‘I think I’ll just call that hand,’ Hatcher said flatly.
‘Maybe you better call Stenhauser first.’
‘What’d you do, Sloan, kneecap the poor little bastard?’
‘I just tightened his suspenders a little bit. He hasn’t got your class. He folds easy.’
‘As easy as blackmail comes to you?’
Sloan’s anger was beginning to rise, but he controlled himself. The smile stayed, the soft tone, the sincerity. ‘Okay, okay. I got off on the wrong foot. Look, you do this little thing for me, you’ll never see me again. I’m history. You’re forgetting, I taught you everything you know, Hatch. I’ll forget all about—’
Hatcher suddenly twisted the wheel sharply to the right, then spun it back the other way. The boat started to go into a tight turn, then just as quickly switched into the opposite direction. Sloan was thrown backward. He hit the bulkhead. The beer can flew out of his hand and was swept away in the wind, then the boat yawed in the other direction and he lurched forward, scrambling for his balance and falling to his knees in front of the cabin hatch. Hatcher pulled the throttles back and then jammed them forward, and the defenseless Sloan, once again caught off-balance, vaulted headfirst into the cabin and flipped halfway over, landing on the back of his neck. He scrambled to get his feet under him and started to get up, but the boat turned sharply again and he flew forward and slammed into one of the bronze wall panels. His breath burst out of him as the mirror shattered from the force of the collision. Sloan fell to the floor as shards of the shattered mirror tinkled about him.
Topside, Hatcher pulled the throttles all the way back. The boat died in the water, and he jumped off the captain’s chair and bounded the steps to the cabin. Sloan was on his knees, scrambling across the floor to his briefcase.
Hatcher moved fast, and, grabbing the briefcase, pulled out the .357. He tossed the case aside. File folders spilled out and their contents splashed all over the floor.
‘Damn it —‘ Sloan began, and then felt cold steel under his nose. Hatcher stood over him with a Magnum pistol pressed against Sloan’s upper lip.
‘You taught me everything you know, all right,’ his flinty voice snarled. ‘Trouble is, Harry, you stopped learning and I didn’t. Blackmail me, you son of a bitch.’
‘You got it all wrong!’ Sloan said, his smile finally vanishing. ‘Just hear me out.’
Hatcher shook his head — Sloan never quit. ‘Your ace in the hole is that fast mouth of yours. You could coax the devil into a cold shower. You lace it all up with your favorite words. Duty, patriotism — hell, you sell patriotism like Professor Wizard sells snake oil.’
‘What’s the matter with patriotism?’
Hatcher ignored the question. ‘The trouble with you, Harry, is you do lousy math. One time, two and two equals four. Next time, it equals seven or twelve or eighty-two or whatever you want it to equal. Damn it, do you think you can frame me twice in the same lifetime?’
‘Just listen for a —‘
‘Shut up,’ Hatcher snarled, his eyes flashing.
Sloan thought to himself, If I can get past the next minute or two, I’m okay. It had been a calculated risk, facing up to Hatcher. So Sloan shut up. He leaned back in the chair and Hatcher stepped back a couple of steps, holding the gun at arm’s length, pointed between Sloan’s eyes. Then Sloan’s smile returned. The hands went out, away from his sides again. ‘I was hoping we could have a friendly talk.’
‘Christ,’ Hatcher snorted. ‘You are something else.’
‘Will you listen to me? Give me ten minutes of your time and I’m out of here forever —‘
Hatcher cut him off. His harsh whisper took on a new edge. ‘There was a time, Harry, when the only thing that kept me going, the only thing, was fantasizing about this moment. That’s what kept me alive, imagining what it would be like to have you in the squeeze. Right now you’re a trigger finger away from eternity.’
The smile faded a little but was still there. ‘Okay, so what’s stopping you?’ Sloan said boldly.
Hatcher ignored the question. You’ll be out of here forever, all right. I can stash you in the coral, the fish’ll nibble you to bits before you have time to float up. Nobody’ll ever know what happened to you.’
‘You could do that, but you’re not going to,’ Sloan said, confidently shaking his head.
‘I’ve done worse to better than you. Hell, you ought to know, I was working for you.’
‘You think I don’t know you’re nursing a hard-on two miles long?’ Sloan said, and for a moment there was almost a touch of sadness in his voice. ‘Look around. Did I come in here with the whole brigade at my back? Did I come in waving around a lot of iron? Hell, no.’
Sloan had spent his life studying faces, learning to recognize the slightest nuances: the vague shift in a muscle, the almost imperceptible twitch of an eyelid, the slightest tightening of the mouth, the subtle shift of focus in the eyes. They were all signals to him that in an instant something had changed. Then it was like having a fish on a line. Time to reel in. Hatcher was good about concealing his emotions, but it was there, Sloan sensed it. I’ve got him, he thought. We’re past the real touchy part. He leaned toward Hatcher and his eyes glittered as he put in the fix. ‘I’m here on a mission of mercy, pal.’
And Hatcher thought, Shit, here it comes. Now he’s got that tongue of his going full speed, now he’s on the con.
‘Let’s stop horsing each other around, okay?’ Sloan said. ‘So you’re tough and I’m tough, we don’t have to prove that to each other anymore. I know you, Hatch. I know you know I’m not here to get a tan, so you’ve got to be real curious. Why don’t you put that thing down and listen to me before you do something real crazy?’
Hatcher sighed. He leaned his gun arm on his leg. The pistol dangled loosely in his hand, pointed at the deck somewhere between Sloan’s feet.
‘Okay, let’s hear the part about the mission of mercy,’ he snickered. ‘That ought to be a classic.’
CODY
Sloan gathered up his file folders from the deck and put them back in order. He dropped one in Hatcher’s lap.
‘Read this,’ he said.
It was the service record of Lieutenant Murphy Roger Cody, USN. Murph Cody. Hatcher hadn’t heard that name since Cody died in Vietnam a long time ago.
‘What’s this all about?’ Hatcher asked. ‘Cody’s been history for fifteen years.’
‘Fourteen actually.’
‘Fourteen, fifteen, what’s the difference.’
‘Read the file, then we’ll talk.’
Hatcher leafed through the 0—1 file. There was nothing out of the ordinary about the record. It began when Cody entered the U.S. Naval Academy in 1962, and ended abruptly when his twin-engine OV- 10 crashed and burned while flying a routine search-and-destroy mission near Binh Thuy in the Mekong Delta, April 13, 1972. Cody had been assigned to Light Attack Squadron 6, Naval Riverine Patrol Forces, and had gone ‘in-country’ in July 1971, nine months before he was lost. There were two commendations for outstanding service and a recommendation for the Navy Cross, which had been approved and awarded posthumously.
Supplementary reports included a tape of the debriefing interrogation of two of Cody’s wingmen and the gunner of an SAR Huey crew that had tried to rescue Cody and his radioman; a confidential report by the MIA commission dated January 1978, confirming that no trace of Cody had been found;. a tape of the review board and the official certification of death in 1979; and another commission report filed when the crash site was located in 1981, reporting that charred bones had been found on-site but were unidentifiable — they could have been the remains of either Cody or his crewman, Gunner’s Mate John Rossiter, or parts of both.
The only mention of Cody’s father was on the service form under ‘next of kin.’ It said merely, ‘William John Cody, General, U.S. Army.’ Not the Buffalo Bill Cody, commander of all the field forces in Vietnam. A typical bureaucratic understatement.