Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  And was horrified to see a man lying face-up on a cot in the middle of the otherwise empty room.

  Cat’s first thought was that he was dead. Despite the drugging heat, which the snaggle-bladed ceiling fan did nothing to dispel, she felt a sudden chill. She covered her mouth to keep herself from screaming and wondered if she should call the police. But there was no telephone in the room. And even if there had been, she couldn’t have relayed her concerns to anyone because she didn’t speak Vietnamese.

  The man drew a deep breath and let it out on a loud snore.

  Her shoulders wilted with relief at the realization that he was asleep, not dead. She laid her palm over her still racing heart. Then she took a tentative step forward. And froze when he fisted his right hand. Irritated at this new delay, she wasted yet another precious minute or two waiting for him to relax his hand before taking her last cautious steps toward the cot.

  Up close, he looked more like a charity case than he did a soldier of fortune.

  His muddy jungle boots hung over the end of the small bed, his fatigue pants were ripped up one long leg and a black patch covered his left eye. She wondered how he’d lost his eye, then remembered Kim telling her that he’d been wounded in Hanoi and was in the process of recuperating. Which probably explained that blood-soaked piece of white cloth tied around his right bicep. As well as the seeping cuts that crisscrossed his bare chest and flat abdomen.

  There were other scars—a thin silver one that circled the corded column of his neck, a puckered pink starburst in his lean side—that read like a map of too many rivers run, too many jungle trails followed and too many brushes with the law.

  But it was another, more deadly reminder that she had entered the netherworld that drew her eyes.

  Her knees nearly gave way when she saw the pistol that had been shoved into the waistband of his fatigue pants. Given the nature of his profession, she assumed that he probably needed to keep it handy. Then again, he might just be trigger-happy.

  How long she stared at the gun, Cat didn’t know. But it suddenly occurred to her that if he woke up and found a complete stranger standing over him, he might shoot first and ask questions later. Her body jerked as if from the recoil and her heart pounded with fear. Still, determined to talk to him, she held her ground.

  “Cain?” She whispered his name so as not to startle him into doing something rash—like pulling that gun. “Mr. Cain?”

  He snorted and he snuffled, but he didn’t wake up.

  Refusing to think about the gun, she concentrated on his dirt- and sweat-streaked face. And felt a strange shiver pass over her from head to toes. His shaggy black hair fell across his forehead, his nose was bold yet finely chiseled, and his strong jaw was shaded with several days’ growth of beard. But it was his bowstring mouth that made her tingle. In a face that was all lean planes, hard angles and five o’clock shadow, that tautly drawn upper lip and sulky lower one were almost blatantly sexual.

  He startled her into taking a step backwards when he began moaning and mumbling and twitching restlessly as if he was either in the throes of a nightmare or terribly ill. Reminding herself that he’d recently been injured, she stepped forward again to see if he needed help. She bent down, causing her ponytail to fall over her shoulder, and reached out a hand to check his forehead for fever. Then she got a whiff of his breath.

  And realized that he was drunk.

  * * * *

  Oh, Christ, he’d died and gone to Donut Dolly Hell.

  That was all he could think when his eye grated open and he saw the shadowy face of the woman who smelled like Dove soap and sweet dreams but who was staring down at him with the sort of repugnant expression he’d had his fill of in an earlier life.

  “Cain?”

  He winced as her voice went through his head like a spear. Then he winced again because it had hurt so damn much the first time. At great expense to his pain threshold, he shifted a little on the cot and let his eye droop to half-mast, trying to get a bead on her through the screening veil of his lashes.

  Not bad, he admitted. But not his type, either. With that bonfire of hair and velvety-looking vanilla skin, she was too All-American girl for a jaded half-breed like him. Still, she was quite a picture. Her eyes were brown with a little green mixed in for good measure, her cheekbones were sharp enough to cut glass, and her perfect nose belonged on a prom queen. Her mouth . . . despite the disdain that puckered them now, he would’ve bet his last piaster that her lips were full and—

  “Mr. Cain!”

  But her voice! God, it rapped his muddled consciousness like a judge advocate’s gavel. He touched guarded fingers to the goose egg on his temple and groaned, “Go away.”

  She straightened, giving him his first good look at her slender figure and just a hint of her long legs, and snapped, “Not until you sit up and talk to me.”

  Cain thought about whipping out his .45, just to see her jump, but the knife-wound that those two bully boys had put in his arm last night was throbbing as badly as his head. It was small comfort to remember that he’d managed to do a little slicing and dicing of his own before it was over. Because right now he had another problem on his hands.

  He fixed that problem with a ferocious glare. “If I weren’t so sick—”

  “Sick, my foot,” she fired back. “You’re drunk!”

  No, he was hungover. Wrung out and strung out to beat the band. He’d spent the better part of last night swilling beer with his contact in Madam Wu’s before ol’ mama-san had sicced her boys on him. Now his mouth tasted like the cat had crept in, crapped and crept out, his teeth felt like they’d grown fur and his stomach was in imminent danger of emptying itself.

  Hair of the dog, Cain decided groggily. That was what he needed. His taste buds perked up as he reached down under the cot and closed his fingers around the half-empty bottle of Ba Muoi Ba beer that he’d stuck there the night before, after he’d torn up what was left of his T-shirt to bandage his arm.

  But no sooner had he raised the bottle to his lips with a shaky hand than Dolly snatched it away from him, held it out to her side and poured the rest of the warm bom-de-bom on the filthy tile floor.

  “Hey!” he croaked, making a feeble but ultimately futile attempt to grab the bottle back. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She dropped the empty bottle on the cot and smiled down at him as though he were a dolt. “I’m trying to get your attention, Mr. Cain.”

  Oh, she had his attention, all right! And if he hadn’t been in such bad shape, she’d have had his hands around her throat, too. He scowled up at her, wishing he had the wherewithal to wipe that supercilious smile off her face.

  Cat was no more enamored of Cain at this point than he was of her. From his undisciplined mane of hair to his mud-caked jungle boots, he looked every bit as dangerous and disreputable as Colonel Howard had declared him to be. She was sorely tempted to go find a pay phone and call the MPs. Tell them where this debauched specimen of humanity was hiding out so they could haul him off to the hoosegow.

  But that would be tantamount to betraying her two new friends’ trust. The police would want to know who had led her to him, and would likely detain her until she told them. Which could put Kim and Loc’s jobs, if not their lives, in severe jeopardy.

  And as galling as it was to admit, Cat needed Cain. He could glower and growl at her all he wanted. She really didn’t care if he liked her or not. He was her only link to Johnny, and she’d gone to too much trouble and too much personal expense to retreat now.

  She looked down at her watch and was disheartened to see that she had a little less than fifteen minutes left to get some answers out of him.

  At the same time, he levered up on his good elbow and asked in a raspy voice, “In a hurry, Miss . . .?”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mr. Cain.” She held out her left hand so he could see the simple gold band that adorned her tapered ring finger. “And it’s Mrs.,” she corrected. “Mrs. Johnny Brown.” />
  In the past two years, Cain had perfected a near mastery over his reflexes. He’d learned to control his reactions in situations he’d never experienced before, and in others he hoped he’d never experience again. Which was a damn good thing. Because when his still-sluggish mind finally put a face to the name, red flags went up and alarm bells went off.

  “Air Force, right?’ With some half-million American soldiers in Vietnam, he wanted to be sure they were talking about the same Steve Canyon look-alike who had rubbed him the wrong way on more than one occasion.

  “Right.” Cat started to add that Johnny had graduated first in his pilot’s class, then decided that was beside the point and let the single word stand.

  Cain swallowed thickly against a wave of nausea, trying not to disgrace himself by puking all over her strappy little sandals. “Second tour, as I recall.”

  Now she gave him a bob of the head that he took for a nod.

  He swung his legs over the side of the cot and sat up woozily. His head was hurting like a son of a bitch, which didn’t improve his mood. But since neither his memory nor his vision was impaired, he didn’t think he’d suffered a concussion.

  “So,” he said, smiling thinly, “how is ol’ Johnny, anyway?”

  Bridling at his sardonic tone, she replied more sharply than she’d intended, “He’s been classified as Missing in Action.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brown.” He was surprised to realize that it was the truth. Even though he’d never liked the guy, he always hated to hear that another American had gone down.

  She tilted her head. “You didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been on the move.” The dim light cast her face in shadows, but he could see the sadness in her eyes. With everything else that was coming down right now, though, he couldn’t afford to feel for her. “When did it happen?”

  “March 28.”

  “Have they found the plane?” He thought that was kinder than asking if they’d found the body. And he was sure that somewhere out there in that green hell of a jungle there was a body. Otherwise, he’d have been notified by now.

  “Not yet.” But she needed to call her parents when she got back to the hotel to see if they’d had news to the contrary.

  “Did they say where he went down?” He’d heard through the grapevine that, despite their denials, the Americans had stepped up their bombing of the Viet Cong’s infiltration routes from Laos.

  She shook her head. “Over North Vietnam, I suppose.”

  “That covers a lot of territory.”

  “They also said he could be a prisoner of war.”

  Cain realized that she was asking him for a measure of hope, no matter how scant, that her husband was still alive. He couldn’t bring himself to deny it to her. “There is that possibility.”

  “It’s the not knowing . . .” Cat looked up at the water-stained ceiling, fighting to keep her emotions in check, then down at him. And uttered a small gasp. “You’re bleeding.”

  He touched his arm, and his fingers came away smeared with red. “The bandage is coming loose.”

  She resisted a ridiculous urge to reach out and help him as he made an awkward, left-handed grab for one end of the makeshift binding. Weaving the way he was, it took him two tries to catch it. But then, when he bent his head and seized the other end in his mouth, it was more than she could stand.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” As she plopped down beside him on the cot, he peered up at her with that piece of cloth trapped between his straight white teeth. “Let go.” She chucked him under the chin, ignoring the sandpapery rasp of his beard against her skin. “I’ll do it.”

  “Be careful.” He squirmed in apprehension when she set her shoulder bag aside and reached for the bandage.

  “Sit still.” Gingerly, she slid her index finger into the top loop of the knot and gave it a tug.

  To his relief, he felt only a mild discomfort when it came undone. “So far, so good.”

  Cat finished unwrapping it, then felt herself blanch at the sight of the nasty gash in his arm. “You need stitches.”

  “Just tie the bandage back on, okay?”

  “Have you seen a doctor?”

  “I disinfected it myself.” Cain tensed as she began dabbing at the blood that trickled from the wound with the cleanest end of the dirty cloth. But he needn’t have worried. Her touch was as gentle as before.

  “Disinfected it with what?”

  “The beer you poured on the floor.”

  Cat gave him a retiring look. “Beer hardly qualifies as a disinfectant, Mr. Cain.”

  “Make do with what suffices, Mrs. Brown,” he said dryly.

  She frowned at the caked blood that had come away with the cloth. “Have you got a clean bandage?”

  He let his gaze drift around the empty room, then twisted his upper body toward her, narrowing her field of vision to his broad shoulders. “Sorry, but I’m fresh out of clean bandages.”

  Quickly averting her eyes, Cat set about the business of rewrapping his wound. And felt her pulse leap when the backs of her fingers grazed the hard, bronzed bulge of his bicep. Telling herself it was the heat that was causing all these untoward reactions, she tied a square knot that would have made her old Girl Scout leader proud.

  “Did this happen while you were in Hanoi?” she asked conversationally.

  “No, it happened last night.” He did a double take then that made his poor, sore head spin like a propeller. “And just how did you know I was in Hanoi?”

  “I have my sources.” Smiling smugly, she admired her handiwork.

  He made a mental note to check them out. “So it seems.”

  “Then it happened here in Cholon?” she persisted, bringing him back to the subject.

  “No.”

  “Oh?”

  “It happened in downtown Saigon.”

  Startled, Cat looked up at Cain. And noticed for the first time that his eye was a pale gray, with a charcoal ring around the outer rim of his iris. Given the darkness of his hair and brows, his tawny, almost amber complexion, she had assumed that his eye would be dark as well.

  “Where in downtown Saigon?” she demanded nervously.

  “No place you’re likely to frequent.” His pirate’s grin was anything but reassuring, however.

  “Where?”

  “In an alley behind a bar.”

  That figured, she thought, but only said, “I’d hate to see the other guy.”

  His grin curled into a snarl that was nothing short of feral. “Now that I’ve marked them, you’ll recognize them easily enough.”

  “Them?”

  “One is missing his nose—”

  “You cut off someone’s nose?”

  “And the other one’s ear.”

  Cat couldn’t say which appalled her the most—the horrible injuries he’d inflicted on two other human beings, or his obvious relish in recounting them. Shouldering her bag again, she stood and looked everywhere but at him. “That should hold you until you can see a doctor.”

  Too late Cain realized that he should have kept his big mouth shut. He’d witnessed so much senseless violence and needless death since his arrival in Vietnam that he’d become inured to it. But all she knew of this goddamn war and the grisly counting of its toll was what she read in newspapers or watched on television, where the bodies with their faces blown away or their intestines spilling out or their legs gone were always bagged before the cameras were turned on. And seeing her standing there, all stiff and guarded, he suddenly felt as if that knife had been plunged into his gut instead of his arm.

  He stared up at her until she looked him in the eye again. “It was them or me.”

  “I’m sure it was,” she responded tersely.

  He felt like saying to hell with it and telling her that there were really two wars going on over here. There was the media spectacle where all the Walter Cronkite wannabe’s in their khaki bush jackets spent their time heckling the generals who proclaimed it fitting and proper t
o die for one’s country instead of talking to the grunts in the jungles and the mountains and the rice paddies who were doing the actual dying. And then there was the behind-the-scenes battle that was being fought against the growing force of North Vietnamese regulars who’d been seeping into Saigon since Tet to mingle with the Viet Cong and to kill those South Vietnamese who were working with and for the American “enemy.”

  Because that would prompt questions he wasn’t at liberty to answer, though, he just cupped his arm and cocked her a smile. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” The words sounded stilted, even to her, but she relaxed her stance somewhat.

  Silence fell, as sharp and crystalline as his eye.

  “Tell me something,” he encouraged her after a moment. “Why are you here in Saigon instead of back home in—”

  “Because Johnny said I should contact you if anything . . .” To her humiliation, her voice began to quaver.

  “And it never occurred to you to just write to me?” he asked quietly.

  “I did.” Cat unzipped her shoulder bag and fished out the letter from Johnny and the one to Cain. “But as you can see,” she said as she handed them over, “you’d already moved.”

  Cain’s expression hardened subtly as he scanned Johnny’s letter. Given all he knew, that last sentence was almost laughable. Almost, but not quite. He didn’t bother opening the envelope addressed to him on Truong Minh Gian, but just passed both it and the letter back to her.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said as she returned them to her purse for safekeeping. “When you got my letter back, you decided to hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world, into the middle of a war zone, to look for me.”

  She hadn’t realized how imprudent it all sounded until he’d said it aloud. “Not exactly.”