UNBREAKABLE (Murder on the Mekong, Book 1): Vietnam War Psychological Thriller

by Hart Rivers

  “You are to report right over there, sir, and the sergeant will take care of you. You’re being expected, as well as your company.”

  Izzy and Gregg moved as a reluctant unit to the imposing Master Sergeant.

  “Captain Gregg Kelly reporting.”

  The sergeant came to attention. “Captain Kelly, sir. Let me get your bags, sir.”

  “What?” Gregg asked suspiciously. “Why?”

  “Why, sir, you must know that you are going out VIP, First Class, right through that door there with the admirals, bird colonels, generals, and you are all processed, sir.” He glanced at Izzy’s name patch. “The orders say to admit your friend here, too. Both of you go right in now.” And he held open the door to what looked like a board room for a top Fortune 500 corporation.

  The air conditioning was another level of coolness to match the walnut paneled walls with silk oriental scrolls, a splashing fountain, and a navy steward in white manning the bar who made them the tallest gin and tonics they had ever seen. On the buffet table was a silver tray with anything you could want from home.

  “Oh man, are you kidding me?” Izzy filled his plate with lox and cream cheese and bagels while Gregg loaded up on prime rib that looked almost as delicious as what Sergeant Washington had grilled up on the beach.

  “Apparently it is good to be a general or an admiral or a spook,” Izzy noted as they got settled into the huge, comfy leather club chairs. “This must be the upside to making the team.”

  “It is definitely an excellent sendoff that I never expected from him. I wonder how he knew…” Gregg put down his G&T and turned suddenly serious. “It was unexpectedly hard for me to leave the 99 today and having you with me means the world. Promise me when you go back, you be careful, man, keep your ass down, no heroics, go out to the mission and look out for Kate—hell, you know all this. You know you better write me back. You’re the only one that…”

  “I can ever talk to,” supplied Izzy.

  “Yeah, don’t you know it, buddy.”

  “Absolutely.”

  As they shook on always being a team, another steward in white approached the table, bearing a silver tray. On the tray was an envelope. The delivery made to its recipient, Gregg picked it up. His hands felt cold.

  Gregg did as instructed on the outer envelope and did not open it until he was well on his way on the plane taking him home. He half expected the contents to self-destruct and take him out, only to be greeted by the unexpected yet again:

  Dear Gregg,

  I hope this letter finds you well and enjoying the sort of ride back home that you deserve and earned. We might not have seen eye to eye but I wanted to give you my personal thanks for everything you have done. I’m sure you will understand when I say that our friend is at a “special” facility that does not exist and do not be surprised if your expertise is sought out again for a particular type of research. To that end, I have enclosed a little something you requested and ask that you keep it as confidential as you keep everything else.

  In closing I would just like to say that this was the most difficult assignment of my career. Not only given the sensitivity of the issues involved, but because it became more than a job for me. You and Izzy taught me more than I ever expected to learn about human nature, including my own.

  I wish you sanctuary and peace, Gregg. Read and enjoy. Until we meet again, I remain

  Respectfully yours,

  John Doe

  NOTES FROM HELL

  They say that war is hell. It is not. This is hell. The locked ward for the criminally insane. There are actually two locked doors at every EXIT. You need keys for both. I have one already. Every day the same walls, the same people, the same medications to slow down your brain to the pace of a snail. Medications that you can feel are altering your nervous system and destroying your speed and coordination. The blandness and sameness makes you crazier and crazier. The ones that have been here a long time are walking zombies. They shuffle along the halls, some of them actually drooling. Some wear helmets all the time because they seizure so often and are banging their heads all the time.

  Oh, they are still dangerous, the walking zombies. They go off now and again and attack the staff. They mess them up pretty bad sometimes. If there is one thing crazy people and I have in common it is knowing who is dangerous. They stay away from me. The ones I know are dangerous I treat like very, very bad dogs. I always let them know where I am and never scare them or threaten them. If I have extra candy I give it to them. They remember. They remember the candy just like they remember who is mean to them. Milton managed to actually completely chew off the thumb and gouge out the eye of the tech that was mean to me before they subdued him. Only cost me a Mars bar. Old man Smith they say has bitten and disabled 5 techs in the crotch in his time here. He likes Snickers bars. He will help me get out for 3 bars when the time comes.

  I am getting adept at faking the meds and hiding them to use later. I always know when a blood test is coming so can get blood levels where I need to. I got stupid once in Nam and got caught and then taken out of the war which was, as far as I was concerned, a great place. It will not happen again. I have a plan and it is a good one. It should be; I have gone over it several thousand times since I have plenty of time. I will get back again and this time I will be a new person with a new life and will develop my skills totally to another level. I know just what I want to do and what I want to be. I am highly motivated, gung ho as they say.

  Everybody has a dream job says the vocational counselor and I agree with her. What can be better than a place they pay you to kill people for a living?? Almost everybody I knew over there was messed up by it. You go in there they say and all of you never comes back out. Me? I found myself. I felt better and better.

  I can hardly wait to go back.

  Gregg carefully folded the pages and returned them to the envelope. If only he could put away the snakes in his head just as easily, he would gladly close the door and never look at any of it ever again.

  Hours later, he opened his eyes, and remembered sanctuary and peace. Looking out the window, Gregg smiled.

  He could see the lights of San Francisco.

  Epilogue

  If Kate had started as Audrey dancing, she now felt like Sophia Loren in some hot Italian movie. She stood in the dusky light by the tatami floor mattress, looking down at JD. He was sleeping. His lithe brown, muscled body was naked and sprawled like a big jungle cat over the sheet. The breeze from the fan rustled his hair. His body had slick old scars scattered like some ancient swordsman’s across his chest, arms, and legs. The sweat from their lovemaking was still on him. If this was what chemistry felt like then she had an all-time reference point for heat level. The last five days and nights were a blur of being entwined and sliding over each other’s sweat slicked bodies and swimming and snorkeling in the South China Sea.

  She went out to the hammock and pulled down the filmy mosquito netting and then lazily swung back and forth, watching the tropical dusky sky turn dark and the stars begin to come out. Kate took a deep breath. Steady girl, she thought, steady. And then she thought, what the hell am I talking about, “steady?”

  She was as far from steady right now as she was from San Diego County and Katherine Lynn Morningside was too far gone to care. She knew that the guy on the sheets was about as likely to be domesticated as a panther, and what he did professionally was just as dangerous. She did not know precisely how he fit in with the government beyond their liaison with Phillip, nor had she probed since JD had a way of eliciting information himself. At this stage, she really thought it best he not know that Phillip was the would-be father who had arranged the abortion that didn’t go quite as expected.

  C’est la vie. Such was life. And she had far more to be grateful for than most.

  Certainly more than Shirley who had urged her to take a little time off, grab her chance at happiness while she could, because life was too fleeting to wait for assurances or second chances. Go
, go! Shirley had waved her away, and away Kate had gone to join JD at his private dwellings.

  There was a slight breeze coming up and Kate could hear some waves breaking on the shore. She had lit a candle before stepping outside and could see the main room’s interior as if for the first time. The small desk, portable typewriter, various books, most on Asian philosophy. The paintings were Chinese brush on rice paper and some on silk with poems in elegant Chinese calligraphy. JD had translated their words and told her how the painting, the poem, and the interaction of those and the observer was a way of communicating deep feeling and beauty that had been developed over six thousand years.

  When she asked him who had painted them, he smiled and just said, “Me. Let’s go snorkeling.”

  Under the water was another whole wet world that was just another kind of exploring of sensuality like their lovemaking.

  “Hey,” he said next to the hammock. She had not even heard him move. “Are you receiving visitors in there?”

  “I am,” she said. “At least the kind that can behave themselves since the last time you joined me we flipped out of here like a circus act.” Kate laughed.

  So did JD.

  They canoodled side by side in the hammock, head to foot, looking at one another in the light from the lantern he had lit.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Mmmmm,” she said. “Yes, hungry, hungry.”

  “The Headman’s sister is bringing over a special crispy fish, rice, and veggies. Fresh pineapple.”

  “I am calling the front desk and extending my stay.”

  “I hope so. Want to go on a river cruise?”

  “Sure. Mississippi, Nile?”

  “No, the Mekong.” JD caught her wrist. The matching silver bracelet on his glinted in the moonlight. “I have a little work, combined with a family visit with my brother. He is, shall we say, a bit of a mystery?”

  “Must run in the family.” Kate pretended to think about it but they both already knew she couldn’t resist an adventure any more than she could the lover in the hammock. “Actually, I think I would like that. A Mekong mystery. I know you have mysteries, but I did not know you had a brother.”

  “No one does, except you now.” He kissed her then. “We leave in the morning.”

  The End

  The Island Dreaming

  A man with outward courage dares to die;

  A man with inner courage dares to live.

  Lao Tzu

  Acknowledgments

  Anyone who writes stories of war knows how important support and encouragement is to getting through the darkness.

  No one could have a finer or more gifted and giving co-author than Olivia Rupprecht, my writing partner.

  My thanks to early readers and dear friends Nuala Vermeiren, Anne Algard, Sonja Kamber, Steven Smith, Berger Hareide, Nancy Gold, Nick Torokvei, and my brother Joseph Hart. Nora Tamada’s and Glenna McReynold’s early editorial feedback proved invaluable; Olivia and I are indebted to you both, as well as to Scott Rupprecht for going the distance. Much gratitude also to Michele Matrisciani and her father Dan, a Mekong Delta Vet whom I value for his endorsement of the authenticity and reality of the book.

  My respect and gratitude to master calligrapher, artist, and teacher John Nip. And to Gerry Lopez for her art expertise, a special thanks.

  I would like to especially mention the late P.J. Torokvei who loved the original story and with whom I wrote the screenplay from which this novel evolved. She provided support, dear friendship, encouragement, and SpiritBearArtFarm, the best sanctuary in the world for writing this story.

  Love and gratitude to my children Kelly, Nick, and Caitlin.

  A simple thank you is not enough for Andrea Jane who has been through the dark nights and brought me back and always believed.

  Finally to the brave and dedicated women and the men of the 98th (KO), the Red Cross, and the mission hospitals in 1969–70 for all you did and all you gave.

  –John Hart

  Blind Spot

  Murder on the Mekong, Prequel to Book Two

  We all have a fatal flaw, and we don’t know what it is. This fatal flaw is the shortcoming that we don’t know about or can’t do anything about. It is our undoing because it is precisely in our blind spot.”

  Deng Ming-Dao in Scholar Warrior p.229

  Teachers

  An Island Near Nha Trang

  Republic of Vietnam

  March, 1970

  He dove down through crystal blue water with just goggles, snorkel, and a Hawaiian sling spear, the angled rays of the morning sun sending bright shimmering shafts of light through the South China Sea. His sleek and brown martial-arts-honed body absorbed the soothing caress of the water; it felt like silk against JD’s skin, growing cooler the deeper he went. Clouds of yellow tang grazed on golden and green coral mounds and mingled with bright butterfly fish. A brilliant rainbow of a parrot fish gnawed at the coral with them while a startling blue speckled peacock grouper waited to gulp a surgeonfish.

  Diving deeper, JD saw the stealthy move of another predator. Yes, there. He paused to watch the octopus. Cautiously, carefully, and so smoothly it moved. Its remarkable eyes—eyes that swiveled independently like a chameleon and could see not just ahead, but an entire panorama—had not yet spotted him. Eyes that were connected to a strange and brilliant mind that could solve puzzles, have a remarkable remembrance of human faces, strategically navigate mazes. In that, and more, JD and this particular predator had much in common.

  As he contemplated the octopus in one of his favorite places in all the world, a certain small island off shore from Nha Trang, JD sought peace. Here, he had sanctuary. Here, he could be away from war, intrigue, and the business from which he made his living: spycraft and assassination. Here, he could read, write, paint, practice calligraphy, go diving into the crystal blue deep. He could do all the things that brought him inside himself. Usually.

  But not now. Despite his peaceful surroundings JD was agitated, unbalanced, and knew he was not thinking clearly at all. Such a state of mind was life threatening for someone in his line of work, and his attempt to seek solace to better plot his next move wasn’t conjuring its usual magic.

  “Help” or “bangmang” was an unfamiliar concept for him and definitely not a sound easily uttered whether in English or Mandarin. For a child left behind by his suicidal mother, and whose pitiless father abandoned him with the words “you are dead to me,” help was what you did for yourself. Until you couldn’t.

  There was one person inside his lifelong emotional wall who could help him now, but reaching out to a brother who was supposedly dead—and needed to stay supposedly dead for a grander purpose—was not as easy as picking up a phone and dialing for…

  Bangmang.

  He had to find a way. Things were different from the last time he saw Zhang. Critical. And why? Because he’d done something he never should have done. He never should have let Kate gently breach an emotional wall as untrespassable and foreboding as the one surrounding China. He never should have let her touch his heart and suffer the consequences for it.

  Because of him, Kate was in dire peril, and he needed help in order to find her, to bring her to safety by whatever means it took. He would have to somehow track down his brother without being seen, else he put Zhang in jeopardy as well… although, anyone attacking Zhang would find themselves in even more peril than Kate was in now.

  Bangmang.

  JD felt his need for help as surely as the crab he watched the octopus seize then inject with its paralyzing saliva before tearing it into small pieces with its beak.

  Bangmang.

  He felt as helpless as the crab being consumed, and it was a terrible feeling he was not at all comfortable with, hardly acquainted with even. He’d always been the predator, not the prey. His entire physiology was out of control; the air he was typically capable of holding beyond most human limits was running out too fast while his heart sped up despite his inner commands to
slow down. His body was not heeding his mind, and his mind was not heeding the years of training that, before Kate, had allowed him to avoid urgent, impulsive, and wrong decisions.

  He should be springing up for air, but instead he watched the octopus as a shark slowly circled. Watching, focusing. He could stay down just a little longer, couldn’t he? He could even intervene and drive the shark away, or kill it with the sling spear. But…

  That was not The Way. The way was to watch the way of the world and learn. These were teachers. These were helpers.

  Bangmang, came the whisper between his ears. Help me. The water was so clear he could see the unblinking blackness of the eye of the shark. It exuded power and threat. One of the lords of the sea. The shark’s tail whipped through the water, moving it instantly and smoothly into killing mode.

  And then magic happened. The octopus disappeared. It had seemingly shape-shifted and color-shifted into invisibility on a rocky shelf. It had changed itself into something indistinguishable from coral and stone.

  The shark veered away and then back. Where was the octopus? It was right there. And yet invisible to the shark’s highly trained eye.

  JD allowed himself a small, satisfied smile as he shot to the surface of the South China Sea and plowed water to reach the shore of a small island off the coast of Nha Trang where both purpose and peril awaited.

  The octopus was a great teacher, pointing The Way.

  JD would find Zhang. Invisible in plain sight.

  Bangmang was coming.