Heirs of Cain (16 page)

The man took a sip of coffee. Judging it too hot to drink, he added more cream.

“These Gulf wars—they ain’t like Nam,” he said quickly. “Over there, we let those little bastards push us around pretty good. Not this time. This time we went in there and showed ‘em who was boss. We flexed our muscles, you know? Showed the world we’re still the baddest ass-kicker on the block.”

Collins felt a strange mix of feelings toward this man-child. There was a certain appreciation for his simplicity, for that concise black and white outlook toward complex issues. Collins had long ago come to realize his own world would be easier if there were fewer gray areas. Conversely, he detested the man’s kick-ass mentality, the tough-guy posturing. Of all the misconceptions, that was the biggest. Tough guys don’t posture or bluff. They don’t feel the need. Tough guys merely do the job and let the job do the talking. Joe Louis didn’t brag. Lou Gehrig didn’t brag. They beat your brains in every day. Tough guys don’t stand on a ship and tell you, “Mission accomplished.” Of course, Collins understood the man was caught up in the fervor of an ongoing military campaign and the residual anger of 9/11. He was riding on a new wave of patriotism that had swept through the country like napalm on a hillside. In Collins’s view it was Super Bowl pizza party patriotism, more fashionable than heartfelt. But maybe that was okay. Maybe that was what the country needed. It wasn’t his style, or to his liking, or something he could relate to, but that didn’t really matter. How could it? He was from another time, another era.

Another war.

The killing never ends, does it, my boy? It just goes on
and on
.

Collins signaled for another cup of coffee. The waitress brought it, answered his frown with a cheery smile, then sashayed away. He gazed deep into the dark liquid, his thoughts swinging like a pendulum, forward to Deke, backward to Snake.

At some point the machinery broke, causing the pendulum to become stuck in the past.

On Snake.

There was no mystery why Collins felt so down. Meeting Snake again, listening to his old friend’s troubled words, looking into those cadaver eyes—how could he not be down?

Snake had been to the abyss, peered into the darkness, and seen absolute evil. They all had seen the same darkness, the same evil. Been to the same abyss. They had negotiated its unique confines, performed their duties, then withdrawn to the light and its safety. All except Snake. The darkness followed him, pursued him relentlessly, trapped him, and ultimately swallowed him.

Snake was being held hostage by countless ghosts from his past. By the secrets left behind in those steaming jungles of death. His soul was on fire, and the flames were unquenchable.

“I hope you find peace.” Those were the last words Collins said to Snake.

Snake, his head lowered like a monk in prayer, didn’t answer for almost a minute. Finally, he lifted his head, directed those sad, hollow eyes at Collins, and said, “Not in this world, my friend. Not in this lifetime.”

Snake nailed it. There would never be peace, not for him. There would only be more pain and suffering. The Angel of Death offered the only means of escape, the only end to all his agony. Collins could envision it—Snake with a gun in his hand, his head in a halo of blood, or a rope around his neck, or a dirty needle in his arm … some shabby way to lay the monkey to rest, to finally set himself free. To leave the ghosts behind. One more casualty of the Vietnam War. How many more would there be before that war’s long arm of death ceased to harvest victims?

The killing never ends, does it, my boy? It just goes on and on
.

Those dark thoughts followed Collins all the way to Chicago. So did the image of Snake’s tortured eyes. Even as Collins lay sprawled on the huge bed in his motel room, he heard Snake’s words rumble through his head like a locomotive. Words that pleaded for redemption and peace. Words Collins couldn’t allow himself to hear. They had to be erased, like the enemy.

Sympathy, pity, concern—the inevitable signs of weakness. And weakness led to defeat. There was no place for sympathy or pity, now or ever, not even for a wounded comrade-in-arms. He had to forget Snake; the man was lost. He had to be cold, indifferent, distant. There was no other way. Somewhere out there, Seneca was waiting. And Seneca pitied no one.

Neither could Collins.

Because it
‘
s time for Cain to be born again
.

Pity was foreign to the great Cain. That’s why Lucas called for his resurrection. Pity, sympathy—they simply didn’t exist within him. Neither could they exist within Mickey Collins. In truth, Mickey Collins could no longer exist. He had to be discarded like an old suit of clothes, laid away until this drama was finished.

This was Cain’s time.

That meant journeying back to the riverbank, to the abyss, and looking once again into the darkness. For there, on the edge, he would rediscover the assassin’s heart.

Collins eased closer to sleep, his curtain of consciousness rising and falling delicately. Noises from outside the motel mingled with scattered, broken voices heard during a firefight. Automobile horns were in harmony with helicopter rotors. Dogs barked, water buffaloes bellowed. The chill air from the air conditioner was a cool answer to the hot breeze of the jungle. Two maids exchanged pleasantries in the hallway; two shadowy figures on a riverbank whispered in the early morning mist.

Because it
‘
s time for Cain to be born again
.

As the abyss neared, a question arose: was he closing in on it, or was it closing in on him? He hoped for the former, would accept the latter. Either way was fine because, ultimately, it wouldn’t matter.

Cain was there … waiting.

First kill, sir?

In combat, life and death are always at the mercy of chance. Nothing else figures in. Odds against living or dying can’t be computed; therefore, any contemplation is a waste of time. The randomness of death is such that all calculations are useless. A mortar shell explodes fifteen yards to your right: you walk away unscratched; a soldier to your immediate left becomes hamburger meat.

How do you begin to account for such absurdity?

You don’t. You move on, hopeful that chance is on your side when the next shell explodes.

Collins seldom dwelled on such matters. He instinctively understood war, thus eliminating questions concerning matters beyond his comprehension. Understanding erased the mystery. Anyway, questions seldom led to answers, only to more questions. Questions also led to doubt, to undue caution: deadly traps for any soldier.

What he did know was this: he was still alive. Four months in Vietnam, countless firefights, and he was still breathing, still in one piece. In the end, it was all that mattered. Being alive, healthy, still functioning. He had been in country, in confrontations with the enemy, face to face with death enough times to understand war is a very elemental enterprise. War isn’t about nations or philosophies. It’s not about right or wrong. War is about surviving, about staying alive. It’s about killing the other guy before he kills you.

Pleiku was scalding on that March afternoon in 1967. The monsoons had ended two weeks earlier, replaced now by unrelenting heat. It was as if the whole world had become hell and the jungles of Vietnam were at the center. Lucifer himself would have trouble breathing in this furnace.

Collins guided his company through the steaming jungles surrounding a small village several kilometers east of Pleiku. The village, inhabited by fewer than two hundred people, was a suspected Viet Cong stronghold. Collins, only nineteen and already a captain in the First Air Cav, had been ordered to infiltrate, look for signs of Viet Cong activity or sympathizers, kill the sympathizers, and torch the village if positive evidence was found.

They entered the village at fourteen hundred thirty hours. An emaciated old man came out of his hut, approached rapidly on spindly legs, and in broken English told Collins that no Viet Cong sympathizers lived there. He cursed Ho Chi Minh, praised the United States, railed against the war’s toll, saying in a voice choked with emotion that he had lost two sons, a daughter, and a grandson.

Before the old man could finish his tearful litany one of Collins’s men emerged from a small building, holding a large burlap sack in each hand.

“It’s the mother lode, Captain,” the man said. “Weapons, Army rations, more than five grand in cash, clothes. Don’t listen to what he says, Captain. These dink pricks ain’t pure.”

Collins aimed his M16 at the old man’s head.

“Viet Cong?” Collins asked.

The old man backed away. “No Viet Cong,” he said, shaking his head frantically. “G.I. boo koo number one. United States boo koo number one.”

“He’s boo koo full of shit, Captain,” the soldier said, holding up the sack.

“Viet Cong?” Collins repeated, pushing the old man to the ground.

“No, no, no Viet Cong,” the old man screamed.

Then came the shots,
pop, pop, pop
, from behind and to the left. Automatic rifle, probably a single shooter. Collins dropped to one knee, let the old man go, then motioned for his men to fan out in all directions. More shots rang out—five to be precise, one smashing into Willie Dickinson’s chest. The young corporal fell backward, dead before he hit the ground.

Pandemonium was unleashed. Villagers ran screaming for shelter, women yanked crying babies out of harm’s way, soldiers struggled to find cover.

Pop, pop, pop
.

Collins heard—felt—a bullet whiz past his head. He fell to a prone position and began crawling toward a water trough. To his left, maybe fifteen feet away, another soldier took a hit in the lower abdomen. He fell to the ground, screaming. Someone called for the medics, but a second bullet, this one to the fallen soldier’s temple, arrived first.

“How many you figure, Captain?” someone asked.

“One,” Collins replied.

“You’re fuckin’ nuts,” the soldier mumbled.

The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion, and Collins would always remember it that way. Images moved in a halting, almost poetic way, voices and noises sounded as though they might be coming from a phonograph record played at the wrong speed. His own movements, slow and precise, were more dreamlike than real.

Straight ahead, directly in his line of vision, Collins saw the sniper darting between huts, running low, rifle in hand. Collins scrambled to his feet, raced to his right, intent on intercepting the sniper before he could disappear into the jungle or the network of tunnels running underground. Collins knew if that happened, the shooter, and any chance of killing him, would be lost.

When Collins came around the last hut, he saw the man running toward him, not more than thirty feet away, struggling to insert a banana-shaped clip into his AK-47.

The sniper stopped dead in his tracks. Collins raised his M16, sighted, squeezed off a single round. The sniper’s head exploded, coming apart like a watermelon dropped from a skyscraper. The bullet entered directly below the man’s nose, blowing out the back of his head, opening a hole the size of a grapefruit. Most of his teeth were splintered by the bullet’s impact, and his left eye, blown free from its socket, dangled on his cheek. Although he died instantly, his right leg continued to twitch for several seconds after he hit the ground.

“Goddamn, what a mess,” one of Collins’s men said.

“Served the little gook motherfucker right,” said another.

Collins looked down at what seconds before had been a human face, but was now a grotesque mixture of dark red blood, flesh, brain matter, and bone fragments. He pushed his foot against what remained of the dead man’s head. It rolled to the side like the broken head on a child’s doll. Several teeth worked their way through a glob of thickening blood and dropped to the ground.

It was his first confirmed kill, although he suspected there had been others. In combat you didn’t always know for certain. Combat is chaotic, given to sudden bursts of high energy and uncontrolled madness. Bullets fly, bodies fall. Which bullet kills what enemy is not always clear. Accurate scorecards are impossible to keep. More often than not, the killer is as random as the victim. Seldom is the equation clean and simple. But with this kill there could be no question, no doubt. He had squeezed the trigger, seen the bullet do its damage, and watched the target fall.