Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“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.