The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “Yeah, you’re right. I guess now’s as good a time as any to move on.”

  “Why was he having a go at you?”

  Lehman didn’t want to tell Dillman how he’d let Komer off the hook so he just said, “Money. He reckoned I wasn’t trying hard enough.”

  “Hell, Dan, you’re doing better than anyone else out there. His brother must be putting him under pressure. You know that Mario has been using this operation to launder mob money?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Lehman answered. So long as his commission cheque arrived each month, Lehman hadn’t given any thought to the workings of the boiler room.

  “Just remember that Cilento is connected. It won’t be enough to get out of Los Angeles, or even Orange County. You’re only going to be safe if you leave the States, for a while at least. Cilento’ll move heaven and earth to get even.”

  Lehman was beginning to realise what a hole he’d dug for himself. He’d reacted instinctively to Cilento’s threatened attack and hadn’t given any thought to the consequences. If he’d avoided hitting Cilento he could perhaps have worked out some sort of deal, taken a lower commission on the next few hits, promised to make good the deficit. Lehman always preferred to talk his way out of trouble whenever possible. He’d seen more than enough violence in Vietnam to last him a lifetime and knew that it rarely solved anything. But Cilento had given him no room for manoeuvre and he hadn’t been prepared to take a punch in the mouth just to keep his job. Lehman wasn’t a man given to losing his temper, but he wasn’t the type to back away from a fight, either. And besides, it had sure felt good when his knee had connected with Cilento’s private parts. “Thanks for the advice, Gordon.”

  Cilento groaned on the floor but his eyes were still closed tight. Lehman stepped over him and began sorting through the unopened envelopes on Cilento’s desk. He found one postmarked Albany and tore it open. Inside was Rob Komer’s cheque for 125,000 dollars. Lehman tore it up into small pieces and dropped them over Cilento’s head. He could see that Dillman was dying to ask what he was doing but Lehman just shook his hand and left the office without saying another word. One or two of the slammers looked up as he picked up his Rolodex and the few personal possessions he had in his desk drawer, but they were all too busy on the phone to say anything to him.

  In the underground car park far below the boiler room, Lehman threw his Rolodex on to the back seat of his Porsche and drove out into the bright LA sunshine. He took a pair of Ray-Bans from his glove compartment and slipped them on. He reckoned he had about fifteen minutes until Cilento had recovered enough to call his brother, and maybe half an hour after that before they’d be able to get some heavies around to his apartment. Lehman looked at the Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. The roads were relatively clear and he’d be able to get home within ten minutes, giving him just enough time to throw a few clothes into a suitcase and grab the cash hidden under the bedroom carpet. The apartment, like the furniture, the electrical equipment and the car, were all leased. He dismissed the idea of driving out to the airport because he was sure that Cilento would have that covered. He’d drop off the car, hire something less conspicuous from Hertz, and drive to San Francisco. From there he’d catch a Greyhound and head east, to Chicago maybe. And in a couple of days he’d catch a plane out to Asia. He’d been thinking of taking a trip to the Far East for some time, ever since he saw a newspaper advert that had intrigued him. A travel agency based in Chicago was offering to take Vietnam War veterans back to Vietnam, partly as a holiday and partly to help them come to terms with what had happened out there.

  The idea appealed to Lehman: Vietnam had long been an itch that he’d felt incapable of scratching, a source of memories and ghosts that kept coming back to haunt him more than twenty years after he’d taken the Freedom Bird back to the world. Now was the perfect time to go back. As he waited at a red light the irony of it suddenly made him smile. The way things were going, Vietnam was just about the safest place on Earth he could be just then.

  The mission was straightforward. The team of hand-picked mercenaries had to fight their way through tough jungle terrain, seize a powerful speedboat and fight their way upriver to a canyon held by rebel forces. Once they’d reached the canyon they were to dump the boat and shoot it out on foot until they arrived at an enemy camp where five hostages were being held in a fortified three-storey block. The mercenaries were to release all the hostages, shoot their way out of the camp and seize a plane at the nearby airport which they would fly to safety. It was straightforward, but if they were to succeed they would need a hell of a lot of luck. Luck, and skill, and quarters.

  Jonathan Pimlott had yet to see anyone get through the entire video game for less than three dollars and it usually took him about four, but he was getting better, no doubt about it. The canyon stage was the worst, he kept running out of ammunition before reaching the far end and enemy forces ripped him apart while he was helpless. The electronic images had no mercy. There was no possibility of surrender. It was kill or be killed.

  There was no one on the video game when Pimlott and his girlfriend arrived at the arcade so he told her to stand in front of it while he got change. Pimlott had loved video arcades ever since he’d first been taken into one by his father when he was just six years old. Now he spent almost all of his spare cash on the machines and often visited one of his favourite arcades before morning lectures. He was a second-year law student and he always rebutted claims that he was addicted to the games by arguing that he needed something to counterbalance all the reading he had to do. He seemed to spend half his life with his nose buried in law books, and that couldn’t be healthy, could it? He didn’t have time to waste playing football or tennis or any of the pursuits that the university’s jocks devoted themselves to. He barely had enough time to satisfy Suzanne, though at least she appeared to share his enthusiasm for arcades. He had only been going out with the pretty blonde for three weeks so he wasn’t sure yet if she was faking it. Most of his former girlfriends had pretended to enjoy his daily visits to the arcades but had soon begun nagging him to go see a movie or a ball game instead once they realised that it wasn’t a temporary fad.

  He hoped that Suzanne wouldn’t go the same way. She had the cutest butt and the best legs and, swear to God, she loved to play Nintendo while they were in bed. That had been a first, a definite first.

  The change booth was squashed between an air-hockey table and a bright red motorcycle mounted in front of a video screen. Kid’s stuff, Pimlott reckoned. He opened his wallet and took out a ten dollar bill.

  The guy in the glass-sided cubicle was sitting back in his chair reading a copy of True Detective, a photograph of a buxom blonde in a black bikini wielding a large knife on the cover. He had unkempt light brown hair and a beard that seemed to be the result of neglect rather than an attempt to cultivate facial hair. It grew high up his cheeks and obscured most of his face, giving him the look of an emaciated Old English sheepdog. He was wearing wrap-around black sunglasses so Pimlott couldn’t tell if he’d seen him or not, so he coughed quietly. The man slowly turned a page of the magazine and continued to read.

  “Hey, buddy, any chance of some change here?” said Pimlott.

  The man lifted his head to look at Pimlott and Pimlott could see himself reflected in both lenses. He waved the banknote and his two reflections waved it back.

  “Back for more punishment, College Boy?” said the man, putting the magazine in his lap.

  “Yeah,” said Pimlott, impatiently.

  “You must have put, what, fifty bucks in so far this week? Am I right, or what?”

  Pimlott felt that his ability on the machine was being questioned and his cheeks reddened.

  “Hey man, just give me change, okay?” He thrust the ten dollar bill through the semicircular hole in the glass.

  “You want the whole ten bucks in quarters, College Boy?” asked the man, grinning. It wasn’t a pleasant smile, it was loaded with sarcasm and bitterness and Pimlott knew that
the eyes behind the dark lenses had no humour in them.

  “Yeah. I’d like it all in quarters,” answered Pimlott. “Please.”

  The guy sighed and leant forward to take the banknote. He put it in a drawer and pushed across two piles of quarters. “Think that’ll be enough?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” said Pimlott.

  The man leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the shelf so that Pimlott was looking at the soles of a pair of old brown cowboy boots with silver tips. “Seems to me that the way you’re going, that’ll only last you ten minutes or so. Maybe you ought to save yourself a trip and give me another twenty bucks or so.” He sniggered and reached up to pinch his nostrils as if stifling a sneeze.

  “Hey man, what’s your problem?” said Pimlott, irritated. He couldn’t understand why the man was picking on him. It couldn’t have been personal. He didn’t recognise the guy. In fact he wouldn’t have been able to describe any of the men who manned the change booth; he was usually too busy to get back to the game and wherever possible he used the automatic change-giving machines. The dark glasses and beard made it difficult to assess his age; he could have been anywhere between thirty and forty. He was about five nine, five ten, though the way he slouched in the chair could have been deceptive. He was skinny and his shoulders sloped sharply away from his long neck. He was wearing a black sweatshirt that appeared to be a size too big for him, and faded blue jeans that were ripped at the knees. There was a large American eagle on the sweat-shirt and underneath it in white lettering it said “POWMIA. You Are Not Forgotten”. Pimlott wondered what the initials stood for. He ran various combinations quickly through his mind and rapidly came to the conclusion that it meant “Prisoners of War – Missing in Action” and that the man was probably a Vietnam vet. Great, thought Pimlott. Just what I need. A vet with a grudge.

  “Hey, I’m not the one with the problem, College Boy,” the man sneered. “You’re the one who’s blowing all Daddy’s money on a game he can’t handle.”

  The comment struck home and Pimlott felt his cheeks blush. His father was picking up the tab for his education, and was paying his living expenses, too. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to work, it was just that the economy was so stretched that part-time jobs just weren’t available, and it was only Ivy Leaguers who managed to get high-paying vacation jobs with legal firms. The best he could find last vacation had been serving drinks in a downtown bar and he’d hated that so much that he quit after the first week. Hell, he was training to be a lawyer, not a cocktail waiter. He’d pay his father back once he was qualified and had a job, and besides, he needed most of his free time to study. You didn’t get to be a lawyer without putting in the hours with the books.

  “Think you can do better?” Pimlott asked.

  The man snorted. “I’m damn sure I can,” he laughed.

  “Wanna put money on it?”

  “You mean your daddy’s money, College Boy?”

  “It doesn’t matter whose money it is, does it? Do you want to put your money where your mouth is?”

  The man took his cowboy boots off the shelf. “Fifty bucks,” he said quietly.

  “Fifty bucks?” repeated Pimlott. He didn’t want to embarrass himself by taking his wallet out but he was pretty sure that was about all he had.

  “Too rich for your blood, College Boy? Yeah, I thought it might be. Why don’t you go and ask Daddy for a raise and come back and see me.”

  “I’ve got the money,” said Pimlott, angrily. “I’ll take you on.”

  The man laughed, throwing his head back. “Take me on?” he said. “Take me on? This isn’t going to be a competition, College Boy. It’s going to be a walkover. I could beat you one-handed.” He stood up and turned his back on Pimlott to put his magazine on a table at the rear of the booth.

  “Oh yeah?” said Pimlott.

  “Yeah,” said the man, turning around and holding up his left arm. For the first time Pimlott noticed that the man’s left hand was missing. In its place was a steel claw made from three interlocking metal curves. The man grinned and made the pieces click together. Pimlott frowned, trying to work out how he’d managed to do that. The claw must be connected to the tendons in what remained of his arm, he realised.

  “Oh come on, man,” said Pimlott.

  The man thrust his neck forward. “You backing out, College Boy?” he spat. “Cos if you’re backing out, I want the fifty bucks.”

  “But this isn’t fair,” said Pimlott.

  The man peered at Pimlott through the dark lenses. “You implying something by that, College Boy? Are you implying that maybe I’m not up to it? That the fact I’m short a hand makes me less of a man than you? Is that what you’re saying, College Boy?”

  Pimlott felt his cheeks go even redder and he shook his head. “No, it’s cool. You wanna play, I’ll play.”

  The man smiled and clicked his claw again. It sounded like some huge insect. “Good,” he said. “That’s real good.” He used the claw to put a “Closed” sign over the hole in the window and locked the door behind him. Pimlott followed him to the video machine where Suzanne was waiting anxiously. He badly wanted to check to see how much cash he had in his wallet but didn’t dare risk it.

  On the screen in front of them pictures of enemy soldiers flashed up, followed by brief descriptions of their weapons and the terrain that lay ahead. Then the screen cleared and a series of initials and numbers flashed up and began scrolling. The numbers on the left represented the ranking of the players who’d been on the machine that day, the score was in the middle, and to the right were the initials of the players. The results scrolled up to the top to show the top ten players since the video game had been switched off. Pimlott’s initials, JRP, were in third place, alongside his all-time record score. Suzanne’s were in eighth place. First and second place were taken by someone with the initials LC and both scores were about 100,000 ahead of Pimlott’s. Pimlott had never seen LC in action, but the initials regularly headed the rankings and the guy was obviously an expert. He placed his pile of quarters next to his gun and began feeding them into the machine.

  The vet tapped the glass screen with his claw and Pimlott looked up, startled.

  “Maybe I should introduce myself,” he said, grinning evilly. “The name’s Carmody. Larry Carmody.”

  Pimlott looked at the man’s leering face and at the initials on the screen. “Oh fuck,” he said. His stomach churned as he realised that there was no way he could even hope to match the man’s score.

  “Are you ready, College Boy?” goaded Carmody, holding the barrel of the machine-gun with his claw and caressing the trigger with his other hand.

  “Ready when you are,” replied Pimlott, trying to sound confident as he put the remainder of his quarters in a pile on top of the machine. Then he had second thoughts and handed them to Suzanne and asked her to feed them into the slot when necessary.

  “How about you pressing the start button, little lady?” said Carmody, hunching over the gun.

  Pimlott nodded at her and she hit the button. A swarthy colonel appeared on screen to deliver his briefing and Suzanne stabbed at the “two-player” button to go straight to the game. Pimlott began spraying the screen with bullets and letting fly with grenades, his eyes wide as he breathed heavily through his nose. Suzanne put her hand on his shoulder but he shrugged it away.

  Carmody’s technique was more measured and economical. He fired in short bursts of three or four bullets, used his grenades only when faced with a group of enemy soldiers or heavy armour, and when he wasn’t firing he centred his sights on the middle of the screen. His score quickly moved ahead of Pimlott’s.

  “Come on, College Boy, you’re not trying,” Carmody hissed.

  Pimlott ignored him and lobbed a grenade at a lone sniper. He had the satisfaction of seeing the soldier explode in a cloud of blood but then four heavily armed men leapt out of a tree and when he tried to throw another grenade he discovered he was out, he’d used them a
ll up. He tried frantically to swing around the machine-gun but he wasn’t fast enough and took several hits before he mowed them down.

  “Bad move, College Boy,” sniggered Carmody, taking out a large snake curled around the lower branch of a tree before it could strike.

  “Take it easy, Jonathan,” whispered Suzanne but he didn’t appear to hear her. Most of his ammunition had gone now. She glanced over at Carmody’s score. He was already 80,000 ahead of her boyfriend and had plenty of ammunition and grenades and was showing no body damage at all. Suzanne could see that Pimlott was starting to panic, firing almost randomly instead of picking his targets and when they cleared the first section it was clear that he didn’t have much time left. She fed the rest of the quarters into the machine and saw the credits flick up. As she did so, Pimlott lost another life and she heard him curse under his breath. Carmody sniggered and sent a grenade spinning through the air to destroy a tank and then picked off two soldiers with machetes as they stepped from behind a tree with evil grins of intent on their comic-book faces.

  They came to the end of the jungle stage and Pimlott wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His score was low, much lower than he’d usually achieved at this stage of the game. The way it was going, he’d be lucky to get through the river section. He stole a glance at Carmody’s score. It was more than 100,000 ahead and he’d only taken a couple of hits. He had stacks of ammunition and six grenades left.

  The words disappeared from the screen and they were cruising along the river. He destroyed the floating log just as a waterlogged soldier came from underneath it and he was aiming in the sky even before two helicopters came swooping out of the clouds. A boat bristling with armed soldiers came out of a tributary and he sprayed it with bullets, killing them all.

  “Yes!” said Suzanne, slapping the machine with her hand. Pimlott ignored her and picked off a soldier crouching by a rock. Two more appeared on the left of the screen and he fired but as he did a helicopter roared down from the clouds and let fly a guided missile which sped towards him. He tried to bring his gun to bear on the fast-moving target but before he could pull the trigger the screen went red and yellow and then a skull and crossbones appeared. Game Over. Pimlott swallowed and tasted blood. He’d been biting the inside of his mouth without realising. Suzanne slipped her arm through his and squeezed but the show of affection didn’t make him feel any better. He hated losing, and he hated even more losing to a man like Carmody. The vet was still shooting and his score was already higher than Pimlott’s personal best.