Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

When Trin’s socializing was concluded, they left the camera and the last roll of film with the militia and walked back to the van. They backtracked up the sandy road and turned left and drove through the dunes.

“This is a long drive,” said Broker after almost an hour bouncing on a rutted cow path.

“Not far,” Trin minimized. “Five kilometers.”

They turned again and headed back toward the sea. Trin stopped and pulled the emergency brake. “See. Not far.” They left the van at the pylons of an unrepaired bridge and trudged the rest of the way, coming out of the willows onto a beach. Ribbons of breakers eased into a small cove. A decrepit fishing sampan was moored to a rickety dock, rocking gently in the surf. A baleful Chinese eye glared on the bow. A sail was furled to a boom off the mast.

“A sailboat?” Broker groaned.

“It has a motor,” said Trin quickly. Immediately Broker went down to inspect the boat. He climbed over the gunwale and made a face. What looked like the rusty vertebrae of a mechanical dinosaur filled the stern of the boat. An automotive engine, off a Willis Jeep maybe, coupled to some kind of marine transmission with some kind of universal joint. A fifty-five-gallon drum served as the gas tank. He kicked it. Empty. The stirrups next to the motor were absent a battery. The boat was like the militia: unusable. He glanced at Trin dubiously.

“It runs,” said Trin. Then he pointed to a whitewashed building that sat on higher ground among the willows. A different flag tossed from a pole in the sea breeze: red and blue with a yellow star. The first VC flag Broker had seen.

“He can make it run,” said Trin. A scarecrow shadow in sweat-stained gray cotton separated from the shade of the porch. His left pant leg hung empty as he hobbled on a crutch down a lane between rows of vegetables. As they walked up the beach to meet him, Broker shielded the sun with his hand. The old man’s skin was a mahogany shrivel over knotty muscle, his stringy gray hair was tied in a pigtail. His right eye gleamed like a Greek olive in a salad of scar tissue. A black patch covered his left eye.

“That’s Trung Si, my old battalion sergeant major when I was in the Front. Welcome to Jimmy Tuna’s home for down-and-out Viet Cong,” said Trin with a sardonic hung-over grin.

Trin introduced Broker to Trung Si, who was under the initial impression that he was Jimmy Tuna, their benefactor. With that cleared up, the weathered cripple hopped off to a well and hauled up a net full of chilled beer bottles. Broker accepted a bottle. San Miguel. “Jimmy liked this beer,” he said, making conversation.

Jimmy was dead.

“Yes,” said Trin.

“Yes,” said Trung Si.

Trin recounted how Jimmy had bought an old truck for the home. The rest of the men had driven it into Hue to have their artificial limbs reset. One man had stayed behind. A double amputee, legs gone above the knees, who remained inside, withdrawn, sitting on a sleeping platform. A set of artificial legs lay discarded on the floor by the bed. The man smiled politely when Trin introduced him and then looked away.

Back out on the porch, Broker said, “We need to get the boat running.”

Trin scratched his head and seemed dazed by the sun. “It’s too hard for the men to manage. They use little round wicker boats to fish.”

“We aren’t after fish.”

“Yeah,” said Trin. He barked to Trung Si, who barked back, and they had a heated discussion that Broker couldn’t understand. In the end, the old man, bitching, and refusing Broker’s offer of help, stalked off one-legged with a tool box, a battery, and a five-gallon tin of gasoline piled in a small wagon that he insisted on pulling all alone. His loud alien profanity carried up from the beach as he thumped down the dock. In a few minutes the engine coughed under a cloud of smoke. One by one the cylinders kicked in like firecrackers. Trung Si threw off the lines and reversed the old boat into the cove. He piloted the tub in a circle.

“That thing won’t take the sea,” said Broker.

“No, it’s a river boat,” said Trin.

Trung Si made a dock landing, secured the boat, killed the engine, and jerked back up the beach, still swearing.

“What’d he say?” asked Broker.

“He says why fish when we have meat.” Trin pointed to an old bolt action hunting rifle hanging from a peg on the wall. “They took the truck up north yesterday and got a deer in the hills. So we’ll have venison tonight. Right now we should try to get some sleep. It’s going to be a long night.”

Broker didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to keep busy. His eyes wandered up the beach, into the dunes. He’d never felt desolation like this. He didn’t know what to call it. Nina’s earlobe was a dry lump in the napkin in his pocket. Morbid. Didn’t know what to do with it. Hang on to it until he saw her again.

“I know,” said Trin gently. “You’re worried about her. And you’re worried about me. You’re afraid to go to sleep because Trung Si and I might brain you with a skillet and take your map. There’s a lot to worry about. Always.”

“Don’t like being this helpless,” said Broker.

“We’re not helpless. And she’s tough. It doesn’t do any good to dwell on it. We have what they want. Tonight we’ll go find it.” Trin paused and bit his lip. He cleared his throat. “I should have a look at that map, Phil.”

Broker unzipped his security pouch and unfolded the worn laminated sheet. Trin placed it on a table on the porch and secured the edges with sea shells. “We’re here,” he pointed.

Broker tapped the grid square that he’d memorized. “We look for three old graves, with the curved walls.”

“That puts it about four klics up the beach.” Trin smiled. “That close. All these years. There’s a road we can take most of the way that ends at an abandoned hamlet. Here.” He pointed.

“We need a compass,” said Broker.

“No problem,” said Trin. “I’ll line up the tools. You try to rest.”

Broker looked up. Trung Si hovered over him. “You better let him look at your thumb,” said Trin.

The old cripple untaped the slightly swollen, infected finger, rinsed it in rice whiskey and went back to his cook shack. He returned and applied a foul-smelling poultice and bandaged it tightly with adhesive.

“What is it?” Broker asked.

Trin shrugged. “I’m a city guy. Who knows what they do out here.”

The home had one long room with a cook shack built off the back. A dozen sleeping platforms lined the walls, partitioned off for privacy. Broker lay on a hard plank platform across from the silent brooding amputee and couldn’t sleep. At least the steady sea breeze fended off most of the flies. Nothing could dilute the rancid odor of years of accumulated nuoc mam sauce that smelled like dirty pussy. The dressing on his thumb itched and tingled.

Trung Si puttered and hummed in the kitchen. Trin swayed in a hammock on the porch-twelve-stepping it after his explosion in Dong Ha-drinking Pepsi-Cola from a can.

Sleep wouldn’t come. Broker couldn’t stop imagining, in great detail, all ways in which Nina could be dead, injured, debased, violated, and tortured. He had fifteen years of crime scenes to draw from. He didn’t think restraint was part of Cyrus LaPorte’s method of operation. Not with Bevode Fret for the hired help.

Mercy was not an option.

Basic desperation was a new sensation that he explored like a wild animal inspects its cage. He was stuck on this foreign spit of sand in the middle of nowhere with flies crawling over his skin. In the graveyard of the fucking iron elephants. He had lost initiative: now he was controlled by events. Cripples and barely trained kids for backup. A shipwreck named Trin for company.