T. Parker - Little Saigon

He crawled back to the defunct sliding door and squeezed into the hangar beside the old plane. The cement floor was dusty but quiet. He moved slowly under the wing of the aircraft, then dodged behind a stack of old ammo boxes. Outside, the wind slapped against the walls. Frye watched the guard look in his direction, then turn back to Bennett, Fifty feet away, he guessed: I could take him out with one shot. You didn’t even get paper on the first one. It’s the first one you want true ... usually that’s all you get.

Shapes were moving just outside the light. Frye saw the guard stand at attention. Then the echo of footsteps slowly approaching Bennett, and a tapping sound. A young Vietnamese man dressed in green fatigues stepped into the light, looked at Bennett, then eased back into the shadows, Bennett looked up. Frye could see the stunned disbelief on his brother’s face as he squinted into the darkness. Two more steps, slow steps, punctuated by the tapping sound again. The profile of a man formed. With one last step he entered the light, a stooped figure leaning on an ebony cane, a face twisted beyond recognition. He wore dark glasses. Thach and Bennett stared at each other for a long, long moment.

Frye’s body went bone-cold. He couldn’t take his eyes off Thach’s molten face — the way the cheeks and nose and mouth fused together, as if welded by some skilless artisan using the last scraps of creation. Thach wore an army shirt and pants, a black belt and boots, an officer’s holster, a batch of medals on his bulky, misshapen chest. He continued to stare down at Bennett, who stared back. Frye did too. The .45 seemed impossibly heavy and useless. Then Thach lifted a hand from his cane, just slightly, and motioned to someone behind him. Li stepped into the light, wrists bound tightly, ankles linked by a foot of rope, guided by a soldier with one hand on her arm and the other on his rifle. She wore the black pajamas of a Vietnamese peasant. Bennett started off his chair, but the guard stepped forward and drove him back with his gun butt. The man with Li cinched her close to him. Thach looked at the suitcases of money, then back to Bennett. When he spoke, his voice sounded artificially induced. “Your wife and I have had many long discussions these last days. I expected to find a strong woman in Li Frye, and I was correct. I had hoped to show her the truth of history, and of nature, but she is too far lost to your lies to ever see the truth. You were thorough, Lieutenant. Our attempts to re-educate her have not been a success.”

Li stood motionless. Again Bennett tried to go to her, and again the guard jammed him back with his weapon.

Thach turned to the darkness and waved again. The guard that Frye had seen outside now pulled a small table and chair to the edge of the light. Thach maneuvered himself behind it and sat down. “We have some formalities to complete before our transaction can be made.” The guard placed a sheaf of papers on the table. Thach removed his dark shades, removed a pair of reading glasses from his pocket, wrapped the cables carefully over what remained of his ears, and read. “On July second, nineteen-seventy-two, you ordered South Vietnamese Army sergeant Huong Lam interrogated as a traitor, then executed?”

Bennett sat forward, still looking at Li as if she were the only person left on earth. As she gazed back at him, Frye tried to identify the strange expression on her face. She looked exhausted, almost resigned, but still with hope. What had Thach done to her?

“Lieutenant Frye, please answer.”

Bennett gave his name, rank and serial number.

Thach shuffled the papers, then looked at him. “I must tell you, Lieutenant, that the war is over. You lost. The sooner you give me answers, the sooner we will finish.”

Bennett was still staring at Li. “Yes, I ordered Huong Lam interrogated and killed.”

“Huong was a man you had worked with for nearly a year, a man you had come to suspect was a traitor to the American war effort?”

Bennett nodded.

Li was looking at Thach now, as if paralyzed by the face and the disembodied voice.

“On the night you took this woman, she came to you with a pack on her back. Huong Lam had given it to her. What was in it?”

Bennett looked at Li.

“Answer, Lieutenant.”

“He gave Li a bomb. He strapped it to her back and told her to take it to me. He said we should open it together.”

Li looked at Bennett expectantly.

Thach wrote something down. “Tell her, Lieutenant Frye, what your men found in the pack given to Li by Huong Lam.”

Bennett started off his chair again but the guard lifted his gun butt. Bennett ducked, covering up with his elbows. Frye saw the guard’s disdainful frown, the disappointment that he’d already beaten the fight out of his plaything. His brother sank back into the seat. Frye’s grip tightened on the automatic.

Bennett looked at Li. “She knows. It was a bomb, a frag grenade made from three dead mortar rounds.”

Thach rose slowly from the table and tapped his way to Bennett. He stooped, bringing his face close, and removed his glasses. Bennett sat, frozen by Thach as a mouse is frozen by a rattlesnake. Then, slowly, Bennett leaned forward. Their faces almost touched. Bennett’s hand rose slowly, as if to touch Thach’s cheek, but hovered there, unable to complete the motion. Bennett spoke in a whisper. “No.”

Thach’s face twisted into something like a smile. He stood straight. “What is wrong, Lieutenant? You look like a man who is seeing ghosts.”

“ Lam.”

“Bennett.”

“Lam... you fell, you—”

“I was thrown. Let us not distort the truth as we have distorted each other. I am still thrown from your Huey a thousand times a night.”

“Lam,” whispered Bennett.

“Lam died in the sky as he fell to earth. He died in the trees that tore his face. He died in the mud where he lay while the rats ate him. He died in the tunnel where they did not set his wounds because he could never live. You killed him.”

Thach brought up a hand, looped something off his neck, and tossed it toward Bennett. It landed on the floor and Frye knew in an instant what it was: the silver wave necklace he’d made and sent to Benny all those years ago.

Bennett breathed deeply, his eyes moving from Thach to Li, then back to Thach again.

Li stood still, staring at Thach as the colonel approached her. Frye could see the tears glistening on her cheeks.

“Lam,” she said. “ Lam.”

Thach took her face in his hand and turned it to Bennett. “Tell us, Bennett, what you found in the pack that I prepared for you two to open together.”

Thach yanked Li up close to Bennett, still clenching her face in his hand. “This must come from you. I’ve waited many years for the chance to hear you say that one word. Li would not believe me. Tell her now, what I packed for you to open together. Tell me what I was tortured for, what I was thrown from the gunship for.”

“Champagne,” said Bennett quietly. “Three bottles of French champagne.”

Thach released her. She didn’t move.

“And what else?” asked Thach.

“A note that said, ‘Friend, you have won.’”

Li looked at Bennett imploringly. She seemed to diminish into the pajamas. “Benny... no. It was a bomb.”

Bennett’s voice was low. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know, until after. It wasn’t until my men tried to defuse it that I knew what had really gone down. I was drinking in the officers’ club that night. I was drinking because a friend betrayed me. Then the ordnance team came in and tossed the pack onto the bar. They were laughing. I just stared at those bottles and realized what I’d done. I thought you had betrayed us, Lam. And I thought you tried to kill me for taking Li away. Go back, Lam. Go back to that night and ask yourself what you would have done.”