Lincoln nodded. They were a tribe from a mountainous region of Vietnam who fought gallantly alongside the Americans—and sometimes put their ARVN counterparts to shame—against the NVA and Vietcong. Stories of their prowess in combat were already legendary. “Sure.”
“Well, we don’t have Montagnards in Laos, but we have something just as good. Maybe even better. They’re called the Hmong. They mostly live in the mountains that rim the Plain of Jars. They’re not ethnic Laos or Vietnamese but an entirely different race. And for historical reasons of their own, they hate those commie pricks almost as much as I do.”
“So they’re on our side?”
“The ones who know about us are. The rest will be, as soon as we can make contact. And with some help from their new American friends—mostly in the way of training and supplies—they can become a major impediment to the Pathet Lao.”
They had reached the camp. Flies were swarming over the VC bodies, buzzing around in black clouds. Lincoln hoped the copters arrived soon, to take away the American dead and wounded and to get him away from these corpses.
“I still don’t see what all this has to do with me,” Lincoln said.
“We’re obviously keeping a low profile here in Laos. Rivers said he had footage of American troops here, but I think he was full of shit. He knew the film had been destroyed, so nobody could disprove him. He probably didn’t even know where the border was. Personally, I think we should have a major force here, but the desk jockeys in the Pentagon have their own ideas. Instead of a major presence, we’re positioning a single man—a good man—in each of several Hmong villages. Those men will recruit the natives, win their trust, train them, and deploy them on missions against the Pathet Lao and any VC or NVA troops dumb enough to cross into Laos.
“We’re looking at Special Forces soldiers particularly, because they’ve demonstrated the skills our guys will need. They’ll remain with their current service, but they’ll be on loan to the Agency. As such, they’ll be paid a bonus on top of their military salary. And of course, they’ll work largely without supervision, making decisions for themselves, out in the field.”
Lincoln thought he understood where this was heading, but he wanted the man to say it. He kept quiet. Finally, Donovan added, “There’s going to be a lot of commie ass to kick. And I want you to be the one doing the kicking. So how about it?”
“Do I have to tell you right now?”
Donovan grinned. “No. No, of course not. Take all the time you need, buddy.” He sucked in one last drag of his cigarette and flipped the butt onto a bullet-riddled North Vietnamese corpse. “Just as long as you give me your answer by tomorrow morning.”
11
* * *
Lincoln was barely conscious of the ride.
For one thing, he was dead tired—he’d been going nonstop since Captain Franklin had come to see him at Lang Vei. Most of the other guys, those who still drew breath, were sleeping as soundly as if they were dead. But for as exhausted as he was, Lincoln couldn’t sleep. He kept turning Donovan’s offer over and over in his mind, as if it were a physical thing he could pick up and examine.
He had so many questions. Could he tell anyone he was going to Laos, to live and work with the Hmong? It was surely a highly classified mission. He didn’t like the idea of being out there, alone, with Sammy and Ellis not knowing where he was and what he was doing. Sammy was counting on him to come home as soon as he could, not to go native someplace he wasn’t even legally supposed to be. What if something happened to him there? Would the government find his body and send him home, or would it pretend it had no idea what had happened to him? Or like Stan Rivers, would they make up a lie to explain his death? If he were captured, would he—again, like Rivers—be murdered by his own government, to avoid embarrassment?
He didn’t speak Laotian, or Hmong, or whatever it was those people spoke. He barely knew any Vietnamese. Did the Hmong tribesmen know English? How could they? He just couldn’t picture himself on his own in the Laotian wilderness, responsible for turning what he assumed was a bunch of primitive people—hardly advanced from the Stone Age, from the sound of it—into a fighting force capable of taking on well-trained North Vietnamese soldiers equipped with the best matériel that China and the Soviets could provide.
It was insane. He couldn’t possibly do that job.
He had questions but no one to ask. Donovan was once again sitting in front, next to the pilot. Lincoln was strapped into a seat in the rear of the craft, sitting on his flak jacket to protect himself against small-arms fire from below. Donovan had made it clear that he wanted an answer, not more conversation, when they landed at Danang. And by taking him aside for the conversation, he’d demonstrated that the topic was not to be broached with the other guys.
No, Lincoln was alone on this one. He had to make the call, and he had to do it with incomplete information.
Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. “Alone” was commonplace for a man who’d been abandoned by his mother as a toddler, who had never known his real father. That role had been filled for him by Father James, and then Sammy, but as hard as they tried—and they were both good men, he thought, flawed but well meaning—they both had other obligations as well. Lincoln was just one of dozens of kids at the orphanage, and by necessity, Father James and the sisters had to pay most attention to the troublemakers.
Lincoln Clay had learned early on that if he didn’t want to be harassed by the orphanage staff, all he had to do was behave inside its walls and save his hell-raising for outside. If a kid gave him trouble, he didn’t strike back immediately. He swallowed his anger, and then when he caught the kid away from the grounds and the staff, he made a point of reminding his opponent what transgression he’d committed—right before beating the crap out of him.
He had lost a few battles, too, early on. But it wasn’t long before he grew bigger than most of the other orphans, and stronger. And the beatdowns he took taught him how to fight, showed him what he was doing wrong. More crucially, they taught him that physical pain was fleeting compared to emotional pain. Humiliation lasted a long time, but a bruise faded in a few days.
Father James had been good to him. He and the sisters had fed Lincoln, put a roof over his head, gave him clothes, and taught him. But Lincoln had always held back some of himself. How he processed those things, how he dealt with them internally, was all on him. And he had been fine with it. After the adoption, it was years before he learned to trust his new family. Even now, although he would take difficult decisions to Sammy and Ellis for input, he ultimately made up his own mind.
He would do the same here. Instead of dwelling any further on the unknowable, he looked outside, watching Vietnam’s improbably green landscape whipping past. When Donovan asked the question, he would have an answer.
• • •
The helicopters touched down at the busy air base late in the afternoon. Lincoln still hadn’t slept, and the scene on the tarmac seemed to take on a surreal quality. Soldiers in olive drab or jungle fatigues rushed this way and that, everyone in a hurry but very few seeming to actually do anything. Enormous howitzers stood at one end of the airfield, like giant insects with their necks craned to catch the last rays of the sun, as wasp-like choppers circled. Airplanes landed and others took off. It was a war zone without a war. People came and went, but what was the point of all the hurly-burly motion?
Then he saw Donovan strolling toward him, the one man who didn’t seem rushed or anxious. He had a lit cigarette in his mouth and had somehow come up with a light linen blazer that he carried over his shoulder, like a tourist looking for beignets in the French Ward.
He stopped in front of Lincoln and nodded over his shoulder. “There’s a truck back there, on its way to Lang Vei,” he said. “You can get on it, if you want. Or not. Your choice.”
“If I skip the truck, then what?”
“Then you’ll grab a bunk here, and in a few days you’ll start your new life.”
Lincoln hesitated. “New life” made it feel like a big change. He had already known it would be. When he’d been issued his Green Beret, that had seemed like a new life in itself—instead of being just one more grunt, he had become a special breed of elite soldier. Now, Donovan was offering him a different path, an elevation in status that seemed meteoric compared to his expectations when he had enlisted. The only person in Lincoln’s life who wouldn’t be surprised would be Sammy, who had always insisted that Lincoln was destined for greatness, one way or another.
He didn’t know if he would even be able to tell his family. Again, so much he didn’t know.
And Donovan stood there, tapping ash off his butt, waiting for an answer.
“You said I had until tomorrow morning.”
“You believe everything you hear?”
“I’ll grab a bunk,” Lincoln said.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. Come on, I’ll make sure you get the best bunk this shithole has to offer.”
• • •
Lincoln could have gone into Danang, just a short ride up a paved road from the air base. But some of the guys he met told him that it was a sleepy little ville, nothing compared to Saigon. He was surprised. It was a beautiful setting, on the Danang Bay with the South China Sea just beyond it, and the Marble Mountains rising behind. In the United States, it would have been a resort area packed with fancy hotels.
Instead, he sat on the beach, read a paperback book someone else had abandoned, and swam in the warm waters of the bay. He ran on the white sand and worked out in the makeshift gym set up at the base. He ate at the mess with the rest of the grunts. Even though he didn’t know them, he couldn’t help feeling some of the camaraderie of men in uniform, men with a common purpose. Looking around, he couldn’t know which ones would be dead in a month or a year, but some would. They were all aware of it, too. That knowledge of impending danger—like the uniforms, like the training—drew them together.
The feeling was familiar to him. The Black Mob back in New Bordeaux was much the same. The city had numerous crime organizations—Sal Marcano’s family first among equals—and tensions often ran high. Law enforcement was another constant thorn. Those two forces drove the men of any given gang together. And men they were; there were always women, but for the most part they were on the periphery, wives and girlfriends who took care of the home front. Having been raised in that environment, the sense of soldiers at war was a kind of homecoming.
But that camaraderie was short-term, for him. He had agreed to leave this all behind—the Army, Vietnam, the forced bonding of men under fire—and instead would be alone in a different country, with foreigners of a kind he had never met. He couldn’t quite picture what it would entail, what conditions would be like, how he would live and work with those strangers. And once again, there was no one to ask. Before he’d left, Donovan had made clear that Lincoln was to talk to no one about his new assignment. If men wondered why he was just hanging around the air base, he was to make something up or put them off.
As it was, nobody asked. There were whole companies hanging around Danang, not sure of where they were headed or what it would be like when they got there. One man in that boat didn’t raise any eyebrows.
Still, he was getting impatient. Sitting still wasn’t his style. When Donovan showed up again, four days later, Lincoln was more than ready.
12
* * *
“We shall organize, we shall organize
We shall organize today
Deep in my heart I do believe
We shall overcome someday.”
Ellis belted out the words to the old spiritual alongside Vanessa, his voice a surprisingly rich counterpoint to her dulcet tones. They were marching on a picket line outside city hall, where many promises regarding segregation had been made but precious few kept. Ellis remembered reading about Native American treaties in school; he thought he had a pretty good idea what the Indians must have felt like every time a new oath was sworn in Washington. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times—I’m gettin’ my gun.
Of course, Vanessa didn’t hold with that viewpoint, and he could see where folks like Dr. King were having a more profound effect on public opinion than the Malcolm Xs of the world had ever had, so he was willing to do it her way. For now.
They’d been at it for only about a half hour and were just starting the fifth and final verse when red-and-blues lit up the street and distorted voices over megaphones started ordering them to disperse.
Vanessa looked over at him.
“You don’t have to stay for this part,” she said. Other people were already ditching their signs and running. Vanessa looked scared but determined. Ellis knew for a fact she’d never been arrested before. He also knew her parents would freak when they got the call to come bail her out, though they’d post the money without question. But her being willing to face their wrath—which terrified her more than the thought of being in police custody—because she believed so strongly in what she was doing just made him admire her that much more. And she was already about as far up on a pedestal as any woman besides Perla could get.
“You stay, I stay,” he said, and the look of gratitude she gave him almost made him feel guilty. He wasn’t afraid of being booked. It wasn’t like the inside of a jail cell was new territory for someone who’d grown up the way he had. Sure, Sammy would be pissed about having to bail him out, especially for something as dumb as protesting, but the old man would do it just the same. And once he knew there was a girl involved, he’d probably congratulate Ellis for having the gumption to go all out to impress her. Any punishment would be forgotten. Hell, he’d probably buy Ellis a drink.
But Vanessa didn’t know any of that. She had no idea about Ellis’s family—about Sammy, or Perla, or Lincoln, or the family business. Ellis was afraid if she did know about it, she wouldn’t want to see him anymore. And while their “seeing” each other thus far had consisted only of a handful of movement-related events, he’d been angling for more, and he thought she was receptive to the idea. He was pretty sure if they got arrested together, that would seal the deal.
Maybe then, after she got to know him better, he could introduce her to Sammy.
Or maybe he’d just wait until Lincoln got back.
Or maybe he’d just keep her away from all of them for as long as he could and hope for the best. He wasn’t used to feeling embarrassed by who he was and what he did, but being around Vanessa made him want to be someone different, someone more . . . worthy of her, he guessed.
Just thinking that ought to make him angry. He was Sammy Robinson’s son, for God’s sake! He was worthy of any woman.
But . . . this was Vanessa Dautrieve. Upper middle-class family, college student at SUNB, father a banker, mother a socialite. She didn’t just run in different circles, she ran in a different world, breathed a more rarified air.
She was too good for a mob boss’s son.
Hell, she was probably too good for anyone’s son. But damned if he wasn’t going to try for her anyway, do whatever it took to land her. He ignored the little voice that asked what would happen if what it took was making a choice between her or Sammy and Lincoln.
It hadn’t come to that. Not yet, anyway. Not today.
Today all it was going to take was getting roughed up, cuffed, and booked. Fastoche.
“You’re a real hero, you know that?” Vanessa said, her dark eyes wide with admiration. “A knight in shining armor.” And then she leaned over and kissed him with those lush, full lips, and Ellis prayed she wouldn’t ask him to do anything in the next few seconds, because there would be nothing on the face of the Earth he could deny her.
And then there was a uniform pulling them roughly apart, and all Ellis could see was the stark fear on Vanessa’s face as she looked to him for guidance, all her earlier confidence forgotten as her arms were twisted behind her back and metal bracelets were snapped onto her wrists by a burly white officer wh
ose face was half mustache.
“Ellis!”
“Ellis?” the cop who had a hold of his collar repeated, spinning him around to get a better look at his face. “Ellis Robinson? Shit.” Ellis recognized him as one of the good ole boys in the department who wasn’t too good to take black money to look the other way.
The cop looked over at his partner.
“Let her go.”
“The hell I will!”
The first cop shrugged, slipping his own cuffs back into his belt.
“Your funeral, man. I ain’t arresting Sammy Robinson’s boy, or his girlfriend. I need trouble with the Black Mob like I need a hole in the head. You got a death wish, you go right on ahead. I ain’t stoppin’ ya.”
“Fuck.”
“Exactly.”
The mustachioed cop uncuffed Vanessa and shoved her none too gently toward Ellis, who caught her in his arms and pulled her close.
“You two get out of here before I change my mind or someone who doesn’t know—or care—who your daddy is gets hold of you.” When neither of them moved, he frowned. “Now!”
They didn’t need any further prompting. They ran.
• • •
They’d taken Lincoln’s Drifter to the demonstration, so when they got back to it, they just got in and drove until it got dark. Ellis wasn’t even sure where they were headed; he just followed traffic, stopping at red lights, going when they turned green, waiting for Vanessa to say something. Anything.
Mafia III Page 7
