Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“Gimme,” said Nina. She fastened her hand around the bottle. Broker smiled. A dicey smile. He’d been afraid she’d be in shock. Trauma. By the thin light of the moon he could see the set of her jaw. She was one pissed female human.

Nina gagged on the first swallow of whiskey and lurched toward the window. But she kept it down and went back for a second jolt. She handed the bottle to Broker. “Drink with me,” she said. He did. The moonshine brought tears to his eyes. He handed the bottle back to Trin, who took a long swig, corked it, and stuffed it back under the seat.

“Who’s that on the floor?” said Nina, arching her neck.

“Madame LaPorte. She led us to you. We’re not real sure we trust her so she’s not traveling first class.”

“You found it.”

Broker nodded. “It’s something.”

Nina shuddered and Broker took her in his arms again. “You all right?” he asked foolishly.

“Hell, no, I’m not all right. Got a cigarette?”

He put a cigarette in her lips and popped his Zippo. She steadied on the tobacco, drawing it deep into her lungs. Exhaled.

“You remember anything?” asked Broker.

“The bad parts. There weren’t any good parts.”

“Knock on wood. We might have a fighting chance now.”

“I’m for fighting,” said Nina. She smoked and gazed out the window. They were into the sand now and moonlight twinkled on the dunes. Willows spun crepuscular shadows around the stark geometry of a North Vietnamese cemetery.

She said slowly, “They burned me with cigarettes. I didn’t tell them shit. Gave ’em a lecture on the fucking Code of Conduct.” Gingerly her hand went to her festered left ear.

“I saved it for you,” said Broker absurdly.

“What?”

“You know.”

“Fuckers.” Her voice was still hoarse, but stronger. He could feel her cinching herself by an act of will into a tight knot of leather and stitched canvas and buckles.

“That red-headed creep tried to rape me.” She shook her head ruefully and dragged on the cigarette. By the flare of the cigarette tip she saw the expression on Broker’s face. “Don’t worry, fire base cervix didn’t get overrun…here.” She tried to smile. “Might have in Minnesota, though.” She turned and gazed out the window. “Little shit tried to rape me,” she said, forcefully this time. “But the only thing he could get up was cocaine up his nose. I laughed at him. That’s when he burned me.”

“That was Bevode’s little brother. We took care of him.”

“Fuck him and his limp little dick,” she muttered.

Broker winced at her truculent vulgarity. But she needed it now. If there was a part of her childhood left that remembered playing with dolls it had died in that room.

They drove on in silence broken only by Lola LaPorte’s gagged protests. Nina used Broker’s bandanna to give herself a quick cat-wash. She excused herself and crawled over Lola to the back of the van with the bottle of water and performed a crude douche. She returned at least ritually cleansed. Broker helped her into her clothes.

A farmhouse up ahead was illuminated by an improbable glow. When they went past, they saw a family gathered on a sleeping platform in front of a big color TV.

“Huh,” said Nina. “Is there electricity out here?”

“Batteries,” said Trin.

“ That’s the beginning of the end of Vietnamese culture,” pronounced Nina dryly and they all laughed. Shaky. But a laugh. She was trying to let them know she was all right. Not a burden. They drove for a long time in silence and there were no more houses.

Then Trin arched in the front seat and yelled. “Oh-oh.” Just before he killed the headlights Broker saw the tree felled across the road.

The barrel of a rifle poked through the open driver’s window. The van was surrounded by limping side-slanting shadows, crabwalkers.

A low discussion commenced in Vietnamese. “It’s all right,” Broker told Nina, recognizing Trung Si behind the rifle.

“It’s not all right,” said Trin very coldly.

Trin cut the tape on Lola’s feet so she could walk and pushed her toward Broker. She tried to pull away, the whites of her eyes bulging in the moonlight, mummified protests coming from her gagged lips. Nina shoved her roughly ahead.

Formed in Indian file, they went off the track and snaked through the dunes, toward the sea. Trin and Trung Si were in the lead. Then five hard-faced middle-aged men in softly straining artificial limbs. Broker saw at least one empty sleeve among them. They all carried primitive weapons: machetes, rice sickles, butcher knives. Despite their handicaps they moved with precision, instinctively keeping an interval. Stopping every few steps to listen. Broker pushed Lola in front of him as he and Nina fell into the rhythm of the night discipline.

As they neared the beach they halted at the clack of bamboo. Another paraplegic hobbled from the shadows. He conversed tensely with Trin and Trung Si. When Nina started to ask a question Broker warned her to be silent. The stony intonation of Trin’s whispers informed him that, for better or worse, this was now a Vietnamese show.

Slowly they approached the house on the slope over the beach. The cripples sprawled carefully in the cover of the dunes while Trung Si hopped spry and silent on his crutch to a covering position and leaned over his rifle. Trin crept down to the house.

Five tense minutes passed. Then a low whistle sounded from the beach. Trung Si swung up on his crutch and waved his rifle. The cripples pushed themselves up and went down on line. Broker and Nina followed.

The place had been trashed. Shards of crockery and utensils were strewn in the trampled vegetable garden. Trin and his men gathered at the flagpole next to the porch.

Nina’s fingers spasmed on Broker’s biceps. Her nails broke the skin.

In the moonlight they could make out the legless mass of the flute player’s body. Trin held up a fuel oil lantern and Trung Si lit the wick. The soft yellow light revealed that the dead man’s neck was grotesquely stretched in a noose knotted in the flagpole lanyard. A chopstick had been pounded almost out of sight into his left ear.

“Meeow.” A low growl thickened the inflection of the voices around the flagpole. Smoldering dark eyes swung toward the three white people in the yard. Lola shied back, straining against the tape on her wrists. Nina grabbed her by the hair and shoved her forward and forced her to her knees in front of the flagpole.

Flies stormed around Lola’s face and she averted her head from the barnyard stench. Trung Si swore. They saw that the Viet Cong flag had been taken down. It lay in the dirt, filled with feces. More flies clustered in black twitching furrows on the dead man’s body. Among the crawling insects they saw patches of skin upbraided, hanging in flaps.

One of the vets began brushing the flies away. Another steadied the corpse while another cripple cut the rope with a machete. Slowly they lowered the body to the earth.

Broker exhaled. Whipped and lynched. You find gold, you pay in blood . The flute player and Billie Holiday could have played a duet.

Trung Si tapped Broker on the shoulder and pointed out to sea. At first Broker thought he was pointing at the stars and then he picked out the faint regular line of electric lights hugging the horizon. A boat lay off the coast.

Then Trung Si spoke to Trin and Trin swore vehemently in his native tongue. Not in the heat of anger, but out of something much deeper and deliberate and sinister.

“That man. Trung Si was on his way back from hiding our boat. He saw them leave. Six white men in a power-boat. They carried AR-15s. That man had a whip.”

Then he moved in a certain scary way and Broker, who believed that Vietnamese all hid deadly stingers under their friendly smiles, braced himself.