The Price of Blood

17

“Then all Hell broke loose,” said Broker. He downed the Scotch and let the liquor talk.

On the deck of a navy carrier he learned that he was the sole survivor of the ground team. Only Tuna had survived of the Chinook crew that had gone in with Pryce.

Dumbfounded, he was interrogated by tense, exhausted intelligence types who wanted to know why Pryce had used him as a diversion while he took the Chinook in to rob the National Bank of Hue.

Broker and Tuna were placed in separate detention and didn’t get the whole picture until the preliminary investigation for their classified inquiry convened in Fort Benning.

He was saved by the radio communications from the helicopter, which had been monitored by the fleet. And by Tuna who testified that Pryce had switched the plan after the chopper took off.

According to Tuna, Broker’s raid was a decoy, to draw attention away from the real mission. Pryce had discovered that the Communists had amassed a huge cache of gold for shipment to Hanoi. Pryce intended to sling the booty and drop it in the Laotian jungle to finance continued resistance. He said it was a high-priority mission, denying assets to the Communists.

And Pryce had it planned to the last minute. Two Vietnamese operatives were positioned inside the bank and had eliminated the guards. They rolled the crated gold ingots out on a forklift and dumped them into the cargo net that was lowered from the chopper. The inside men scrambled up the net and they left.

Tuna had specifically stated under oath that he had queried Pryce about the ground diversion: Shouldn’t they pick them up.

According to Tuna, Pryce replied that they were “expendable.” The gold came first.

Tuna then described how the chopper was hit by ground fire, how Pryce was seriously wounded and their radio was damaged.

Two radio messages figured prominently in the testimony. The first was a call from the pilot requesting clarification from someone in authority because the mission had been changed in mid-flight. The second was a mayday call. The pilot was about to send a coordinate when the radio stopped transmitting.

The next day, as Broker hid in the restaurant cellar, Tuna was picked up on the South China Sea in a survival raft. He said they had looked for a place to put the bird down after the radio went out and decided against it. With Pryce wounded and the copter damaged, the pilot decided he’d never get back up if he set down. He opted to stay in the air and try to make it back to the fleet. But with the load in the net, he miscalculated. The damaged helicopter went down in the sea and only Tuna came out alive. Ray Pryce, the bird, the alleged gold, and the crew went to the bottom of the South China Sea.

Colonel LaPorte had testified how he had signed for the bird and authorized Pryce’s plan for the prisoner extraction. But he’d handled it verbally on the radios and nothing was in writing. When he learned what had happened he burned up the radio channels trying to send in another helicopter to get Broker out. The command had vetoed the project. Radio logs were introduced to verify his testimony.

Tuna and Broker’s appointed JAG attorneys presented the “good German” defense. They were cleared of charges when the inquiry board found that they believed they were following different versions of lawful orders. The blame for the renegade operation was conveniently placed on Ray Pryce, who was listed as dead, body unrecoverable. Inexplicably, no evidence was brought in the investigation that the gold really existed. The new Communist rulers of Vietnam never formally registered a complaint. The Hue gold became a mythic story.

The incident was a final ripple in the sewage of defeat and was buried deep. But the stench attached itself to Colonel LaPorte, who never commanded troops again. Doggedly he stayed in the army and got his Brigadier’s star before retiring. The dishonor also fell heavily on the Pryce family. Broker had assumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today.

Broker stared at his empty glass and looked up. Mike said, “Ah, Phil, Nina’s up there sitting on the porch with your twelve-gauge.”

“She’s cool, Mike.” He paused. “Actually, she’s not. She’s got the syndrome now.” Broker laughed.

He could appreciate the irony. The psychological antics associated with returning veterans were for other people. Hell, that was for the Oliver Stone war. His war was different. Four divisions of NVA-hundreds of tanks-coming at him across the old DMZ and batting him down the length of Quang Tri Province. No time to roll a joint. Now here he was, saddled with a fucked-up Desert Storm vet. Size six, female type.

“So,” said Mike, “why are you telling me this now, tonight?”

“Because Nina says she can get proof that Gen. Cyrus LaPorte set me and her dad up. But his gold heist went funny and the gold wound up in the ocean. Now apparently he has a boat over off the coast of Vietnam and he’s found the stuff. But the fact that he may have found it doesn’t prove he masterminded stealing it.”

Mike exhaled. “Ten tons of gold…Back up. How’s she know this-”

“Because last night she stole a map with the location of the goddamn helicopter wreck off LaPorte’s desk in New Orleans. Somebody’s after her. She says.”

“Oh,” said Mike, looking around mildly. “That why you’re packing the Colt? Are we expecting bad company?”

“Well, let’s put it this way. If we aren’t, I tend to disbelieve her story.”

Mike puffed on his pipe. “I pity any fool who meets Tank in the woods at night.”

Broker nodded. “I already put Tom onto a guy who may have followed us. He’s got Lyle Torgeson and some Grand Marais cops keeping an eye on us. We’ll be covered. But I still want you and Irene to spend the rest of the night in town.”

“So…” Mike finally lit his pipe and drew on it, creating a cyclops ember in the dense shadow of his head.

“So,” said Broker.

“A map that marks a…treasure.” Mike Broker chuckled and slapped his knee. “Kinda like when you were a kid and we’d come down here and read-”

“This ain’t no story book,” said Broker.

“So who’s this alleged gold belong to?” asked Mike.

Broker shrugged. “Right now I’m thinking that it got lost in a gray area between two chapters in the history book.”

Broker stood up and placed his hands on his hips and watched the firelight bend over the waves that lapped on the rocks. “Maybe it belongs to the people who stole it. Maybe I’m one of them,” he said.

Mike joined him on the water’s edge. “This LaPorte character, what’s he like?”

“Tough, smart, rich, connected.”

“And you’re going after him?”

“Depends. If she’s right. If the gold is real-I’m going after something.”

“With just that girl?”

Broker laughed. “The other survivor of the raid sent Nina to find me. He’s been sitting on something for twenty years in federal prison. Now he’s out, he’s dying of cancer, and he’s disappeared.”

“Sounds pretty thin, Phil.”

“Right now ten tons of gold sounds pretty heavy to me.”

“You’re going back to Vietnam?”

“I’m not going back anywhere. I might be going to someplace. Except this time, I’m going on my own. And I plan to pay myself damn well for my trouble. If all that gold’s really there-”

“Can you do that?”

“Watch me,” said Broker. He swung his eyes down the dark beach. “We’re going to hold on to these rocks.”

Mike left Tank on Broker’s porch. Then he drove into town with Irene. Nina came from the shadows with the shotgun balanced on her shoulder. “You have a nice talk?”

“Real good one.”

“I feel left out.”

“No. I’m thinking you’re definitely in.”

He patted Tank on the head and then told Nina to give it a rest and get some sleep. He’d be sitting up just a few feet away in the bedroom. She said he looked tired. He said that if he nodded off and anything happened the dog would rouse half the goddamn county. He reminded her to be careful with the shotgun, anything she heard moving out in the dark could be cops watching the place. Or the dog.

As he brushed his teeth, a Scotch-inspired thought caricatured his lean face in the mirror. He recalled a question on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test, one that had recurred in his imagination while working undercover, a personal joke that John Eisenhower would not approve of: I am a special agent of God. Answer yes or no.