The Price of Blood

76

Trin’sRules .

Broker burst out laughing.

There were twenty of them, maybe more. Hard-faced young men in green camouflage tunics. Some carried AK-47s. Others toted deadly customized sniper rifles. They sprinted from the willows in the dunes, spreading out. Field radios crackled as they ran past.

Of their former tormentors, only LaPorte was still on his feet, running down the beach. Broker could see the sunlight catch the water that filled his footprints. Nina’s eyes marked him like iron bolts. She sprang from the pit, shucked her fatigue, and pounded after him.

Avenger. No angel about it.

“Let her go,” said Trin. Then he spoke curtly in Vietnamese to one of the soldiers, who, with two of his comrades, took off after Nina.

Broker kept laughing. Maybe he would never stop. He continued to laugh when he saw Bevode Fret crumpled over, clutching his right knee in both hands. Bevode appeared to be amazed that a bullet could go through his flesh and bone. “Jeez Louise,” he gasped through bloodless jerky lips. “You didn’t have to shoot me.”

Near one half-loaded dinghy, Save the Whales was also down, pushing hard on his thigh with both palms, applying pressure. Blue Shirt lay crumpled, unmoving. Two more of the Europeans made motionless rag piles on the sand. The rest of Cyrus’s men crouched behind the other dinghy with raised hands.

Broker had not been hallucinating. Three helicopters came in a line from the north, dots over the sea. Two fast patrol boats bracketed the Lola.

Then Broker saw two, three more soldiers who sat erect in spider holes in the sand a hundred yards up the slope where the dunes petered out. They were almost invisible in sandy folds of netting. Wads of sand-colored cloth hung from their helmets and tunics. They held heavy-barreled, scooped rifles. Snipers.

“Were they there all night?” he asked.

“I’m not sure exactly when they moved into position. The timing got all screwed up,” said Trin.

“These guys aren’t militia,” said Broker.

“Army Special Forces,” said Trin quietly. “The militia’s fine. They were a throw-away plan, for Cyrus to figure out.”

A lean Vietnamese woman in jeans and a military tunic ran from the last knot of soldiers and veered toward them, long black hair streaming. She had a pistol belt strapped on her waist with a red star on the holster.

“Who’s that?” asked Broker.

“A real bitch. The mayor of Dong Ha.”

She started screaming at Trin as soon as she slowed her pace. Just when Broker thought she was going to haul off and slug him, she hugged him instead.

Broker had seen those resilient lava eyes before. He stared as she unbuckled the pistol belt and handed it to Trin. She continued her harangue as Trin cinched on the gun with his torn hands.

“Speak English,” he shot back.

She took a haughty breath. Her thoroughbred nostrils quivered. “You said it would happen today. In daylight. Not last night! We couldn’t chance a fight in the dark. We might have hit you. Goddammit.” Her eyes flashed, taking in Broker, Nina.

Trin nodded. “They got ahead of me. But it was right you waited. They had to be caught transporting it away.”

“The house in Dong Ha, you were the woman,” said Broker.

“Correct, Mr. Broker, and I’m married to a real bastard who likes to take too many chances. He thinks he’s hot stuff, but he’s just a colonel in the border police.”

Trin smiled tightly. “Phil, meet Mai Linh, my wife.”

With flowering understanding, Broker inclined his head. He couldn’t shake. His hand was a mess. She nodded back. Then Trin conversed with her in rapid Vietnamese. She switched back to English. “You still insist on doing this thing?”

Trin nodded curtly. “Get them all out, except those two.” He pointed first to Bevode, then down the beach. Nina had cornered LaPorte, who stood waist-deep in the ocean. Soldiers closed in on him and motioned to him with their rifles. Trin turned to Mai Linh. “You can’t be here,” he said flatly.

“I don’t approve of this,” she insisted.

“You’re not going to see this. Go.” She turned and jogged toward the beach. She stopped at Blue Shirt’s body and spoke to two soldiers who were starting to drag it up the slope. One of them bent, got up, and sprinted back to where Trin and Broker stood. He handed Trin the gold tiger tooth. Trin closed his hand around it in a bloody fist and glared at Bevode Fret, who squirmed in the sand thirty feet away.

Then he turned and shouted at the snipers who popped from their holes and jogged down to join their comrades at the waterline.

A truck rumbled down through the dunes and most of the soldiers gathered up the dead, the wounded, and the prisoners and loaded them aboard. Trin’s wife joined them. The truck gunned back up the slope and out of sight.

“What was that scene at the house about in Dong Ha?” asked Broker.

“I wanted her personally to see you. She photographed you through the window. To be able to identify you if it came to this.”

“Who was the guy at the house with her that day?”

“Our driver. I’m a cop.” A thin smile crossed his mouth as he aped Pidgin English. “How you say-undercover.”

“You could have let me in on it.”

Trin shook his head. “You might have tipped them off.”

“Cut it kind of fine, didn’t you?”

“You’re the one who kept insisting we had to catch him loading it into the boat.” Then he glanced up and his face could have been a rock on Broker’s beach. In a tight group, Trung Si and the six cripples slogged up the beach toward them. “Don’t interfere, Phil,” Trin admonished.

Bevode Fret was situated between them and the approaching Viet Cong veterans. He began to scramble painfully toward Broker and Trin. He crawled over his whip and left it behind like a molted skin.

“Hey, Broker. Okay, man. I’m your prisoner…”

“Talk to the guy in charge,” said Broker.

Bevode’s eyes were brilliant yellow with pain. They swiveled to Trin. But Trin’s gaze was fixed ahead, behind him. Slowly Bevode turned his head and saw Trung Si pause, balance on his good foot, and use his crutch to scoop up the whip and toss it in the air. He caught the whip by the handle and let it uncoil in a nasty twitch.

“Okay, you caught me. Quit fuckin’ around,” said Bevode.

The cripples filed past Bevode and walked to a stack of loose ingots-the first ones Broker had tossed out. Wobbling on their artificial legs, they reached down and loaded their arms.

Trung Si tested the whip in the air.

Crack! The sound echoed away down the beach. It took all emotions except hate with it.

The lash whipped across Bevode’s legs. He shivered with an involuntary cringe and scuttled to escape. The cripples formed a gauntlet and funneled him toward the pit.

“Hey, knock it off!” Bevode’s eyes were indignant. Still no fear. No remorse. Not quite getting it. But then that’s where he got his dark energy: Not quite getting it.

Trung Si let the whip sway menacingly. Waiting. Broker saw Nina limping up the beach pushing LaPorte in front of her. A soldier had given her a pair of baggy fatigue trousers to cover her dirty underwear. She looked like Charlie Chaplin.

Two soldiers walked on either side, herding LaPorte with their AKs. Nina collared LaPorte by the scruff of the neck and pushed him to his knees in front of Broker and Trin. The soldiers stepped back.

“You’re a…soldier?” She stared at Trin’s pistol belt, numb, bewildered, definitely happy.

“He’s a fuckin’ cop,” said Broker. “Don’t ask me how.”

In the distance, the three helicopters, blocky Russian Hinds, circled the Lola.

Trin reached and roughly seized LaPorte by the ear. He nodded to Trung Si. The whip feinted left, circled, and snapped into Bevode’s face. Bevode bellowed, scrambled, and tumbled backward into the hole.

One of the cripples immediately drew back his arm and fired one of the heavy ingots. A howl of pain rose from the pit. “Cut that out!”

“Who are you? You can’t do this,” whispered LaPorte.

“I could shoot you right now for stealing Vietnamese antiquities; we take that very seriously,” said Trin without emotion. He kicked LaPorte and dragged him forward by the ear and tipped him forward over the pit.

The cripples now hobbled around the edge of the hole. Down below, Bevode had torn a piece of the rotted planking from the pallet. Instinct. Grasping a weapon. An ingot drew a glittering arc and smashed through the moldy wood. Bevode roared in pain and scrambled on his hands and one knee, scooting in a circuit of the pit, dragging his wounded leg. Taking their time, the cripples talked among themselves, altering their stances around the circumference of the hole.

Tiger in a pit came to mind. Other analogies would fit. Maybe it was the war. If Bevode could get his hands on them he could tear them apart. But then, they had position on him…

On a command they all hurled their missiles. One of the bars scored a solid hit on Bevode’s skull. At least two hit him in the arms and trunk. He fell forward roaring, smashing blindly with his fists. He gathered himself and attempted a staggering charge up the ramp. A volley of ingots chopped him to his knees. He was badly hurt now. Blinded. Parts not working. With the awkward jerky tempo of a squashed bug, he crept back into the hole and began to claw at the rotted wood. Digging. Trying to hide.

Trin yanked LaPorte to his feet. LaPorte came partway up, reluctant to rise to his full height. Knees bent, he stayed with his head below Trin’s.

“Run,” said Trin.

“Wait a minute,” protested Nina. Broker touched her arm. Shook his head, warned her off.

“Run,” repeated Trin. “You have money? Your passport?”

LaPorte hunched over, his wild pale eyes fixed on the pit where the cripples were taunting Bevode with feints, preparing to throw another volley.

“Go that way.” Trin pointed across the dunes. “Get to the road. Someone will run you into Hue for a few bucks. Then you can catch a plane. Go quick before I change my mind. Before they get here…” He yanked his head at the helicopters that still circled the boat.

A flurry at the pit. Another volley. Bevode’s impaired voice, “Come down here…try that, chickenshit lil’ fuck…”

One of the cripples held out his right hand. He didn’t have a left one. He bent his index finger back with his second finger into a crude oval. And Broker remembered that one too. Right up there with “Meeow.” Calling Bevode a pussy.

Trin pointed to the helicopters again.

“Office guys, Cyrus,” said Broker helpfully. “No sense of humor whatsoever.”

“He’s right,” said Trin. “When they get here it becomes official in a stuffy way. Right now I have some discretion.”

LaPorte’s eyes locked wide open. Flight. Trung Si snaked the whip across the sand and let it skitter, undulating next to LaPorte’s desert boots. The cripples hurled another shower of gold. LaPorte heard the broken wet squeal from the hole. He looked around once and bolted, running in long strides across the sand. Some soldiers, who had stayed to picket the top of the slope, chased him, yelling insults. Laughing.

“You let him get away?” Nina’s voice was confused.

Trin smiled grimly. “If you find what you’re looking for down there, let the U.S. Army catch him when he gets back to America.” Softly, he added, “One last joke on Cyrus.”

Nina drew herself up. “You are really something, mister.”

Then, pitiless, they turned their attention back to the pit.

Bevode was losing a lot of blood from his face and scalp. One arm hung, smashed and useless. His crouch had deteriorated into a fetal curl. With his good hand he pawed through the punky wood and scooped feeble handfuls of sand.

“Jesus,” gasped Nina in a harsh release of emotion.

Bevode, blinded by blood, raised a shard of chalky bone in his functioning hand, trying to protect his face.

Trin snapped an order.

The cripples dropped the gold of Ming Mang and Trieu Tru and Gia Long and Tu Duc. Slowly they lurched and tottered and staggered down the sand ramp. They dragged Bevode to the side of the pit. Carefully, remorselessly, they pried the bone from his twitching hand and reverently placed it aside. Then they formed a semicircle and, arm-in-arm for stability, balancing on their artificial limbs, using their good legs, they kicked Bevode Fret to death.