“Surprise. And you will be too if you don’t listen. Are you listening, Hoss?” The ghost stepped before Stiles and peered into his face. The shadows seemed to prevent Stiles from peering back. “Are you listening? ’Cause they’re all around you.”
“Ghosts?”
“Vietcong. You’re walking right through an ambush.”
Stiles searched the jungle. “I haven’t seen anyone.”
“Then it wouldn’t be an ambush, would it, stupid. They’re waiting for you to pass and lead the men in here.”
“Then I’ve got to warn them,” he started, but Alex’s words held him back.
“You move to the rear and you’re dead before you take a step.”
“Then what do I do?”
“You take them out yourself.”
“You’re nuts.”
“No, I’m a ghost,” Alex retorted, “and that is your ace in the hole.” He pointed to Stiles’s rifle. “Any good with that thing?”
“Sure.”
“Good. So here’s what you do. Wherever you see me next, you fire. Aim right for my breastbone. I’ll be your pointer.”
“I don’t know—”
“Just do it, Chris. You don’t want to be dead. It’s no fun. Take my word for it.” Then the apparition was gone.
Chris Stiles stood there in the mud and the leaves and stared into the gloom around him and felt his sanity slip away. That’s what it had to be. There was nothing there. No Alex, no ’Cong, no nothing. Jeez, you really went this time. Forget about numbness and daydreaming. Now you’ve gone completely wackadoo. Brothers you haven’t seen in years suddenly pop up, casually dressed in shadows and doing a Casper routine. That’s it, you’re out of here. It’s Section Eight time, back to the World and a padded room with a great view of the shock-treatment ward . . .
“Quit dreaming, asshole,” yelled a voice, too loud to be concerned with being heard. By anyone but him, that is.
He scanned the trees, from one identical trunk to the next, until a waving arm caught his attention. Alex was straddling a branch about forty feet up, waving and pointing at himself, at the center of his chest. Chris shrugged. What else could he do? He shouldered the rifle, switched it to semi-auto, centered the Aimpoint, and squeezed one off. The shot echoed through the jungle, giving flight to the monkeys and flushing birds from their roosts. Then the silence returned.
He lowered the scope from his eye. Alex wasn’t there. The tree was empty. “Well?” he said under his breath. “I wonder if I hit anything.”
“Absolutely,” came his brother’s voice now from behind him and about twenty feet away. Stiles stared into the darkness, knowing it impossible to find a shadow among shadows, but somehow a faint figure became apparent to him as if wrapped in an amber glow. “Pick up the pace now,” Alex counseled. “They don’t know that you’re onto them yet. Go to automatic, too.” He danced back and forth. “There’s a bunch of ’em here.”
Stiles opened up on the figure with three shot bursts, following it wherever it moved. One scream rang out, strangled and eerie in its solitude. Then the jungle seemed to come alive with gunfire.
He dove for cover even as a volley sizzled overhead and shredded the smooth bole beside him. He responded not to the attacks but to the figure that still pranced out there in the open, vanishing here and popping up there, giving Chris barely enough time to fire before moving on to the next target. Each of his shots was apparently dead-on. The barrage of incoming rounds was decreasing.
He scrambled for better cover and that was when he was hit. One round tore cleanly through his left shoulder while the rest stitched his rib cage like red-hot needles. But he felt only the initial jolt; the rest was extinguished beneath a pounding wave of adrenaline. He fought for his balance, twisting sideways on unstable legs as another volley passed hotly by his cheek, their buzzing barely louder than the mosquitoes around them. His eyes, by instinct, pinpointed the patch of grayness out there where the muzzle had flashed. One handed, he trained his rifle on that spot and emptied his magazine into it before his brother had even arrived there.
Chris fell back on his butt, instinctively fumbling with the jungle clip on his rifle despite the cessation of enemy fire. It was several moments until the silence finally registered. He looked around him, found Alex still standing over the last kill, inspecting his handiwork. “You got ’em all, Hoss,” the ghost laughed, if a bit lifelessly. “I’ll give you credit. You’re better than I expected. Yessir, this might just work out after all.”
Chris squinted at his brother. “What? What might work?”
Alex turned and started toward him, his feet walking a good six inches above the mud, and as he grew closer he also began to fade. “Your men are coming,” he said as if from far off. “You’ll be okay.” Then he was gone.
If he had really been there at all.
Stiles blinked. What the hell had just happened? The pain from his shoulder and side was only now beginning to slip his defenses, an all-too-uncomfortable reality that made what had happened before it seem dreamlike. Alex hadn’t really been there, had he? He couldn’t have been, he was still back home in the states somewhere. There was no ghost. He’d just stumbled across a squad of ’Cong and time had slowed down like it does in battle sometimes and he’d just dreamed Alex up. Yeah, he’d just dreamed him. And once he got back home he’d look Alex up and they’d have a pretty good laugh over it.
But there was no laughing now. The pain was blinding. He climbed to his feet but staggered and collapsed and wasn’t even aware that someone had caught him until he heard Lieutenant Wilkerson’s voice, sounding far-off and hollow as if yelling across a public restroom. “Stiles? Can you hear me? You men, secure the area! You, get that corpsman up here!” He saw Briscoe and Osteen and Shelton fan out from behind the CO, as Turner stood watch with his necklace of belted brass and his M60 leveled at the hip.
Stiles’s eyes were so tired, too tired to keep open. Instead he just listened to the voices, distinct but distant, like a radio playing just in the background.
“How’s he doing?”
“Is the area clear?”
“It’s clear, sir, and you ain’t gonna believe it. There’s bodies everywhere. . . .”
“Where’s that fucking—Corpsman! Get up here now!”
“. . . must be at least ten of ’em. He got ’em all!”
“Has anybody seen Pruett?”
He felt hands on his shoulders, ripping at his shirt, blotting away the blood that ran warm down his chest and arm. “Somebody’s coming, sir.”
“Identify yourself!”
“Hey, it’s Pruett. Look, it’s Pruett!”
The name snapped Stiles alert. He shoved past the medic and stood dizzily, leaning on his rifle to stand beside the lieutenant and peer into the gloom of the rain forest. It was true. Jimmy Lee Pruett was picking his way through the dense overgrowth, a drab shadow set apart from the jungle by the crisscrossing bandoliers across his ponchoed chest. He waved with his shotgun as he approached. The other man waved too.
Stiles struggled to clear his throat. “Who’s that other guy with him?”
Everyone stared at him. “What other guy? Ain’t nobody there but Pruett.”
Oh, Lord. Oh, no.
“Shoot!” Alex yelled from in front of Pruett. “Shoot, dammit!”
“I—”
“SHOOT!”
He brushed drunkenly past the others and they didn’t see his raised M16 until he started to fire in controlled three-shot bursts as before. Pruett jerked up onto his toes. His dance lasted only a second or so but its twitching choreography was sickening to watch. But watch they did, in stunned silence until the rifle went dead and Stiles began to fumble for a second clip.
Someone hit him from behind then, just below the ear, and the forest seemed to burst into fluorescent color before his eyes. The we
ight of his attacker pressed him down into the mud as blow after blow rained down until he could no longer feel them. “You psycho sonuvabitch!” Briscoe cursed him, over and over. “He’s one of us! He’s one of us!”
It took three to wrestle him off, though Stiles couldn’t have known. There was just a whirlpool of voices around him, and even the pain began to subside as he slipped further and further into unconsciousness. But there was suddenly something dragging him back; a voice saying his name, a familiar voice. The lieutenant.
He looked up painfully to find he was sitting up now, propped against a tree trunk. He was surrounded by a wall of men, each wearing a pensive but suspicious look. The lieutenant was right in front of him, holding something in his hand. Pruett’s shotgun. “How did you know?” he was saying, his eyes unable to mask his own suspicion. His own fear. “How did you know it wasn’t Pruett? How?”
Stiles’s mouth moved but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even try. Instead he looked past Wilkerson’s shoulder and past the men to a figure standing away from the others, back in the shadows behind a shell-pocked tree. “Tell them,” Alex said. “When you get back, call home. Tell them where I am.”
“Where are you?” he asked. The men exchanged puzzled glances and looked to see who he meant.
“The park,” said his brother, his voice cracking. “Central Park. Tell them to come and find me. Don’t leave me there.”
There was a sudden flash of lightning in the storm beyond, and a stencil of it reached the floor of the rain forest. For a brief instant it chased away the cloak of shadows and gave Chris the first glimpse he’d had of his brother in years. Alex wasn’t the same. Parts of him were missing. But it wasn’t that, nor the gleam of his bare cheekbone or the jutting ribs or the blood that matted his hair and clothes that made Chris’s guts twist the most. It was the cause of his condition. Something had been at his brother. The teeth marks were evident even from a distance.
“Tell them where I am, Hoss,” he repeated as he started to fade.
“But where? Where in Central Park?”
For the first time some spark of emotion came from the phantom. A sob racked his mangled frame. “The whole park,” he cried. “I’m all over it!” Then he faded, and the jungle was silent again.
Stiles didn’t so much wake up, since he had not been sleeping, as suddenly come alert. His eyes were still glued to the roadway but they had failed to notice the subtle lightening of the eastern sky. As the realization sank in he rubbed his tired eyes and checked his watch: 5:30 a.m. Christ, have I missed anything?
He got out of the van, one hand hiding the Uzi beneath his overcoat, and ran through the trees to the culvert. The scene was undisturbed; the hand was still visible, still frozen in place. Disgusted, he bent the rigored limb back out of sight, though not so far that he couldn’t pull it forth again. He’d need his marker again tonight.
Five-thirty, he thought, stretching his cricked spine. That ought to give him enough time to shower and sleep and then think of what to tell Billie before his vigil started again. Grumbling, he greeted the sun as both friend and enemy and walked tiredly back to the van.
On the way back to town, he thought about stopping for cigarettes but he fought the urge until it faded.
Chapter Nine
“Billie?”
She snapped out of her daydream, stopped mopping the counter, and turned slowly to where Sharon Lou stood at the far end. Seated across from Sharon was Carol Gastineau, a sturdy woman in a snappy tweed business suit with a briefcase laid next to her coffee cup. “You’ve been off work for fifteen minutes now,” Sharon reminded her. “Why don’t you go on home?”
Billie smiled tiredly, took her apron off, and went around the counter, but only to take a seat on one of the empty stools. “The boys have been out since this morning, playing football I imagine. I’d just as soon hang around here than be in the house alone.”
“Is that old house bothering you, honey?” Carol said with a smile and a gleam in her eye and Billie knew she’d said the wrong thing. Carol was the local real estate agent, and land was her life. “You be sure to tell me,” she went on, “because if it is, I just know we can come to some kind of arrangement.” She drummed her fingers on the genuine imitation leather of her case as if it contained all of the treasures one could ever wish for. “I’ll bet I can get you a good price for your old place, well, not too much, but a decent price just the same. Now,” she snapped the clasps on the case and arched her eyebrows, “what kind of house do you have your heart set on?”
“Put your teeth back in your mouth, Giggy,” Sharon said sharply, “she didn’t say she was selling or buying.”
Carol huffed and sipped her coffee. Giggy had been her nickname in high school, back when she was a cheerleader and one of the popular girls while Sharon Lou Moore was just a face in the crowd. But nowadays the only person to remember was Sharon, and she twisted it like a knife every chance she got.
“I was only trying to help,” Carol muttered into her cup. “And you know, this coffee’s cold. Lou honey, would you be an angel and warm this up?” It was more a command than a question, a reminder of who was being served there and who did the serving.
Sharon shrugged it off and, with a bigger smile, overran her cup. “Oh. Sorry about that. Giggy.”
“I appreciate the thought, Carol,” Billie said, signaling a truce. “But I’m not really interested in getting rid of my house right now.”
“Then what’s bothering you?”
“That new boy in town,” Sharon said, then caught Billie’s look. “Excuse me . . . new man. Billie’s kinda taken up with him.”
“You don’t have to make it sound so back alley,” Billie complained. “He’s just a nice guy’s all.”
Sharon leaned across the counter as if it were a back fence. “You never did tell me about the other night when he went home with you ’uns.”
Carol stopped brushing microscopic lint from her outfit and arched a thin brow. “What’s that? With a stranger?”
“Nothing happened,” Billie shrugged, “at least nothing to feed your libidos. We just talked is all.”
“About what?”
“Well . . . things.”
“Are you seeing him again?”
Billie just shook her head. “We were supposed to go out last night but he called and canceled at the last minute. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Deadbeat,” Carol said, offended. “Isn’t that just like a man, wheel into town and then back out, leaving a woman high and dry?”
“Whoa there,” Sharon warned, “both of you. You act like it’s been days instead of the roughly, what,” she checked her watch, “eighteen hours since he called? Give him time, Bill. He’s not on the clock, you know. He’ll call.” She leaned closer. “Or you could call him.”
Carol huffed. “Well, I wouldn’t. Men don’t like pushy women, Billie, take my word on that. Why, when I was seeing my husband Jim Gastineau, God rest his soul, I gave him a long leash, if you know what I mean, and sooner or later he’d come sniffing around. . . .”
“Roll up your pantlegs,” Sharon cautioned, “the shit’s getting deep. Remember, dear Giggy, that I was around back then. That man couldn’t take two steps that you didn’t have a bulldog headlock on him. The way I heard it, the poor sap only married you so he could get a little rest.” Carol inflated with indignation but Sharon held her at bay with a raised hand. “Billie, you do yourself a favor and go after him. There ain’t many in this town or anywhere else worth a hill of beans, but that one’s special. Take my word for it.” Then Carol couldn’t hold it in any longer and a storm rolled across the counter that probably showed up on the weather radar in Indianapolis.
“How dare you, Sharon Lou Moore, how can you set there and insinuate that I would blah blah blah . . .”
Billie tuned out the festivities. She’d heard it all before;
Carol was a regular customer, coming in like clockwork every day to “wait for a potential buyer” who invariably never showed. Billie knew she was trying to rub her job in her old rival’s face, but Sharon seemed quite content with her own store and her job and took none of the other’s guff. So the friendly feud went on, week to week, and sometimes customers showed up for ringside stools just to listen to the meowing and hissing.
Billie’s eyes strayed to the door, though the bell hadn’t rung to attract her. Nonetheless, she found Chris Stiles standing in the doorway, watching her for a reaction before daring a smile of his own.
Carol Gastineau saw him as well. “I wonder if he’ll be staying on, ” she pondered aloud and reached for her briefcase but Sharon smacked her hand.
“I didn’t know if you’d be talking to me,” he said as he came across the store.
“Why not?” Billie shrugged. “Things come up, I know. It happens.” She became aware of the stares burning into her back. “C’mon, let’s sit down,” she motioned to a table nearby, but not before glaring back at the counter. Sharon was suddenly busy wiping glasses, but Carol still gawked openly and with a smirking grin. Sharon had to snap her with the dishtowel to get her to turn around.
“So,” Billie began, “how did it go last night?”
He stiffened. “How did what go?”
“You said you had something to do.”
“Oh that. Yes, that’s what I came over about.”
Uh oh, she thought. Here it comes. I’m sorry, Billie, but I’m going to be busy again tonight . . .
“I’m sorry, Billie, but I’m afraid I’ll be tied up again tonight. Can I get another rain check?”
She shrugged. “Sure, no problem. We don’t even have to go out if you don’t want, really, I—”
“Billie,” he said in a firm tone that brought her eyes up to meet his own. “I want to. Really. This is just very important stuff, and it can’t wait, that’s all.”
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