easy there, Country. You didn’t know.”

  “I killed Denny,” Tyrel gasped. He turned and stared at his dead friend. “I killed him.”

  “You ask me,” Victor said, “I’d say he killed himself. He should know better than to flash a light out here.”

  The small flashlight lay only a short distance from Denny’s lifeless hand. The beam shone into the grass till Victor knelt down and retrieved the light. He switched it off and slid it into a pocket on his BDUs.

  “We’ve got to get him back to Qui Nhon,” Tyrel said. “They’ve got doctors and nurses there.”

  “Doctors and nurses ain’t goin’ to help this guy,” Fat Mike said. He’d only just gotten there. “Country put a bullet through his brainpan.” He turned to Tyrel. “That’s good shootin’ in the dark, man. You got two outta four.”

  Tyrel couldn’t even remember aiming. Everything was on autopilot out in the jungle.

  “We got to think about this,” Victor said. He glanced at Tyrel. “If we take Hinton’s body back, try to tell them wh
at we were doing out here, this thing’s gonna end your career in a heartbeat. They might put you in military prison for this because you were drunk at the time.”

  A fear like none he’d ever known assailed Tyrel at that moment. He’d already given up any ideas of going back home a hero. Vietnam didn’t make heroes these days. But he couldn’t imagine going back as a prisoner guilty of killing a fellow soldier. Even if it was by mistake.

  “I know I don’t want anything to do with an investigation like that.” Victor paused. “And neither do you, Country.”

  “We can’t just leave him here,” Tyrel whispered.

  “We take him back, there’s gonna be an investigation,” Victor assured him. “Uncle Sam will rain a storm down on your head. This is the military, Country. They don’t give free passes for mistakes.”

  Tyrel knew that was true. He’d heard the same kind of speech all throughout his military career.

  “You got a woman back home?” Victor asked.

  Unable to answer, Tyrel just stared at Denny and willed the man to get up and tell him it was all a joke. Except he knew it wasn’t a joke. There was too much blood.

  “Are you listening to me?” Victor demanded.

  “Yeah.”

  Victor took Tyrel’s face between his hands. “Look at me, Country.”

  Tyrel tried to, but tears were streaming down his face and blurring his vision. He blinked to clear them, but there were more.

  “Pull it together and look at me,” Victor ordered.

  Hurting, more scared than he’d ever been in his life, Tyrel did. Victor’s eyes were hard and black. He looked like he’d never been scared a day in his life.

  “Do you have a girl back home, Country?” Victor asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to see her again?”

  Tyrel nodded.

  “Then you’re gonna have to do exactly what I say,” Victor told him. “If you do, we’re gonna be shut of this and we won’t ever speak of it again. Do you hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  Victor stared deeply into his eyes. “What I should do is take you back to the post and turn you in myself. I’m a sergeant. It’s my duty.”