Victor Milan - Turn of the cards

“When you find out,” Casaday said, “I’m sure you’ll have a hell of a story.”

The senior PAVN officer had been speaking over the squad’s radio. He came forward now with an air of grim satisfaction.

“We have been holding a weapon in reserve,” he announced. “We could not deploy it against that… creature, because it was in the midst of our own troops. We could not risk so many tanks.”

“Typical socialist priorities,” Whitelaw murmured. “Worry about the war toys first, and the men last.”

“Now that the monster has been dealt with, however that occurred, we can use our fuel-air explosive shells against another menace to our Socialist Republic.”

Casaday looked at him in surprise. “You have FAE?” The officer nodded.

“You will destroy the rebels with it, then?” Vo asked, eyes shining with eagerness.

“No. They are too dispersed. To be effective, FAE devices require concentrated targets. Concentrated, like that mass of smaller monsters down there by the temple.”

Vo went white. “What are you saying? They’re our men!”

“They are monsters. They attacked us. They are rabid, like dogs. They must be destroyed.”

“No!” Vo shouted. “You can’t! We can still use them! We can still win! They”

The PAVN officer’s backhand blow knocked him to the ground. When Vo blinked away the big balloons of light from behind his eyes, he saw Casaday standing over him, aiming his Beretta at his face.

“But why?” Vo gasped. “It was your project too.”

“My main priority,” Casaday said, “is wiping out wild card filth wherever I find it. If the project’s a write-off, I can still say, mission accomplished.”

To punctuate his words, a whistling crossed the breaking sky.

When Mark came in sight of the clearing, he saw that a pole had been set up in front of the pagoda. Colonel Sobel’s head was stuck atop it. The New Joker Brigade was dancing around and around it.

He stopped, swallowed. What am I getting myself into?

But Eric was hurt. Eric needed him – needed Moonchild. Hell, needed all of them. Eric had saved him twice tonight, once from the mob and once from himself.

Mark shut his eyes, willed his conscious self to recede, let himself slip as far into Moonchild mode as he could.

Eric, she thought. Eric, where are you? I’ve come to help you.

“Isis?”

Mark’s eyes opened. Yes, Moonchild said within his mind. I’m here.

Panic filled her mind. “No, you’ve got to get away from here. It’s too late for me – too late for any of us.”

Eric, tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.

“Isis, you can’t. They’ll kill you.”

Who? The jokers?

“Or the nats. It’s a race now, don’t you see? Do we destroy ourselves first, or do the nats finish us off?”

She saw him now, staggering from the midst of the exuberant mob. Weak, moving painfully, his T-shirt dyed red with his own blood: Eric.

I see you. Just walk a little farther into the trees. I’ll come for you -

He stopped, cocked his disfigured head to the side.

“No, don’t! Get away – run! It’s too late, I told you. Run!”

Eric – A scream filled the sky.

“Wouldn’t you know,” came the sardonic thought. “The nats win again.”

She heard popping then, too small a sound, she thought, for bombs or shells. Most of the jokers didn’t even pause in their dance.

Eric, I love you!

“I love you too, hon.”

And then temple, clearing, the jokers, and Eric, all vanished in a single brilliant orange flash. Mark was hurled backward, into darkness.

“So love conquers all.”

The room was elegantly furnished, in dainty fin-de-siиcle French style. Mark perched on one of the antique chairs, looking luridly out of place, like a stork in a drawing room. His cheeks were still sunburn pink from the dragon’s breath of the fuel-air blast, and his ears rang.

He was paying half attention to the television droning on: “- White House appears to be backing down from a statement made earlier today by President Bush that he was prepared to dispatch the American Pacific Fleet to prevent what he termed an ‘ace-powered criminal mastermind’ from becoming president pro tem of South Vietnam. The reassessment seems to have been prompted by the People’s Republic of China’s recognition of the breakaway Republic.

“Meanwhile the survival of the communist regime in Hanoi itself remains very much in doubt -”

Mark looked up at his guest. “At least love helps an old hippie conquer himself,” he replied.

Belew laughed. The renegade secret agent had a pair of tubular metal crutches propped by his chair and bandages on his face. He had not made a real good landing after Monster blew up in his face.

“The great work,” Belew said. “It goes on and on. ‘Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman – a rope over an abyss.’”

“I’ve been there, man.”

Among the other tightrope walkers over the Abyss, William “Carnifex” Ray was lying under guard in a Saigon clinic formerly reserved for Party officials and their families. He was in much worse shape from his aerial adventures than Belew was. Without his body’s ability to regenerate he would have been dead, crippled at the least. As it was, the Medecins sans Frontiиres doctors expected him to make a full recovery over time.

Crypt Kicker’s condition was stable: he was dead. Whether his condition was critical or not was a different matter. His lightning-blasted corpse lay in a cold drawer in the Saigon city morgue. The bemused attendants were under instructions to open up if they heard knocking.

Croyd Crenson lay in a bedroom here in Mark’s official Saigon residence. He was still sound asleep.

“How do you feel?” J. Bob asked Mark.

“I feel strange. Soiled, somehow. Evil. I didn’t know I had all that in me.”

“Everybody has that in ’em, son,” Belew said. “You’re just the only one who has such an impressive means of letting it out.”

He slapped Mark on the arm. “Just think of all the anger you managed to work out of your system. Does wonders for you, they say.”

Mark grimaced.

“Some people say no one ever won a fight,” Belew said. “They lie. But there’s always a cost. Always a butcher’s bill. You pay a price in blood, whether you’re scratched or not.”

He walked over and touched Mark on the shoulder. “Time for a change,” he said softly. “Your public’s waiting.”

“Thanks,” Mark said.

Belew gathered up his crutches and left the room. I hope I don’t have to kill him someday, Mark thought.

Mark looked toward the window. The night had come down outside. It was time for the new president to address her constituents.

He took his hand from his pocket, held the vial it held up to the light. Black crystals swirled among silver. He brought it to his lips, hesitated. He would never take one of the potions again without that moment of fear, that glass-breaking instant of decision.

He took the potion.

A moment later Moonchild bent to turn off the television. “Goodbye, Eric,” she said. There was no pain in the space he had occupied in her soul. Just void. “The Dream is in my hands now.”

She stepped to the French doors that gave onto the balcony. She could feel the adulation of the crowd coursing through them like benevolent radiation. Like the healing rays of the moon.

The opportunity before her was great: to turn South Vietnam into a safe haven for all those touched by the wild card; to lay the foundation for a better world. To give peace a chance, the way the song said.