by Tom Abrahams
Finally, she tapped his shoulder. “Pardon me,” she said with a demure smile. “Is this seat occupied?”
Linh flinched at her touch and blinked her into focus. “No,” he said. “You’re free to sit.”
“You were deep in thought,” she said, sitting next to him, her purse in her lap.
He flashed a polite smile. “Work,” he said and turned his attention back to the notepad until she put her hand on his leg.
“What do you do?” she asked.
Linh suppressed a sigh and looked to the woman. “I’m a reporter,” he said. The words leaked from his mouth before he’d noticed her wide, icy blue eyes. Her thick blonde hair was pulled into a bun atop her head. She was dressed in a dark blue suit. He’d noticed her before. At least, he’d noticed those blue eyes. It was hard not to take notice.
“That’s fascinating.” Her accent was more Liverpool than London. “I’ve never met a reporter.”
“What do you do?” he asked, suddenly interested in his originally unwelcome seatmate.
“I’m a receptionist and telephonist for the Home Office,” she said brightly. “Nothing exciting like being a reporter.”
Linh’s cheeks flushed. He looked down at his notepad and back at the woman. She was smiling, her eyes focused on his. Her body was turned toward his.
“I’ve seen you before,” she said. “On the tube. I just…”
“Just what?”
“I just couldn’t grasp the nettle,” she said, her face turning red.
Linh laughed. “A woman as beautiful as you?”
She slapped his thigh. “Oh, go on, then.”
Linh allowed an awkward silence to build between them before he looked back at his notepad. He bit the inside of his cheek to keep a toothy grin from exploding. When he’d bit down hard enough for his eyes to well, he turned to her with as serious a face as he could muster.
“How’s this,” he finally said. “I have a lot of work to do today. I’m making a big pitch. I’d like to talk more, though. Could I have your telephone?”
She pursed her lips. “This is a blow-off.”
Linh shook his head. “No,” he said. “Better yet, let’s exchange telephone numbers. Then we have no excuse. Plus, we take the same ride every day.”
The smile returned. “That we do,” she said. “My name is Molly.”
“I’m Jimmy.”
They shook hands, their grip lasting a beat past formal, and exchanged numbers before Molly stood.
“I’ll let you finish your work,” she said. “I do expect a ring.”
“I promise.”
Jimmy looked back at the notepad and then over his shoulder at Molly as she walked toward the back of the car. She was beautiful and seemed sweet. She wasn’t Vietnamese though. His parents would kill him; a job as a reporter and a date with a Caucasian woman?
He shook his head and refocused on his pitch.
He’d lived in England his entire life. Well, all of his life since evacuating Vietnam in 1969. He’d escaped the war, but a ghost from that war seemingly was still alive. He wanted to find out exactly who it was.
— 2 —
Near Son La, Vietnam
April 1, 1980
Lieutenant Trevor Brett nibbled on the woman’s ear, paying special attention to the lobe. He’d first seen her weeks ago and there was an instantaneous, animal attraction. Her musk was intoxicating and narrowed his fractured mind to a single focused thought.
He had to have her.
His memory flashed to that moment. Her smooth skin looked delicious. Her silky black hair framed her features in a way that made her all the more inviting. She was thin, which wasn’t necessarily good. Lieutenant Brett had long ago given up being picky about those upon whom he’d set his sights.
The woman had had no choice but to succumb to his advances. She was like the others before her. The initial fear and pulse pounding gave way to resignation and acceptance.
So Brett nibbled. It wasn’t flirtation.
No.
He was chewing on the ear, rolling the chunks of cartilage around his tongue and between his jagged yellow teeth. He held it between his gnarled, claw-like fingers for leverage. It was the newest addition to the necklace he wore around his neck. Like a piece of sugary sweet candy on an elastic string, he couldn’t keep it out of his mouth. He couldn’t resist the urge to gnaw. His thickly rounded sucker lips popped and slurped.
There was little satisfaction from the gristled piece of skin, but it kept his mind from fixating on the relentless hunger that ate at his gut. The woman, as he’d suspected despite his attraction, wasn’t enough to satiate the hunger for long.
Women often weren’t enough. Men, thick and greasy men, were the prize. He needed another man.
Brett was perched fifteen feet off the ground on the gnarled limb of a tamarind tree. His clawed feet gripped the knotty wood with calloused, elongated toes that had the appearance of vulture’s talons.
He suddenly stopped chewing and held the snack against the roof of his mouth. He tilted back his head and closed his eyes. He inhaled through his nostrils, first with a long pull of air and then with short quick bursts. A slow, rounded grin crept across his face. The odor was unmistakable. It was thick and greasy.
Filtered through the scent of rotting vegetation and mildew was the sweet smell of Brett’s favorite prey. He took another quick suck of air in his nose. The odor was intensifying. The prey was moving toward him.
Brett was hunting a narrow stretch of land between the Da River and the mountains that stretched most of the distance from Lao Cai to Hanoi. It was a good spot that offered unsuspecting farmers and preoccupied fishermen.
The prey came from the river. Brett opened his eyes and narrowed his gaze, scanning the green landscape for visual confirmation. He shifted on his feet, the callouses scraping against the wood and his knees clicking as he moved.
He gripped the thick tree branch with his clawed hands to steady himself. Nine of his ten fingers, or what resembled fingers, were adorned with long hooked claws. One of the fingers was missing a claw. Brett had lost the weapon fighting a woman in the river. It didn’t diminish his abilities to pounce, slash, and feed. It had been more than ten hours since he’d fed. Warm saliva pooled in his mouth and oozed from his lips, mixing with the omnipresent stain of blood that painted his face.
Then he saw it. The prey. Brett leaned forward. He was ready to pounce.
Wait for it, growled the woman’s voice that occupied his head. She was always in control. It will come closer.
The hunger in Brett’s gut screamed at him to jump, to use his speed and agility to overtake the prey and feed. The ache emanated from his stomach to his chest and into his throat. He longed for the warmth of raw meat and the delicious satisfaction of blood.
The prey moved closer, carrying a net of silver and coral basa fish over one shoulder. Even from a distance of fifty yards, Brett’s bloodshot eyes could see the basa’s tiny heads, their eel-like eyes, and the thick underbelly that distinguished them from others in the catfish family.
He wasn’t interested in the fish, though, and his glare darted to the chunky man carrying the net. He was walking with the low energy of a man who’d spent his day fighting for his food. Brett inhaled the sweet odor of the man’s sweat. His eyes narrowed on the beautifully full artery running along the man’s strained neck.
Another flood of saliva poured into his mouth. His sinewy muscles tensed, twitching almost, as Brett awaited the command. He was so hungry. So. Hungry.
Now, snarled the voice.
Brett pushed with his thighs and jumped from the branch to the muddy ground below. He landed solidly on both feet, his shoulders rolled forward, as he caught the fisherman’s full attention.
The man froze. His eyes grew wide. He dropped the net.
Brett sniffed the distinctly acidic smell of urine. His lips pursed and popped. His joints clicked and snapped when he dropped to all fours.
In the ti
me it took the man to open his mouth, but before he could force a scream, Brett was on top of him. Brett’s razor teeth ripped at the man’s throat. His lips found that juicy arterial flow and he fed. Oh, he fed.
Brett grunted and snarled and slurped as he worked the prey to a pulp. He scratched and clawed the meat free of the bone when his teeth and lips were otherwise occupied.
When he was finished, when he’d put the hunger at bay for the moment, he squatted on the jungle floor, admiring his work.
He was delicious, said the voice. Mmmmmm.
Brett snatched a thin bone from the ground next to him. It was a finger. Maybe a toe. Brett picked it up with his own clawed hand and slid the bone between his lips. He bit down and raked his teeth across it until the last remnants of flesh were stripped away.
Brett then tore what was left of the man’s nose from his mangled face and held it tight in his hand. It would make a wonderful addition to the cord around his neck.
He stood and then crouched on his knuckles like an ape. He inhaled deeply through his nose, threw back his head, and howled. Even after a decade, it was a sound that chilled what little humanity remained in Lieutenant Trevor Brett. That speck of his former life couldn’t reconcile the monster he’d become. That speck, that spot of reason and love and compassion, was buried so deeply within his core, it might as well not have existed at all.
Time to move, growled the voice. I’m hungry.
Brett charged toward the mountains, away from the river. He left the fisherman behind. A few of the basa still flopped and twitched in the netting as Brett disappeared.
— 3 —
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 17, 1980
Nick Womack took a swig of Old Dutch and swished it around in his cheeks like mouthwash. He was leaning forward in a worn leather easy chair dinged with cigarette burns and stained with the sweat from countless cans of beer.
On the old tabletop television in front of him, familiar images of American hostages flickered under the drone of the network news correspondent explaining the latest lack of developments half a world away.
Womack swallowed the corn-infused, bitter, body-temperature beer and grumbled at the screen. “Send me in,” he said. “I’d have all fifty-two back and eating bacon within ninety-six hours.”
It wasn’t hyperbole.
Womack was a man of unique abilities and rare gut. He was a living, breathing, drinking and smoking superhero. His skills were prized and expensive to employ.
He tightened his grip on the near empty can and drew it to his mouth to finish it. He winced at the bitter draw of the beer. It wasn’t his favorite. It was cheap.
Womack liked cheap things, which explained his proclivity for easy women whose last names he’d never learn, and his large cache of free ammunition taken from the corpses of the men he was paid to eliminate.
He crumpled the can and set it on the table next to his easy chair. The black rotary phone caught his eye. It had been two weeks since it rang. Womack was surprised his friends at the agency hadn’t called him about Iran.
The whole thing was a big cluster as best he could tell. They needed some extractors to ply their trade and end the drama. He half thought there was some deal in the works to keep the men and women held until after the election, but he discounted it as a figment of his conspiratorial imagination.
“One chopper, five men,” he said, leaning back into the comfort of the leather. The tufted chair back hissed and deflated as his cartoonish, muscular frame sank into it. “Quick, silent, violent.”
QSV. That was Nick’s mantra. It was what he told his team every time they saved a friendly or raided the enemy. Their job was as simple as those three commands.
Nick would outwardly tell his men they needn’t kill without cause. They knew. There was always cause. It was better they have trouble sleeping at night for what they’d done, Nick reasoned, than take a permanent dirt nap absent regret.
“Not gonna lie,” he said to the news anchor, who’d shifted to the ridiculous price of oil, “this is all a bunch of crap. Everything you liberal commies say is propaganda. It’s all rigged. It’s all fixed. And the little people like me, the grunts, we’re always going to take it in the hindquarters. That’s just a fact.”
Nick had reason for his skepticism. He’d seen the worst in man. Three long tours in Vietnam had assured him a life of dependency and nightmares.
A half decade after he’d been among the last to leave that forsaken, blood-soaked jungle, he could still smell the rot. He could still feel the leeches stuck to his neck and forearms, the stockade bruises on his wrists. He could taste the warm droplets of rain that mixed with the salt and dirt on his face before finding their way between his lips and onto his tongue.
He couldn’t shake the horror of that place. That was part of the reason he’d gone freelance. It got him out from under Uncle Sam’s thumb and allowed him to exorcise demons one trigger pull at a time. More than anything on the planet, he hated the jungle.
Nick belched and smacked his lips against the bitter taste of the Old Dutch. He pushed himself to his feet, wobbled before steadying himself against the arm of the chair, and walked across the room to turn off the television.
On the table, next to the TV, was an eight-track player. He ran his fingers along the minimal selection of tapes stacked on top of the machine and drew a cartridge from the middle.
He pushed the tape into the slot, hit the play button, and selected program two. He cranked up the volume on the amplifier and closed his eyes to soak in the sounds of the trumpets and drums playing the intro to Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”. He involuntarily started swinging his head back and forth, his foot tapping on the floor. He mouthed the words as Stevie paid tribute to jazz greats in his inimitable way.
Nick walked over to the doorway that led into his bedroom. At the doorway, he reached up and grabbed an aluminum pull-up bar lodged into the frame.
He grabbed the bar with one thick mitt and then with the other. He dropped down, his feet still on the floor, and hung from the bar to stretch his arms and back.
“Time to sweat out the Dutch,” he said and pulled his feet up behind him, crossing them at his ankles.
He tightened his grip and pulled upward until his lips were even with the top of the painted wood frame. He kissed the frame.
“One,” he said and lowered himself until his arms were almost, but not quite, fully extended. He inhaled and then pulled his weight upward again. Another kiss.
“Two.”
Nick repeated the routine until he’d reached fifty, sweat stung his eyes, and his arms burned with lactic acid. He dropped his feet to the floor and let go of the bar. He shook his arms loose and took deep, slow breaths until his pulse evened.
Then he dropped to the floor and spread his arms shoulder-width apart. Push-ups. Five sets of twenty.
When he was finished, he rolled onto his back for two hundred sit-ups. Each time he pulled his chin even with his knees, he glanced across the room at the black rotary phone.
He’d be ready when it rang. It would ring. He knew it.
— 4 —
Frederick, Maryland
April 17, 1980
Major Rick Gibson pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes were squeezed shut. His jaw was clenched.
“I’m sorry,” said Dr. Justin Starling, a civilian researcher on Gibson’s team. “It won’t synthesize. I’ve tried everything.”
Gibson sighed. “Clearly,” he said, “you haven’t tried everything. Otherwise it would work.”
Starling protested. “We keep reaching the critical moment in the life cycle and then it breaks down. We can’t get it to hold and replicate. I’ve tried different proteins. I’ve tried—”
Gibson held up his hand. “Justin,” he said, “I brought you here from Stanford because I believed you were the best. If you’re not capable of the job, I’ll find someone who is. I need to know now, son. Have you really tried everything?”
“Good,” said Gibson. He turned on his heel and marched away from the young scientist. He reached a secured door, slid a magnetic card, waited for the metallic click, and moved from one corridor to the next.
Gibson navigated the maze of hallways that connected the various sections of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. USAMRIID was comprised of more than seven hundred civilian, military, and contract workers whose publicly stated goal was “to protect the warfighter from biological threats and investigate disease outbreaks and threats to public health.”
In reality, they did much more than that. Gibson was among the men charged with leading their unstated goal, which was to biologically enhance warfighters in ways that made them unstoppable, amoral killing machines.
Gibson turned down another long sterile corridor, his boots clacking and echoing against the tile flooring. He found another secure door, slid his card, and strode into his office.
He shut the door behind himself, leaving the overhead light off, and dropped into the large chair behind his desk. He bellied up to the desk and pulled a computer keyboard closer. He turned on the attached computer, an IBM Model 5150. It was state of the art, with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 microprocessor that wouldn’t be available to the general public for another year.
The desktop hummed to life and the black screen flickered until the white dot-matrix lettering glowing on the display told Gibson the system was booting properly. The home screen populated and Gibson typed in his credentials.
He was logged in to a local web of computers that allowed him to communicate secret, top secret, or confidential information without putting anything in writing. It was a secure system that allowed for moderately sized text document transmittal. The files were stored magnetically and only accessible to a handful of people with the proper clearance and knowledge of the system’s existence.