William Bernhardt - Perfect Justice

“Get down!” Nguyen grabbed his daughter and knocked her against the wooden floor. Another volley of bullets rained through the windows. Holly screamed.

Nguyen took his baby from the cradle and hugged her close to him. He pressed both daughters flat on the planks and prayed that the danger would pass them by. He could hear the pickup moving outside, circling the barn, keeping everyone pinned inside their homes.

Another round of bullets pierced the front doors and windows, the ones he had only repaired two days before. Anger boiled up inside Nguyen’s breast. To attack them in their own homes—to endanger his children! His body tensed and filled with hate. If he could just get out of here, he would tear them apart. He would destroy them. But he could not leave the children—

“Go,” a voice behind him said.

It was Lan. She must’ve cut through the rear of the settlement and come in the back door.

“I will see to the children. Go.”

As soon as he was sure the pickup had momentarily moved away from his home, Nguyen moved a chair beside the bookshelves he had constructed in the front room. From behind two books on the top shelf, where the children could not possibly get it, he withdrew a gun.

The one that had served him so long and so well in his previous life.

It would serve him again.

As he ran out the front door he once more heard the sound of gunfire, but this time from a different quarter. The front doors of the barn were open, and a steady stream of bullets poured out from within.

It must be Pham and his self-styled resistance league. Despite Pham’s denials Nguyen had suspected they were stockpiling weapons; now his suspicions were confirmed. Under the circumstances, however, he could hardly complain.

Pham’s group did not have automatic weapons, but there appeared to be many of them, and they were well hidden within the dark interior of the barn. The pickup had stopped roving and was now at a stationary location between the barely reconstructed Truong home and the barn.

Colonel Nguyen went down on one knee, held his gun in both hands, and aimed carefully. His first bullet punctured the pickup’s left rear tire. Those huge oversized tires made for an easy target. The second bullet blew out the left front tire.

Someone in the pickup noticed what was happening. The wheels spun as the pickup tried to move away. The pickup lurched into drive, doing a lopsided tilt toward the left and scraping the wheel hubs on the dirt. Just as the pickup began to move, Nguyen fired a third bullet into the rear window. The window shattered as the pickup barreled toward the front gate, leaving a trail of glass shards in its wake.

Nguyen raced after the truck, but it was out of sight before he had run fifty feet. The black pickup had struck again, and now would disappear without a trace just as it had done so many times before.

Dan Pham emerged from the interior of the barn. “What a marksman you are!” he exclaimed. “The great Colonel Nguyen has once more triumphed against the enemy.”

Nguyen’s face remained stern. “You told me you were not storing weapons. You lied.”

“Yes,” Pham admitted, “and you knew I was lying. What of it?”

Pham’s followers began to emerge from the barn, many of them carrying their guns.

“Are you still so blind?” Nguyen grabbed Pham by the collar of his jacket. “Don’t you see what is happening? With each incident, the destruction escalates. It will never end!”

“It will end,” Pham said solemnly. “It will end when ASP has been eliminated!”

His followers cheered. Nguyen scanned their faces. Angry faces, faces of men prepared to do anything, prepared to march on ASP and tear the camp apart board by board. Faces filled with rage.

The same rage he himself had felt only moments ago.

“If you march on the ASP camp,” Nguyen said, “they will mow you down like cockroaches.”

“I do not doubt that,” Pham said. “But that is not our plan. Our intelligence has provided us with an alternative approach. One that will hurt them in a way they will never forget!”

“Don’t do this!” Nguyen said, shaking Pham furiously.

“It is too late,” Pham said, pushing him away. “We were already planning to strike. We were simply waiting for the outcome of the trial. But no trial has stopped ASP before—no trial ever will.” He turned to face his followers. “It is up to us! We will make our move tonight!”

They cheered again, long and loud.

“This is insane! Suicide!” Nguyen shouted, but few could hear him over the clamor of Pham’s warriors. “I will not allow you to do this!”

Suddenly the night was split apart by a piercing scream, so loud it seemed to reverberate through all of Coi Than Tien.

“My God,” Nguyen said quietly. “What now?”

The youngest Dang daughter, Cam, ran out the front door of the newly constructed Truong home. Cam was crying and wailing; her hand was pressed against her mouth.

“Why was she in there?” Nguyen wondered aloud. “The house is not yet ready for them.” It was not finished; it was simply a wooden framework with a thin layer of boards on all sides.

Nguyen didn’t have to wonder long. Cam ran straight to him and buried her head against his shoulder. “I was checking the homes, to make sure no one was injured by the gunfire.” She paused and tried to catch her breath. “I don’t know why I went in there. I just had … a premonition. I wanted to be thorough. And I found—”

Nguyen’s eyes expanded with the horrible realization. He passed Cam to one of Pham’s men and raced toward the new home. The frame was still visible in many places; it had the fresh yellow coloring of new-cut pine.

He flung open the front door.

A body lay crumpled on the floor. A female body. With a bullet hole in her head.

A puddle of dark blood encircled her head and shoulders. The bullet had left a star-shaped hole about the size of his fist in her skull. Nguyen grabbed her wrist, but he knew he would find no pulse. She was dead; she probably died the second the assassin’s bullet struck her skull. The poor Truongs—as if they had not already been cursed enough—

He blinked and wiped the sweat from his eyes.

This woman was not one of the Truong clan. He stared down at her wrist, her hand, her pearl-colored complexion.

She was white.

What would she be doing here? He brushed away her dark hair and examined her face, what was left of it, more closely.

She was definitely white. And for some reason, she looked familiar.

All at once, tears poured out of his eyes. He could not hold them back any longer. For so long, so long, he had not allowed himself to acknowledge his own feelings. Now the tears came whether he wished them or not.

No one was safe. An innocent woman had been killed. In his rage, Pham would kill innocent men, men whose only crime was joining a club that was popular in their hometown. And in retaliation, ASP would destroy Pham and all his men—perhaps all of Coi Than Tien. No one was safe.

And in large part, Nguyen realized, it was his fault. In his concern for his own family, he had crippled the law enforcement efforts to restore peace, had crippled the court’s ability to exact justice.

He had caused great harm. And he had prevented nothing. His words had been useless—dust in the wind. The cataclysm between ASP and Coi Than Tien would proceed just as surely as if he had never been here at all.

Nguyen suddenly realized he was still clenching the dead woman’s hand, but he did not drop it. He squeezed it all the tighter. He could do one thing. He could prevent another innocent death, another tragedy like the one that now lay beneath him soaking in her own blood.

He could do that. And he would.