by Fran Baker
Despite the adrenaline that was boiling through him, urging him to make a break, there was only one thought in Cain’s mind now—how to keep Cat and the baby from getting caught in the net that had been cast for him.
It had been the busiest afternoon of Cat’s life. She’d sterilized bottles and nipples, slapped sandwiches together for lunch and scrubbed a couple of dirty diapers. Leaving her hair wet after the quick shower she’d managed to squeeze in, she’d put on her dry underwear and those black pajamas—for the last time, she hoped—before she’d fed and changed the baby. Then, when the boat slowed, she’d wrapped him in his blanket and brought him topside, believing they were about to dock.
But now, squinting against the patrol boats’ searchlight eyes that suddenly glared in through the wheelhouse glass, she held his tiny body closely to her breasts and turned blindly to Cain. “What’s going on?”
“If I’m not mistaken, we’re being busted.” And he knew exactly how it had come about, too. He’d broken radio silence only once this entire trip—to let Tiny know what time they’d be pulling into port and to ask him to have Loc meet them so he could take Cat and the baby back to the hotel. But it was obvious that someone else had patched in to the transmission.
“Busted?” With a panicked sound in her throat, she looked up at the sky and saw three helicopters hovering overhead, rotors twirling, like a band of avenging angels. “Busted for what?”
He pointed toward the dock. “Ask Colonel Howard.”
She turned her head in disbelief. “Colonel Howard?”
“James Lee Cain, it is my duty to place you under arrest!” the familiar voice barked at him through a bullhorn.
Her eyes widened with horror as lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating Colonel Howard’s figure on the dock. He was wearing a regulation trench coat that was buttoned to the throat, and his free hand was hidden in a pocket. Four military policemen in shiny black helmets and fatigues flanked him, Galils at port arms with their right hands on their holstered .45s.
The patrol boat on the starboard side bumped up against Cain’s. Once it made fast, the other boats backed off. Then the helicopters rose over the water one by one and, blades thwap-thwap-thwapping, were gone.
The baby, startled as much by the noise and the lights as by how tightly Cat was squeezing him, let out a lusty wail. She relaxed her hold and reminded herself to stay calm. It wasn’t going to do anybody any good if she freaked out.
But she gaped at Cain, incredulous, when he idled the motor. “What are you doing?”
“I’m turning myself in.” If he’d been alone, Cain would have made a run for it. He had the room, now that the patrol was down to one boat, and God knew he had enough horse- and firepower to either leave both Howard and his merry band of MPs in his wake or to go out with a bang. But he wasn’t alone. He had a helpless baby and the woman he loved to think about. And right now, their safety was more important to him than saving his own skin.
“No!” The fierceness in Cat’s voice surprised her. Cain, too. She saw it in the sharp, sideways jerk of his chin. Felt it in the searing gaze he turned on her. “You can’t do it.” Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to shed them. “Howard hates you. I saw it on his face the day I went to talk to him. He doesn’t just want to lock you up. If he has his way, they’ll hang—”
“Yes, Cat.” He tempered the finality of his statement by lifting a tear off her lashes. He looked at it, and then at the baby before giving her a bittersweet smile. “It’s for the best.”
His words struck her chest like heavy stones. She wanted to scream and cry, fall on her knees and beg him not to give up so easily. But to what avail? He’d already made up his mind. And the three linebacker-sized navy crewmen now boarding the boat had their weapons cocked and locked. Their expressions just begged him to give them an excuse to shoot.
“Freeze!” the beefiest of the three demanded as Cain stepped out of the wheelhouse.
He stood so motionlessly he might have been made of ice.
“Your gun.”
Trying without success to soothe the baby, Cat watched helplessly as Cain reached in his waistband and withdrew his .45.
The sailor stepped closer to take it. “And the knife.”
He removed it from the sheath at his belt and passed it over.
“Now put your hands over your head.”
After the second crewman grabbed the arms he raised in surrender and roughly drew them behind him, the first clamped a pair of handcuffs on him. While they were doing that, the third stepped around him and into the wheelhouse, then gunned the throttle and swung the bow to port.
Cain growled deep in his throat when, with a weeping of metal on wood, the driver carelessly scraped the side of the boat against the dock. “Watch it, you stupid sonofa—”
The seaman who’d handcuffed him now backhanded him across the mouth.
Cain’s head snapped around, following the impetus behind the blow. To Cat’s horror, the corner of his lip was dripping blood. But even shackled in steel, he was still a dangerous man. Still a street fighter. He bared his teeth, braced his weight on his right foot and kicked his left one upward, catching the sailor who’d hit him under the chin and sending him stumbling backward.
The second sailor sprang into action, punching Cain first in the stomach and then in the face with his fist.
“Stop it!” Cat’s voice cracked with hysteria when he drew his sidearm and raised the butt of it to hit him on the back of the head. Heedless of the automatic weapons pointed at her, she confronted Cain’s assailant. “You’ve hurt him enough!”
The seaman hesitated, then dropped his hand.
Cain fell to his knees with a grimace and a grunt.
The baby was crying so strenuously that Cat was afraid he was going to make himself sick again. Even though her own body was racked with sobs, she lifted him to her shoulder and crooned mindlessly to get him to stop. The breeze had picked up, and she adjusted the blanket over his head with a shaking hand.
“We’ll take over from here.” Colonel Howard stepped onto the boat, accompanied by the four MPs but minus the bullhorn. He slid his other hand into his pocket as he adjusted his stance to accommodate the slight sway at the dock.
“Yes, sir.” The crewman, whose careless “driving” had caused the contretemps in the first place, holstered the pistol he’d been holding to Cain’s temple, saluted Howard, then signaled the other two that they’d been dismissed.
“Remind me to add resisting arrest to the other charges we’ll be filing against him,” Howard ordered after the sailors had returned to their own boat.
“Yes, sir.” The MP who’d moved forward to take the navy crewman’s place now stood over Cain with the muzzle of his .45 set against the base of his skull.
Though Colonel Howard’s eyes were flat and his face expressionless, Cat sensed a menace bordering on madness behind the smooth mask he turned to her. He ignored the baby, whose wails had subsided into whimpers, as he gave her the once-over. The black peasant’s pajamas she was wearing seemed to take him aback. But only for a second. Recovering, he shook his head in disgust.
“You disgrace your husband’s memory, Mrs. Brown,” he said contemptuously.
When Cain started to surge to his feet, the MP holding the gun to his head cocked the trigger and he wisely remained on his knees.
Her lashes barely flickering, Cat met the officer’s gaze and raised her chin unashamedly. “I see you’re still letting other people fight your battles for you, Colonel Howard.”
Howard’s eyes narrowed, and she braced herself for the slap she felt certain was coming as a result of her insubordinate remark. But he kept his hands in his pockets and spoke to Cain, gloating. “Thought you could outsmart me, didn’t you, gook?”
Cat gasped in outrage at the nasty epithet.
“Thought you could sneak up river to peddle your drugs and our guns—”
“No,” she contradicted him. “That’s not what happened.
He took me—”
“Frisk him,” Howard ordered the MP to his right, ignoring her.
The MP, who didn’t look to be a day over eighteen but wore the stripes of a sergeant, glanced uncertainly at him, then at Cain. “He’s already surrendered his gun and his knife, sir.”
A mocking sneer curled Howard’s thin mouth. “You telling me you trust this traitor not to be carrying a concealed weapon? Or to have another knife strapped to his leg? Maybe even a universal key in his pocket that would unlock the handcuffs?”
“No, sir.” The MP said it as though he had a mouth full of ashes.
“Frisk him,” Howard commanded again in a cold voice.
“Yes, sir.”
While obviously wary of Cain’s booted feet, two of the MPs dragged him to a standing position while the third kept him covered and the young sergeant did a thorough job of patting him down.
“He’s clean, sir.”
Suspicion snaked up Cat’s spine when Howard jerked his head toward the warehouse. “Take them both inside while I search the boat.”
Why was he going to search the boat alone? she wondered. Especially when he had military policemen with him who were trained to do just that sort of thing. Shudders rippled through her, one after another, as she remembered the conversation she’d had with him—was it really only a three days ago?—in his office. And the innocent question she’d asked him at the time.
It all made sense to her now. He was setting Cain up. At her suggestion, no less! And if she wasn’t mistaken, he had the evidence—
“You might want to shackle his legs, too,” Howard added as the MPs rudely yanked Cain toward the dock. “Just in case he’s thinking of putting on another martial arts demonstration.”
“What have you got in your pockets, Colonel Howard?” Cat was positive now that this was a sting operation, and that the proof of it lay deep in those very pockets he was guarding so assiduously.
For the first time since he’d boarded the boat, Howard’s eyes truly sparked. Then he doused his anger with a smile that was both thin and brief. “My hands.”
Cat didn’t believe him, but before she could refute him the skies opened up and rain lashed at her face. Because she didn’t want the baby to get wet, she bowed her head over his and made a mad dash across the deck. The MP who’d questioned Howard about frisking Cain a second time considerately gave her a hand up and escorted her into the warehouse.
Inside, Tiny had been relieved of his shotgun and relegated to his desk. But he hadn’t lost either his smile or his sense of timing. The first thing she heard when she ducked in out of the rain was his transistor radio, its volume turned down lower than the last time but still loud enough for her to hear the Animals screaming at the top of their lungs, “We gotta get outta this place . . .”
The MP who had ushered her inside took up a post at the door while the other three stood guard over Cain. When Cat first saw him, she gasped. His hands were cuffed to a steel beam that ran from floor to ceiling and his legs were in irons. His lip had stopped bleeding but had begun to swell, and there was a new bruise forming on the side of his face—the result of the blow he’d taken on the boat.
She started toward him, but he warned her with a slight shake of his head to stay where she was. How long they waited, frozen in that terrible tableau, she couldn’t begin to guess. All she knew was that everything that mattered to her—Cain’s life, the baby’s future—depended on her being right about what Colonel Howard was doing.
There was only one way to find out, she realized, and that was to catch him in the act. Her decision made, she turned back to the door. But the young MP who was guarding it stretched his arm in front of her, barring her way.
“You have to stay here,” he said.
Thinking fast, she gave the MP a chagrined look. “Stupid me, I left the baby’s diapers and bottles on the boat.”
He glanced down at the baby and smiled, then up at her and shook his head remonstratively. “You shouldn’t take him out in that rain, ma’am.”
“Then you hold him.”
“Me?”
“I need to get his medicine, too.” The baby had calmed down, bless his heart, but Cat was a veritable bundle of nerves. “See, he has an ear infection—”
He nodded in understanding. “My little brother used to get them, and we’d have to warm towels for him to lay his head on.”
She knew she had him then. “And it’s almost time for him to take his penicillin again . . .” Before the MP knew what hit him, he was holding the baby and she was rushing out the door, into the teeth of the storm, assuring him over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back.”
* * * *
A rain-drenched Cat found Colonel Howard tearing the main cabin apart with divine vengeance. He was so absorbed in emptying the pantry, flinging paper plates and sugar cubes atop the pile of stuff he’d pulled out of the other cabinets, that he hadn’t heard her racing across the deck and down the hatch. It sickened her to see the mess he was making, especially knowing the way Cain kept things in such ship-shape order. Pushing her sopping hair out of her eyes, she stood on the bottom step and watched him for a moment in the light from the lantern he’d hung at the porthole.
Then, taking a deep breath, she entered. “What are you looking for?”
Howard spun, obviously startled to see her. “I ordered you to stay in the warehouse.”
“I came back to get this.” Feigning calm, she bent down and picked the backpack off the floor by one of the straps. “And to ask you if you have a search warrant.”
His eyes narrowed nastily in the flickering light. “I don’t need one.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, we’re in a combat zone—”
“Cain is a civilian.”
“Rules of procedure are different when the enemy—be it the Viet Cong or a traitor—threatens.” Smiling snidely, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a half-dozen plastic vials filled with a powdery white substance that could only be one thing. “And for another, I’ve already found enough of what I’m looking for to throw the book at him.”
Heroin, Cat realized dully as she stared down at the vials in his hand. She suffered not a scintilla of doubt about where it had come from because she trusted Cain. Implicitly. The problem was, she had no proof that Howard had planted it. All she had to go on was instinct. It was that same instinct, though, that had led her half way around the world to find her son. Now it gave her the courage to raise her gaze and call the officer’s bluff.
“Where did you find that?” she demanded.
A flicker of annoyance marred Howard’s features. “What difference does it make?”
“For one thing,” she said, mocking him, “I’ve been with Cain around the clock these last couple of days so I know for a fact that he doesn’t do drugs.”
Howard glowered at her. “He just sells them to our troops.”
“And for another,” she continued blandly, “I’ve been in every nook and cranny of this cabin, and I’ve never seen anything even remotely resembling heroin.”
He thought hard, and then darted a glance at the drawer under the bunk. “That’s because you didn’t look in there.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Her own gaze went to the drawer. It was still closed, so she assumed that he hadn’t tossed it yet. Which meant he hadn’t found the cigarettes that Cain kept there for bargaining purposes, either. She looked back at Howard then. “I put the baby—my husband’s baby—to bed in there.”
His hard face went slack. “Your husband’s baby?”
“Yes.” Cat was flying blind now, fighting against panic as she tried to think and talk at the same time. “You see, he had a Vietnamese ‘wife’ who—”
“A hootch-girl,” he said scornfully.
“Call her what you will,” she countered, “but Lily gave birth to Johnny’s son less than a week after he was shot down, and then she hemorrhaged to death herself a couple of hours later.”
“Your husband’s infidelity is your problem, Mrs. Brown.” Howard put the plastic vials back in his coat pocket and made to step around her. “My only concern is seeing Cain tried and hanged for smuggling heroin.”
Cat paled at the venom in his voice, but refused to move out of his way. The crucial moment was at hand, and her chest hurt from repressing her mounting anxiety. Still, the man had to be stopped before he destroyed Cain.
She stared up at him, unblinking, as she played her trump card. “Before you leave, Colonel Howard, I want to let you know that I’m planning to attend the press briefing with the baby tomorrow afternoon.”
That stopped him in his tracks. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Why?”
“Because I think it’s time the American people know what’s going on over here. That you and the other commanders are not only ignoring mixed-blood babies like my husband’s, but that you’re perfectly willing to abandon them to the communists when we lose this damned war.”
His eyes darkened ominously. “Are you threatening me, Mrs. Brown?”
“Not at all, Colonel Howard,” she said with delicate irony. “I’m simply promising you that by the time I’m done, those ‘Five O’Clock Follies’ you so despise will have turned into an opéra bouffe. And that I will have named you personally as one of the principal obstacles to these babies being acknowledged and granted U.S. citizenship.”
He took a step backwards, almost tripping over the bamboo throw rug that lay in the middle of the floor. They both knew that what she was saying wasn’t entirely true. He wasn’t the ultimate authority where the babies’ fates were concerned. The blame for that lay at the doorstep of his superiors, who, by turning a blind eye to the problem, were complicity encouraging it. But if this got out, somebody would have to take the fall. And judging by his expression, Howard knew exactly who that somebody was.
“You’re planning to frame me,” he accused.
“Kind of like you’re planning to frame Cain,” she agreed.
Cat couldn’t believe that she had so boldly admitted her intention. Howard looked back at her through stricken eyes. Then he lowered them guiltily and swallowed hard, visibly struggling to compose himself.