by Chuck Logan
The next night Trin returned with a small motorized pirogue and Broker’s radio and the survival kit. They paddled through lotus-choked canals 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 shore.
17
“THEN ALL HELL 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 classified 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 amassed a huge cache of gold for shipment 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 assets 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 hit 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 assumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today.
Broker stared at his empty glass 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 associated with returning veterans were for other people. Hell, 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 fucked-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 goddamn 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 damn 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.”<
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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 goddamn 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 God. 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-shirt 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 butt-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 butt. 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. Fucking. 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 snatched 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 snatched 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 shit, 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 shirt, 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. Asshole there pulled over about a hundred yards from your turnoff. Came in through the woods…”
Broker’s skin prickled 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.”
“Shit.”
“He’s tricky, we lost him in the trees. Mark swung down to the shore in case he was coming up from the beach. Then I saw him creeping toward your place. He went in and I came running and he comes flying out the screen door with the banshee. She a new love interest?”
“That would be too simple.” Broker shivered, bare-chested in jeans and tennis shoes.
“This some kind of snaky UC shit that followed you up from the Cities?”
Broker shook his head. “This is personal. Can you take him down and put him on ice, no rights, no phone call, nothing. I’ll get dressed and meet you at the station. We’ll have a talk with him.”
“Okay, but I’ll have to wake up Tom. This guy’s really a cop. He’s in our jurisdiction without bonafides.”
“This has nothing to do with police work.”
“I gotta take the stuff he was bringing out of your house.”
Broker nodded. “Just keep it quiet.”
“Gotcha.” Lyle went back up the steps. “On your feet,” he ordered.
“How ’bout you take off the cuffs, huh?” said Fret. “Seeing’s I’m a brother officer—”
“You ain’t shit,” said Lyle. “I saw on Sixty Minutes last week about the NOPD. Feds busted twenty of you guys and the crime rate in New Orleans went down eighteen percent.”
“Listen, dickhead, I realize you got it rough up here in the woods going round scooping bear shit off the roads—”
“Move,” said Lyle Torgeson. With a menacing glance, Broker warned Nina to stay clear as he handed the map over to Lyle. Coated with goosebumps, he walked Lyle and his prisoner up the drive to Lyle’s cruiser. Mark Halme shined his flashlight and led Broker into the thick brush on the shoulder of the highway. They stopped and Broker knelt and put his hand on the still warm mound of dark fur.
Halme shined his light on the silver whistle and the electric stun gun that lay next to the dog’s body. He speculated, “That guy had a lot of balls letting that dog in close enough to zap him with the Tazer.”
“Real good or real desperate,” said Broker.
“I already took some pictures. I’ll be at the cabin the rest of the night in case there’s more of them,” said Halme. He ginge
rly folded the Tazer and the whistle in plastic evidence bags and backed away, giving Broker some room.
Broker jerked nervously. Mosquitoes starting to flock. He fished a crumpled pack of cigarettes and matches from his pocket, lit up, and blew smoke at the insects. It was quiet now except for the waves breaking on the shore. Hyper alert, he could hear his sweat dry, feel the salt crack on his skin.
He took his vows seriously. He’d upheld the ones he’d sworn to the U.S. Constitution and to the people of Minnesota. His failed marriage he still wore like crippling chains.
The Cyrus LaPorte he had known wouldn’t use the likes of Bevode Fret. For the first time he formed the thought that maybe it was LaPorte who had not minded his vows. But it was wrapped in hot angry instinct.
For the dog alone I’ll hurt you bad, General.
Back off. Think. Cool gears of reason shifted through the wrath. Sorting it. Delaying it. He lifted the huge shepherd in his arms and plodded back to the cabin. Nina confronted him, shaking in her torn shirt. There were purple claw marks down her shoulder and on both arms. She had trouble breathing.
“Now you believe me,” she insisted and her voice rasped, barely under control. Then she saw the dead animal. “Aw, God.”
Broker nodded and laid Tank down. Then he noticed the blood oozing from her bruised throat in the porch light. The dark shape of Fret’s thumb prints. “Your neck?”
“Bastard tried to choke me.”
“I’ll take you to the hospital—”
“I don’t need a fucking hospital. I need some fucking help.”
Broker patiently hoarded his anger, pushing it into his heart like icy bullets into a spring-loaded magazine. “Get cleaned up, make some coffee. There’s a cop named Mark Halme staying close. I’ll be back after I talk to this Fret.”
“He won’t tell you anything.”
Broker squinted in the harsh light at the damage on her throat. Sonofabitch, she’d been fighting for her life.