Johnny Bolan pushed away his beer and looked at Mack. The Executioner's presence filled the room.
"Whatever it was I accomplished in Portland," Bolan said, "I accomplished it far, far too late. To you, we were in Portland to hit the Mafia and the terrorists, to avenge Sandy Darlow and April Rose. But I was there for something else."
"What?"
Bolan's voice grew calmer, deeper. "I was there to take my revenge on all the Councils of Kings. To shove it down their throats one last time. When I think of my buddy... when I see a picture of him in my mind, of my buddy back in Nam, I think of you, Johnny."
As the afternoon drew on, Johnny Bolan heard what it was that Mack Bolan had learned in Vietnam and what it was that made him fight for friendship to such an extent that now he could not bear to expose his younger brother to any of the dangers of the Executioner's world.
To Johnny it was an accounting for events that reached their true conclusion only days ago in Portland. Bolan told the tale in brief, urgent, first-person snatches of image and commentary. But the effect on Johnny's imagination was complete and everlasting.
This is the story Mack Bolan told his brother.
Dusk turned the jungle to an eerie, formless gray. A breeze whispered through the treetops. He had come to know the jungle as a living thing, a breathing thing that gave up no dead.
Bolan let his thoughts slip away, and listened below the faint rustling of leaves.
He stopped beside a thicket. A scraping sound slipped through the leaves around him. He eased the AR to full auto and searched for movement. The jungle surrounded him, held him, breaking his vision with a confusion of vegetation that sighed almost imperceptibly in the pale darkness. Where the hell was Buddy?
Bolan eased himself back a step. The scraping sound came from behind.
Bolan turned in painfully slow motion, the AR's snout moving with him.
The jungle was still.
It was Buddy. He was squatting beside a pool of black water that reflected the deepening, broken sky.
Connecticut was gone from Buddy.
Mack Bolan looked back a million years at the small man squatting in the swamp, shaving his head with a knife.
"Don't do it, Buddy."
"I'm done for, Mack."
"No, you're not." Bolan was crouched beside him.
They talked four inches apart. Buddy scraped his head with his killing knife, shaving the hairs from the scalp, but leaving a full swath from brow to nape. The Mohawk.
Bolan wanted to stay his hand, stop the shaving, as if that would alter Buddy's fate — but Bolan did not want his throat slit.
Buddy shaved and talked in a shaky voice. An orange spider emerged from behind his ear and crawled carefully down his neck.
"I smelled Leslie today. No, really. All of a sudden it just hit me. It was like she was beside me. Can you believe I gave her up to do a second tour? Man, I smelled her hair, her skin." Buddy was lost in himself, talking unevenly as he shaved. "You want to hear something even crazier? I had this memory, finally, of my mother, like I've never been able to remember her. She died when I was three. But today I remembered her giving me a bath."
"Buddy? What was in the letter you got this morning?" asked Bolan, though he already knew.
Buddy swallowed but continued shaving, as if by rote. The spider, which had crawled so carefully down his neck, rode Buddy's Adam's apple as he swallowed, but then danced in alarm as the water came trickling down from Buddy's head.
"Oh, you know. Leslie, ah..." he swallowed again "...Leslie got herself a Jody. I knew it would happen."
"Buddy, you've got to remember..."
"Only regret I have is that I won't be coming back to cut his frigging balls off," Buddy said to no one as he rinsed the short hairs from his blade. It was Buddy's trademark — the knife that was super-sharp but dark. It reflected no light. Bolan could hardly see Buddy now. Their whispers hissed in the half light.
"You're doing the Mohawk because of Jody? That's not like you."
"It's not Jody, man. It's this fucking mission. I got this feeling. First we go to penetrate the village that Intelligence says is a VC camp, and it ain't. Just a bunch of goddamn villagers. Did you see those little kids with the water buffalo? If you hadn't called off the air strike they'd be dead meat. And then we hump it to the next village and there's no VC there, either. Then I got that smell and my mother, and I see myself in the water, and I get hit with this feeling. Buddy, you're a dead man. Time for the Mohawk. Buddy's going to die in the Mekong."
Bolan watched as Buddy rose on his haunches. He was sweating like a pig, staring at the jungle. Beads of sweat on his forehead and brow reflected the last touches of light. His left hand hung down to the muck, clutching the blade. Bolan saw Buddy's nostrils quivering. A Mohawk meant you weren't coming back. He wanted Buddy before he slipped away any farther.
"That's a beautiful Mohawk, Buddy."
"You think so?"
"Can I make a suggestion?"
"Sure."
"Spread some mud on your scalp. It's shining white."
Buddy reached into the muck and looked at it as though reading the entrails of his own corpse.
Slowly he raised his hands to his scalp and worked the swamp muck on either side of the stripe of chestnut hair.
When finished he looked up at Mack Bolan as if his mind were made up all the more. Keeping his hollow eyes fixed on Bolan, he lifted the cord that hung around his neck and gathered it in his hand.
"Here. I want you to have this." He reached over and put the tangle in Bolan's palm. A human ear hung from the cord, limp and leathery. "My first kill. It's yours."
"I don't want this," said Bolan. "Never have."
"Take it."
"No."
Bolan saw the look on Buddy's face and put the ear in his pocket. They moved off, with Buddy walking point.
The darkness grew wet with rain.
They crawled into position just as the moon was sinking behind the scrub.
Before them lay the enemy camp, a hillock among the mangroves that was honeycombed with tunnels and caves. It looked to be a full fifty yards across the top.
This jungle would hide an army forever. The delta was fingered with ridges that rose from the primeval swamp, covered in scrub oak and nettles in an endless, unbroken cover of vegetation. The VC gathered and struck their targets when and where they chose, always melting away into the delta.
There was no way of destroying them without destroying the delta itself.
The young Sergeant Bolan had picked up a Washington newspaper with the Pentagon's account of areas controlled by American and RV forces. He found it a cruel joke. The allies never held any position more than temporarily, and then only as long as their firepower blasted anything that moved. The VC owned the night, anywhere and anytime they wanted to collect.
Buddy and Bolan watched the occasional movements of VC in the camp, trying to make out where the tunnels began and ended.
There were too many entrances to count.
"I think we hit the jackpot," Buddy said.
"I stopped counting at ten."
"This is a hard-core regiment. These guys aren't farming by day."
"Probably sitting on enough ammo and supplies for the whole quadrant," muttered Bolan. "We can't do this alone. We'll do a sapper job on the place, then call in the choppers once the action starts."
"You do the perimeter, Mack. I'm going in to see if I can blow the ammo. Meet by that trail in an hour and a half."
Bolan was about to say, "No, I'll go in," but Buddy had already slipped into the swamp that lay at the foot of the ridge.
Bolan gave him five minutes and then snaked in himself. He felt the cool touch of the water as it slipped through his fatigues and surrounded his body. With only his eyes above the waterline, Bolan crawled toward the camp. The moon had set.
Bolan eased every thought from his mind. He was empty. He let everything of himself slip away.
He
reduced himself to a presence. The water passed through him. He became pure killer.
Where the ridge rose from the swamp, Bolan slowed to almost imperceptible movement. In his mind he was Buddy's blade — a death that reflected no light.
He rose from the water so slowly he could feel the evaporation from his neck. Every nerve was vacant yet highly aware.
Ten feet away two guards sat in a shallow hole, looking at him.
Bolan's crawl toward them was agonizingly slow. They looked directly at him but could not see his form in the dark swamp. Bolan saw the outline of rifles in their laps.
Bolan lowered each hand carefully as he crawled, testing the surface before he let his weight press on it. He covered four feet in ten minutes.
An eternity passed. One of the guards moved his head, sending an alarm along the swamp crawler's spine. Bolan's hand came down slowly on something plastic. A claymore.
Bolan could smell the guards. He was five feet from their hole. He began to turn the claymore around, five degrees at a time, so that it faced the guards.
One guard turned to the other and spoke in a whisper. The second guard sat up listening, the claymore wires in his hands.
Bolan stopped breathing when he saw the wires.
His lungs began to burn. His heart pounded audibly in his ears.
Three feet away the guard's knees shifted in the blackness.
Nothing more was said. The two guards listened intently.
Bolan finished rotating the claymore and moved off into the blackness.
Then he turned two more.
Time was running out. Bolan finished the perimeter after an agonizing hour and then crawled into the camp to meet Buddy.
Bolan felt Buddy's breath before he heard him. The voice came in his ear, barely perceptible.
"I found the commander. He's copying something down on his map as the radioman gets it. They're giving out the locations of the VC regiments."
"Did you hear any of it?"
"Hear it? I'm going for the map, Mack."
"You've got a pair of brass balls, my friend."
"I always knew I'd die in this shit hole." Buddy slid off before Bolan could say anything more. Bolan's guts went cold.
Bolan crouched by the trail, knife in hand. He felt a centipede scamper up his leg, but remained motionless. It was not worth risking exposure to kill it. He could feel it work its way into his crotch.
A cry went up within the tunnels the instant that Buddy returned silently to Bolan's position. Someone had found the dead commander and radioman.
Adrenaline coursed through the two Americans as they ran away from the trail, into the brush. A claymore blew, sending a flash and a bizarre shadow through the foliage. Then another, and a scream, and then the AR's opened up. The VC were shooting at one another and the Americans were escaping through the perimeter. The firefight reared its head around them, cutting the jungle to tatters. Bolan jumped, doubled over, across a thicket, then heard Buddy grunt. He turned back, saw something that looked like Buddy on the ground, and then the VC rained heavy machine-gun fire across the distance that separated them.
Bolan crawled under the fire and grabbed Buddy's elbow, dragging him through a pool of viscous muck, part of which was Buddy's own vomit. The enemy were firing from two directions now; a crisscross of angry slugs whined hotly past in bright flashes.
Bolan picked up Buddy and ran as fast as his legs could pump. There was too much confusion to hear anything. He crashed through the brush with Buddy's guts leaking down his back.
"The dirty bastards," Buddy was chanting. "This dirty fucking war!" Finally he sank to his knees by the radio.
Bolan had circled to find the radio, and was breathless. He keyed the set quickly. He could hear the VC following the trail of Buddy's blood. They would be on top of him soon. With one hand over Buddy's mouth, Bolan gave the coordinates for an artillery hit, followed by another set for the Med-evac. Then he lifted the radio and Buddy and staggered away.
On the next ridge Bolan sat with the radio calling the coordinates again.
From far off he heard the booming of the big guns, then the blasts that shook his stomach as the big shells staggered up the ridge.
"East fifty... north thirty..." Bolan was waiting for the big one. The shell that would blow that ammo. "North another thirty," he said, and then it went. The sky cracked open. Bolan and Buddy lay side by side as the ground bucked beneath the roiling fireball. In the reflection of Buddy's glazed eyes Bolan saw the flames blossom.
* * *
"Buddy didn't make it, Mack," said Crawford. The lieutenant colonel was Bolan's commanding officer, but every man in Penetration Team Able was the CO's equal as far as Crawford was concerned. "He caught too many slugs. Too damn many."
The sun had risen, turning the shack into a steam bath. A portable fan blew fetid air at them. Bolan's eyes burned like coals.
"Where is he?"
"They shipped him out. He's going back to the States in a bag. Still has a father alive, I think."
Bolan said nothing. Crawford offered him a cigarette and then lit it for him.
"I'm not going on the next mission."
"Mack, we've all lost friends."
"I don't mean that. Buddy went in after a map he saw the commander drawing on. I bet he's still got it."
"No way. I emptied his pockets myself. Nothing. Except the letter from home."
"Then he swallowed it."
"Mack, come on now..."
"No way. Buddy knew he was going home in a bag... A field map is made of canvas and paper. The part of it that Buddy swallowed could still be undissolved in his stomach right now."
Crawford was about to reply, but said nothing. It was true about Buddy knowing he was going to die, of course. Everyone had seen the Mohawk. He tapped a pencil nervously on the desk.
"Let me call down to Saigon. I have a friend who works..."
Bolan cut him off. "I'm doing this personally. No more depending on someone else who doesn't care."
Crawford sighed wearily. "All right. This is going to take a lot of Vaseline. A lot." Crawford picked up the telephone and said to Mack, "Get a fresh uniform." Then, "Get me Colonel Winters."
* * *
The chopper landed with a lurch. That was what Nam felt like to Bolan, just as the lurch of a pickup was what New England felt like. He stepped out and looked across the tarmac at the depot, an immense corrugated metal structure shining in the bright sun like an airplane hangar.
Beyond it a transport lifted off, the heat of its exhaust turning the surrounding jungle into a shimmering blob of green. The depot was temporary; the jungle would win it back. Bolan never looked at the jungle without thinking about its inevitable victory.
The office jutted out from the side of the depot like an unwanted appendage. Everyone wore clean crisp uniforms. The place was calm, but eerie in its calmness; Bolan wanted out, though he did not give himself that choice.
He walked in and explained his visit to a fresh-looking kid from Alabama.
Then he waited for someone with authority. On the radio an English voice was singing about sympathy and the Devil.
Bolan resisted the urge to crush the radio under his boot. This was the rear.
This was how it was back here. He wanted out more than ever.
Ten minutes later a man came to the office in a white coat. He looked like a New York cabdriver, but spoke in educated tones.
"Dr. Morgan," he said, reaching out a hand. "What's the problem?"
Bolan explained. He needed to locate a corpse. There might be some vital intel within the body itself. As he talked they entered the depot. Bolan was hit by the coldness of the air. Then he understood — air-conditioning.
He hadn't felt it in... how long? A past life.
"What's the name and serial number?"
Bolan withdrew the slip of paper from his pocket and read the serial number. They were standing in a giant warehouse divided by rack upon rack of dead GI's in plast
ic bags. The racks went down the length of the room, parallel, chilling. A thousand dead eyes staring through milky plastic at the ceiling. The predominant smell was of disinfectant.
"You see, a piece of canvas and paper like that would ninety-nine times in a hundred be lost. We have to remove the viscera from the body and then stuff the cavity with cotton soaked in formaldehyde. There's no way we could ship them otherwise. And all that junk goes down into the bins for disposal."
Morgan called to another whitecoat talking to a private in uniform. They came over and the grunt was sent to locate Buddy.
The other doctor doubted they would have seen such a piece of paper.
They told Bolan about their careers as coroners back home. Bolan did not respond.
The grunt called them over and stood waiting with cap in hand, pointing to a long bag on a wheeled stretcher. Morgan unzipped the top of the bag.
Bolan looked down at Buddy's face.
"This one's done. You do this one, Mike?"
"I can't remember. Sergeant, this one's already done. I guess you're a little late."
Bolan looked down at the bag.
Buddy's Mohawk was sticking up beyond the folds of the plastic.
"Cut him open again. I have to be sure."
"Are you crazy? We already took his guts out."
"Cut him open again."
"Sergeant, you don't seem to understand..."
"It's you who doesn't understand, doctor. Get your goddamn knife out, or I'll do it myself."
Morgan turned to the grunt. "Get the guards. This crazy asshole needs cooling off."
The grunt keyed the walkie-talkie and called for guards. Bolan fumed.
"Morgan, your ass is on the line for this."
A door flew open at the far end of the room.
Two MP's trotted in, bats at the ready.
"Sergeant," the doctor said to Bolan, "you'd better watch what you say, or you'll go home in a plastic uniform, too."
* * *
Bolan waited for the transport to lift off into the night. Then he vaulted the fence. The depot was not exactly a high security area. He crossed the tarmac without seeing anyone.
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