“I don’t think I can get him out. He’s not listening to anyone,” I said.
“We didn’t say, ‘get him out.’ We just said, ‘get him,’ ” they told me.
There were three of them. Two MACV, one CIA. I was shaking my head. The guy from the agency spoke up.
“Do what we’re asking, and you’ve got a ticket home.”
“I’ll get home when I get home,” I said, but I wondered.
He shrugged. “We’ve got two choices here. One is, we carpet-bomb every hamlet in Bu Dop. That’s about a thousand friendlies, plus Calhoun. We’ll just emulsify everyone. It’s not a problem.
“Two is, you do what’s right and save all those people, and you’re on a plane the next day. Personally, I don’t give a shit.” He turned and walked out.
I told them I would do it. They were going to grease him anyway. Even if they didn’t, I saw what he had become. I had seen it happen to a lot of guys, although Jimmy was the worst. They went over there, and found out that killing was what they were best at. Do you tell people? Do you put on your resume, “Ninety confirmed kills. Large collection of human ears. Ran private army”? C’mon, you’re never going to fit in the real world again. You’re marked forever, you can’t go back.
I went in, told the Yards that I wanted to see Crazy Jake. I was known from the missions we had run together, so they took me to him. I didn’t have a weapon; it was okay.
“Hey, Jimmy,” I said when I saw him. “Long time no see.”
“John John,” he greeted me. He had always called me that. “You come in here to join me? It’s about time. We’re the only outfit in this fucking war that the V.C. is actually afraid of. We don’t have to fight with one arm tied behind our balls by a bunch of no-load politicians.”
We spent some time catching up. By the time I told him they were going to bomb him it was already night.
“I figured they would, sooner or later,” he said. “I can’t fight that. Yeah, I figured this was coming.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know. But I can’t make the Yards my hostages. Even if I could, fuckers’d bomb them anyway.”
“Why don’t you just walk out?”
He gave me a sly look. “I don’t fancy going to jail, John John. Not after leading the good life here in the Central Highlands.”
“Well, you’re in a tight spot. I don’t know what to tell you.”
He nodded his head, then said, “You supposed to kill me, man?”
“Yeah,” I told him.
“So do it.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve got no way out. They’re going to vaporize my people otherwise, I know that. And I’d rather it be you than some guy I don’t know, dropping a seven hundred and fifty-pound bomb from thirty-thousand feet up. You’re my blood brother, man.”
I still didn’t say anything.
“I love these people,” he said. “I really love them. Do you know how many of them have died for me? Because they know I would die for them.”
These were not just words. It’s hard for a civilian to understand the depth of trust, the depth of love, that can develop between men in combat.
“My Yards won’t be happy with you. They really love me, the crazy fucks. Think I’m a magic man. But you’re pretty slippery. You’ll get away.”
“I just want to go home,” I said.
He laughed. “There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done. It doesn’t work that way. Here.” He handed me a side arm. “Don’t worry about me. Save my Yards.”
I thought of the recruiter, the one who’d given us twenty bucks to pay some woman to sign us into the army as our mother.
“Save my Yards,” Jimmy said again.
I thought of Deirdre saying, Watch out for Jimmy, okay?
He picked up a CAR-15, a submachine gun version of the ubiquitous M-16 with a folding stock and shortened barrel, and popped in a magazine. Clicked off the safety so I could see him do it.
“C’mon, John John. I’m not going to keep asking so nicely.”
I remembered him putting out his hand after I had fought him to a standstill, saying You’re all right. What’s your name?
John Rain, fuckface, I had answered, and we had fought again.
The CAR-15 was swinging toward me.
I thought of the swimming hole near Dryden, how you had to just forget about everything else and jump.
“Last chance,” Jimmy was saying. “Last chance.”
Do what we’re asking and you’ve got a ticket home.
There’s no home for us, John. Not after what we’ve done.
I raised the pistol quickly, smoothly, chest level, double-tapping the trigger in the same motion. The two slugs slammed through his chest and blew out his back. Jimmy was dead before he hit the floor.
Two Yards burst into Jimmy’s hooch but I had already picked up the CAR. I cut them down and ran.
Their security was outward facing. They weren’t well prepared to stop someone going from the inside out. And they were shocked, demoralized, at losing Jimmy.
I took some shrapnel from an exploding claymore. The wounds were minor, but back at base they told me, “Okay, soldier, that’s your million-dollar wound. You’re going home now.” They put me on a plane, and seventy-two hours later I was back in Dryden.
The body came back two days later. There was a funeral. Jimmy’s parents were crying, Deirdre was crying. “Oh God, John, I knew, I knew he wasn’t going to make it back. Oh God,” she was saying.
Everyone wanted to know how Jimmy had died. I told them he died in a firefight. That was all I knew. Near the border.
I left town a day later. Didn’t say good-bye to any of them. Jimmy was right, there was no home after what we had done. “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” I think some poet said.
I tell myself it’s karma, the great wheels of the universe grinding on. A lifetime ago I killed my girl’s brother. Now I take out a guy, next thing I know I’m involved with his daughter. If it were happening to someone else, I’d think it was funny.
I had called the Imperial before the meeting with Tatsu and made a reservation. I keep a few things stored at the hotel in case of a rainy day: a couple of suits, identity papers, currency, concealed weapons. The hotel people think I’m an expat Japanese who visits Japan frequently, and I pay them to keep my things so I don’t have to carry them back and forth every time I travel. I even stay there periodically to back up the story.
The Imperial is centrally located and has a great bar. More important, it’s big enough to be as anonymous as a love hotel, if you know how to play it.
I had just reached Hibiya Station on the Hibiya line when my pager went off. I pulled it from my belt and saw a number I didn’t recognize, but followed by the 5-5-5 that told me it was Tatsu.
I found a pay phone and input the number. The other side picked up on the first ring. “Secure line?” Tatsu’s voice asked.
“Secure enough.”
“The two visitors are leaving Narita at oh-nine-hundred tomorrow. It’s a ninety-minute ride to where they’re going. Our man might get there before them, though, so you’ll need to be in position early, just outside.”
“Okay. The package?”
“Being emplaced right now. You can pick it up in an hour.”
“Will do.”
Silence. Then: “Good luck.”
Dead line.
I reinserted the phone card and called the number Tatsu had given me in Ebisu. Whispering to disguise my voice, I warned the person on the other end of the line that there would be a bomb on the undercarriage of a diplomatic vehicle visiting the Yokosuka Naval Base tomorrow. That should slow things up in front of the guardhouse.
I had showered at Harry’s before going to meet Tatsu, but I still looked pretty rough when I checked in at the hotel. No one seemed to notice my sleeve, wet from fishing Tatsu’s package out of the fountain at the park. Anyway, I had just flown in from the East Coast of the United States — long trip, anything can happen. The attendant at the front desk laughed when I told him I was getting too old for this shit.