Heirs of Cain (23 page)

Lucas White sat alone, empty glass of Scotch in hand, eyes fixed straight ahead into the darkness. The weight of depression rested heavily on his shoulders. He needed to refill his glass, many times, enough to buoy the weight and strip it away, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t move. He was a man frozen.

Finally, with great effort he pulled himself up, went to the liquor cabinet, picked up a bottle of Chivas Regal, and carried it back to his chair. He refilled the glass, drank the Scotch straight, felt it burn.

He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. Sleep had never been a friend, even during the best of times. By all accounts, these were far from the best of times. These were nightmare times—confusing times. He yearned for the old days, when black and white squared off against each other, when there were no gray areas …

Poppycock
. Such talk was pure poppycock. There had always been gray areas. Indeed, he had operated in those hidden areas, much like Cain had operated in his own world of shadows. Nothing was ever clear-cut.

Except death.

Death was always clear-cut, final.

Lucas didn’t mind death. He had seen many men die, ordered thousands of good men into combat, written the letters home to grieving loved ones. While death was never a welcomed guest, it wasn’t an unexpected one. Not for a professional military man. He had learned to accept it—and handle it. A good soldier had no other choice.

And Lucas was a good soldier.

Then why this gloomy mood? What was causing this heavy weight bearing down on him? Was it Deke’s death? He thought about that for a moment. Yes, the death troubled him, but … the circumstances ate at his insides. The in-house killing, the brother-against-brother aspect. It was unnatural. Military men do not kill their own. They simply do not. It is their duty to kill the enemy. That’s the nature of their occupation. This … this fratricide violated sacred laws.

Alone in the darkness, his brain sluggish from too much Scotch, Lucas thought of different times. He retraced the footsteps of his life, a journey that had taken him from Iowa to West Point to Korea and beyond. It had been a good life, eventful, full, and productive. What he had done counted. It added up. In his own small way, he had made a difference. There had been honor, praise, glory. More important, there had been respect from both his peers and his enemies. They had seen him as a good soldier, a true warrior. They still did, and the evidence proved it. Hadn’t they come to him? Hadn’t they pleaded with the old lion to come out of retirement one last time and handle yet another crisis?

Yes
.

General Lucas K. White. A soldier’s soldier.
Goddamn fucking-A-right
.

At moments like these, when sleep was elusive and introspection reared its ugly head, Lucas’s thoughts invariably returned to Vietnam. To the one matter haunting him like a recurring bad dream.

Operation Fallen Angels.

Had he made the right decision? Was he wrong to say no? Should he have given the green light? If he had, and if the mission had been executed successfully, would the end result have been a quicker and more favorable conclusion to that damned war? Had those voices opposing his been correct?

He would never know. Perhaps that’s what haunted him the most.

Lucas sipped at his Scotch.

And remembered.

Operation Nightcrawlers was Cain’s idea from the beginning. He conceived it, drew up the plan, and orchestrated every movement. From the moment intelligence had first learned of the meeting and given it to Lucas, it had been Cain’s show.

What intelligence learned was that nine high-level ARVN leaders were meeting with two Russian generals at Hoa Binh, a medium-sized village located less than an hour from Hanoi. The purpose of the meeting was unknown; however, most U.S. military experts guessed that plans for another Tet-like offensive were being finalized.

Another full-fledged invasion of South Vietnamese cities could be devastating to morale, both on the field of battle and in the riot-torn streets of America. The Nixon White House, already under siege on the home front, couldn’t tolerate another battlefield setback ten thousand miles away.

The situation couldn’t have been more hotly debated. For Cain, it was perfect.

“An impossible mission,” one general had intoned, “better left to B-52s.”

“Suicide,” another said. “No way it could succeed.”

Cain welcomed the mission, seeing it as a forerunner to Operation Fallen Angels. If successful—and why shouldn’t it be?—it would be his most persuasive argument yet in favor of Fallen Angels: five assassins, within miles of Hanoi, eliminate eleven key high-ranking enemy personnel and get back safely.

Lucas would have to listen.

Cain and his men helicoptered from DaNang to Xam Hua on the western border of Laos. From there they crossed over into North Vietnam, moved through the jungle to Moc Chau on the edge of the Black River, picked up a small gunboat from a CIA operative, and began the short trip to Soui Rut, where they met—and killed—Lucky. The final leg of their journey, four tough miles through jungle, they covered on foot.

They arrived at Hoa Binh an hour before sunrise. According to intelligence, the meeting was to take place in an ancient brick building situated on the northern tip of the village. Strategically, the location was perfect, allowing for quick access to the jungle once the mission was completed. That is, if intel was right. If intel got it wrong, always a possibility, neither the jungle nor anything else would matter. There would be no exit, safe or otherwise.

The building, two-storied and surprisingly well kept, dominated the village. To Cain’s great surprise, the building was unguarded. He dispatched Snake to the side entrance, and within two minutes Snake had picked the lock and was waving the rest of the group forward.

Cardinal was the first to enter, followed by Deke, Seneca, Snake, then Cain. Next came a bit of educated guesswork—finding the room where the meeting would take place. That task turned out to be a simple one: the building had but one room large enough to accommodate such a gathering. It was located on the ground floor, next to the kitchen area. At the center of the room was a long rectangular table surrounded by a dozen chairs. Several large maps of South Vietnam covered the wall behind the table. Each map was divided into sectors, with the larger towns and villages marked in red ink with
Xs
.

Cain positioned his men for the wait. Less than an hour until blood time.

Outside, a rooster crowed. Daylight broke.

The first to arrive, an ARVN colonel, had the misfortune to open the door, turn and face Seneca. The man’s mouth dropped open, but he never had time to utter a sound. Seneca’s knife was swifter and more accurate than a rattlesnake’s strike. Four fierce thrusts were all it took to turn the colonel’s heart into a pin cushion.

Seconds later, three more arrived for the last sunrise meeting of their lives, two ARVN colonels and a Russian general. Deke and Cardinal took out the colonels—Deke with his knife, Cardinal with a piece of piano wire he picked up outside—while Cain easily killed the Russian by administering a judo chop to the Adam’s apple, then driving his fingers deep into the man’s throat.

A harrowing two minutes followed. Five men, all ARVN officers, entered the room single file. Two of the five carried AK-47 rifles. The weapons, of course, posed no threat of death, only noise. The men would be dead before ever having the opportunity to fire a killing shot. However, one of them could accidentally get off a round, and the noise from that blast would be as deadly as a bullet.

Single file was what made the dynamics somewhat problematic for Cain and his men. It was essential that the fifth and final man entered the room before the killing began. That meant for a fraction of a second the men would see their assassins, the surprise element lost. That reduced any margin for mistakes. For the mission to succeed, everything had to click perfectly.

If it didn’t, they were dead.

But this was their finest hour. This was the moment they would settle all debate about future operations. This would transform them into legends.

This was blood time in its most perfect form.

They weren’t about to fail.

By the time the fifth man was even with the door, the killing was under way. One step into the room, and two men were dead, the first taken out by Cardinal, the second by Snake. One step farther, and men three and four were falling. Seneca’s knife eliminated the third man; Deke’s machete lopped off the fourth man’s head and sent it rolling across the floor. The fifth man was not even three full steps into the room when he came eyeball to eyeball with Cain. For a brief moment, the man seemed torn between going for his rifle and screaming for help. He did neither. Cain drove his fist deep into the man’s solar plexus, effectively rendering him breathless and incapable of making a sound. Next, Cain grabbed the man’s head on both sides and gave a savage twist, quickly breaking his neck.

Snake and Cardinal disposed of the final two victims—an ARVN captain and the second Russian general—with no problems. Their weapon of choice was the machete. Both men had been impressed by what Deke accomplished with his.

Cain surveyed the scene. Eleven dead, not a sound made, no more than five minutes elapsed time.

It couldn’t have been done more efficiently.

Cain walked to the corner of the room, picked up a decapitated head, and set it at the center of the table. He then reached in his pocket, took out a playing card, the ace of spades, and propped it up in front of the dead man’s face.

Mission accomplished.

Lucas lay on the couch, the glass of Scotch resting on his chest, rising and falling with each breath. How much Scotch had he consumed? Too much. No, that wasn’t correct. Enough to kill the pain; not enough to erase the doubts.

There was never enough Scotch to erase the doubts. No matter how hard he tried to drown them in liquor and self-reproach, those doubts forever remained with him. If Operation Nightcrawlers failed to erase them, nothing could. Not Scotch, not time.

The first glimpse of sunlight cast a slim reed of light across Lucas’s desk. He let his weary eyes follow the light from the narrow opening in the curtains to the old desk, where the light hit directly on a framed picture of him standing with his arm on Cain’s shoulder. He had a smile on his face; Cain, as always, displayed no emotion.

Qui Nhon. Summer 1972. Behind them the blue South China Sea glistened like glass. The picture had been taken only weeks before Cain left Vietnam for the last time.

There was something about that photo. Something Lucas couldn’t remember. Something that made it special. But what? Cain, maybe? Something in those cold, unflinching eyes? That faraway look?

No, that wasn’t it. What, then? Lucas thought hard but couldn’t pin it down.

The ringing phone pierced the silence. Lucas rose on wobbly legs, walked to the desk, picked up the receiver.

“Yes,” he said.

Then listened.

“Not to worry, General Nichols,” Lucas said. “I wasn’t asleep.”

He sipped the Scotch and listened for several more seconds.

“Noon, your office, sounds fine. I’ll be there.”

He sat in the leather chair behind the desk, his head cupped in his hands.
Tired. Goddamn, I’m so tired, so fucking tired of it all. When does it end? When do the wars and battles end?

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

Lucas picked up the photo, brought it to his lips, and kissed Cain. After staring at it for several more seconds, he set the photo down, angling it so the incoming sunlight also kissed Cain.

Suddenly, as if the light of God had provided the answer, Lucas realized what it was about the picture that had been troubling him.

It had been taken by Seneca.