The Price of Blood Part 9

"We decided to go in and get Trin out. Real nuts. But that's what we decided to do. LaPorte got us a helicopter."

They sat down over a street map of Hue City with one of Pryce's agents who'd made it out with a floor plan of the prison. Hopefully, the victory-drunk North Vietnamese might be literally drunk, celebrating on this particular night.

Broker, with Quang Tri City on his mind, volunteered to lead the ground component of the operation.

The last time Broker saw Ray Pryce he was on the deck of the minesweep that had crept in close to the mouth of the Perfume River. Hue City was sixteen kilometers upstream. A Chinook helicopter sat ready on the deck. Broker would go in early, by boat, set some diversions and then blow the jail. The Chinook would rendezvous with them and pull them out. Broker had barely met the pilots. It was all-hey hubba-hubba-let's get this f.u.c.ker over with.

Before midnight, Broker, with six of Trin's South Vietnamese commandos, slipped up the Perfume River in a fis.h.i.+ng boat under the cover of a rain squall. After they set their diversions, the plan was to crack the jail at 3 A.M., free as many prisoners as possible, and get them to the broad lawn on the riverfront where the old province helicopter pad had been. Pryce and Tuna would come in with the Chinook, barrel down the river, land, and pluck them out.

Broker had walked the streets of Hue back in '72 and '73. Now the streets were strewn with flags and clutter from a victory march. That night he crept through garbage in the back alleys, clad in black fatigues with greasepaint on his face and a black watch cap pulled down tight. He was not particularly thrilled or frightened. He was too preoccupied with not s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. But it was a mind bender-everyone was leaving and he was going back in.

They set their diversions at a radio tower, a barracks, and the city hall. Just before they blew the plastique, he remembered hearing a dull rumble in the humid rain. Unafraid of the American Air Force, an unbroken convoy of trucks crossed the Perfume River bridge with their lights on, ferrying reinforcements and supplies down National Route 1 to the south.

Then life accelerated and time slowed amid the confused stutter of one last fire fight in the shadows of the blown building. The durable smile of Colonel Trin appeared in the doorway of a cell and Broker made his radio call. They ran for the riverfront and waited for the Chinook.

He remembered hearing the rotors and seeing the shadow of the big chopper flit through the flames from the diversion fires. But it swooped down two blocks away from their location. Frantic, he'd called on his radio. No reply. The helicopter struggled back aloft with a heavily laden cargo net. Wands of sparking groundfire batted around the chopper as it disappeared into the gloom.

They'd been abandoned in the hostile city. North Vietnamese soldiers-angry at the rude nightcap to their victory celebration-boiled out of buildings and swarmed the streets. Broker and his team and the freed prisoners split into small groups and it was every man for himself. A steady cacophony of small-arms fire stalked them.

Trin made Broker hide his radio and survival kit, then doff his weapons and remaining gear. They dove into the river and swam to the lower story of a restaurant built over the water. Trin left Broker in the care of the proprietor, a Frenchman, who hid him in his cellar.

The next night Trin returned with a small motorized pirogue and Broker's radio and the survival kit. They paddled through lotus-choked ca.n.a.ls and then side channels, then started the motor and went down the Perfume River to the sea. Off the coast, at dawn, Broker raised a Navy rescue channel and a Sea Stallion chopper homed in on his beacon. Trin declined the offer to escape. They exchanged gifts. Broker traded his Zippo lighter for a tiger tooth set in gold on a neck chain. Then Trin turned his small craft back to the misty sh.o.r.e.

17.

"THEN ALL h.e.l.l BROKE LOOSE," SAID BROKER. HE downed the Scotch and let the liquor talk.

On the deck of a navy carrier he learned that he was the sole survivor of the ground team. Only Tuna had survived of the Chinook crew that had gone in with Pryce.

Dumbfounded, he was interrogated by tense, exhausted intelligence types who wanted to know why Pryce had used him as a diversion while he took the Chinook in to rob the National Bank of Hue.

Broker and Tuna were placed in separate detention and didn't get the whole picture until the preliminary investigation for their cla.s.sified inquiry convened in Fort Benning.

He was saved by the radio communications from the helicopter, which had been monitored by the fleet. And by Tuna who testified that Pryce had switched the plan after the chopper took off.

According to Tuna, Broker's raid was a decoy, to draw attention away from the real mission. Pryce had discovered that the Communists had ama.s.sed a huge cache of gold for s.h.i.+pment to Hanoi. Pryce intended to sling the booty and drop it in the Laotian jungle to finance continued resistance. He said it was a high-priority mission, denying a.s.sets to the Communists.

And Pryce had it planned to the last minute. Two Vietnamese operatives were positioned inside the bank and had eliminated the guards. They rolled the crated gold ingots out on a forklift and dumped them into the cargo net that was lowered from the chopper. The inside men scrambled up the net and they left.

Tuna had specifically stated under oath that he had queried Pryce about the ground diversion: Shouldn't they pick them up.

According to Tuna, Pryce replied that they were "expendable." The gold came first.

Tuna then described how the chopper was. .h.i.t by ground fire, how Pryce was seriously wounded and their radio was damaged.

Two radio messages figured prominently in the testimony. The first was a call from the pilot requesting clarification from someone in authority because the mission had been changed in mid-flight. The second was a mayday call. The pilot was about to send a coordinate when the radio stopped transmitting.

The next day, as Broker hid in the restaurant cellar, Tuna was picked up on the South China Sea in a survival raft. He said they had looked for a place to put the bird down after the radio went out and decided against it. With Pryce wounded and the copter damaged, the pilot decided he'd never get back up if he set down. He opted to stay in the air and try to make it back to the fleet. But with the load in the net, he miscalculated. The damaged helicopter went down in the sea and only Tuna came out alive. Ray Pryce, the bird, the alleged gold, and the crew went to the bottom of the South China Sea.

Colonel LaPorte had testified how he had signed for the bird and authorized Pryce's plan for the prisoner extraction. But he'd handled it verbally on the radios and nothing was in writing. When he learned what had happened he burned up the radio channels trying to send in another helicopter to get Broker out. The command had vetoed the project. Radio logs were introduced to verify his testimony.

Tuna and Broker's appointed JAG attorneys presented the "good German" defense. They were cleared of charges when the inquiry board found that they believed they were following different versions of lawful orders. The blame for the renegade operation was conveniently placed on Ray Pryce, who was listed as dead, body unrecoverable. Inexplicably, no evidence was brought in the investigation that the gold really existed. The new Communist rulers of Vietnam never formally registered a complaint. The Hue gold became a mythic story.

The incident was a final ripple in the sewage of defeat and was buried deep. But the stench attached itself to Colonel LaPorte, who never commanded troops again. Doggedly he stayed in the army and got his Brigadier's star before retiring. The dishonor also fell heavily on the Pryce family. Broker had a.s.sumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today.

Broker stared at his empty gla.s.s and looked up. Mike said, "Ah, Phil, Nina's up there sitting on the porch with your twelve-gauge."

"She's cool, Mike." He paused. "Actually, she's not. She's got the syndrome now." Broker laughed.

He could appreciate the irony. The psychological antics a.s.sociated with returning veterans were for other people. h.e.l.l, that was for the Oliver Stone war. His war was different. Four divisions of NVA-hundreds of tanks-coming at him across the old DMZ and batting him down the length of Quang Tri Province. No time to roll a joint. Now here he was, saddled with a f.u.c.ked-up Desert Storm vet. Size six, female type.

"So," said Mike, "why are you telling me this now, tonight?"

"Because Nina says she can get proof that Gen. Cyrus LaPorte set me and her dad up. But his gold heist went funny and the gold wound up in the ocean. Now apparently he has a boat over off the coast of Vietnam and he's found the stuff. But the fact that he may have found it doesn't prove he masterminded stealing it."

Mike exhaled. "Ten tons of gold...Back up. How's she know this-"

"Because last night she stole a map with the location of the G.o.dd.a.m.n helicopter wreck off LaPorte's desk in New Orleans. Somebody's after her. She says."

"Oh," said Mike, looking around mildly. "That why you're packing the Colt? Are we expecting bad company?"

"Well, let's put it this way. If we aren't, I tend to disbelieve her story."

Mike puffed on his pipe. "I pity any fool who meets Tank in the woods at night."

Broker nodded. "I already put Tom onto a guy who may have followed us. He's got Lyle Torgeson and some Grand Marais cops keeping an eye on us. We'll be covered. But I still want you and Irene to spend the rest of the night in town."

"So..." Mike finally lit his pipe and drew on it, creating a cyclops ember in the dense shadow of his head.

"So," said Broker.

"A map that marks a...treasure." Mike Broker chuckled and slapped his knee. "Kinda like when you were a kid and we'd come down here and read-"

"This ain't no story book," said Broker.

"So who's this alleged gold belong to?" asked Mike.

Broker shrugged. "Right now I'm thinking that it got lost in a gray area between two chapters in the history book."

Broker stood up and placed his hands on his hips and watched the firelight bend over the waves that lapped on the rocks. "Maybe it belongs to the people who stole it. Maybe I'm one of them," he said.

Mike joined him on the water's edge. "This LaPorte character, what's he like?"

"Tough, smart, rich, connected."

"And you're going after him?"

"Depends. If she's right. If the gold is real-I'm going after something."

"With just that girl?"

Broker laughed. "The other survivor of the raid sent Nina to find me. He's been sitting on something for twenty years in federal prison. Now he's out, he's dying of cancer, and he's disappeared."

"Sounds pretty thin, Phil."

"Right now ten tons of gold sounds pretty heavy to me."

"You're going back to Vietnam?"

"I'm not going back anywhere. I might be going to someplace. Except this time, I'm going on my own. And I plan to pay myself d.a.m.n well for my trouble. If all that gold's really there-"

"Can you do that?"

"Watch me," said Broker. He swung his eyes down the dark beach. "We're going to hold on to these rocks."

Mike left Tank on Broker's porch. Then he drove into town with Irene. Nina came from the shadows with the shotgun balanced on her shoulder. "You have a nice talk?"

"Real good one."

"I feel left out."

"No. I'm thinking you're definitely in."

He patted Tank on the head and then told Nina to give it a rest and get some sleep. He'd be sitting up just a few feet away in the bedroom. She said he looked tired. He said that if he nodded off and anything happened the dog would rouse half the G.o.dd.a.m.n county. He reminded her to be careful with the shotgun, anything she heard moving out in the dark could be cops watching the place. Or the dog.

As he brushed his teeth, a Scotch-inspired thought caricatured his lean face in the mirror. He recalled a question on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test, one that had recurred in his imagination while working undercover, a personal joke that John Eisenhower would not approve of: I am a special agent of G.o.d. Answer yes or no.

18.

THE ANGRY SCREAM WAS NINA. THE GRUNT OF PAIN belonged to someone else. Dammit! Broker shot upright on the bed and grabbed for the Colt. Must have fallen asleep and...

Broker grimaced as he rolled off the bed, at half-speed, because of the thumb, and charged the doorway to the living room. Bodies crashed against furniture, the screen door buckled.

Three figures thrashed on the back porch, breaking his terra cotta pots. A shotgun was somewhere in the middle. In the porch light, a patch of Nina's ribcage showed where her T-s.h.i.+rt was ripped. This tall dude with long, blond hair askew was trying to bear-hug her. Burly Lyle Torgeson's light blue uniform was in there too, trying to lever between them.

The intruder was making the fatal mistake that Earl had made, trying to contain a hysterical woman. Nina darted inside his long reach and b.u.t.t-stroked viciously with the shotgun stock.

"She's with me," Broker yelled, gingerly looking for a way into the tussle.

"Then tell her to stop hitting me," yelled Lyle.

Broker found an opening and clubbed the blond dude in the head with the pistol b.u.t.t. He slung his good arm around Nina's waist and lifted her free, grunting with the effort because she was compact as a puma and hissing and spitting and she still had a hold on the shotgun.

Lyle had his service pistol out now and jammed the muzzle two inches into the blond guy's cheek. "Don't. f.u.c.king. Move."

"Hey, man, mind the threads, I ain't resisting," said the guy in a ropey drawl. An echo of Earl lay thick on the chilly predawn and Broker, breathing hard, hurting, shaking, became incensed. He hadn't been in two tussles in two days in a row since he'd been a rookie working patrol.

Urgent footfalls sounded in the brush on the path from the lake. Broker s.n.a.t.c.hed the shotgun from Nina, stuck the Colt in his waistband, and swung the shotgun toward the sound. "It's Mark Halme, from Grand Marais," shouted Lyle. Broker lowered the long gun. "We got this under control," said Lyle to the swift-moving shadow. "Keep an eye on the road." The other cop jogged back on toward the road.

Broker saw the map, mashed flat by a dirty shoeprint, on the redwood planks among the dry potting soil, dead roots, and broken crockery. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and set it aside. Then he turned to this new redneck.

Lyle had him face down and was trying to cuff him, but the guy was making it hard so Broker stepped in and gave him a kick. He quieted and Lyle, who had holstered his piece, grabbed a handful of the guy's hair and slammed his head down onto the redwood.

"I got no problem cuffing you unconscious," said Lyle.

"Awright, man, cut the s.h.i.+t, I'm lettin' you do this, you understand," said the guy. A streak of blood on his chin made an oily slick in the yard light. Lyle snapped the shackle.

"Okay, you have the right-"

"Wallet," said the guy.

"Shut your hole," said Lyle.

"Badge in my wallet," said the guy.

Broker glanced over at Nina who sat in a crouch, sweating and gasping for breath, eyes bright. "The green Saturn?"

"Now you believe me? He was on the plane. His name is Fret." She nodded.

"He left the Saturn up on the road," said Lyle. He had the wallet out and squinted at it in the yard light. He handed it to Broker. The blond guy rolled over and came to a sitting position, his back against a bench. He was wearing a charcoal jacket, matching trousers, a black stretchy muscle s.h.i.+rt, and soft, worn black crosstrainers.

The laminated picture ID matched the guy, a pretty boy, cruel face ruined by a bottom-heavy long jaw. Carefully combed blond hair. A silver badge was pinned next to the ID. Det. Sgt. Bevode M. Fret, Orleans Parish, New Orleans Police Department.

"He's no cop. He works for Cyrus LaPorte," said Nina.

"Shut up," said Broker. He turned to Fret. "What're you doing breaking into my house?"

"Recovering stolen property," said Fret confidently.

Broker motioned to Lyle who told Fret to stay put. Then they walked down the steps into the backyard. Lyle said, "Had the car on my sheet, Tom said to keep an eye out, watched him pull out from the motel parking lot at 3 A.M. We had Mark already up here, backed off the road, so I radioed him to look sharp. a.s.shole there pulled over about a hundred yards from your turnoff. Came in through the woods..."

Broker's skin p.r.i.c.kled suddenly, his eyes swung from side to side, reaching out into the dark. Then he whistled. The high-pitched whistle echoed through the silent pines. Then he called, "Tank."

Lyle bit his lip and shook his head. "Lured him up onto the road. We found a canine handler's whistle up there. He hit your dog with a Tazer." Lyle paused and toed the dirt. "Then musta snapped his neck."

"s.h.i.+t."