Nature of the Game Read online

  “Bought into the revolution. People of color are one.” Lisson jerked Jud’s tether. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m three months short,” said Jud. “I’ve seen all the shit. I want to walk away happy and whole. They sent me out here, so fuck them. I know more of their lies than you do.”

  “Next you’re gonna tell me Lenin is your hero.”

  “I’m a stone-cold capitalist,” said Jud. “And I got lots to sell that your revolution needs.”

  “What?”

  “For starters, the head of North Vietnam’s Politburo is headed for a secret meeting with the PLs about twelve klics from here. Our mission was to get him—alive or dead, but get him.”

  “Just like that, you expect me to believe you?”

  “You want to hear the cover story I was supposed to let you beat out of me? About being a SPIKE recon team caching radios and supplies for other insertion teams and downed pilots?”

  “You lie good,” said Lisson.

  “When I have to. But the truth is what’ll work now. And it’s what you and your dink masters need.”

  Lisson slapped Jud again, barked an order. Owl Eyes watched the boy drag Jud back down the line.

  “Believe me!” Jud yelled. “You got no better choice!”

  The boy holding Jud’s rope jerked it tight and shoved him into line. Curtain was ten men back.

  They marched west.

  They aren’t worried about air strikes, thought Jud.

  The column left the hills for the rolling fields and ravines of the Plain of Jars. The natural color of Laos is green: thousands of napalm strikes had charred that land into a blackened abstract smear. Plumes of smoke rose haphazardly to the sky. The surviving foliage was stunted and stained with a dull metallic sheen from defoliants. Bomb craters pockmarked the earth. The air smelled unnatural and dead.

  They camped when the sun rose one hand above the hills.

  There’s the sawtooth mountains, thought Jud. To the west, the bumpy plateau was right where it belonged.

  “Air-strike time comin’ up,” Lissen told Jud and Curtain as they were led to a campfire. “This’ll be your last hot meal.”

  The guards made Curtain and Jud squat. Scarface stood nearby, AK-47 ready. Soldiers lit fires, boiled rice. Lisson and Owl Eyes sat around the fire to Jud’s right; Curtain was to his left.

  “My buddy likes your popgun,” Lisson told Jud, nodding to the derringer Scarface wore like a necklace. “You’re too smart to pack that prissy piece of nothing ’less it’s your ‘good-bye guy’ gun. You got the balls to shoot your own bullet?”

  “I can do what I have to,” Jud said.

  Owl Eyes kept his face blank.

  “He speak English?” Jud asked.

  “Damned if I know,” said Lisson.

  “Damned if I care,” said Jud. “What about our deal?”

  “Do I smell treachery?” Lisson smiled. “Or bullshit? Same difference, honky: you stink.

  “Look at them.” Lisson nodded to the eating soldiers.

  Curtain watched the fire.

  “You got nothing to offer them, white boy,” said Lisson. “CIA’s been here since it vetoed neutrality in ’59. The armée clandestine. Meo tribesmen. Don’t kid yourself into thinking all fifteen thousand of yours worship you. You control the food supply to their villages, Yale bright boys commuting to work by copter from Thailand. Move whole towns around like checkers. The Company’s grand plan. But these yellow brothers knew better than to fall for your bullying or bullshit.”

  “I told you I don’t care about that,” said Jud.

  The pot of rice on their fire was ready. A guard untied Jud, put a wooden bowl and chopsticks in front of him. His fingers were too numb to move. He stayed on his haunches. Curtain sat on the ground beside him.

  “When I knew they were dropping me here, I stole your file,” said Jud. A sickly sweet flower smell drifted in the air. “If you grabbed me like you probably did six other teams, I wanted my deal in place.”

  “And if not?” asked Lisson.

  “Doesn’t matter now.” Jud shrugged. “What did you do with the other Americans you nailed?”

  “You already told me your mission,” said Lisson, “your backup bullshit. You got nothing left they can’t sweat out of you in the bunkers.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Believe it,” said Lisson.

  Feeling returned to Jud’s hands. He picked up the long wooden chopsticks. A guard ladled gooey rice into the bowl.

  Slowly, Jud looked over his shoulder. Laughing groups of soldiers. Jud’s Vietnamese asset was tied to a tree. They’d taken off his blindfold so he could watch the others eat.

  “I have seen the way,” sighed Lisson in a child’s voice. “I am of the way.”

  “Then look behind me and see reality,” said Jud.

  Two Pathet Lao soldiers lounged by a tree, sharing a glass-bowled pipe. The smoke smelled of sickly sweet flowers.

  “I got a piece of the poppy trade,” said Jud. “The only money crop here in hell. I’m cashing in. Like a good capitalist.”

  “You and half your damn Meo lackeys. You and all Saigon. Fourteen-year-old girls selling scag at roadside stands on the way to the firebases. How many GI junkies these days, Bro’? Twenty-five thousand? How much heroin you shipping to poison brothers and sisters in New York and Newark and Chi-town?”

  “The masses have many opiates,” Jud told him. “What do you care which ones, when you can make that work for you?”

  “You’re scum,” said Lisson.

  “I’m a pragmatist,” said Jud. “You better be. It pays.”

  “I don’t want your death money!”

  “Not you: your revolution. It’s the sixties, Bro’: flower power. Hell, in the fifties, French spies used opium to finance their war here, from the poppy fields in the Plain to the dens in Saigon. Called it Operation X. When the CIA found out, they got told to back off.”

  “Off ain’t where they backed,” snapped Lisson.

  “I got growers in Burma with the Kuomintang Army your buddy Mao ran out of China,” said Jud. “If you protect our caravans to our airfields, we’ll take it from there. You get cash. Plus.”

  “Plus?”

  “You get me as an asset,” said Jud. “You send me back—help me fake an escape. Maybe they’ll make me a hero. I’ll re-up. Get a command job with SOG—and do my business till Uncle Ho runs us out of Nam or I get bored. There won’t be shit I don’t see and know, and that bonus is worth more to you than cash.”

  His fellow POW Curtain stared at Jud; looked into the fire. Jud worked his chopsticks in the rice, ate a bite.

  “You’d be a slimy kind of spy,” Lisson said.

  “Only kind there is,” replied Jud.

  “Why the hell should we believe you?” said Lisson.

  The chopsticks turned slowly in Jud’s hand. He braced the butt of each stick against the heel of his palm. Two ordinary chopsticks stuck out from between his fingers.

  Peter Curtain, Jud’s fellow POW, his mission number-two, a fellow American soldier, lowered his rice bowl to the ground.

  Jud rammed his chopsticks through Curtain’s eyes.

  Curtain shot off the ground. The chopsticks stuck from his face. Blood sprayed Scarface. A scream gurgled in Curtain’s throat; he fell into the campfire, writhing….

  Dead.

  “No!” yelled Lisson.

  Jud fell facedown, his hands crossed over his head.

  Owl Eyes screamed.

  A dozen Pathet Lao yelled; one accidentally squeezed off a burst from his machine gun. A line of dirt kicked in the air.

  Lisson jumped on Jud, beating at the hands over his head. “Damn you! What did you do? What did you do!”

  Owl Eyes pulled him off. Soldiers jerked Jud to his feet.

  “I killed my own man!” yelled Jud. “Now you gotta believe me!”

  “You dumb fuck!” Lisson punched Jud in the face. “He wasn’t your man! He was our
s! We owned him! Body and soul, five fuckin’ years and you fuckin’ killed him!”

  “Didn’ know,” mumbled Jud through the blood in his mouth.

  “How do you think we knew you were coming! How the hell did we know where to pick off the other teams! Radio codes and … Bought and paid for! Swiss accounts and nobody in your fucking CIA fucking Green Beret fucking SOG knew shit and you waste it all!”

  Jud spit blood. “Now you need me more than ever.”

  Lisson bellowed and drew his K-bar knife.

  Owl Eyes grabbed his arm.

  So you do speak English, thought Jud.

  The black American renegade broke free from Owl Eyes. He charged frantically around the camp. Pathet Lao scattered out of his path. Lisson slammed his boot into Curtain’s body; kicked it again. He held his knife high with both hands, plunged it into the corpse; dropped to his knees, screamed words and sentences with no meaning as he stabbed the dead man again and again.

  The knife blade came out red and wet. Pointed at Jud.

  “We’re taking you all the way in,” said Lisson. “One way or the other, you’ll know the truth. And so will we. But whatever happens, you belong to me.”

  He yelled an order. Scarface tied Jud’s hands behind him, gave his tether to the boy. They jerked the Vietnamese asset into line. Lisson crashed into the jungle; the column followed.

  They left Curtain’s body where it lay.

  Lisson marched the column through scattered grass fields and patches of forest. After an hour, Jud started yelling. The boy jerked his tether, hit him, but Jud kept calling for Lisson. The column halted in a field. Owl Eyes and Lisson walked back to Jud.

  “You hit my kidneys too much,” said Jud. “I don’t pee, I’ll black out. Your guys can’t carry me far enough, fast enough.”

  “Piss your pants,” Lisson told him.

  “If I could,” said Jud. “Every jostle makes it stop.”

  Owl Eyes asked Lisson a question, got an answer. Shrugged. Lisson barked an order. The boy led Jud out of line. Owl Eyes stopped them, summoned the veteran Scarface. Owl Eyes gave him Jud’s tether and his instructions.

  “Remember, you’re nobody in the middle of nowhere,” Lisson told Jud. “Do anything dumb, you’ll wish I already killed you.”

  Lisson scanned the exposed terrain, checked his watch and the sky: no warplanes. Yet. He ordered the column to move on.

  Scarface ran Jud to a grove of trees, where he undid Jud’s black pajama bottoms, let them fall around his ankles. Scarface fixed a bayonet to his Russian assault rifle.

  Slowly, he slid the bayonet blade inside Jud’s underwear. He yelled, lunged—and cut away Jud’s jockey shorts. They dangled from the blade as Scarface walked away, laughing.

  “What about untieing my hands?” asked Jud, bending so his question was obvious.

  Scarface pointed the bayonet at Jud’s naked groin.

  For ten minutes Jud shuffled from foot to foot. Scarface sat on a log, smoking a cigarette, the bayoneted assault rifle across his knees. Jud finally relieved himself.

  After he’d worked his pajama bottoms down his ankles. After he’d freed his feet.

  “Okay!” he yelled to Scarface.

  The Pathet Lao put out his cigarette. Frowned at the half-naked prisoner. He put the assault rifle on the ground so he could pull up Jud’s pants. Bent down.

  Jud kicked him in the chin. Scarface snapped up. Jud’s foot slammed into his stomach, doubling him over. A roundhouse kick smashed the guard’s temple. Scarface crashed to the ground. Jud stomped on his neck until he was sure.

  Time! prayed Jud. Give me time to catch them—twenty-three soldiers, Lisson, my asset; time to surprise them!

  Three minutes to brace the assault rifle and use the fixed bayonet to cut the ropes off his wrist.

  Ninety seconds to dress, scavenge the corpse. Leave the worn photos of a woman and baby, the letters, the blanket, and spare socks. Five grenades, six clips for the rifle. One full canteen, a pouch of rice, some dried fruit, a waterproof tin of matches. Jud pulled on Scarface’s pack, took his holstered derringer from around the dead man’s neck, strapped it to his left arm.

  Owl Eyes had Curtain’s flash-encode communicator; Lisson had Jud’s.

  Three men chattering in Lao walked through the trees.

  Jud dove, grabbed the assault rifle, rolled up to his knees, and sprayed half a clip of bullets into the soldiers.

  He was running as they hit the ground, scooping up an extra AK-47 and a pouch of clips from their bloody heap.

  The patrol was west of him; he ran east. Lisson would have halted the column when he sent the three men; he’d have heard the shots. They couldn’t be more than twelve marching minutes away.

  Now they’d be running.

  Jud raced from one grove to another, up and down ravines, stumbling through bomb craters.

  Dirt sprayed into the air to his right; a machine gun chattered. He jumped a ravine, missed his footing on the other side, and rolled down the slope.

  A fanned-out line of men ran toward him from a quarter mile away.

  He fired a burst, hoping it would make them cautious, slow them down. Scrambled out of the ravine. And ran.

  But he’d twisted his knee. The beatings and the pain in his leg drained strength from his stride. His lungs were on fire, his head throbbed. With each step, the guerrillas drew closer.

  They kept shooting—short bursts, bullets ripping through brush on either side of Jud. He had to dodge and weave. They could run straight, waste no steps as they closed the gap.

  Half a dozen bullets shattered on a rock to Jud’s left. Ricocheting fragments sliced his leg, but he didn’t stop. They were shooting low: Lisson wanted him alive.

  “Gonna die GI!” screamed an Asian voice two hundred meters behind Jud. Was it Owl Eyes? “Gonna die GI!”

  Scarred fields stretched in front of Jud for more than a mile: open land. Lisson rated as a sharpshooter.

  Jud ran until he thought they’d cleared the trees. He spun around, Scarface’s machine gun chattering in an arc along the line of men chasing him. The Pathet Lao dropped as Jud slapped a new clip in the gun, fired it off, catching his breath as they ate dirt. He thought he hit two of them. He rammed in a third clip, fired at a raised head—the gun jammed. Jud dropped it and ran.

  “Jud Stuart!” bellowed Lisson. “You’re mine, Jud Stuart!”

  You know my name, thought Jud. Have you figured out the truth yet?

  Silver dots winked at him in the blue sky.

  Something whooshed over his head.

  Two jets raced toward the other side of Laos, their vapor trails drawing white lines half a mile off the ground.

  I’m down here! Jud wanted to yell at the Americans in the sky. The Pathet Lao were charging toward him, a ragged line of running men a hundred meters away.

  The planes banked through a turn on the horizon, silver dots floating back, coming closer.

  Coming to get the enemy soldiers they’d glimpsed running across the Plain of Jars.

  A bomb crater was twenty meters in front of Jud. Ten. He stretched his legs, ran with all his might, dove through the air.

  Two glistening canisters dropped from each jet, twisting and tumbling through the blue sky.

  Napalm.

  A roaring orange, soapy gasoline heat blew over the crater where Jud burrowed. The warplanes zoomed by, homeward bound. Behind him, he heard the flames crackle, rattling ammunition explosions. Screams. Imagined metal glasses melting in the inferno.

  Jud dragged himself to the crater’s rim, looked back.

  Saw a solid wall of bellowing orange flame.

  “Jesus,” panted Jud with no disrespect. “Jesus.”

  In front of the wall of fire, four black silhouettes rose out of the dirt and the ashes of the dead—and moved toward Jud.

  The heat wind whipped a bandanna on the tallest silhouette.

  The barrel of Jud’s second commandeered assault rifle jutted deep into the mud
of the crater: blocked, useless.

  Jud lobbed two grenades toward the shadows. As soon as they exploded, he ran in the other direction. He didn’t look back.

  Stumbling, staggering, he made it to another grove of trees. His knee throbbed, his leg and mouth bled. He collapsed, fell on a tree root twisting up from the earth.

  Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

  When he pushed himself off the root, his whole hand went around it. Quickly, he slid out of dead Scarface’s pack. He wedged one of his last two grenades under the root, tied a pack strap to the grenade pin, and laid the pack on top of the booby trap.

  And staggered deeper into the trees.

  Twenty steps, then came the whump explosion. A man screamed. Jud looked back as he heard the man die; stumbled over a log and sprawled face first to the dirt. His last grenade rolled away, lost in the brush.

  Footsteps crunched behind him.

  Jud scooted on his back until he leaned against a log.

  Lisson stepped from the trees. His shirt was soaked. Mucus coated his lips and his chest heaved. His eyes were napalm.

  The boy who’d been Jud’s keeper staggered behind Lisson, barely able to walk.

  Jud pulled his derringer from his wrist holster. Inched the gun toward his own gasping mouth.

  “No!” yelled Lisson. He charged, reaching for Jud’s gun.

  And Jud grabbed Lisson’s reaching arm with his empty hand, pulled it down and out of the way, flicked the derringer toward Lisson’s face. Pulled the trigger.

  A pop! stamped a red dot below an ebony cheekbone.

  Lisson crashed on Jud, dying with a sigh.

  When Jud rolled free, the Pathet Lao boy stood ten feet away, his rifle pointed at the ground. Jud aimed the derringer with its one remaining poison shell at him.

  Then lowered his arm.

  The boy blinked; turned and faded into his country.

  Jud’s communicator was in a pouch under Lisson’s shirt. Nine months after going native, Lisson still wore his American dog tags. Jud dropped them in the pouch he strapped around his waist. He took Lisson’s gear, staggered out of the trees.

  Black smoke billowed to the sky from the napalmed field. Two klicks ahead of him was a humpbacked hill where he might find shelter from America’s steel rain.

  He limped to the hill, praying that no American planes would spot his black-pajamaed form; praying that today no other Pathet Lao patrols sought their revolution on this patch of earth. Jud crawled up the slope, hid between two boulders. When his hands stopped shaking and he could control the pain racking his body, he tapped code words into the hand-held communicator.