Inside the storage area he felt again the coolness. The song about the Devil would not leave his head. Without hesitation, Bolan climbed into a forklift and motored down the aisles to the spot where Buddy lay. He checked the serial number of the bag's ID tag and lifted the body onto the pallet of the forklift. Then he motored to the side of the room.
Bolan worked hidden by the forklift. He unzipped the bag, bracing himself against the stench of putrefaction. Buddy stared up at him from a drained face. His skin was a dull grayish green, cold and sagging. Dried mud clung to his scalp. Bolan wondered about the person welcoming Buddy home.
They would never understand what was about to happen.
Bolan forced open the jaws and looked inside. It was an ugly purple-black hole that stank. Nothing.
He took the knife from his pocket and held it to Buddy's neck where the crude stitches began. Buddy's sightless eyes stared at him, his Mohawk stark on his scalp. Bolan closed Buddy's eyes.
He sank the knife into the dead throat and pulled. Buddy's eyes popped open.
Quickly Bolan drew the knife downward to the belly and watched the flesh part along the broken stitches. He separated the flesh and stared in shock.
Bags of white powder sat gleaming among the gray-pink cavity of Buddy's corpse.
Bolan broke one open and tasted it. Heroin.
The vulgarity of it made Bolan sick. In a daze he closed the bag, put it back on the shelf and left.
For once in his life Bolan was too sickened to think.
Bolan sat in a Saigon bar, trying to get Buddy's face to go away, but wherever he looked he saw it. The bar radio called mockingly from home. The songs would never sound the same for him. He hated them, now and forever.
Rage was twisting his guts into a knot.
Three GI's sat on beat-up chairs at a table, crushing beer cans. The ceiling fan crisscrossed them with shadows as they talked at one another of their sexual exploits.
Bolan drowned out their boasting. He had to consider his options: the local police, who were in the pay of the VC or the smugglers or both; the American Military Police, who could just about tie their shoes and swing a bat and not much else; the Division command; or the CIA. Bolan chose the most powerful people in the country: the CIA.
He went to the telephone just as two Vietnamese girls entered the room.
Bolan paused momentarily. They were identical twins, both petite and slender and lovely. He heard a whistle from the GI's and watched the girls ignore the whistle. Bolan telephoned.
He waited through the clicks and buzzes, and eventually got through to someone named Barker, who proceeded to question Bolan in a bored but probing way. Bolan was vague; Barker was feeling him out to see if he was a crazy.
Bolan went as far as he would go, then demanded an interview. Barker took down the location and said he would send someone over.
Bolan hung up and turned around, The GI's stood over the girls who stood mutely at the bar. The girls wanted to leave.
The tallest of the GI's leaned down and beery centered his red-rimmed eyes on one of the twins.
"You not like me, baby-san? You understand I want a little tail tonight?" The GI drained his beer and said to the other, "I think I'm seein' double, Frank. Two fuckin' identical pieces of tail. Man oh man."
"Never liked slant-eyed pussy myself," said Frank, burping.
"Got no complaints about it myself," said the tall one. "So long as I'm sure it ain't dead." The girls tried to leave, but he grabbed them by their wrists. "Oh, hey, the party's just starting."
Bolan felt his hands twitch. He'd seen enough. "Let them go," he said, wearily.
The GI's turned to stare at the big bastard in the sergeant's uniform. Did he want these two women for himself? Conversation stopped; only the radio continued its mocking, something about someone was going to the chapel.
"Come on, Sarge," said one of the GI's, pulling out cash from his pocket. "They're only slopes."
Rage ran through Bolan like electricity. His hands snaked apart, one clutching the GI's uniform at the neck, the other drawing back and then lashing him cruelly in the face. The GI dropped his money, his face running with blood, and sank to his knees. His friend held him, tottering and bleeding, and looked up hotly at the big bastard standing over them. "What are you, a Commie or something?"
The bartender had called the MP's. Now he stood wiping nervously at the bar, half watching. The two GI's were busy trying to lift their friend from the dirty floor before the arrival of the pricks with the hats and bats.
A Jeep lurched to a stop outside the bar.
Bolan turned; not the MP's, but a man in sunglasses with a whore. This would be the CIA contact, he guessed.
They were the only people around here who wore sunglasses at night.
"You Bolan?" the man called out as he sat lazily in the Jeep. Neon flashed on him in red and blue. "I'm Naiman."
"Who the hell is she?" asked Bolan, climbing into the back of the Jeep.
"Don't worry, I'm just dropping her off."
Bolan looked at Naiman's whore. False eyelashes sat incongruously on her eyelids. She sucked a long cigarette. She probably spoke French. Yeah, she'd lain under a regiment of sweating officers and bureaucrats, first from France, then from America.
The whore ran her fingers down Naiman's neck as he drove through the streets. He shrugged to shake her off. She was whispering to him, increasing the force of her nails, digging them into his flesh. She wanted him to pick her up the next night. Naiman shook his head, motioning with his eyes to indicate the passenger in the back seat. She left off, insulted, and then said, "You not really a strong man like I said, Jim. You a mama's boy."
"Sure, sure," said Naiman, pulling the Jeep to a stop in front of a hovel. She got out, holding her snakeskin purse. Bolan could see through the fabric of her shirt that she wore a snakeskin bra to match. "Talk to you soon, Barbra-Ann."
Bolan climbed into the front seat. "Drive," he said.
They wheeled through the cool darkness. The time before dawn was the only time offering respite from the dreadful heat and humidity. In the stillness drifted the booming of far-off artillery.
Saigon slipped past them, a dirty, hunched, downtrodden city.
Gradually the density of dwellings thinned, and Bolan smelled the dew and the river.
Naiman pulled the Jeep into a gravel field between the railroad tracks and the river.
"Who was the guy I spoke to first?" asked Mack.
"I don't know. I got a call from the secretary. Why?"
"I don't like it. The fewer people who know about this thing the better."
"This thing being."
Bolan told him about the trouble with the coroner, Morgan, and then of cutting open Buddy and finding the bags of raw heroin. A transport plane roared overhead as they talked, wing lights streaking in the darkness.
Another load of dead would be vibrating in its belly.
Naiman sighed, considering. He saw ramifications.
"You're right, Sergeant," he said, turning to look at Bolan. "The CIA has a duty to stop this. I don't know if I, personally, will handle the case..." A crack split the air. Naiman's head blew apart, his forehead exploding in a wet spray that lashed Bolan's face.
Bolan rolled to the ground, gripping his Colt M16.
Slugs ripped into the Jeep with a scream of metal.
Under the Jeep, Bolan watched the tires of the cars as they swung across the gravel toward him, spraying dirt and stones. Someone in the car was raking the Jeep with slugs, but the car's headlights were still not turned on.
Bolan rolled to the right, coming up with his submachine gun pointing to the car. From his right flank Bolan saw another car, and then they both jerked on their fights.
Bolan was caught like an animal in the blinding glare. He rolled again, dodging the killer slugs, and then with a steady stance blew the lights from the car ahead.