Mike Maden - Drone Command

Troy marched into the shop, straight toward JoJo. The fat man didn’t budge. Kept working his needle.

JoJo’s tallest man leaped up to block Troy’s path. “Wait your turn, bud—”

He swallowed the last syllable as the heel of Troy’s hand crashed into his jaw, snapping his mouth shut and shattering his front teeth. He grabbed his face, stifling a scream. The other man jumped to his feet but didn’t make a move toward Troy, who was four inches taller.

Troy stood over JoJo, hands flexing. JoJo motioned for his customer in the chair to get up, which he did, then he raced outside. The heavy skin artist shut off his needle and finally looked up. “What the fuck is this?”

“My old man is dead.”

“I heard. Something about a brain tumor. That’s too fucking bad.”

“You hit him on the head when he couldn’t fight back, you cowardly shit.”

“And you knocked me out cold. I figured we were even.”

“You figured wrong.”

“You want me to throw him out?” the other man said.

JoJo laughed. “If you can.”

The shorter man reached behind a counter and grabbed a baseball bat. Pointed it at Troy. “Get the fuck out now.”

Troy glowered at him.

The man raised the baseball bat up, ready to swing. “You think I’m kidding?”

“You’re wearing an earring,” Troy said. “I thought maybe you wanted to kiss me.”

The bald-headed man shouted and raised the bat over his head as if he were going to chop Troy down like a tree. Troy charged at him and caught the bat above the man’s gripped hands before he could bring the bat down. Troy easily twisted the bat around and grabbed the barrel and handle, the man stupidly still holding on to the bat, trying to win the wrestling match. Big mistake. Troy easily pushed the smaller man back toward the chairs against the wall until the man fell into one. Troy kept pushing the bat against his throat until the man’s face turned red and he finally let go. Troy pointed the bat at him. “Don’t move.”

Troy turned around with the bat in hand, ready to start pounding JoJo with it. But JoJo had other ideas. He stood by the doorway, pointing a long-barreled Colt .357 Magnum at Troy’s chest. A smile twisted his pockmarked face.

“Looks like a robbery to me. Self-defense, too.” His fat thumb moved toward the hammer to cock it.

A hand grabbed the pistol around the cylinder, locking down the hammer, then wrenched it hard in a vicious 180-degree turn. The heavy steel pistol twisted so fast it broke JoJo’s wrist and trigger finger.

JoJo dropped to a knee, yelping, his fractured hand empty of the gun that was now in the steady grip of the man from the graveyard.

Troy raised the bat to brain JoJo.

“Troy,” the man said. The authority in his voice checked his swing.

“What?”

“He didn’t kill your dad.”

“What’s that to you?”

“He isn’t worth going to jail for.”

“He needs to pay for what he did to my old man.”

“He just did. He won’t be inking anybody for a while now with that broken hand.”

“Nobody asked you.”

The man’s fierce green eyes didn’t ask anything, either.

“Listen to him, boy,” JoJo hissed, teeth clenched in pain.

Troy looked around. The two other men had hobbled to the back of the shop, tending their wounds, no longer a threat. He gripped the bat tighter. Wanted to piñata the fat man’s skull and watch the candy spill out.

“Knowing when you’ve won is half the battle.” The tall man opened the pistol cylinder and dropped the big shells onto the floor. “Killing him will only hurt you in the long run. Trust me, kid. If I thought he needed killing, I’d do it myself.”

They left JoJo on the floor, alive.

But two minutes later, JoJo’s big custom pickup with the orange painted flames was burning to the ground.

The man had to give Troy at least that.

They sat in a booth at the back of the empty diner. Troy was wolfing down his second Denver omelet while the man smoked a cigarette. He’d introduced himself on the steep, winding drive through the Teton Pass. Said his name was Will. Knew his dad a long time ago.

They’d eaten in silence since arriving an hour before, a few miles out of town, just in case JoJo changed his mind and came looking for trouble in one of Troy’s familiar haunts.

Troy scraped up the last bits of egg and hash browns with his fork and shoveled them into his mouth, then pushed the plate away. A middle-aged waitress with puffy eyes and an easy smile cleared away the mess, then refilled Will’s coffee cup and Troy’s Coke. Will gave her a wink and she nodded, her cue to stay away for a while.

“Thanks for back there,” Troy finally said. The first words he’d spoken since they’d left JoJo’s shop.

Will nodded, sipping his coffee. “Sorry about your dad.”

“How’d you know him?”

“The war.”

“You were in the army, too?”

“Not exactly. But we served together.”

“CIA?”

Will smiled. Bright boy.

“Your dad was a good man. It was a bad war.”

Troy shrugged.

“He ever talk about the war?” Will asked.

“When I was a kid, he talked about it more. Not so much lately.”

“But he was living it, wasn’t he?”

“He was having a hard time. PTSD, I think.”

“He try the VA?”

“He preferred self-medicating. Jack Daniels mostly.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for him. He saved my ass more than once. He ever tell you about the tunnels?”

Troy nodded. “When I was little. Gave me nightmares. Didn’t give me all the details.”

Will did. How a local Viet Cong commander got wind of Will’s marriage to the daughter of a prominent South Vietnamese politician in a Catholic ceremony — a particular affront to the godless Communists. Six weeks later, they killed Mai and her family when Will was away on assignment.

“I recruited your dad’s unit to help me hunt the bastard down. Found out he went underground, along with his VC platoon. Barracks, hospital, you name it, it was all down there. We finally found the tunnel entrance and your dad was the first one in.”

Will described the hand-to-hand fighting in the dark. And their capture.

“Dad was a POW?”

“Not exactly. After they roughed us up, they stripped us of anything of value, looking for intel. Lost the only photo I had of my wife. Even stole my crucifix. Then they shipped us off to a regular NVA camp to get us to Hanoi, but a Green Beret unit intercepted us before we got there.”

“Wow. I had no idea.”

“I have other stories about your dad if you ever want to hear them. You know, he was about your age when he was over there. He had a big brass pair on him, and then some.”

Troy was lost in thought, imagining his dad’s ordeal under the cramped earth. He shuddered. “Yeah, maybe someday.”

“I only just heard through the grapevine he’d passed. What happened?”

“He got in a fight one night. That fat fuck in the tat shop, JoJo, hit him in the head with a bottle, knocked him out cold. I took Dad to the county hospital to get him checked out. They did X-rays, found a tumor. Doc asked me about his overall health. I described some of the symptoms. The doc thought maybe the tumor had something to do with Agent Orange. Referred dad to the VA.”

“And the VA didn’t do its job.”

“Told him the tumor was inoperable. Gave him six weeks to live. Handed him a bunch of pain pills and wished him luck. He died like a fucking dog.”

“The VA is a crapshoot. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t.”