Dick Stivers - Royal Flush

"Yeah, but she makes it harder for us to do our job," the colonel reminded him. "Speaking of which, have a seat and report."

Bone weary, Bolan settled into a chair across the desk from the colonel, who nodded as Bolan related the kills in the village and the firefight in the jungle afterward.

"Good work, son," he said when Bolan finished. The corners of the CO's mouth drew back in a grimace. "You must be damn tired."

"I could use some sleep," said Bolan, shrugging.

"Wish I didn't have to tell you this after a mission like that, but there's no ducking a bad job, I always say."

Bolan waited, trying to ignore a foreboding in his gut.

"Sir?"

"I can't send Jill Desmond back to Saigon, much as I'd like to," Crawford growled. "I've got orders from the top to cooperate with her."

"She must have a lot of pull back home."

"Enough. Anyway, she's here for as long as she wants to stay. And while she's here, I've got to have somebody I can trust keep an eye on her."

Bolan's mouth tightened.

A baby-sitter.

The colonel wanted him to baby-sit the live-wire journalist who had a mad-on for anything military.

"I, uh, could think of better choices for the job than me, sir."

The CO chuckled.

"I'll bet you can, but I can't. The lady doesn't seem to like you, Sergeant, and I don't blame you for not liking her, but if anybody can keep her alive while she's out here, it's you."

"Is that an order, sir?"

"It's an order."

Bolan stood.

"Then I guess I'd better catch up with her and get her locked up somewhere for the night."

"Just don't let her know that she's locked up." Lieutenant Colonel Crawford chuckled. "She was mad enough when I told her I was going to assign someone to keep an eye on her while she's here."

Bolan's mouth quirked.

It might have been a smile. He saluted and started to turn when Crawford stopped him.

"Sergeant, you might tell her what the Viet civilians call you. Sergeant Mercy fits you just as well as the Executioner."

"She wouldn't understand," Bolan said simply.

He reached for the doorknob. It was jerked open before he could grasp it.

"Well, what is it, Corporal?" the colonel barked at the orderly who barreled into the room. "You'd better have a damned good reason for not knocking!"

"It's Miss Desmond, sir," the corporal said, shakily. "The reporter."

"I know who she is. What about her?"

Bolan had that foreboding in his gut again.

"She's taken a jeep, sir. No one expected her to try something like that. It was parked behind the motor pool. They worked on it today. Uh, gave it a tune-up and everything. C Company was supposed to pick it up first thing in the morning."

Crawford slammed his fist on the desk top.

"Damn. What do you mean she stole a jeep?"

The corporal cowered. "She was gone before anybody knew it. She headed west."

"West? Toward Three Click Fork?"

The corporal nodded again.

Bolan sighed as he thought of Three Click Fork, three kilometers from the camp where an old supply road branched north and south.

Where the heaviest concentration of VC activity in the area was reported to be building up.

That was the intel from all the recon patrols.

A bad place for an unarmed, just-off-the-plane reporter who also happened to be a woman.

A terrible place.

"Sergeant?"

Bolan glanced at the colonel and nodded.

"On my way, sir."

Bolan stalked out into the jungle night.

So Jill Desmond wanted to know what war was really all about.

The Executioner hoped she wouldn't find out. The hard way.

Soldiers.

They were all alike, Jill Desmond thought as she piloted the bucking jeep along the road leading away from Cam Lo base camp.

They were like juvenile college boys in a fraternity with their secret handshakes and rituals.

They didn't want to let anybody in on what really happened, least of all an uppity woman who had "no right" to be there.

Well, Lieutenant Colonel Crawford and his bloodthirsty Sergeant Bolan were wrong if they thought they could keep the truth from her.

She was young, yes, but she was also damn good at her job.

She was more than willing to wade through any kind of shit to get the story she was after.

The camp was one kilometer behind her.

The twin beams of the jeep's headlights cut through the curtain of night, revealing the deeply rutted road.

She jerked the wheel savagely and geared down as the vehicle bounced over the crater-pocked roadway. With each depression in the half-paved track the jeep threatened to head into the jungle.

This wasn't any worse than the road she had driven over in the hills of Kentucky when she interviewed the leader of that cult. He had been a little scary with those burning eyes, that long beard, the shotgun in gnarled hands.

Then there had been the Black Panther she had ventured into Watts to find. She had gone to places where a white woman had no business. She had asked the questions nobody asked, and she had survived.

She had flourished.

Guts.

That was all it took. If you had guts, you could go anywhere, do anything.

There were no sounds of war in the jungle night as she drove through its velvet blackness.

She would find the people who lived in this area. She would ask questions. The truth would be told.

The people back home were starting to wake up to what the truth about Vietnam really was. The human suffering. Napalm. The fat cats.

War was always good for business. Young men were dying in a rich man's war 10,000 miles away from home. Most of them had no idea why they were there, fighting a people who had done nothing to them. They weren't heroes, they were pawns in the wrong place at the wrong time. The first real rumbles of protest were beginning to be heard.

The truth would fuel those protests, and that knowledge made her job simple.

Find the truth.

Get it to the people.

Cam Lo was two clicks behind her.

Men like Mack Bolan had free rein to kill and maim and torture, and their superior officers hung medals on their chests for it.

Somebody had to put a stop to it before this backward little country was overrun with self-styled Executioners.

The glow of the headlights washed over Three Click Fork.

Jill Desmond stopped the jeep.

A frown marred the smoothness of her forehead.

She had pored over maps of the area before coming out here and had expected this fork, but she wasn't sure which way she should turn.

There were villages in both directions.

She tromped on the gas and spun the wheel to the right. The vehicle headed north down the narrow road.

As she drove, she tried to recall the smattering of Vietnamese she knew. Many of the villagers, especially the elders, knew English, she'd been told. She was sure she would be able to communicate with them.

The truth has a way of breaking down most barriers, including languages.

The harsh growl of the jeep's engine sounded loud in the night, drowning out the many little jungle noises that whizzed by along both sides of the open vehicle.

But the jeep sounds did not drown out the sudden burst of rattling gunfire from up ahead.

Instinctively, Jill hit the brakes.

The jeep skidded to a stop.

She sat very still, not realizing she was holding her breath.

The weapons fire continued.

She could distinguish the crackle of small-arms punctuating the heavier blasts.

She cut the jeep's headlights but left the engine running.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. She saw a flickering brightness up ahead, around what was evidently a bend in the road. The glow was red, licking the night sky as she watched.

Fire.

The village was being put to the torch!