The Price of Blood

by Chuck Logan

  Andy screamed when he saw a tall black man, whom God had made without a waist, so that his pumping hips and thighs jointed in a power train to his ribs, doing a hundred-yard dash across Broker’s grubby kitchen straight at him.

  St. Paul Det. Jarrel “T-Bone” Merryweather was pure onyx black and his shirt was an ivory off white and his tie of expensive silk. J.T. came on screaming at the top of his ex-drill-sergeant lungs, managing to smile at the same time because he really ate this shit up. J.T. didn’t take the time to vest up because he knew there was only one way to get through a door, which was first and fastest, because Broker had taught him how to do it. He held a 12-gauge Remington riot pump steady before him with the muzzle gaping like an open onrushing manhole straight to Redneck Hell: “Freeze—you fuckin’ piece of shit—I’ll blow your mother-fuckin’ head loose from your fat cracker ass!”

  Broker heard a groan as Andy collapsed to his knees and somewhere Tabor was yelling how he wanted to see his lawyer and other people were in the room giving Andy his rights but he was giving his full attention to Earl and Nina was getting in the way trying to step in and kick Earl and catching Broker in the ribs a couple of times and Earl had this confused little boy lost look in his eyes as his cheeks popped like chicken bones because he’d strayed too far from home in Alabama, and—ha, mother fucker—Brokers from Minnesota had met Alabamians before, in July 1863, at a place called Cemetery Ridge and, like his ancestors before him, Earl had come too far north and walked into the remorselessly moving parts of Det. Lt. Phillip Broker of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

  But then Earl rallied and, with an insane red-and-gray bloodshot flapping in his eyes, surprised Broker by clamping the edge of Broker’s left thumb in his teeth, as he mashed down and Broker felt the teeth sink into the skin, the muscle, and the bone of the top joint.

  Earl’s jaw muscles pulsated through the blood running down his face and Broker screamed when J.T. butt-stroked Earl with the 12-gauge to make him let go. The jarring pain traveled—electric, incandescent—up his arm.

  “Don’t,” screamed Broker.

  Earl wouldn’t let go. He growled even though he was covered with cops grabbing at him, and his neck and jaw continued to surge, leathery and lethal as some damn snapping turtle.

  Five pairs of hands searched for a hold on Earl’s face. Fingers clawed in his nostrils, yanking back, while Earl growled and shook his head and Broker screamed.

  Procedure went to hell in the bizarre circumstance. “Phil, don’t move,” shouted Ed Ryan, the ATF agent in charge. “Grab that fucker’s head. Stabilize it. Don’t let him shake like that, he’ll bite it off.”

  Somebody in a vest and black cap was cuffing Nina.

  “J.T., keep her close,” Broker yelled, rolling his eyes toward Nina, and Merryweather, who’d been taping the caper off the wire in Broker’s pager, pushed the officer away from Nina and took the guy aside, explaining. And Broker was sure that the terrible crunching sound that he heard with his ears, but also was hearing inside his body traveling up his arm, was his thumb being bitten off.

  A dozen officers, Robocopped in black body armor, bore down in a twenty-four-handed grab-ass all over Earl who continued to growl and tried to thrash. They sought leverage on the bulging muscles of Earl’s neck and jaw, experimentally jabbed him in the eyes; one guy had a wooden spatula from the kitchen and was trying to pry between Earl’s teeth. Earl had these serious teeth. The spatula broke.

  “Man will not let go. I’m gonna have to cap the sucker,” said J.T. Merryweather loudly for effect, resigned, dubiously setting down the shotgun and drawing his pistol.

  “You can’t shoot a guy for biting somebody,” a voice yelled.

  “Hell I can’t, he’s attacking an officer. Just shoot him a little bit, to make him stop.”

  A woman deputy from Dakota County wondered aloud, academically, “Where exactly would you shoot him?”

  Sweat poured into Broker’s eyes. The pain was incredible, immobilizing, and it was just a thumb.

  Several paramedics pushed through the house, which was now crawling with men and women wearing badges and armed to the teeth and the Washington County SWAT team was there and they were all pumped up on adrenaline and the smell of sweat and fresh blood and everybody was talking at once and the radios were crackling.

  And voices. “Who’s the chick? What’s she doing here?”

  And “Secure that money on the floor.”

  And Nina. “That’s mine.”

  Broker floated in an excruciating fog, wrapped in fiery cotton candy that dripped sticky red from the mangled knuckle that was locked in Earl’s jaws. Somebody blurted on a radio, “No shit, one of the assholes bit off Broker’s thumb.”

  They eased him off his knees to the floor so that Earl, stretched out like an alligator, lay between Broker’s spread legs, breathing in short snorts, with worms of snot crawling on his upper lip. His face had turned a demented purple and orange with some parts showing through the blood a horrible fish-belly white and the engorged veins popped out on the twisted crimson cables of his neck muscles.

  “Got a doctor coming,” yelled a medic. His cohorts quickly took wood splints from their bags and jammed them between Earl’s teeth. As they worked, Broker noticed the contents of Nina’s purse, which lay scattered beneath him. He reached down with his good hand for the pack of Gauloises. Like the cognac, her father’s brand. He found the lighter in her purse and lit it. Despite the pain, the bright pink airsacs in his lungs collected in a happy banzai charge and ran straight for the nicotine.

  The medics carried on in awed, too-loud voices. A spirited professional discussion about the problem Earl presented.

  “I’ve read about this, surge of adrenaline, ancient survival mechanisms—”

  “Strongest muscle group in the body—”

  “Stuck together. I thought that meant intervaginally?”

  “Bad joke. Bad joke.”

  They had worked the splints between Earl’s teeth to buy Broker time but debated that they couldn’t pry the jaws apart without risking a surge that would take Broker’s thumb with it.

  A medic shouted into an emergency radio. “We can’t bring him in. They’re attached. Sure we’re trying to keep him calm…whad’ya mean, don’t let him wander around. He’s not in shock, he’s fucking being eaten.”

  The medic handed off the radio and knelt beside Broker. “Okay. It’s a tricky one so the doctor’s coming with a shot. We gotta keep his neck immobilized, we’ve stabilized the biting pressure, but if he gets to whipping his head around…Hey, the guy’s got serious neck muscles.” Another medic, a husky blonde wearing a Washington County Paramedic jacket, narrowed her eyes at Broker. “You shouldn’t be smoking,” she lectured, just like a good Minnesotan.

  “Fuck you! Get him offa my hand!”

  Nina was there, watching him. Broker peered into her merry, adrenaline-drunk, gray eyes. Speckled blood blended naturally with her freckles. A slight bruise darkened her left cheekbone. She stifled an absurd laugh.

  “What?” Broker demanded.

  “I can’t help it,” she sputtered. “It’s…” She glanced at the spectacle of Earl trying to eat the thumb. “Just too weird.” She broke into contagious laughter.

  “Don’t,” gasped Broker. “It hurts when I laugh.” The insane hilarity subsided and he drilled her with tormented eyes. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Nina shrugged. “You said if I ever needed help I should come to you. Well, here I am.”

  Broker groaned. Earl’s lips curled back and his teeth gleamed, socketed in Broker’s blood—his eyes were pure Pickett’s Charge. The hollow growl emanating from back in his throat sounded like the sound effects in The Exorcist.

  8

  THE DOCTOR LOOKED LIKE BEN FUCKING CASEY, with copious chest hair sticking out of his green scrub shirt. He sauntered like a deeply tanned visitor from Olympus on a slum tour through the seedy mayhem of the house. He smiled, amused at the macab
re banter circulating among the heavily armed law-enforcement types forming a brawny huddle over Broker and Earl.

  He snapped on thin rubber gloves and tapped a bulging vein on Earl’s red, swollen neck and said, “Hmmmm.” John Eisenhower, the Washington County sheriff, walked into the room. Broker had worked undercover with Eisenhower years back in St. Paul. Eisenhower proceeded to study the situation, alert blue eyes in his blunt blond features. Broker knew the look. John was learning something…new.

  “What are you going to give him?” asked Eisenhower.

  The doctor held a syringe in one hand, a vial in the other. “Ketamine,” mused the doctor. “The question is how much.”

  “Knock him out,” urged J.T. “Fast.”

  The doctor shook his head. “Give him too much, he could go into spasm. Cardiac arrest.”

  “So?” J.T. was impatient. He gestured with the big black Glock automatic in his hand.

  The doctor smiled, enjoying himself. “There’s a liability question,” he said.

  “Stick him,” ordered J.T.

  “What if his teeth are loose and he swallows one and chokes?” speculated the doctor, inserting the needle in the vial, playing with the pressure on the plunger, estimating his dose.

  Broker, his eyes pin dots in a waterfall of sweat, muttered, “Nothing wrong with his fuckin’ teeth.”

  “I could get sued,” pondered the doctor.

  “All these nervous coppers, you could get shot,” explained J.T.

  Ed Ryan squatted next to the doctor. “I’m the ATF special agent in charge. Give the shot. Now.”

  “Yeah, but who backs me up if I get sued?” replied the doctor.

  “Now,” said Ryan, in an icy voice.

  Earl, imprisoned in a dozen pairs of hands, shied back from the needle. The doctor pointed to Earl’s upper right arm. Earl’s shirt exploded away in J.T.’s hands. It reminded Broker of a bunch of cowboys and cowgirls hog-tying a steer. Earl snorted as the needle popped into his deltoid. He seemed to levitate, thrashing in the imprisoning hands. There was an audible snap. A huge ATF guy spoke up apologetically: “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “A wrist,” offered a calm detached female voice. Nina.

  “About three minutes to kick in,” said the doctor. He smiled. “One possible side effect of ketamine is that he could go into a psychotic delirium for as long as twenty-four hours.”

  “Nice touch,” admired J.T.

  “I thought you’d like it,” said the doctor.

  Broker puffed mightily on the cigarette and watched the drug seep into Earl’s mad eyes. Everyone took a strong hold and waited. Earl tried to beat the clock. Tried to grind through the wood splints. Broker flashed on Jaws—watching the shark come over the transom. Nina wiped sweat from his forehead. She held his free hand.

  Finally, Earl’s snarls began to moderate into a ghastly yawn. Slowly the pressure on Broker’s thumb cranked back. Earl’s eyes fluttered and the steely muscles of his face drooped. Broker felt a gruesome suckling sensation as Earl’s loose, bloody lips slipped over his thumb. Earl made a sound like a drooling baby. Ga ga goo.

  Earl began breathing in anesthetized, blood-smeared dopery. “Aha,” said the doctor serenely as he removed something from Broker’s bloody thumb. “Did someone hit this guy in the mouth before the bite?”

  “You could say that,” said J.T. Merryweather.

  “Loose canine,” said the doctor, holding up Earl’s tooth. “That’s probably what saved your thumb.” One of the medics moved in and irrigated the wound with stinging disinfectant. “Move it,” the doctor ordered Broker.

  Broker gritted his teeth and sent messages into the gashed flesh. The digit moved.

  “Okay, we have intact tendons. Don’t know about nerves. Clean it like hell all the way to the ER. The human mouth is the dirtiest thing there is.”

  Squads and unmarked cars from the Washington, Dakota, and Ramsey counties’ Task Force jammed the brick emergency entrance portico of the Riverview Memorial Hospital. Rodney, who’d been arrested at Broker’s house—Broker had been arrested with him to keep his cover consistent—sat cuffed in the back of one of them, forgotten for the moment. But as Broker climbed from an ambulance, aided by cops, Rodney raised his cuffed hands and aimed an index finger, cocked his thumb. Through the window Broker saw his lips form a “Bang.”

  Word got out over the radios that one of the assholes had bitten off Broker’s thumb. Security got lost in the scramble to come and gawk. It was a real mess. His cover was blown to smithereens. Nina squeezed his good hand and smiled helpfully. Through a veil of blue curtains, Broker saw Earl wheeling by, thrashing against restraints on a gurney. “Mama, Mama,” he screamed. “There’s snakes in my poop!”

  A pissed-off ER surgeon and his team shooed the rubbernecking cops from his triage. “Out. It’s a bite. No big deal. So get the hell out of here.”

  Nina refused to budge.

  “She stays,” said Broker.

  “You’ll get some time off work now,” said Nina in a matter-of-fact voice, eyes fixed on Broker’s wound.

  “Huh?” Broker watched needles. Tetanus in his butt. Then Novocain in his thumb, then this curved job that strung catgut through what looked like a torn flap of extra-large pigskin glove attached to the palm of his left hand.

  “You see, I’m in a little trouble and I could use a guy like you,” said Nina.

  “Wonderful.” Broker watched, resigned, as the doctor stitched and tied.

  9

  BROKER DIDN’T WANT TO HEAR IT.

  They gave him Dilaudid and put him in a hospital bed. He needed rest, they said. Fat chance. With Nina curled up on a chair at his side, alternately sleeping and watching him.

  She was his doppelganger, come haunting.

  It was about her dad. It was always about her dad. She still didn’t get it. Ray Pryce had stranded him in a real tight spot and almost got him killed. But it wasn’t like that at the beginning. Dilaudid dripped into the adrenaline void and the memory flickered like slow-motion cinema.

  May Day 1972, QTC—Quang Tri City—

  Stalingrad South

  North Vietnamese regiments supported by tanks and artillery fought South Vietnamese regiments supported by the U.S. Air Force in the rubble of Quang Tri City. The rubble had been pounded to gravel. The North Vietnamese regiments had won.

  The tank was a low-slung Russian T—54, with a smooth round turret like a green steel igloo, from which protruded the biggest cannon Broker had ever seen. Dozens of other North Vietnamese tanks picked through the junky bricks on the muggy summery morning. Except this one had just pushed a wall over on 2nd Lt. Phil Broker, who had become separated from his unit and who was now pinned under a slab of cement and imprisoned in a bristle of rebar whiskers. Stuccoed in mortar dust and twenty-one years old, he was for sure going to die because he was dumb enough to get caught in a losing battle in a lost war.

  A hatch opened on the turret and a tanker shouldered up and removed his goggles, a smile broadened across his insect-tough Tonkinese face. The treads clanked back, grinding masonry; and the tank realigned, beetle fashion, as the cannon barrel moved left and then down, probing the air. Broker experienced one of those acoustic shadows he’d read about. A roaring battle was winding down all around him but he could clearly hear the hollow shouts coming from the interior of the tank. Happy shouts of the victors.

  Helpless, pinned in the rubble, his rifle crushed, his radio broken, out of grenades, Broker watched the guy looking out the hatch engage in a spirited discussion with his crew mates about how best to squash this most stupid of long-nosed foreign dummies.

  And then, through eyes teared to glue by brick dust and sweat, young Phil Broker witnessed a scene from a 1950s newsreel out of Budapest. A gaunt figure in dusty American olive drab sprinted up and across the rubble. He clutched a smoking wine bottle cocked back in his right hand.

  At first the North Vietnamese tanker laughed at this puny intruder but then very quickly he popped
back into his steel shell as Lt. Col. Cyrus LaPorte came straight in at a dead run, let out a chilling rebel yell as he hurled the Molotov.

  Broker watched the bottle arc gracefully through the congested air and splash into flame against the side of the T-54. He inhaled an explosive rush of basic American gumption and gasoline.

  The flames jump-started a machine gunner in the tank, who went seriously to work. LaPorte danced for a moment, in very uncolonel-like glee for a fortyish West Pointer, as rounds sprayed the loose bricks around his feet, drawing the fire away from Broker.

  Then the turret cannon poked in LaPorte’s direction. That’s when Major Pryce’s square body appeared over a collapsed wall thirty meters away with a LAW on his shoulder. The back blast raised a cloud of smoke and dust. The antitank round slammed into the T-54. A tread cracked off. The tank wallowed, stymied in the debris. Pryce waved to LaPorte, tossed off the LAW canister, and swung his M-16 from his shoulder to cover the burning tank. LaPorte unslung his rifle and scanned the smoking concrete wasteland for NVA infantry.

  And Staff Sergeant Tarantuna, Adonis-tall and athletic, weighted down with his bag of explosives, broke through the smoke, running in tandem with a short wiry South Vietnamese in tiger-stripe fatigues.

  Broker heard human sounds chorus quickly to a shriek inside the burning tank. The hatch flipped open. A boil of oily smoke obscured his line of sight. Pryce’s rifle squeezed off laconic semi-automatic rounds.

  But then Sergeant “Tuna” and Colonel Trin were scrambling across the rubble and kneeling next to him. Tuna grinned as he heaved his bag off his shoulder. “I say fuck him. He’s just a brown bar lieutenant.”

  “He’s got the radio,” said Trin, also wearing a deranged blood sport grin.

  “Radio’s busted,” croaked Broker, who was newer to this war business than they were and who definitely wasn’t grinning. He’d been thrown to these wolves in a little town named Dong Ha up on the DMZ before the offensive. About two weeks after he arrived he looked through the mist on Good Friday morning and saw thousands of NVA and hundreds of tanks coming straight at him. They had been coming nonstop for a month.