Selected Short Stories Featuring Ghost Dust

by Nicolas Wilson

be done was to trade my life for hers.” He sounded sad about that, and I don't think it was his own loss that pained him.

  “I’ve known for a long time she wanted to expose the project. I don’t know if that, of itself, would be worth killing for, but she didn’t just want the public to know, she wanted us demonized. She picked and chose her facts to fit the evil picture of us she wanted to paint; I paid someone to break into her apartment and steal a draft of her piece, and some of it is a flat fabrication, connections to Japanese war crimes, Joseph Mengele and the like. I even offered her a place in the program, access to the best science on earth- though I think by then we both knew her DNA wasn’t near malleable enough to be fixed.”

  He sighed. “I tried to put something in her coffee, but she said it smelled like piss, which I suppose it does. And guns are unpredictable: even a clean shot to the head or chest isn’t likely to kill instantly. No, I’ve had more experience with a knife, more precision. She didn’t suffer beyond what she had to; it was a moment’s pain, and far removed from what she was staring down the barrel of.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand the decision I made, Newman, leave alone agree with it. But what we’ve done here, what we’ve yet to do, it’s important, more important than some story; more important even than that young girl’s life.” He held up his briefcase, and I could make out along the crease a dollar bill poking through. “What I’m taking is only what Uncle Sam owes me, and not a penny more, my pension, down to the hour per the time I’ve got left on my telomeres. If you let me go, and I don’t presume you already have, I'm only saying if- you’re not offering me absolution. I can never again see my wife and sons, and what I did will weigh on me the way no combat death ever could. But what I did I did for all mankind. If you can understand that- that’ll go a ways to getting me to forgive myself.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer; and I didn’t have one to give, at least not out loud, but he looked down to the gun in my hand with the safety still on, then to me, and smiled. Then he turned and walked away. I didn’t know if I believed him; I hoped Amber’s coldness to me wasn’t a factor.

  And I hoped he was right, that what he’d done was what had to be done, but all I could know for certain is I couldn’t shoot him in the back over it. Maybe security could have stopped him; maybe faced with the same decision they’d have let him walk, too.

  It was my first day at NuMan, and my life was already much, much stranger for it.

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  Prisoners of War

  The Vietnam War ended 35 years ago. It feels like a milestone, but it doesn't even really register. I just arrived in country, and it's barely even on my radar. I work for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command based out of Hawaii, and somehow out of all those words the military managed to get JPAC. Our highest priority is finding Prisoners of War- of course, in the same breath our command says that it doubts very much that there are any POWs remaining from past conflicts.

  I'm a forensic anthropologist, a fancy way of saying I tell you whose bones you've found, so my highest priority has nothing to do with people who are still alive. I'm still pretty new to the job; I was on it for a couple of years before they found out the FA based out of Hanoi with Vietnamese language skills was pregnant and planning on retiring, so they put me through a crash course in the language. She popped out her kid a week before I got here, and I think she's already on a plane back to the States.

  I know what I know about the country from war movies I haven't seen since I was a kid. I keep expecting Marlon Brando, or for other strange things to happen, and I keep reminding myself that this is a normal country, now, that people live here, and it's actually one of the more digitally-advanced nations in the world- it even has its own creepy robot with Albert Einstein's head. But up until I arrived, basically everything I knew about Vietnam came from movies, travel brochures and Wikipedia.

  I hate being in-country; that feeling of being not just foreign, but American, in Vietnam, wasn't pleasant- or at least I'd convinced myself that everyone was looking at me sideways. It was on a rainy night, when I couldn't help but think about 1984 and being watched by everyone around me, that I received my first visitor. Three knocks, spaced evenly apart, hard and heavy, taller up on the door than I'd expect in a country where the average height is 5'4”. I'm already on edge, so it doesn't take much to convince myself that I should take my sidearm, but once I have it in my hand I curse the bastards who switched to the M9 from the 1911, because I just don't feel as safe standing behind a 9mm. I open the door quick, and standing there is a man who fills the doorway, over 6' and I'd swear half as wide, wearing fatigues. He takes a step into the door, and I realize even the 1911 wouldn't do me a damned bit of good; I feel sheepish about the pistol, and hope I can holster it before he notices.

  “Won't need that,” he says, and his voice is as deep as you'd expect off the size of him, but heavier, like he's talking through smoke. I chuckle to myself, set the M9 down on the table. He looks out the window, at the rain. “You're the solution to a problem I've had,” he eventually says. “Most forensic anthropologists are civilians. Takes too much schooling for most soldiers. But you're the exception.”

  He was right. I'd gone into the reserves to get money for college, but once I'd gotten my degree, I started looking into the military's FA program. They liked to hire contractors, but I reasoned I could convert my part-time status to full and retire early with pension and benefits and stay on as a contractor. I convinced one of the JPAC COs that it made sense, and that's how I got the gig.

  “What do you know about the fall of Saigon?” he asked.

  “Next to nothing.” He smirked. I could hear it in his eyes, him complaining about my goddamned generation and how we had no respect for history.

  “These were the last days, the few remaining Americans in country. Kissinger was holding out for more aid to the South Vietnamese. They figured if we finished evacuating before then, the South would go belly up. So we were holding the airport in Saigon, when on April 29th we started getting shelled and hit by rockets. By 11 AM we'd lost all our runways, so they kickstarted Operation Frequent Wind, a fullscale helicopter evac of all US personnel and at-risk Vietnamese. By 5 AM the next morning, it became apparent we weren't going to be able to get everybody out, and Ambassador Martin was ordered to get himself out of the embassy and cease the airlift by President Ford.”

  “A group of us were the last marines left guarding the embassy. There were twenty-four of us- just enough to fill up the belly of a CH-46 Sea Knight. But there were still hundreds of South Vietnamese in and around the embassy. We didn't feel right just leaving them behind, so we gave our ride to some women and kids and decided to walk the rest of them out on foot. The NVA had been ordered to let the airlift happen- they wanted the Americans gone, but nobody'd said a damn thing about letting us walk away. We ended up pincered; an NVA group came up on our north flank, and Charlie came up from the south.”

  “I might be new around here, but I've reviewed all of our pending cases, and we've only got 53 MIA cases. I think I'd have noticed if half our files were on one incident.”

  “From what I've gathered, our Sea Knight suffered some engine trouble. It's possible the pilot took on too many people, maybe one of the NVA got twitchy and put some AA fire into it- but it went down. We were all declared KIA. Nobody came looking for us.”

  “Uniformed NVA didn't want us. Said if they took custody, they'd just have to give us right back, so they sent us home with Charlie. The VC were happy to have us. They were terrified of assassinations, that the CIA was gunning for each and every last one of them. It was just impossible for them to fathom they'd beaten us. So they wanted us for collateral, bargaining chips.”

  “That night, they put us up in a game of poker. There were four of them, senior VC, each putting his claim on six of us. We all might have gone to whoever the victor was, but it got heated, and one of them shot another man's 'chip.' After that they al
l just walked away from the table. I was only in captivity for a while, couple of months. I ended up getting traded down to an errand boy in exchange for who knows what kind of favors. He wasn't bright, got too close to my 'cage' and I killed him.”

  “I tried to go to CINCPAC, but Admiral Gayler didn't want to hear it. Vietnam was a fresh wound, and they didn't want anybody picking the scab off it over a lousy 23 men; I suspect they even made a clumsy attempt at having me shot, though that could have just been post-conflict Vietnam.”

  “I've been working ever since. The VC went back to their lives, hid who they were and what they'd done, and more than ever blended back into the population. Made it tough to find them. It's taken years- but I had years to give.”

  I finally found my breath, “Wait.” He cocked his head to the side, like an aggressive dog not used to anyone trying to tell him how things are. “You're saying you've been hunting old VC since the war ended? Like a Nazi hunter?”

  “I've found 22 of the men we lost that day, or in most cases what remained of them. And I've met the men responsible.” He looked away from me for a moment, towards the window, and I shuddered- and I think he knew I needed to