Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“That’s what Jimmy meant when he said ‘Trin’s rules,’ huh? Sounds like another disillusioned young man took them to heart,” said Nina, poking him in the arm.

Broker shrugged. “Trin said it was a dilemma. To work a good plan you can’t trust anyone. But what can you accomplish all alone? He said he wouldn’t be a robot or a puppet. That’s what he called the Communists, robots. Just disciplined hands and feet, no brains. He saw the Saigon government as puppets of the West. So, he was screwed in the middle.”

“Sounds like a real upbeat guy.”

“Yeah, but Cyrus LaPorte, standing on Jimmy Tuna’s shoulders, wouldn’t come up to Trin, and he’s about five four.” Broker turned to her. “Your dad said Trin could run an army or a government.”

“Dad trusted him?”

“You got it. That’s all we’ve really got to go on. Their friendship. Twenty years ago. Nina, I didn’t know these guys. Not even your dad. Not really. I was a young dumb stud. I risked my neck just to get a nod from them. LaPorte, Ray, Trin, even Tuna-they were-are, well, smarter than I am.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Nina. “I do know that when it really mattered you ran right at a forty-four mag to draw fire away from me.”

Broker clicked his teeth. “Not real smart.”

Nina perused him. “Dad had rules too; he used to say: ‘The map is not the terrain.’ There are all these brilliant people and they think up these boffo schemes and when the plans all fall apart-because they always do-someone like you holds things together.”

“So fuck a bunch of office guys,” said Broker with a broad grin.

“Absolutely.”

Broker stepped on the gas and whisked down a ramp onto Interstate 94 and exceeded the speed limit to Hudson, Wisconsin.

“Where the hell have you been?” said Don Larson on the phone.

“Shopping,” said Broker, looking at a plastic bag from an outdoor store they’d found in a mall near the Best Western motel in Hudson. Nina stood in the bathroom doorway, sleek and bright in a towel and a wreath of steam.

“I’ve got your visas and your passports. I expedited them so it costs extra. But to schedule a flight it would help if I knew when you want to leave .”

“How about tonight? It’s real urgent, Don.” They read him the number off Nina’s credit card.

Larson groaned. “So I eat at my desk tonight. Okay. Twin Cities to Seattle…” Broker heard the patter of a computer keyboard as Larson talked. “Connect to…Hong Kong or Bangkok?” he asked.

“Whatever opens up first.”

“Then Air Vietnam to Hanoi. Give me a number where I can reach you and stay close to the phone. If something pops up you’ll have to jump on it.” He paused. “You get your shots?”

“No.”

“Take two hours, go to Ramsey. It’s serious malaria country where you’re going. Then stay at a number where I can reach you.”

Broker gave him the room extension and hung up the phone.

“So?” asked Nina, fluffing her hair with a towel.

“So,” said Broker, “tell me, when’s the last time you wore your hair long?”

“Don’t do this to me, Broker.” But he caught an edge of a smile as she spun away.

Four hours passed in a whirlwind. They’d used his badge to speed getting a full round of inoculations for Vietnam at the Ramsey Travel Clinic in St. Paul. Nina submitted to the shots and filed the prescriptions reluctantly, explaining how she had refused to take the experimental biological and nerve agent antidotes in the Gulf. She’d put her faith in her gas mask. “See,” she said, “no rashes or night sweats-”

“Just a three-foot-wide stripe of purple ambition down your back,” Broker commented.

They went back to the motel and called Larson. He had them on an evening flight to Seattle but was having trouble with the Hong Kong connection. They ate takeout and watched the phone and packed. They were traveling light, one carry-on apiece. Broker studied himself in a mirror in his baggy new tropical shirt with lots of pockets and armpit vents. He cut the brand name off it with fingernail clippers and had just pried the piece of bone off the tiger tooth when Larson called. They were through to Hong Kong after a six-hour layover in Seattle. They’d have to scramble from there but it shouldn’t be a problem if their paperwork was in order. Air Vietnam’s line in Hong Kong was down but Northwest reservations told him that the airline always had empty seats.

They left the motor running at the travel agency, thanked Don Larson profusely, grabbed their passports and visas and tickets and drove like hell.

Two hours later the Jeep was tucked away in the long-term parking ramp at Minneapolis-St. Paul International. Broker felt the empty place in the small of his back where his Beretta used to live. They’d left the guns in the car.

They buckled their seatbelts. Broker glanced around and maybe it was fatigue-induced hallucinations or maybe it was clarity but it looked like the 747 was crammed with all of Rodney the arms dealer’s rude, over-weight dumbed-down extended American family off on a mission to sink Seattle with cellulite.

After takeoff, Broker unfolded himself from the cramped economy seat and got up. “My feet hurt,” he explained to Nina. Which was true. From kicking Bevode and swamp walking. But he also wanted to check out the passengers to see if anyone resembling the Fret family was onboard. He saw a lot of physiognomy that suggested latent serial killers and depressed gene pools but none of them with the long jackass bone structure of the Frets.

He returned, restacked himself in the Procrustean seat and fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the flaps cranked down as the jet made its landing approach. Nina, still fast asleep, snuggled on his shoulder with her hand warm where her fingers curled around a dead tiger’s gold-tipped fang against his chest.

After they landed in Seattle they took a bus into town and ate at a restaurant with so many ferns that it felt like jungle survival training in Panama all over again. At four in the morning, Seattle time, so slap-happy they were making stale Dorothy and Toto jokes, they remembered that they hadn’t called Trin. They left their incomplete flight information with the hotel desk clerk at the number in Hue. They’d arrive in Hanoi on the first open flight from Hong Kong. Trin would have to fill in the Air Vietnam blanks. In the background, Broker could hear the alien bells and growls of Vietnamese afternoon traffic. Then they showed their passports and boarded their flight.

T heplane is full of people with black hair and those wraparound brown eyes. No idea what they’re talking about. Everything is backward and upside down. Sleep has slipped between the cracks of a dozen time zones. Nina is coping better. She snoozes on his shoulder. No-smoking flight. His mouth and his nerves ache for a cigarette .

He stares at the Northwest Far East magazine he finds in the seat pocket. The centerfold is a brightly colored map of the world. Like a Rorschach. The Asian continent is a spotted beast rearing out of the crouched leg of Africa with Europe in its hip pocket. North America is an afterthought cropped and running off the page left and right .

Marginal .

No calling 911 where he’s going .

The flaps jerked, their ears swelled and popped, and Hong Kong emerged from a layer of dirty clouds. Cement high-rises streaked by like smoke, window lights for sparks. They banked sharply and the pilot kicked the big 747 through a fighter-jet turn, passing-it seemed to Broker-right between the tall buildings.

Cramped and numb they lumbered out the door and the clouds were burning tires and the air was rancid dishwater that stuck to Broker’s cheeks. China was a fractured sensation. His first steamy look at the oldest engine in the world.