Nature of the Game (18 page)

He had ebony-black skin.

The tarnished silver jump wings of an American paratrooper were pinned to a red bandanna encircling the black's forehead. His face was handsome, his teeth white.

He smelled of fire.

“Lisson!” Jud spit the words through his bleeding mouth. “Thank God it's you!”

“God doesn't live here!” snapped the black. “This is the People's Republic of Laos, and you are fucked and refucked!”

“You're Mark Lisson,” said Jud. “I was looking for you.”

The rifle barrel jabbed the side of Jud's neck.

“Congratulations, honky!” said the black. “You found me.”

Owl Eyes yelled something in Lao. The black man glared at him, then told Jud, “Stick around.”

And his captor laughed. Scarface aimed his assault rifle at Jud. Lisson and Owl Eyes walked to where Jud's four Nungs knelt in a line, hands tied behind their backs. The Pathet Lao hadn't removed the madman's gag. Two guards watched Curtain as he stared dumbfounded at Jud. Jud counted twenty-three Pathet Lao—and the American.

Owl Eyes drew his Russian pistol, put it behind the head of the first Nung.

Run!
Jud thought as the pistol
crack!
sliced through the jungle. The first Nung crumpled.
Fight!
His soul ached as they meekly waited for their bullets:
crack!
and the man who smelled like lemons pitched forward.
Crack!
and the pine man flopped on the ground like a fish while
crack!
the madman slumped on his knees.

The Vietnamese who'd guided Jud in was blindfolded, his hands bound behind his back. Blood covered his face.

“You know my name,” said the black, ambling back to Jud while Owl Eyes holstered his pistol.

“We're gonna be partners,” whispered Jud.

Lisson put his rifle bore inches from Jud's face.

“You are who I tell you to be, white meat,” said Lisson.

“Believe me!” said Jud.

“I always believed you,
Mister Charlie
. Call the V.C. ‘Charlie,' right? That's what my brothers call our white oppressors. The name of the enemy, right? Only one is the enemy, one is not. I learned that from you capitalist pig motherfucker assholes, didn't I? But you lied about which was which, who was who, I am me, and you, motherfucker, are you.”

“You only think you know who I am.”

Across the clearing, Curtain shook his head at Jud.

“Fuck me, Charlie,” Lisson told Jud. “Fuck me and fuck you and refuck you again!”

He barked an order. The Pathet Lao shuffled into line. Lisson checked one man's gun, adjusted another's pack. A soldier cinched a choke tether around Jud's neck. Curtain's guard nudged him into line behind Jud. Scarface walked by. Jud's holstered derringer dangled from his neck. He spit on Jud.

The Pathet Lao moved out, leading their POWs away.

Curtain hissed, “What do you think you're doing?”

“Nice job on point,” said Jud. “The Nungs loved it.”

“They were always just meat,” said the man behind him. “Why are you dicking the nigger like that?”

“What did you do, Curtain?”

“I got bushwhacked, asshole! Same as you!”

“My ropes are loose,” whispered Curtain to Jud's silence. “I get a chance, I'll go for it. If they separate us, I'll circle back, spring you. They'll separate us, but don't worry.”

Up ahead, Owl Eyes barked an order. The fourteen-year-old soldier holding Jud's tether ran him up the file. The jungle thinned to forest. They loped past a dozen Pathet Lao. Half the soldiers were no older than Jud's keeper. They ran past the blindfolded Vietnamese asset, ran until they reached the head of the column where Owl Eyes walked with Lisson.

“Figured you'd like it up here, honky,” Lisson said. Owl Eyes let the two Americans walk ahead of him. “Leader of the pack and all, a one-zero like you.”

“How'd you know I was the one-zero?” said Jud.

Lisson slapped Jud across the face.

“You don't ask questions. You're a flat zero here.”

They kept marching.

“And you're number one boy in the boonies,” said Jud. “But they keep you in the boonies. With Owl Eyes to watch you.”

“He's the political officer.”

“I thought you didn't believe in officers anymore.”

“A revolution without discipline revolts itself.”

“I know you, Lisson. I'm here to help you.”

“Don't waste my English on bullshit.”

“I stole your files,” said Jud. “I know who you are.”

“Nobody knows who you are.”

“I do,” said Jud.

“You do shit!” Lisson thumped Jud with a steel finger. “You're all shit. Pale, white shit, dropped on the people of the world. Anybody who ain't white, ain't right. Con 'em or kill 'em. Selma or Saigon, it's all the same.”

“I know who taught you that,” said Jud.

Lisson roared with laughter.

They're not worried about ambush
, thought Jud.

“You guys taught me that!” yelled Lisson.

“I know,” said Jud. “How many insertion teams did you hunt down before they trusted you?”

The column paused at the top of a ridgeline. In the distance, Jud saw open grass fields: the Plain of Jars.

“Trust?” said Lisson. “You CIA Green Beret fuck! You know shit about trust. You're rats scurrying before the tidal wave of history. Who's gonna spy to keep the white man on top? Can't slip in a yellow man, because we can't trust no indig. And we don't wanna waste one of the white boys. So let's send in a nigger. We can con the slopes into trusting a black brother. Take a soul man, somebody who …”

Lisson started to hyperventilate. He gritted his teeth.

“Two tours in the Nam. Fightin' soldier from the sky. Dumb fuck out of Chicago, man, California Street where the sun never shines, but hey: the U.S. Army gonna make it right. Green Berets gonna let me prove I'm a man. I bought it all the way.”

“Yes, you did,” said Jud.

Lisson led the column down the hill.

“The worst promises don't have any words, just that look that holds your prayers.”

“I know the look,” said Jud.

“How many guys you sucker with it?”

Jud didn't answer. Lisson rambled on:

“How you gonna get those clever commies to trust an American so he can spy on them? Give 'em a GI they want: a dude who knows tough-guy secret shit to tell them. Some SOG star.”

“And give the spy a legend the bad guys can believe,” said Lisson. “You guys taught me Elijah and Cleaver, the Panthers. Che and Mao and Marx. Black power so I'd have a rap and a rep. A reason to fuck up America. Perfect cover. Then last year you shot King. Malcolm. Blew up four girls in a church, sweet fools thought some white God would save them. Fire hoses and police dogs. You're black, stay back, Jack. Oh, you taught me good!

“But you forgot to unteach. California Street. Rats in baby's room and whites only on the Gold Coast. The white boy who slapped Gramma in Biloxi. I used to be ashamed for her. Those villes up by Da Nang where we … where I … Nobody can forget that.”

“I know places like that,” said Jud.

“Then I should kill you now,” Lisson told him. “Then you're guiltier than you look. White is the color of guilt. Of greed. Of capitalism that oppresses the masses. You got that guilt, you gotta die to get rid of it. Or get the assholes who shit you where you are.”

“They caught you like SOG planned. Tortured you—”

“They taught me. Showed me the way of truth.”

“You were our double. Became their triple. Gave 'em everything you could. Fight for them, too.”

“Bought into the revolution. People of color are one.” Lisson jerked Jud's tether. “Who the hell are you?”

“I'm three months short,” said Jud. “I've seen all the shit. I want to walk away happy and whole. They sent me out here, so fuck them. I know more of their lies than you do.”

“Next you're gonna tell me Lenin is your hero.”

“I'm a stone-cold capitalist,” said Jud. “And I got lots to sell that your revolution needs.”

“What?”

“For starters, the head of North Vietnam's Politburo is headed for a secret meeting with the PLs about twelve klics from here. Our mission was to get him—alive or dead, but get him.”

“Just like that, you expect me to believe you?”

“You want to hear the cover story I was supposed to let you beat out of me? About being a SPIKE recon team caching radios and supplies for other insertion teams and downed pilots?”

“You lie good,” said Lisson.

“When I have to. But the truth is what'll work now. And it's what you and your dink masters need.”

Lisson slapped Jud again, barked an order. Owl Eyes watched the boy drag Jud back down the line.

“Believe me!” Jud yelled. “You got no better choice!”

The boy holding Jud's rope jerked it tight and shoved him into line. Curtain was ten men back.

They marched west.

They aren't worried about air strikes
, thought Jud.

The column left the hills for the rolling fields and ravines of the Plain of Jars. The natural color of Laos is green: thousands of napalm strikes had charred that land into a blackened abstract smear. Plumes of smoke rose haphazardly to the sky. The surviving foliage was stunted and stained with a dull metallic sheen from defoliants. Bomb craters pockmarked the earth. The air smelled unnatural and dead.

They camped when the sun rose one hand above the hills.

There's the sawtooth mountains
, thought Jud. To the west, the bumpy plateau was right where it belonged.

“Air-strike time comin' up,” Lissen told Jud and Curtain as they were led to a campfire. “This'll be your last hot meal.”

The guards made Curtain and Jud squat. Scarface stood nearby, AK-47 ready. Soldiers lit fires, boiled rice. Lisson and Owl Eyes sat around the fire to Jud's right; Curtain was to his left.

“My buddy likes your popgun,” Lisson told Jud, nodding to the derringer Scarface wore like a necklace. “You're too smart to pack that prissy piece of nothing 'less it's your ‘good-bye guy' gun. You got the balls to shoot your own bullet?”

“I can do what I have to,” Jud said.

Owl Eyes kept his face blank.

“He speak English?” Jud asked.

“Damned if I know,” said Lisson.

“Damned if I care,” said Jud. “What about our deal?”

“Do I smell treachery?” Lisson smiled. “Or bullshit? Same difference, honky: you stink.

“Look at them.” Lisson nodded to the eating soldiers.

Curtain watched the fire.

“You got nothing to offer them, white boy,” said Lisson. “CIA's been here since it vetoed neutrality in '59. The
armée clandestine
. Meo tribesmen. Don't kid yourself into thinking all fifteen thousand of yours worship you. You control the food supply to their villages, Yale bright boys commuting to work by copter from Thailand. Move whole towns around like checkers. The Company's grand plan. But these yellow brothers knew better than to fall for your bullying or bullshit.”

“I told you I don't care about that,” said Jud.

The pot of rice on their fire was ready. A guard untied Jud, put a wooden bowl and chopsticks in front of him. His fingers were too numb to move. He stayed on his haunches. Curtain sat on the ground beside him.

“When I knew they were dropping me here, I stole your file,” said Jud. A sickly sweet flower smell drifted in the air. “If you grabbed me like you probably did six other teams, I wanted my deal in place.”

“And if not?” asked Lisson.

“Doesn't matter now.” Jud shrugged. “What did you do with the other Americans you nailed?”

“You already told me your mission,” said Lisson, “your backup bullshit. You got nothing left they can't sweat out of you in the bunkers.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“Believe it,” said Lisson.

Feeling returned to Jud's hands. He picked up the long wooden chopsticks. A guard ladled gooey rice into the bowl.

Slowly, Jud looked over his shoulder. Laughing groups of soldiers. Jud's Vietnamese asset was tied to a tree. They'd taken off his blindfold so he could watch the others eat.

“I have seen the way,” sighed Lisson in a child's voice. “I am of the way.”

“Then look behind me and see reality,” said Jud.

Two Pathet Lao soldiers lounged by a tree, sharing a glass-bowled pipe. The smoke smelled of sickly sweet flowers.

“I got a piece of the poppy trade,” said Jud. “The only money crop here in hell. I'm cashing in. Like a good capitalist.”

“You and half your damn Meo lackeys. You and all Saigon. Fourteen-year-old girls selling scag at roadside stands on the way to the firebases. How many GI junkies these days, Bro'? Twenty-five thousand? How much heroin you shipping to poison brothers and sisters in New York and Newark and Chi-town?”

“The masses have many opiates,” Jud told him. “What do you care which ones, when you can make that work for you?”

“You're scum,” said Lisson.

“I'm a pragmatist,” said Jud. “You better be. It pays.”

“I don't want your death money!”

“Not
you:
your revolution. It's the sixties, Bro': flower power. Hell, in the fifties, French spies used opium to finance their war here, from the poppy fields in the Plain to the dens in Saigon. Called it Operation X. When the CIA found out, they got told to back off.”

“Off ain't where they backed,” snapped Lisson.

“I got growers in Burma with the Kuomintang Army your buddy Mao ran out of China,” said Jud. “If you protect our caravans to our airfields, we'll take it from there. You get cash. Plus.”

“Plus?”

“You get me as an asset,” said Jud. “You send me back—help me fake an escape. Maybe they'll make me a hero. I'll re-up. Get a command job with SOG—and do my business till Uncle Ho runs us out of Nam or I get bored. There won't be shit I don't see and know, and that bonus is worth more to you than cash.”