Mark Gimenez - The Abduction

Devereaux rose, removed his reading glasses, and waited for the colonel to speak. He didn’t press him; he couldn’t. This man was a real goddamn American hero. When Colonel Brice finally spoke, his eyes remained on his boots.

“SOG team Viper conducted those covert operations presidents lied about. SOG was Studies and Observation Group, CCN was Command and Control North. We conducted cross-border operations in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. Our mission was to disrupt shipments on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, assassinate NVA officers, recon for air strikes… none of which officially happened. We operated off the books.”

Devereaux pointed to the Asian script on the colonel’s arm.

“These other words, they’re Vietnamese?”

The colonel nodded.

“What do they say?”

The colonel hesitated a moment, then he said, “ ‘We kill for peace.’ The unofficial Green Beret motto.” He now turned his eyes up to Devereaux. “Damn hard thing to get rid of, a tattoo.”

Devereaux handed the blow-up of the big man to the colonel.

“This is the man with that tattoo. Do you recognize him? Be kind of hard to forget that scar.”

The colonel stared at the photo of the big man; Devereaux thought he saw a hint of recognition cross the colonel’s face. But Colonel Brice finally shook his head slowly and said, “No.”

“How many men got this tattoo?” Devereaux asked.

“Viper was a twelve-man heavy recon team, operated for four years before I joined up. Casualties were high. Maybe twenty-five men got that tattoo, maybe more. I only knew the eleven men I served with.”

“So we’ll pull SOG records-”

“You’ll never get those records, if they even exist.” The colonel stood and rolled his sleeve down. “Agent Devereaux, my wife knows what I did over there, but my son doesn’t. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I understand, sir.”

Devereaux thought, Only a Vietnam war hero would feel obliged to keep his heroism from his own son.

“He’s seen the tattoo,” the colonel said, “but he doesn’t know what it means. And he knows nothing about Viper team.”

“What about Mrs. Brice?”

“Elizabeth? No. She knows I served in Vietnam, nothing more. She wouldn’t understand. Anyone who wasn’t there, they just can’t understand.”

“Amen to that.”

The colonel snapped the buttons on the cuff of his sleeve and said, “Agent Devereaux, I’d consider it a personal favor if you didn’t mention that man’s tattoo in front of my family.”

Devereaux studied the colonel a moment and said, “All right, Colonel, we’ll keep it between us for now. Just as well, I don’t want to go public with the tattoo anyway, in case I can get the names of those Green Berets.”

The colonel stared at Devereaux but it was as if he were looking straight through him. Eugene Devereaux had been Army infantry in Vietnam. A grunt. Green Berets were the Army’s elite, trained in the art of killing. Ben Brice did not have the look of a trained killer. He was not a physically intimidating man, as were the Green Berets Devereaux had seen in the Army. Nor was he the macho commando stereotype. In fact, he seemed almost too gentle a man to have done what Green Berets did in Southeast Asia four decades ago. But there was something in his eyes that told Devereaux otherwise.

His blue eyes betrayed him like a cheating wife.

Gracie was in pain, scared and crying and praying to be saved. And her father wasn’t doing a damn thing to save her. He didn’t know how.

Instead, Little Johnny Brice was staring at a life-sized image of his daughter’s soccer photo attached to the side of the concession stand under a banner with WE LOVE YOU, GRACIE painted in big letters; stacked below were pink ribbons, cards, fancy balloons, and hundreds of flower arrangements and teddy bears. The concession stand was now a memorial to his daughter.

Gracie was gone because her father wasn’t much of a man.

John had not wanted to attend this vigil, but the FBI said it was important to appeal to the abductor’s sympathy-if he saw on television the pain he was causing her family, he might let her go. But John could think only of Gracie’s pain.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. John turned and looked into the eyes of his father, this man he had called colonel and now Ben but never father or dad, who once was a hero with a family but who now was a drunk with a dog. His mother had told him that his father was a good man destroyed by a bad war; that terrible things had happened to him in Vietnam; that the war had ended but Ben Brice had never found his peace.

John Brice had never allowed himself the slightest sympathy for his father.

“Come on, son,” Ben said, gently pulling John away from the makeshift memorial.

His son’s eyes remained locked on Gracie’s image. He said in a whisper, “I didn’t tie her shoe.”

Ben turned John away, and they walked past the local mayor giving a TV interview-“A safe place, a wonderful place to build your dream home and raise your children”-and around to the front of the building where a young priest was leading the crowd in prayer. Ben and John stood among hundreds of parents and children wearing Gracie buttons and tee shirts with Gracie’s picture on the back and holding candles flickering in the night. Mingling with them were FBI agents; several were inconspicuously videotaping the candlelight vigil with palm-sized camcorders. Agent Devereaux said it was not out of the question that the abductor might show.

“Mr. Brice.” A young blond man and a pregnant woman had come up to John, who turned and looked at them but did not seem to see them. “Mr. Brice,” the young man began again, “I just want to say how sorry I am. We’re having a baby and… I mean…” He glanced at Ben; he was at a loss for words.

“Thanks for your thoughts,” Ben said to the young man.

The couple left. Up front, a young girl stood and sang:

“A-ma-zing Grace, how sweet the sound…”

And the crowd joined in:

“That saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I’m found, I was blind, but now I see…”

The overhead park lights dimmed slowly until the only light came from the flickering flames of hundreds of candles held high as the people sang.

The stars in the dark Vietnam night seem to flicker in fright, as if flinching at the sound of high-powered weapons firing on full auto and bringing death to this village. But not to this girl. He is determined to save her.

Lieutenant Ben Brice is now carrying the china doll like a football, dodging livestock and running through the burning hamlet toward the jungle where he can hide her. He glances back and trips over a dead pig, sending himself and the china doll sprawling into the dirt. The china doll scrambles up first. Before he can get to his feet, her head explodes like a ripe watermelon; her brains and blood splatter the twenty-two-year-old second lieutenant’s face and fatigues. He looks up to see the major standing there, smoke from the barrel of his. 45-caliber sidearm hanging in the humid air, clouding the Viper tattoo on his bare left arm.

“She was just a girl!” he screams at his SOG team leader.

“She was just a gook,” the major responds calmly, wiping the girl’s blood from his weapon. “They’re all just gooks, Lieutenant. And your job is to kill gooks.”

SOG rules are few but absolute: never leave a live team member behind; never let yourself be captured by the enemy; and never question the team leader in the field. The major turns his back on the naive and idealistic young lieutenant, who violates a SOG rule on his first mission.

“You violated the law of war! And the rules of engagement!”