The Abduction (37 page)

He had his hand on the doorknob when Ben said, “You were a slick driver at Da Krong?”

The sheriff stopped dead in his tracks. His leathery face rotated around; he had a quizzical expression.

“On the wall,” Ben said.

The sheriff walked over and lifted a framed photo off its wall hook. “Me and my warrant officer. He came home in a body bag.” He paused, his eyes still on the photo; his rough fingers gently brushed dust from the glass. He cleared his throat and turned to Ben. “J. D. Johnson, captain, Marine Corps.”

“Ben Brice, colonel, Army Green Berets.”

12 Feb 71. Captain J. D. Johnson is piloting the UH-1D chopper transporting seven Marines to a battle zone near the Laos border in the Da Krong Valley. He’s flying lead slick in a V formation with four other birds. His .45-caliber sidearm hangs between his legs to protect his privates from ground fire. He’s running sixty knots at twelve hundred feet. He has done this hundreds of times and come home every time.

He spots the green smoke marking the landing zone. He brings the Huey down in a steep descent and hears the accompanying gunships firing rockets into the surrounding trees; they’re prepping the landing zone, running a racetrack loop over the LZ so that cover fire is continuous during troop deployment.

Another hot LZ.

He sees tracer rounds coming at his ship. His door gunner opens fire with the M-60. Thirty seconds to drop the troops and get the hell out. He comes in fast, flares the nose to slow his air speed, and hovers three feet off the ground as the troops un-ass the bird from both sides; there are no doors on these slicks. The all clear and he dips the nose to gain speed to pull out. Just as he clears the trees, the chopper explodes. When he wakes, he hears voices speaking Vietnamese.

Captain J. D. Johnson is a POW.

Night has descended over South Vietnam and he’s wondering if his warrant officer made it out alive. He’s bound and sitting in the corner of an earthen bunker carved out of the hillside; he took a bullet in his left leg. From his limited knowledge of Vietnamese, he gathers that a platoon will take the captured American to an NVA base camp in Laos tomorrow.

By the next night, he is in Laos; it’s the first night of a three-day march to the NVA base camp. He’s sitting up against a tree; his hands are bound behind him. His leg is broken and the wound is infected. He’s sweating profusely from the fever and his mind is getting clouded. Except for the guard sitting a few feet away, his captors are sleeping in gray hooches and hammocks strung between the trees, completely unconcerned that their American prisoner might attempt an escape.

J. D. Johnson, from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, never figured on dying in some damn jungle in Laos.

The guard suddenly slumps over without a sound; blood streams from his throat. J.D.’s hands fall; his bindings are cut. A face appears before him—
Jesus! A goddamned Indian!
He is lifted like he weighs fifty pounds instead of one-ninety and slung over a bare shoulder. They walk silently between two NVA soldiers snoring in hammocks.

All night they walk, his head bobbing at a smooth rhythm, his eyes seeing only the trail beneath the Indian’s bare feet as they travel through the jungle; his mind comes in and out of consciousness, wrapped in a blanket of fever.

When he wakes, dawn is breaking. As is the sky. A patch of blue up above. And an American voice beside him, calling for a Medevac: “I say again, Johnson, J. D., Marine …”

His vision is blurred; he shakes his head, but the fever grips him like a vice. Who are these people? He tries to focus on the American. He’s a soldier. He passes out again.

He comes to, the THUMP THUMP THUMP of a chopper coming out of the hole in the clouds, a red cross on a white square on the chopper’s nose: a U.S. Army Medevac. Tears come into his eyes. J. D. Johnson was not going to die in some damn jungle in Laos, at least not today.

He is lifted from the ground and the sound of the chopper grows louder. His face is not against the bare brown chest of the Indian but against the American’s fatigues. He sees the blades rotating above him and he hears more American voices—

“Goddamn, you’re the one they talk about! Green Beret colonel living in the jungle with the Indians! You’re a fucking legend!”

—and he’s being lifted into the chopper. He grabs the American’s fatigues, and with all the strength left in his body, he pulls his face next to the soldier’s chest, to his nametag, and he makes out a name he will never forget: BRICE.

“If you’re white and pissed off at the world, chances are you call Idaho home.”

The sheriff was leaning back in a squeaky swivel chair behind his metal desk; he had changed his mind and decided to talk with them now. Ben and John sat in metal chairs on the visitors’ side of the desk.

“State’s become a damn mecca for those people—white supremacists, skinheads, militias, neo-Nazis—every goddamn kook in the country’s moving to Idaho, living on a mountain and hating everyone don’t look like them.” He shook his head. “People used to come here to fish.”

He handed the photos back to Ben.

“We got a bunch of them living around here, Colonel, but I’ve never seen no one looks like these two. The ones left stay up in the mountains for the most part. They don’t bother us, we don’t bother them.”

Ben gestured at the Boundary County map on the wall behind the sheriff.

“Any idea where their camps are?”

The sheriff stood and stepped to the map.

“Thirteen, fourteen years ago, before they had real terrorists to deal with, FBI was waging war on these guys. They set up a command post here, flew surveillance over the mountains looking for their camps. Thirteen hundred square miles in Boundary Country, lots of room to hide. The Feds identified four camps east of town, seven west, all off unpaved roads. This time of year, you need a four-wheel-drive to get up the muddy roads ’cause of the snow melt. And even if you get up there, you won’t see much from the road. The camps are up in the mountains, blocked out by the trees. If your girl’s in one of those camps, finding her ain’t gonna be easy. And getting her down damn near impossible.”

The sheriff put a finger on the map.

“FBI tried to bring one of those guys off Ruby Ridge in ninety-two, got a marshal killed. Brought in the Hostage Rescue Team even though there weren’t no hostages, put eleven snipers on that mountain, told them to shoot on sight. They did. Killed the guy’s wife. Shot her in the head while she was holding her baby. Government ended up paying him three million bucks.”

“Any place they hang out when they come to town?”

“Place just south of town, Rusty’s Tavern and Grill, but don’t eat the food. Beer joint. Some gals. Rough place, but we leave ’em alone long as they don’t shoot each other.”

Ben stood. “Sheriff, I appreciate your time. My apologies to your wife.”

“Thirty-four years, she’s used to me being late.”

The two middle-aged men, soldiers of a forgotten war, shook hands; they considered embracing but resisted. Ben and John were at the door when the sheriff spoke again.

“Colonel, if you don’t mind me asking, what would a couple Nazi-wannabes living in Idaho want with your granddaughter?”

Ben paused a moment, then he said, “To settle an old score.”

The sheriff studied Ben; he nodded. “One more thing, Colonel. Most of those fellas are just dumb-ass white boys couldn’t spell cat if you spotted them c and t, lucky just to find their way home at night. But there’s a few who ain’t just playing soldier. You go looking for your girl, you be ready.”

“I am.”

A slight smile from the sheriff. “I expect you are. And Colonel … thanks. For back then.”

Ben nodded. And a thought occurred to him. “Sheriff, there wouldn’t be a chopper for hire around here, would there?”

“Matter a fact, boy down by Naples got one. Dicky, we use him for search-and-rescues when a tourist gets lost hiking in the woods. I’ll give him a call.” He turned to his phone but stopped. “Tell you what. Meet me here at oh-six-hundred, we’ll drive down there together. Little air recon might do me good.”

“Oh-six-hundred,” Ben said. “We’ll be here.”

“Check your time, Colonel. We’re on Pacific time up here.”

The sheriff stood, walked over, and opened the door.

“You know, Colonel, one good thing about you hunting your girl without the Feds.”

“What’s that?”

“You don’t gotta worry about them getting her killed.”

“You just missed him,” the store owner said, “not half an hour. Boy didn’t know a tampon from a Tootsie Roll.”

He laughed at his own words. The General Store on Main Street had been in his family for over fifty years. It was a place where you could buy food, fertilizer, clothes, and tampons.

“Like a boy asking for rubbers. Hands me a little piece of paper with the name on it”—the owner leaned down under the counter; Ben could hear him rustling in a trash can—“yep, here it is.”

He bumped his head on the underside of the counter, then he reappeared, rubbing his bare scalp with one hand and holding out a scrap of white paper with the other. Two words had been written on the paper—
Tampax tampons
—and under the words a happy face had been drawn.

“That’s her handwriting,” Ben said.

“And her happy face,” John said.

The owner ducked his head slightly and said, “Am I bleeding?”

Ben shook his head. “Can you describe him?”

“Blond hair, blue eyes, about your height but stockier, maybe twenty-five. I see him a half-dozen times a year. Strange bird.”

“How so?”

“What he buys—girls’ clothes, pink pajamas, Barbie doll …”

“Gracie doesn’t do dolls,” Ben said.

John gritted his teeth: “Bagbiter.”

“No, he didn’t want a bag. Stuck the box under his coat like it was a girlie magazine and left … say, that reminds me. Few months back, he bought a
Fortune
magazine. I remember ’cause he didn’t look like an investor. May still have the one.” He bent over again and rummaged around below the counter. “Yeah, here it is.” He came back up with the
Fortune
magazine.
He looked at the cover picture of John and then at John. “Say, that looks just like you.” He glanced back at the cover. “That is you.” He opened the magazine to the story with the Brice family portrait. “I was standing right here reading your story when he just snatched it out of my hands.”

“Notice which way he drove out of town?”

“North. He was parked right there where you are. Pulled out and headed north, sure did.”

Ben thanked the owner for his time, and he and John turned to leave.

“Oh, one more thing,” the owner said. They turned back. “He’s missing a finger. This one.”

The owner was pointing at the ceiling with the index finger of his right hand.

Ben and John stepped outside. They were canvassing the town, showing the photos to every business owner on Main Street. The general store was their fourth stop.

Ben said, “He didn’t buy tampons for a dead girl.”

“Tampons,” John said. “I didn’t think she was there yet.”

“She’s not. She just wanted him in town.”

“Why?”

“Because she knew I’d … we’d come for her. She’s a smart girl, John.” Ben faced north; the glow of the sunset was dimming now. “And she’s out there somewhere.”

Gracie hadn’t heard noises from the other room for hours now, since Junior had knocked on her bedroom door and begged her to come out so he could explain why they had to kill the president. She had refused, so he had said he was going into town to get her “girl stuff.” She had heard the truck roar off. Junior was gone. Now was her chance to escape. If she could escape, Ben wouldn’t have to drink more of his whiskey to forget killing Junior and Jacko.

She moved everything from in front of the door to her bedroom. She cracked the door and peeked out. The big room was empty. She came out slowly.

“Hi, sweetie.”

Gracie jumped at the voice behind her. She whirled around. A big fat ugly man was now standing between her and the door to her bedroom: the man that killed Bambi. His breath smelled of alcohol; his body odor could stop traffic.

“You ever touch one of these?” the fat man asked.

Gracie looked down to his hands cupped by his crotch. He was holding his penis. It wasn’t all wrinkly and limp like Dad’s that day in his bathroom; it was purple and swollen up like it was going to pop. It was plenty big enough to hurt a girl her age. She recalled Ms. Boyd saying something about erections, that a boy’s penis becomes hard in order to penetrate a girl’s—

“You touch this bod and Junior’s gonna kill you!”

“Well, Junior ain’t here right now, is he?”

She now recalled Ms. Boyd’s advice from sex ed class. She pointed a finger at the man and said, “No! And no means no!”

He just laughed. “Not to me it don’t.”

She made a mental note to tell Ms. Boyd that “no means no” doesn’t work so well with big fat ugly men on a mountain in Idaho. Finally, she recalled her mother’s advice:
If a boy doesn’t take no for an answer, kick him in the balls.
Gracie assumed that advice applied to big fat ugly men. So she kicked him in his balls, her best Tae Kwon Do kick with the hiking boots—but the fat man only yelped and waved his hand around. From the look he gave her, she had only succeeded in making him really mad. There was only one thing to do now.