Blood Lines

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 what 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.”

Tyrel knew that.

“But this war,” Victor said, “it ain’t nothin’ like anybody said it would be. We’re over here fightin’, and it seems we’re the only ones that knows we ain’t gonna win. We’re just gonna keep dying till finally somebody gets tired of sending body bags for soldiers to be sent home in. You listening to me?”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m gonna help you,” Victor said. “I’m gonna make an investment in you. I’m gonna help you out because I think you deserve it. I don’t think you should take the fall for this.”

Tyrel didn’t even have the strength to ask how Victor was going to do that.

“What we’re gonna do,” Victor said, “is take Hinton’s body deeper into the jungle. Then we’re gonna bury it.”

“You can’t just leave him out here.”

“We can’t take him with us. We gotta leave him.”

“But the animals-”

“We’ll bury him deep,” Victor promised. “We’ll make sure the animals don’t get to him.”

The idea of leaving Denny lying in a forgotten grave made Tyrel sick again. He doubled over and threw up, but there was hardly anything left. Victor was barely able to get out of the way.

“Stay with me, Country,” Victor said. “We’re gonna make this right, me and you. We’re gonna be all right.”

›› Intensive Care Unit

›› Las Palmas Medical Center

›› El Paso, Texas

›› 0901 Hours (Central Time Zone)

“So that’s what we did,” Tyrel said. “We picked Denny up and we carried him farther into the jungle. Found a spot, and then we buried him.”

Shel listened to his daddy’s cold, emotionless voice and tried to imagine what that must have been like. Twenty-one years old at the time, his daddy had to have been scared to death.

And he’d been living with the guilt for over forty years, Shel realized. How could he have carried that around so long without becoming an alcoholic or an abusive husband or father?

“Somebody back at the post had to have asked questions,” Shel said.

“They did,” Tyrel replied. “But we stuck to our story. Denny went out with us, must have gotten lost in the jungle or captured by the enemy. We knew Charlie came close to Qui Nhon on a lot of occasions. And Denny wouldn’t have been the first soldier to go MIA from there. All of us covered for each other. In the end, the brass wanted Victor out in the field doing what he did best. Killing Charlie.”

Shel rested his arms on his knees and tried to think. It was like his brain had turned to mud.

“Did Mama know anything about this?”

Tyrel shook his head. “I thought about tellin’ her. I thought about tellin’ her a lot. But I couldn’t. Your mama was a strong lady, but she didn’t deserve to have to try to get around something like that. It was bad enough I came back scarred from that war in ways that never showed. She didn’t need that piled onto her prayer list. And there was nothin’ she could have done anyway.”

For a long time, Shel just sat and thought. But he knew there was no way to avoid talking about what both of them knew was on their minds.

“This is murder, Daddy, and covering it up only makes it worse.”

“I know it. I knew it then.”

“There are no statutes of limitations on murder.”

Tyrel nodded. “The Army will prosecute me. Probably hang me. Especially since I tried to cover everything up.”

Shel didn’t know about that. He didn’t want to think about that.

“What are you gonna do?” Tyrel asked.

“I don’t know. This… this isn’t what I expected.”

Tyrel rolled his head to see Shel. “Don’t you tell me you don’t know, boy.” His voice was edged steel now. “I raised you right, Shelton. You know the right thing to do, and you’d blamed well better do it.”

His daddy’s vehemence took Shel aback.

“I already spent forty years suffering over this,” Tyrel went on. “I’ll not spend one more day in torment. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I tried holding on to this secret.” Tyrel looked up at the ceiling and his voice faded again. “I kept it from everybody, and it kept everybody from me. From the day I got back, I stayed packed and ready to pay for my crimes. I couldn’t love your mama like I should have-and God knows she deserved better’n what she got. And I couldn’t let you and Don get so attached to me that you couldn’t make it when the Army finally come for me. I was a sorry daddy to you boys, and I know that. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to let you be strong on your own.”

That’s why you kept pushing us away, Shel realized. The thought of what his daddy had done-and why-almost made him sick. Even understanding it the way he did, he didn’t know how his daddy could have been so rigid and cold as to keep his sons distant all of their lives.

“So don’t you let any sentimental foolishness on your part cloud your judgment,” Tyrel said. “You turn me in. The way you’re supposed to. You do it or I will. Either way, this ends. Do you hear me?”

Shel tried to answer, but then his daddy slumped back onto the bed, and all the alarms went off. By the time Shel got to his feet, a team of nurses and a doctor were inside the room with a crash cart.

“Get out of here,” Isabella told him.

Shel hesitated, watching helplessly as the cardiac unit worked to bring his daddy back from the dead.

“Now!” Isabella ordered. Her voice was a harsh whip crack.

Shel left.