Brennan leaped across the chamber, but the Egret was as dead as everyone else in the boneyard by the time Brennan reached him. Brennan looked up from the body and glanced around.
What had happened to the other two Snow Birds who had gone into the sepulcher? They had vanished into thin air. Or, more likely, Brennan thought, through a door concealed in one of the walls.
He slung the bow across his back and checked the walls, running his hands over them, looking for hidden seams or cracks, rapping and listening for a hollow sound. He had finished one wall without finding anything, and was starting on the next when he heard a muffled whoosh of air at his back and felt a warm, humid breeze.
He whirled around. The look of astonishment on his face matched that of the two men who had appeared from nowhere into the middle of the mausoleum. One, who wore the colors of the Egrets, had saddlebags draped over each shoulder. The other, a thin, reptilian-looking joker, was carrying what looked like a bowling ball. They had, Brennan realized with some astonishment, vanished into thin air. And now they were back.
The Egret carrying the bulging saddlebags was closest to him. Brennan unslung his bow, swung it like a baseball bat, and connected with the side of the Egret's head. The man dropped with a groan, collapsing next to the pallet loaded with heroin.
The joker reared back, hissing sibilantly. He was taller than Brennan and thin to the point of emaciation. His skull was hairless, his nose a slight bump with a pair of flaring nostril pits. Overlong incisors protruded from his upper jaw. He stared unblinkingly at Brennan. When he opened his lipless mouth and hissed, he exposed a lolling forked tongue that flicked frantically in Brennan's direction. He clutched his bowling ball tighter.
Only, Brennan realized, it wasn't a bowling ball that the joker held. It was the proper size and shape, but it had no finger holes and, as Brennan watched, the air around it started to pulsate with flickering bits of coruscating energy. It was some kind of device that had enabled the joker and his companion to materialize into the mausoleum. They were using it to bring heroin in from-somewhere. And the joker was starting to activate it again.
Brennan swung his bow at the joker, who dodged with easy, fluid grace. The halo around the artifact grew brighter. Brennan dropped his bow and closed in, determined to take the device from the joker before he could escape or turn the thing's energies on him.
He grappled the joker easily, but found that his opponent was unexpectedly strong. The joker twisted and heaved in Brennan's grasp in an oddly fluid manner, as if his bones were utterly flexible. They tugged against each other for a moment and then Brennan found himself staring at the joker, their faces inches apart.
The joker's long, grotesque tongue flicked out, caressing Brennan's face in a lingering, almost sensual manner. Brennan flinched backward involuntarily, exposing his neck and throat to the taller joker. The reptiloid lunged forward, relinquishing his grip on the strange device, and fastened his mouth on the side of Brennan's throat where it curved into his shoulder.
Brennan felt the joker's teeth pierce his flesh. The joker worked his mouth, pumping saliva into the wound. The area around the bite went numb almost immediately and Brennan panicked.
A surge of horror-induced strength enabled him to pull free from the joker's embrace. He felt his flesh tear, and blood ran down his throat and chest. The numbness spread rapidly over his right side.
The joker let Brennan pull away with the device. He smiled cruelly and licked Brennan's blood from his chin with his lolling forked tongue.
He's poisoned me, Brennan thought, recognizing the symptoms of a fast-acting neurotoxin. He knew that he was in trouble. He wasn't an ace. He had no special protection or defenses, no armor or fortified constitution. The joker was confident in the efficacy of his poison. He stood back to watch Brennan die. Brennan knew he needed help fast. There was only one person who might be able to reverse the damage the poison was already wreaking on his body. She'd be at Tachyon's Jokertown clinic now, but there was no way to reach her. Already he was finding it hard to stand as his heart pumped poison to every cell of his body.
Mai could help him, if he could get to her.
Brennan silently screamed her name with a surge of desperate energy.
Mai!
He was aware, dimly, of the corresponding pulsation of energy in the device that he cradled to his chest. It felt warm and comforting as he hugged it. The joker's smile turned into a frown. He hissed and sprung forward. Brennan couldn't move, but that didn't matter.
There was an instant of gut-wrenching disorientation that his numbed mind and body only half-felt and then he was in a well-lit, softly painted corridor. Mai was standing there, talking to a small, slight, foppishly dressed man who had long curly red hair.
They turned and stared at him in astonishment. Brennan, himself, was beyond such a feeling.
"Poison," he croaked through stiff, heavy lips, and collapsed, dropping the artifact and plunging into deep darkness.
It was a swirly, starry darkness, redolent with musky jungle smells. The pinpricks of light scattered across his consciousness were the ends of his men's cigarettes and the faraway stars scattered across the Vietnamese night. There was silence all around him, broken only by the sounds of soft breathing and the noises made by the animals deep within the jungle. He glanced at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Four A. M.
Gulgowski, his top sergeant, squatted next to him in the underbrush.
"It's late," Gulgowski hissed.
Brennan shrugged. "Choppers are always late. It'll get here."
The sergeant grunted noncommittally. Brennan smiled into the night. Gulgowski was always the pessimist, always the one to see the gloomy side of things. But that never stopped him from doing his damndest when the going got rough, never stopped him from picking up the others when they felt everything was hopeless.
From faraway came the whupping sound of a chopper. Brennan turned to him, grinned. Gulgowski spat silently onto the jungle floor.
"Get the men ready. And hang onto that briefcase. It cost a lot to get it."
Mendoza, Johnstone, Big Al… three of the ten-man picked squad that Brennan had led on a raid on regional VC headquarters were dead. But they had achieved their objective. They had captured documents proving what Brennan had suspected for a long time. There were men in both the Vietnamese Army and the United States Army who were dirty,' who were working with the enemy. He'd only had a chance to glance at the papers before stuffing them in the briefcase, but they had confirmed his suspicions that the biggest thief, the vilest traitor, was the ARVN general Kien. These papers would hang him.
The chopper landed in the clearing and Gulgowski, clutching the evidence that would damn a score of men as traitors, chivied the others to their ride home. Brennan waited in the underbrush, staring down the trail from which he expected pursuing VC to come at any moment. Finally satisfied that they had shaken the pursuit, he backed into the clearing as a withering hail of bullets burst unexpectedly into the night.
He heard the screams of his men, half-turned, and felt a searing flash of pain as a slug creased his forehead. He went down and his rifle spun away from him into the darkness. The shots had come from the clearing. From the chopper.
He flopped silently on the ground, staring into the clearing with pain-misted eyes. His men lay sprawled in the starlight. All of them were down. Other men walked among them, searching. He blinked blood out his eyes as one of the searchers, dressed in ARVN-style fatigues, shot Gulgowski in the head with a pistol as the sergeant tried to stand.