Even though duty in Vietnam had little respect for the Monday-through-Friday workweek typical of life “back in the world,” a slang expression for civilization in America that even Jon Kirkwood found himself frequently using as he passed the midway point of his thirteen-month combat tour, Lieutenant Colonel Prunella had made great efforts to make duty in his shop as much as possible like the weekly routines Stateside. He believed that the more things he could keep consistent with those at home, the Marines under his supervision would encounter less stress in their lives and duties.

This week, since the Fourth of July fell on a Thursday, the colonel had closed shop on Friday, too, and gave all hands four days off, like most people back home in America would enjoy. Kirkwood thought about how much he really liked Colonel Prunella, even though he kept himself removed from the daily grind of First MAW Law, and spent the last several weeks mostly on the tennis court with Movie Star or the wing adjutant, who had won a national tennis championship in college and whom Prunella had only beaten in the game once in six months.

The captain sighed as he thought of the good boss leaving in days, and Dicky Doo with Charlie Heyster at his side taking over. As Kirkwood rolled on his back, he could hear Michael Carter snoring below his self-styled altar to his martyred political heroes, who now included black-bunting-draped photographs of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy alongside those of Pope Paul VI and Bobby’s big brother President John F. Kennedy.

Carter had barely finished his wall of martyrs rearrangement and gotten the objects balanced with the addition of Martin Luther King’s photograph, and had finally stopped crying every time he knelt at his footlocker to pray, when word of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination flashed on American Forces Vietnam Radio. The devout stick man began a prayer marathon on the morning of June 6, Vietnam time, as soon as news of the younger Kennedy brother’s early-morning shooting on June 5 in a Los Angeles hotel by an Arab terrorist had reached that side of the world. The Boston defense lawyer held a rosary in his hand, chanting constant prayers, until the next day, when word finally came that Bobby had at last died without regaining consciousness. The lawyer refused to eat, sleep, or work while Kennedy clung to life, devoting his full attention to prayer for the mortally wounded presidential candidate and his family.

As Kirkwood lay on his back, looking at the wall of smiling, dead politicians looming beneath Carter’s wooden crucifix, across the barracks from him, where the stick man snored below the garish scene, and as Terry O’Connor busily scratched a fountain pen across stationery with a light-blue map of Vietnam in the upper right corner and a gold Marine Corps emblem centered at the top, seated at the little desk by the window, writing a letter to Vibeke Ahlquist, the slamming of the front doors startled the daydreaming lawyer from his daze.

“Carter, you maggot! I’ve got the goods on you now!” Charlie Heyster shouted as he stomped down the aisle, where the blond man now sat up on his bunk and rubbed his sleepy eyes.

Jon Kirkwood swung his stocking feet to the floor and cut off the major-select before he could lay his hands on stick man.

“Whoa!” Kirkwood said, putting out his arm, stopping the enraged lead prosecutor and soon-to-be interim military justice officer for the wing. “What goods? As this Marine’s attorney, I advise him to remain on his rack and keep his mouth shut.”

“Oh, get out of my way!” Heyster snapped, and pushed Jon Kirkwood backward.

“That’s assault,” Kirkwood said, and looked at Terry O’Connor, who stood and walked to the side of his pal. “I have witnesses. You’ve had it now.”

“You’ll feel like joking when Major Dickinson writes Miss Carter up for robbing marijuana from the evidence locker, and you two join him in the brig for your complicity,” Heyster said, and scowled at the trio.

“What are you talking about, Captain?” Michael Carter said, combing his tangle of unruly blond hair with his fingers as he spoke, and yawned out a breeze of bad-smelling sleep breath when he finished asking his question.

“Major Dickinson has launched an internal investigation after he discovered a large number of kilogram-sized bags of marijuana missing from the evidence locker,” Heyster said, looking directly at Carter. “We know that someone from inside took the dope, because the only evidence taken were those bundles associated with cases that we have completed, and were now awaiting disposal by the provost marshal. The major has focused his search on the enlisted troops working in the office, such as the colonel’s driver. However, I suspect culprits elsewhere.”

“Namely us?” O’Connor said, smiling. “You sure Dicky Doo didn’t peddle the stuff on the side, and now wants to pin blame on someone unknown so he can clear the books with CID? Sounds mighty suspicious and very convenient to me.”

“It would take a low-life scum like you to suggest that a regular Marine officer might commit such an act, Captain O’Connor,” Heyster said, and then looked at Michael Carter, who had reclined on his bunk and blinked lazily up at the men. “Look at him. He’s all dulled out on reefer right now. How much you smoke of it, Michael, and how much did you sell?”

“You have no idea how stupid you sound, Charlie, do you,” Jon Kirkwood said, looking at Carter and then back at the belligerent lead prosecutor.

Heyster glared at the dark-haired captain.

“What motivates a person to sell dope?” Kirkwood asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Money, of course,” Heyster responded, and then looked at Terry O’Connor, who stood next to his taller friend and cast a sarcastic smirk at the prosecutor.

“Michael Carter’s family owns half of the office buildings in downtown Boston, and several more on Park Avenue in New York City,” O’Connor bubbled, blinking his eyes and smiling at Heyster. “Stick man counts his money by the millions of dollars. His butler makes more than the three of us put together.”

“So maybe he rips off the evidence to get high, and gives the rest of it away to those lunatic friends of yours,” Heyster said, jutting out his jaw. “That character Lobo, I’ll bet he would smoke a joint. Even Buck Taylor, too. He’s pretty radical, now that I think about him. Oh, yes, and let’s not leave out that bleeding-heart sister, Mike Schuller, trying to reform inmate life at the brig.”

“You’re reaching way out of bounds with your stupid accusations on this one, Charlie,” Kirkwood said, and took the major-select by the arm and began leading him toward the barracks door. “Now, crawl back under your rock. Oh, and say hello to Chopper if you see him.”

“Fucking assholes! I’ll get you, Kirkwood, for that cockroach trick. Don’t think that I’ve let it slip from my mind,” Heyster said, stomping out of the barracks.

Jon Kirkwood smiled and shrugged at the two captains.

“Well, with that comment, I guarantee you that he believes you’re the one who put the roach in his tobacco,” O’Connor said, walking to the foot of his rack and sitting down.

“He’s never gotten over it, has he,” Kirkwood said. “Even Dicky Doo eventually gets past the harassment. The day he got back from Okinawa and sat in his chair, and the arms fell off on the floor, I thought he would explode. He got over it.”

“Well, I think that the drawers crashing out of his desk, and the one entire pedestal collapsing to the floor under it had a lot to do with him getting past the chair,” O’Connor said and laughed. “He still hasn’t figured out the electrical problem! Lights flicker in his lamps and he yells at poor Derek Pride to call base maintenance.”

“Dicky Doo as staff judge advocate and Charlie Heyster at his left hip is really scary, gentlemen, all joking aside,” Michael Carter said, standing up and putting on his pants. “I think I will go to the club and have a few drinks before the party, just to get myself in a better mood now, and try to get this internal investigation off my mind. I find it deeply disturbing.”

“Hold on and we’ll tag along,” O’Connor said, walking to his wall locker.

“I’d still like to catch Tommy McKay before tonight, so we can have that last good talk,” Kirkwood said, looking at his watch.

“You know, Jon, he may not show up at all. Not even for his own going-away party,” O’Connor said, shrugging as he buttoned his shirt. “You’ve always got tomorrow, the weekend, and all day Monday to catch him and have that talk before he flies out Tuesday. Besides, we may see our buddy Wayne and that sweet-looking Gwen Ebberhardt at the club. He said he had to meet her in town, at the hotel by the consulate, and that they would probably drop by the Officers’ Club before the luau.”

“True,” Kirkwood said, and picked up his shirt off the corner of his wall locker door. “I had almost forgotten that she had lain over here this week, and will fly out with McKay and the colonel. Will Tarzan and Jane be back at China Beach this weekend?”

“They’re committed to the party tonight, but with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday wide open, my bet’s with yours and China Beach,” O’Connor said and then laughed. “I want to see Dicky Doo and Stanley when she shows up.”

Michael Carter frowned and bit his fingernail, thinking.

“What’s wrong?” O’Connor asked the tall, skinny man, putting his arm over his shoulder.

“I know it’s been a few months ago, but didn’t Wayne say that his wife had told the major and Stanley on that flight to Okinawa that her name was Crookshank, and that Gwen Ebberhardt worked on another crew?” Carter said, still gnawing on his finger.

“Oh, my! That’s right!” O’Connor said and laughed. “Wayne had his weekly MARS [Military Affiliate Radio System] telephone call with her right after that shitty flight, and said then that he hoped she and Dicky Doo never met in a social setting, because she had lied to the major about who she was.”

“Well, you know he has always blamed the old papa-san in the coffee shop at the passenger terminal for his and Stanley’s shitty ordeal,” Kirkwood said, and shrugged, chuckling. “Suspecting a flight attendant of intentionally giving him the trots would be a reach for him, I think, especially when Dicky Doo has the local Vietnamese so convenient to persecute. He’ll probably just blow off the identity thing to female fickleness, and her not wanting to get familiar with him and Stanley while she was working. You know, guys like those two have built-in rejection acceptance when it comes to attractive women.”

“That’s right, he still insists that the old guy that does the cooking over there is a Viet Cong spy,” O’Connor said with a laugh, walking toward the door with his two friends. “I think he still has the counterintelligence guys pestering that poor fellow at least once a week.”

“Stinky sure has it in for that unfortunate old fart at the gedunk,” Kirkwood said, pulling open the screen door. “I thought I would bust a gut laughing when Buck Taylor relayed what his buddy who made that same flight had told him about Tufts squirting his drawers full and smelling up the entire airplane. Halfway to Okinawa, and he shits all over himself. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

“Stinky Stanley Tufts,” Carter said, laughing. “I like that nickname almost as much as the one the troops gave that cockroach that flew out of Heyster’s tobacco, and they now keep fed and protected in Major Dickinson’s office. Holy cow! I thought Charlie would uncork one and sock you when you told him to say hello to Chopper.”

“Press on, men,” he would say. “Suck it up. That’s what Marines do. Come home carrying your shield or lying on it. We live by the Spartan ethic.”

“Fuck the Spartans,” Fryer had said to Captain Holt one evening after he overheard four of the men in his second squad plotting to frag the captain and Major Rich. “We don’t operate as a team no more. We zombies now days. He keep going to the head of the line for every operation that nobody else want. Shit too dangerous, so leave it to Major Rich to volunteer us. We ain’t seen a day off in three months. Not one day off!”

Then two days ago, twelve men in his platoon died in an ambush that left Echo Company in total disarray, bringing the unit’s body count to fifty-four brothers killed in action. Then this morning two more from his platoon died after the major had ordered the company back into the same area the same day they had bugged out, facing an enemy regiment with vastly superior numbers, and taking them on again within hours of their retreat, with no improved firepower or additional supporting arms. Michael Fryer and Captain Holt both agreed that Major Rich had decided to put them right back in the meat grinder, without rest or even a meal, as a harsh lesson for their previous failure. He had looked bad at regiment, and was determined to wipe out that blot before anyone could write the score in the book.

This time Echo Company killed seventy-six North Vietnamese soldiers in the regiment that they took on, surprising the enemy in an insane counterattack while licking their wounds, and Sergeant Fryer lost two friends from his platoon.

Staggering from fatigue after so many days in battle, the black sergeant wearily marched his Marines through the wire at Fire Base Ryder: the last platoon from Echo Company to reach home. The sergeant felt certain they would find a hot meal welcoming them back, and a congratulatory greeting from the battalion commander for kicking serious ass. Yet what he found was Captain Holt standing atop a bunker with the first sergeant, going over a list of housekeeping items, and the men hard at work with picks, shovels, and hundreds of empty sandbags. Several cases of C rations sat on a pallet by the skipper’s command post tent: Echo Company’s dinner.

“What the fuck, sir?” Fryer said, dropping his pack by the bunker where the captain stood.

“Division and Three-MAF got the commanding generals heading our way first thing in the morning,” Holt said, shaking his head at the tired sergeant. “Major Rich has everybody turned to improving positions, policing the area, polishing brass. You name it and we got to do it.”

“This ain’t right, sir,” Fryer said to the captain, and then looked at First Sergeant Eddie Lyle, who shared in the sergeant’s frustration but agreed with Captain Jesse Holt that arguing with the battalion commander would only leave them having their virility put to question by Major Sidney Rich.

Along with his hardness on the men, Rich allowed himself no slack either. He hardly slept, and had no qualms of walking out to the forward listening posts in the middle of the night, just to see if he could catch a Marine dozing off. He would march and never lose step, even with blood oozing out the air vents in the sides of his jungle boots.

“Spartans recognize no pain. We block it from our consciousness. We endure, and we win,” he would boast with his blistered feet soaking in a pot of salt water turned pink with his blood from the long march.

“Sergeant Fryer, I know what you feel,” First Sergeant Lyle told the Marine NCO, wrapping an arm around his neck and walking him back to his platoon area. “The skipper and I talk about that insane fuck all the time. There’s nothing we can do.”

“I can talk to the major,” Fryer said, stopping and then looking back at Captain Holt.

“He’ll humiliate you and make you feel worse,” Holt said, jumping off the bunker and walking to where the first sergeant and the platoon sergeant stood.

“So be it, then,” Fryer said, taking off his helmet and wiping his forehead with his bare arm. “Two-thirds of my platoon is way past due for some R and R, and the rest are coming due now. I know the whole company ain’t much different.”

“We’re all due for a trip to China Beach at least,” Holt said and shook his head. “No way he gonna stand us down for even a day. Hell, man! He ain’t even giving us a break this afternoon for the Fourth of July!”

“I want to just ask him, sir, anyway,” Fryer said, taking a deep breath. “I owe my men to at least see me going to bat for them.”

“If you’re willing to take an ass-whipping so your troops feel better, then more power to you,” the captain said, and put his arm around Fryer. “I admire your spirit. Give it a shot, but don’t count on a damned thing but bitter disappointment.”

Michael Fryer walked back to his platoon area with a renewed spring in his step, carrying his pack and his rifle in his hands. After he delegated the housekeeping duties to his three squad leaders, he washed the dirt off his face and trudged with his rifle slung on his shoulder to the battalion commander’s tent, with Captain Holt at his side.

“Sir, I have a Marine who wishes to speak to you,” the company commander said as he stepped inside the major’s command post tent, where Rich busily drew a new battle plan on a plastic overlay he had spread atop a tactical map.

“Make it quick, Captain Holt,” the major said, looking up from his work. “Head-shed brass coming down tomorrow to take a look at us. We’re the hottest battalion in either division. We got more body count than some regiments, in fact.”

“Does that mean we have some relief in sight?” the captain asked, hoping that the answer might negate Sergeant Fryer’s request.

“We have a war to fight, sir,” the major said with a frown. “No rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.”

“Our men, they’ve been in the bush too long, Major. They have more grass time than most guys with six months edge on them. They need some R and R now. At least a day or two off,” Fryer said, stepping in front of his captain, who gladly faded back through the tent’s doorway and disappeared down the hill. The black Marine sergeant looked at the major’s expressionless face and waited for a response.

“That it?” the major asked. “I thought you had something that was different to convince me that your men deserved more than any other platoon in the battalion. Look around, Sergeant Fryer. Tell me if I’m wrong, but do you see any squad that isn’t bone skinny and dogged to death? We’ve been the meat hanging on the end of the stick, and there’s no relief in sight.

“If I had my way, I’d move this whole battalion off the line and down to China Beach for two weeks, or a month. Every man deserves it. Not just your men.

“Remember this, Sergeant. We’re Marines. As Marines it’s the mission. The mission and only the mission. Men die. Privates and lance corporals die first and most often. That’s the way it is. We spend their lives to accomplish the mission. We don’t ask why. We just do it.

“Until regiment changes our mission, we will keep on here. We will patrol and we will bust our asses, and your buddies and my Marines will die. We don’t have time to send people off to get drunk and screwed. As long as I’m in command, we will fight this war my way. The Marine Corps way. All of us together and with every ounce of muscle we have.

“I’m not letting up on you or anyone in this battalion. Got that? There will be no R and R. There will be no free time. We have a mission, and that’s all that should concern you. Now get out of here. I know that you have more important matters to attend.”

Fryer stood at attention while fine beads of sweat glittered on his face like diamonds on black satin. It was as though he spoke to a rock wall. Nothing seemed to daunt the major. Nothing seemed to clue him in that the men were near the end of their ropes. Didn’t he know that he can push men only so far? Didn’t he realize that to accomplish the mission the team had to work together? Didn’t he know that for the team to work, they had to be motivated, and not just hung out like meat on a stick?

Fryer started to excuse himself and leave, but his frustration kept him in front of the major.

“Sir,” Fryer managed to summon up from his dry throat, “can I ask you something, and not have you go off on me like I mean disrespect or something?”

“If it’s disrespectful, don’t say it, Sergeant Fryer,” the major cautioned. “Just because you excuse yourself by saying no disrespect intended doesn’t mean it isn’t disrespectful. You be the judge. I’ll listen, but maintain your bearing.”

“Yes, sir,” Fryer said firmly. “Sir, I wonder if the major is not aware of the great deal of frustration and bad morale among the men?”

“We’re Marines, Sergeant,” the major growled through clenched teeth in a voice that rose in both firmness and volume. “We don’t quit. Discipline. Remember, it is discipline that keeps us tough. Keeps us alive. Discipline! Spartan discipline!”

The major’s face became flushed red as he glared at Fryer, who stood locked at attention, afraid even to blink. The tension made every muscle in the major’s face and arms stand out hard, and as he spoke, he tightened both of his fists bloodless white, pressing them down on the tabletop, where he worked on the tactical map and overlay that placed battalion positions, lines of departure, and points of coordination for a battle he had planned.

“If there is a morale problem among your troops,” the major said, continuing his angry volley of words, “I would suggest disciplining the cry-babies who cause the problem. That’s leadership, Sergeant Fryer. Reward those who deserve rewards. Discipline those who do not hack it. Make them tough. Marines, Sergeant. Marines! Think tough. Get tough. We’re at war!

“Now, I’ve heard what you have to say. You know my thoughts on the subject. The men will get R and R when we stand down from this position. It may take weeks or months, but I expect every man to pull the load, do his work here, and keep the patrols sharp.”

“Yes, sir,” Fryer said, feeling hopelessly frustrated. He knew that R and R was normally handled on an individual rotation, not unit by unit. He knew that there would be no R and R.

He wanted to tell the major what he really thought. What he knew to be true. What the men were all saying. He felt like telling the major, “Fuck your success. Fuck your promotions. Fuck the body count. Fuck the mission!”

Fryer knew that the major was making big points at regimental headquarters and at division. He knew because his men did not live in a vacuum. They heard the talk that filtered in with the couriers who made the run to LZ Ryder from Da Nang, where the commanding generals watched this battalion and bragged about Major Sidney Rich. His Second Battalion registered more kills and more enemy contact than any other battalion in either division, or in the entire American contingent of ground forces in Vietnam, for all he knew. The sergeant understood that could only mean big points for the major, and Fryer also knew that those points cost lives and the sanity of his men.

He felt like saying, “Fuck you, Major. Fuck this war and all the fucking brass and ribbons that go with it.”

However, Michael Fryer did not say a word. He briskly wished the major good day, followed with a “By your leave, sir,” a crisp about-face, and a rapid departure while the battalion sergeant major stood next to the tent flap, holding it open.

The frustrated sergeant had walked nearly all the way back to his platoon’s position when he stopped dead in his tracks. He could not go on. He could not see another day of the major’s hell. How could he face his men? How could he tell them that the major had points to make at division? How could he say, as the major had said, “We’re Marines. We’re tough. The mission, men. The mission! Suck it up. Be like the Spartans.”

“Cheap-ass talk. That’s all he is. Cheap-ass talk,” Fryer shouted as he wheeled about and unslung his M16 rifle. “Fuck the mission. Fuck the major.”

Reaching into a pouch that hung on his web belt, Michael Fryer pulled out a magazine loaded with eighteen 5.56-millimeter shells taped to another equally loaded magazine. He jammed it into the rifle and slammed its bolt home behind the first round.

“Major, oh, Major,” he began to say as he briskly marched across the compound to where the small command post tent stood, its flaps dropped shut.

“Major, oh, Major,” he chanted rhythmically with each step. “Major, oh, Major. Major, oh, Major.”

As the angry sergeant walked, he gained momentum. Each time his boot heel struck the dusty ground, he picked up speed in his march. Longer and longer strides. Louder and louder he called out, “Major, oh, Major!”

Several Marines down the hill from the battalion commander’s tent had worked most of the day digging a bunker. They stopped filling sandbags when they heard Fryer shouting, “Major, oh, Major!”

When they saw him raise his M16 to his shoulder, they wasted no time diving deep into the hole they had spent the better part of the day digging.

The first burst of gunfire sent Marines scrambling for cover at nearly every corner of the combat base. By the time anyone realized that the loud commotion came from Fryer shooting into the battalion commander’s tent, the angry Marine had emptied the first magazine and quickly turned it over, sent the bolt home on the next round, and began to fire again, flipping the rifle’s selector switch to full automatic.

“Major, oh, Major!” Fryer cried out, shouting and sobbing as he shot into the tent. “Why do you fuck with the troops like you do?”

Billowing dust shrouded Sidney Rich’s command post tent. The crash of breaking glass and flying metal accompanied the crack of Michael Fryer’s rifle report as he unloaded his weapon into the battalion commander’s dusty green shelter.

Before the angry sergeant could jam another full magazine into his rifle, First Sergeant Eddie Lyle tackled Michael Fryer and sent him tumbling headlong into the hard-packed earth outside the major’s tent. The first sergeant took Fryer’s rifle and left the sobbing Marine lying on the ground, flat on his back, completely broken.

“Boy!” Lyle said to Fryer, “you’re damned lucky that nobody was in that tent!”

An ashen pale battalion commander stepped through the crowd of Marines who now circled Sergeant Fryer, who still lay on the ground, crying in deep distress.

“I went to take a shit!” the major exclaimed. “That crazy bastard would have killed me!”

Major Rich looked at the sergeant major, the first sergeant, and then at Captain Jesse Holt, who had run back up the hill at the sound of the first rounds fired. The distraught battalion commander then shouted his orders at the dumbfounded captain.

“Get that black son of a bitch out of here tonight. I want him in the Da Nang brig immediately!” Rich bellowed.

She had told Wayne to go ahead with the boys when they finished their drinks in the club. Gwen had to powder her nose while her husband, Terry O’Connor, Jon Kirkwood, and Michael Carter sauntered out back to join the festivities.

The six-foot-tall redhead loved to make an entrance. Wayne knew it, so he didn’t wait to escort her to the backyard, where the crowd of nearly two hundred hungry, thirsty, and horny Marines mingled and sipped booze while their luau pig roasted in a pall of thick white smoke inside the O Club’s barbeque grill, made of two fifty-five-gallon drums welded together.

“She ain’t wearing any bra, man!” Happy Pounds crowed as the woman swung past him and Movie Star. “Got them perky nips jumping right through that sweater! You see that grillwork? Like a ’57 Cadillac.”

“Shut up, Happy, she heard everything you just said,” Movie Star snapped, stamping his foot. “Now she’s gonna think we’re all fucked-up perverted and shit, like you. That’s Lieutenant Ebberhardt’s wife, you dip.”

Hearing both lance corporals’ words, Gwen looked over her shoulder and gave the two young jerks a big smile. Then she sashayed a beeline straight to the small circle of officers where Major Dudley L. Dickinson stood, holding court with Charlie Heyster, Stanley and Manley Tufts, and the Brothers B.

Special for the occasion, Gwen had slipped on a thin, white, tight-fitting, midthigh-length miniskirt, a bright yellow, lightweight cotton-knit tank top with a deep plunging back and strings for straps over her shoulders, and white sandals that had crisscrossed leather thongs that laced up her calves, well past her ankles. Gold-rimmed sunglasses covered her emerald eyes, but she took the sunglasses off when she said hello to Dicky Doo and the boys, whose speech she stopped cold as soon as they saw her.

“Major Dickinson, so good to see you!” Gwen said, flashing her smile at the portly Marine with his salt-and-pepper flattop hair. “Captain Tufts, so nice to see you again, too.”

“Why, Miss Crookshank,” the mojo said, putting out his hand for her to shake, “what a pleasure to see you. Which one of these animals persuaded you to come slumming in our little garden party?”

“Oh, my husband, of course,” Gwen said, and pointed to the group of men where Wayne Ebberhardt stood, smiling.

While Dicky Doo furrowed his brow and squinted to see which man had brought the beautiful woman to the legal office’s luau, Stanley Tufts slipped away from his group and found an obscure spot at the end of the bar where he could avoid the woman who had seen him shit his pants.

“You mean, one of those goons?” Dickinson said, pointing at the group and then looking back at the tall, shapely redhead.

“Yes, that good-looking goon right there in the middle, waving back at me,” Gwen said, smiling and waving her hand at Wayne.

“Why, you told me that Lieutenant Ebberhardt’s wife worked on another flight crew,” Dickinson said, frowning at the woman.

“Yes, and I am sorry for lying to you, Major,” Gwen said, hooking her arm in his and giving him a squeeze. “I hope you’ll understand that I had so many people to attend, and I just didn’t have the luxury to spend any time chatting with passengers. So I fibbed a white lie, and I am sorry. You’re such a nice man, too.”

“Oh, I understand how things can be,” Dickinson said with a smile, puffing his chest and holding in his round stomach.

“That poor captain, where did he go?” Gwen said, looking for Stanley, who now hid at the bar.

The shorter Tufts brother had no desire to speak to the woman. He felt too ashamed to endure the humiliation of talking to her while knowing she had seen him at the worst moment of his life. He downed two fast beers while he watched his brother bouncing on his toes and bobbing his head, talking to the flirtatious stewardess.

“I am so happy to meet you!” Gwen said to Manley Tufts, shaking his hand and holding on to it while she talked to him. “Why, I would never have guessed that Stanley is your brother. You sure you have the same mothers?”

Manley laughed, and Stanley fumed as he watched the embarrassing show. He knew they talked about him. He could see his name on his brother’s lips, and then the finger came up and pointed right at him.

“There you are! Come here!” Gwen shouted at Stanley, who now blushed beet red.

At first he tried to pretend he didn’t see her, but she kept shouting at him, so he had to look. Then he smiled and halfheartedly waved back at her.

“What’s the matter with your brother, Captain?” the redhead asked Manley Tufts and looked back at Stanley, who kept leaning against the bar and now fumbled with a napkin.

“Let me check,” the taller Tufts said, leaving Gwen with Dicky Doo and walking to the bar, where his brother lurked.

With the afternoon sun disappearing beyond the western mountains, and bright orange beginning to bleed across the sky, Yamaguchi Ritter and his Angeles City Cowboys mounted their plywood stage and opened their show with the Bob Wills classic, “A Maiden’s Prayer.” Gwen Ebberhardt smiled at Major Dickinson and took his hand.

“I love this song!” she said, and began dragging the mojo to the center of the lawn in front of the band, where wide slabs of Masonite covered the grass as a makeshift dance floor. “Surely you know how to waltz.”

“Oh, barely,” Dickinson said as he proudly took the breathtaking flight attendant in his arms and began to count one-two-three as he stepped the waltz with her. As they circled, Gwen flashed a glance and triumphant smile at Wayne and the boys.

“You know, I would make her take a bath tonight, Wayne,” Terry O’Connor said with a laugh while looking at Gwen dancing with Dicky Doo.

“She’s out there dancing with that ape because of you, Captain O’Connor,” Wayne Ebberhardt said, shaking his head at the sight of his wife with the mojo. “Keep that in mind. The last thing all of us need is for that bubble-butt tub of shit to guess that she might have something to do with his and Stanley’s little brown blowout on the freedom bird.”

Stanley Tufts edged his way over to the group of defense lawyers and moved close to Wayne Ebberhardt.

“So this is your wife?” Tufts said, pulling a beer from the six-pack he had carried under his arm from the bar and handing the six-pack to the lieutenant.

“Why, Stinky, how nice of you to join us,” Terry O’Connor said, taking a beer from the shorter captain, too.

“Fuck you, O’Connor,” Stanley hissed, and grabbed the can back from the Marine. “Get your own beer. You have no heart, you know that?”

“Lighten up, Stanley,” Jon Kirkwood said, handing a beer to Terry O’Connor from his own six-pack.

“Wayne, she told you all about my accident, didn’t she,” Tufts said, looking at the lieutenant.

“No, Stanley,” Ebberhardt lied, “Gwen’s not that kind of person. Buck Taylor had a friend on that flight, and he told me. If anything, she felt very sorry for you. But as far as your accident on her flight goes, she has never said a word about it to anyone.”

Stanley Tufts smiled.

“Thanks, Wayne,” he said, and walked back to where Charlie Heyster stood, sucking on his pipe next to Manley and the Brothers B, watching Dicky Doo dancing a second Bob Wills number, “Faded Love,” with Gwen.

“Well, if it isn’t the jailer himself, Michael Schuller,” Terry O’Connor said, seeing the lieutenant from the brig walking across the grass with a fresh six-pack of Budweiser in one hand and chugging a just-opened extra he had gotten at the bar in his other paw.

“Seven beers at once, plan on a little combat drinking tonight, Mikie?” Jon Kirkwood said, slapping the newly arrived lieutenant across the back.

“This three-two shit takes a lot more than I can carry to do the job,” Schuller said, laughing. “Sure does make a fellow piss good, though.”

“Kind of a late start. What happened?” Kirkwood said, tapping the crystal of his wristwatch to emphasize the Marine’s tardiness to the festivities. “Your boss is over there drinking beside our boss. Has been for the better part of an hour. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Dewitt Webster, doesn’t that name just roll off your tongue like peanut butter fudge?”

“He’s not a bad sort,” Schuller said, looking at the provost marshal sipping mai tai cocktails with the staff judge advocate. “Got a late arrival and had to get him squared away. Scary tale with this one. A platoon sergeant, division Marine from down south, went over the edge, opened fire on his battalion commander’s tent.”

“I take it the tent was unoccupied at the time, since the word ‘murder’ didn’t creep into your commentary,” Kirkwood said, taking a sip from his beer.

“The CO had gone down to the privy, lucky for him,” Schuller said, crushing his empty beer can with his hand and opening a second one. “Still, they charged him with attempted murder, clapped him in irons, and fragged a helicopter to ferry him straight to Freedom Hill. The man’s first sergeant and captain came with him, and turned him over to our jailer. I say sad story because these guys all hugged like family when they said their good-byes.”

“Wow, that’s interesting,” O’Connor said, putting his arm around Mike Schuller’s shoulders and giving him a hug, too. “So a sergeant tries to murder the battalion commander and has his company CO and first shirt hugging him good-bye. Wonder if they would hug the guy their sergeant wanted to kill?”

“We just lock them in storage,” Schuller shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Speaking of locking men in storage,” Kirkwood said, narrowing his eyebrows at the lieutenant as he spoke, “I have a serious bone to pick with you. My client Donald T. Wilson, whom you have in pretrial confinement, has apparently joined the gang of convicted prisoners out in the yard these days. You know that is a major no-no, don’t you?”

“We only have so many monkey cages, Jon,” the brig officer said, defending his actions. “First you complained that we held him in solitary confinement, now you complain because he’s out in the general population.”

“It’s against regulations, first of all, Mikie, and secondly, it violates his constitutional rights, technically,” Kirkwood said, shaking his head at the lieutenant. “I’ve said it in the past and I will say it again: you guys need to set up a minimum-security compound for low-risk, pretrial inmates separate from the regular brig. Same goes for inmates convicted of these cockamamy infractions like disrespect and tardy to formation. Put these otherwise good Marines to work, and get them away from the really bad apples.”

“From your lips to God’s ear,” Schuller said, shaking his head and shrugging. “That makes too much sense! Colonel Webster even supports that notion, and so does Colonel Prunella. However, we have a chief of staff, and a bunch of wing and division colonels who subscribe to the same code of discipline that Dicky Doo espouses. Burn them all and let God sort them out.”

“You know I will complain about this situation at trial,” Kirkwood said, furrowing his brow and pressing his lips thin.

“Maybe the judge will order Three-MAF to do what you suggested with the minimum-security work compounds,” Schuller said, nodding at the captain. “We have correctional custody platoons at the recruit depots for similar low-risk personnel. Why not do it here?”

“I see talking to you about it is about as useful as me talking to O’Connor,” Kirkwood said, putting his hand on his buddy’s shoulder.

“Like I told you,” Schuller said and sighed, “Colonel Webster, Colonel Prunella, all of us who deal with criminal justice, we agree. Right now that brig is a powder keg, ready to blow. It just needs the right kind of spark to set off a disaster. We are doing our best, putting the high-risk, most dangerous people in the layered confinement areas and allowing the low-risk inmates, whether pretrial or posttrial, to mingle in the general population. Still, we have an increase in fights among the men, especially those provoked by racial tension. We break up the polarized groups when we see them form, but we’re busting at the seams and we can only do so much.”

While Michael Schuller talked about the worsening conditions at Freedom Hill, Charles Heyster and his shadow, Stanley Tufts, joined the circle of defense lawyers.

Seeing the lead prosecutor and his Sancho sidekick sliding quietly into the defense section’s discussion group, Terry O’Connor raised the red flag for his mates, making a comment about the pipe that Heyster held clamped in his teeth, sucking with an irritating whistle.

“You know, it must be that we’re going to get a flood of a rainstorm,” O’Connor proclaimed, craning his neck and surveying the evening sky.

“What makes you believe that?” Michael Carter said, looking at the sky, too, and seeing only the purple and orange of a midsummer sunset, with no clue of rain in sight.

“Observe, if you will, my dear man,” O’Connor then said, pointing at Charles Heyster. “The pigs have put sticks in their mouths. A clear indication of heavy rain.”

“Heavy bullshit is more like it,” Charlie Heyster snapped back, taking the pipe from his teeth and shoving it in his pocket.

“A word with you, Miss Carter,” Heyster then said, taking Michael Carter by the arm and causing him to slosh sloe gin fizz out of his glass.

“Hold on,” Kirkwood said, taking Heyster’s hand away from Carter’s arm. “Anything you say to Mikie, you say in front of his attorney: me.”

“This isn’t about anything important,” Heyster said, grabbing Carter by the arm again.

“Wait, damn it,” Carter said, and pulled away from the major-select’s grip. “You say what you need to tell me in front of my friends and colleagues. I keep no secrets from them.”

Charlie Heyster rolled his eyes and looked at the circle of Wayne Ebberhardt, Mike Schuller, Terry O’Connor, and Jon Kirkwood. Then in the corner of his eye he also caught a glimpse of T. D. McKay ambling across the grass toward them, with Buck Taylor and Lobo at his sides.

“Captain Carter, congratulations, you’ve finally won a case,” Heyster said and shook his head. Stanley Tufts shook his head, too, mirroring his senior partner.

“I have?” Carter exclaimed and spread a smile across his pink-tinted yellow teeth.

“Well, yes, in a way. Yes, you’ve won a case,” Heyster sighed, and then took a deep breath. “The Corporal James Gillette case.”

“But I lost that hands down,” Carter said, frowning. “The jury found him guilty, unanimously.”

“Right,” Heyster said with a laugh. “Your defense of momentary insanity because the chick had a dick did not quite fly. However, powers greater than ours have intervened and have acquitted Corporal Gillette.”

“The bomb dump fire, right?” O’Connor said and laughed. “Michael, the bomb dump over by First Division CP. When it took a rocket attack last week, the fire burned the legal admin office at division, too. Major Dickinson must have sent our overflow transcription work to division legal. Your court record went up in smoke, right, Charlie?”

Heyster bowed his head and shrugged.

“Yes, that and a deposition we took from this rat fink down at Chu Lai who rolled over on some dope dealers,” Heyster said, shaking his head. “We can get a new deposition from the fink as soon as he decides to cooperate again.”

“Isn’t that my client James Elmore?” O’Connor then exclaimed. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you!”

“Look, we would have told you,” Heyster said, looking at the suddenly angry Irish defense lawyer.

“But not just yet!” O’Connor snapped, glaring at the prosecutor. “Not until after you and your interrogators had regained your lost testimony, plus a little extra, I imagine. After you had sweated a few more miles of life out of my client, without benefit of counsel.”

“Your client is sitting in a cell as we speak at Freedom Hill, for his own protection,” Heyster snapped back at O’Connor.

“Oh, you’ve locked him up, have you?” Terry O’Connor bellowed, throwing his half-full beer into a nearby garbage can. “You lost his deposition, so now you lock him up to sweat another one out of him.”

“It’s for his protection!” Heyster shouted back. “We locked up the guy who tried to kill him, but we believe that this character Pitts may now have him in his sights.”

“That was April, Charlie!” O’Connor snarled, stepping close to the major-select and still yelling. “Today is July Fourth! Nothing’s changed except you got your deposition burned, and now you think you can sweat a new one out of my client without making good on the original promises you made him.”

“Oh, we kept our promises,” the prosecutor fired back.

“He’s still in Vietnam, you shyster!” O’Connor retorted. “You’ve held him in custody here since February, March, whenever it was you first arrested him. You were going to nail his suppliers and send him packing home. What happened to that deal?”

“We just now got Harris,” Heyster said, wide-eyed and backing away from the red-haired, irate captain.

“Just now last April!” O’Connor hissed. “Check your calendar, Charlie!”

“Can we discuss this later?” Heyster said, lowering his voice after seeing Major Dickinson frowning at them because of the noise. He had taken Gwen Ebberhardt to meet Lieutenant Colonels Prunella and Webster, and First Wing’s commander, Major General Norman Anderson, who had gathered under the fly tent by the table covered with platters of fresh pineapple, cheeses, and fondu pans filled with pigs-in-a-blanket. The shouting had drawn everyone’s attention.

“What about Mikie’s win?” T. D. McKay shouted at Heyster just as he and Stanley started to step away from the unwelcome group.

“Oh, yes,” Heyster said. “General Cushman agreed with Colonel Prunella that as far as the Vietnamese know, we took care of the matter. We cannot re-create the transcripts and all the other trial documents that burned in the fire. We would have to reinvestigate, and retry the whole case from scratch. So he said to just let it slide.”

“So no conviction, no record at all?” McKay asked, smiling.

“That’s how it has to go down, I guess,” Heyster said, smiling back.

“What about Gillette’s page eleven?” O’Connor chirped, jutting out his jaw at the prosecutor.

“What about it?” Heyster answered, raising his eyebrows at the still-angry Irishman.

“Corporal Gillette should have no reference to any of this matter in his military record, if the command is just going to let it slide, as you say,” O’Connor said, pointing his finger at the major-select as he spoke. “You think about it, and you know I am right.”

“I thought it would go in the record as an acquittal,” Heyster said, frowning.

“No,” O’Connor said, shaking his head. “With no record of trial, and no due process taken, then it is as though the event never took place. No record whatsoever.”

“Well, Miss Carter will have to follow up at the Marines’ command section then, and ensure that everything gets expunged from his record,” Heyster said, walking away.

“We’ll expect a letter from you supporting it, so we can get the record expunged!” O’Connor shouted, and looked at Michael Carter, who now hung his head and sucked on the red swizzle-stick straw sticking out of his crimson-colored cocktail.

“Mikie, you won!” Wayne Ebberhardt said, slapping the captain on his back. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Oh, that’s not a win, and you know it,” Carter said, still sucking sloe gin fizz through the plastic tube.

“Your man is free!” Kirkwood said, laughing and shaking the skinny, tall captain by his shoulders.

“Oh, my stars, that’s right!” Carter said and then smiled wide. “We need to get him out of the brig! Mike, can we do that?”

“I will take you there myself, tonight,” Schuller said, smiling and putting his arm around the stick man.

“Hold on,” T. D. McKay said, looking at the happy crowd. “I’ve got two clients who took a bust, a fine, and did a little confinement to quarters. They get expunged, too?”

Jon Kirkwood looked at Terry O’Connor and then at Wayne Ebberhardt. Both men shook their heads.

“Of course, it’s always up to General Cushman, but I am confident that your two guys won’t get any relief,” Kirkwood said, shaking his head, too. “It’s already gone down the river. They pled guilty, took the punishment. The trigger puller walks free, and the guys standing outside, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, they get their dicks and balls cut off. That’s how it goes sometimes. Jungle Rules, man.”

T. D. McKay shrugged and then smiled, looking across the lawn at the dance floor, where Gwen Ebberhardt now skipped a lively two-step with Lieutenant Colonel Prunella.

“She’s quite a number, Wayne. How do you stand it?” McKay laughed.

Lobo had stood silent behind the group of lawyers during the exchange with Charlie Heyster, and now bobbed his head watching the tall, sexy redhead stretching her legs on the dance floor. Buck Taylor had his arm looped inside Archie Gunn’s, just in case the lumbering ox decided he needed a turn with the flight attendant.

“I don’t know,” Wayne Ebberhardt sighed. “Life with her sometimes, well, its sort of like wearing somebody else’s shoes. Some things you can never get used to.”

“That lady loves you, though, cowboy,” Buck Taylor said, and nudged Archie Gunn to stop drooling at her.

The lieutenant smiled at the two pilots.

“Enjoy the sight while you can, gentlemen,” Ebberhardt said, turning toward the half circle of men, all looking at his wife dance with the staff judge advocate. “Tuesday, when she flies out, she’s gone for good. She’s headed to Atlanta, and her old job with Delta Airlines. I rotate in September, and get out of the crotch in October, so this is it.”

“You’re headed to Atlanta for sure?” Kirkwood asked the lieutenant.

“Contract law,” Ebberhardt answered, smiling. “No criminals, just negotiations. I’m joining a firm that represents Delta, as a matter of fact. Thanks to that long-legged redhead out there who is the master of saying the phrase that pays to the ears that count.”

“Tuesday, the colonel and I hit the ville in Okinawa,” McKay said, spreading a rare smile on his face. “Then on to Norton, a bus to Pendleton for outprocessing, and after that I fly from Los Angeles to Dallas, where my mom and dad promised to pick me up a week from this Thursday night.”

Tears began to fill the lieutenant’s eyes as he looked at his buddies and thought of his home and family.

“I got to go see Jimmy’s mom, you know,” McKay choked, and then took a big drink of beer.

“Yeah,” Kirkwood said, shrugging and bowing his head. “We know.”

“Do me a favor, Tommy,” Buck Taylor said, walking to the lieutenant and putting his arm around his shoulders. “Don’t try to kill all the demons at once when you get home. Take them on one at a time, and don’t try to do it alone. Don’t shut people out, either, when you need to let go of some of that grief you’ve got all bottled up. Wounds have to air out to heal. Give it some time and you’ll be fine. When you talk to Mrs. Sanchez, and Jimmy’s brothers and sisters, try listening a little bit. Hey, and you stay in touch with us back here, too. That’s an order.”

Tommy McKay nodded and wiped his eyes.

“I never thought it would be hard to say good-bye to you bums, but it is,” he said, and smiled again.

“Tommy Touchdown, we will all see you back in the world,” O’Connor chirped and raised his can of Budweiser in a toast.

“How about a year from today?” McKay said, looking at his pals. “What about Denver? Fourth of July 1969 in Denver, Colorado!”

“The middle of the country,” Kirkwood said, raising his beer, too. “No excuses why we all can’t get there.”

Archie Gunn smiled, too, and raised his glass, making the commitment to join their first annual reunion in Denver. So did Buck Taylor, Terry O’Connor, Wayne Ebberhardt, and Michael Carter.

Olsen had served for nearly a year under the umbrella of a highly secret unit designated, Intelligence Coordination and Exploitation, better known among company circles as ICEX. This clandestine Central Intelligence Agency spin-off group, overseen by veteran CIA field officer Evan Parker, officially the director of ICEX, did the jobs rumored by Marines who talked to a guy who knew a guy who told wild stories of ninjas in black suits stalking the enemy’s leaders and sympathizers, putting bullets in their brains, or sawing through their necks with piano wire. They code-named it Phoenix.

Before picking up the tour in Saigon, Bruce Olsen had lived his navy life aboard small ships, riding in submarines, swimming in a frog suit during the night, doing all those sorts of things that members of the U.S. Navy’s two Sea-Air-Land Teams, SEALs, like best. He had excelled through his training at Coronado, and pulled one and a half tours in Vietnam before Evan Parker and his boss, Robert Komer, handpicked him for the Phoenix program.

Komer, a well-respected and powerful agent in the CIA, got the job of putting the wheels on the idea of Phoenix. He went to Saigon and opened shop as the head of the CIA’s Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development, which funded and sheltered ICEX and Phoenix.

Black-suited commandos, handpicked from the Army Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, Marine Corps Reconnaissance, Force Reconnaissance, and Scout/Sniper units, and Special Weapons and Tactics units in the air force, stalked through the cities and the countryside, not just in Vietnam but also in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, and assassinated enemy leaders, and suspected leaders who sympathized with the Communists and caused harm to American and South Vietnamese forces.

They terminated targets without prejudice, meaning the poor sap just got in the way; with prejudice which meant they had put the hit on the man, and with extreme prejudice, which meant die now, motherfucker, die immediately.

In many covert operations that went beyond any concepts of legality, and simply amounted to outright murder, blatantly violating the Geneva Conventions, Olsen and his black ninja cohorts recruited, trained, and oversaw field agents who often did the actual trigger-pulling or neck-sawing, or they set up the victims so he and his Phoenix team associates could do it. Then, after the mission, they terminated these torpedoes, too, cleaning up all loose ends. They left no living witnesses or participants to the deeds who might betray their secret with a nudge or a buck or two. Killing the friendly, unsuspecting local shills after their use ran out, that was the ugly part of the job that Bruce Olsen detested. That was one reason why he liked his seven-and-seven with more Seagram’s Seven than Seven-Up.

“Hey, pal, got a light?” a voice behind Bruce Olsen said, surprising the SEAL.

“Wow, where’d you come from, Marine?” Olsen said, seeing the trim cut of the blond man with the clean smile and definite look of one of Uncle Sam’s misguided children.

“How did you know I’m a Marine?” Brian Pitts said, taking a stool next to Olsen and pointing to a beer tap that said San Miguel on the plastic handle.

“I knew you weren’t a SEAL,” Olsen said, and laughed. “We know each other personally, here in ’Nam. You don’t have a dog face, and your hair does not say ‘wild blue yonder’ or ‘anchors aweigh,’ so that just leaves Marines.”

“You’re good, man,” Pitts said, grabbing a book of matches off the bar and lighting his cigarette. “I take it you don’t smoke, then.”

“No, sorry,” Olsen said, finishing his drink and pointing to the bartender named Tam to bring him another.

Sam Madison, a CIA field supervisor close to ICEX director Evan Parker, sat at the other end of the bar with a colleague of Olsen’s named Bart Johnson, a SEAL, too, and a Phoenix man as well. A third associate, Mike Hammond, a Force Recon Marine, made up their close-knit, handpicked team. Sam and Bart watched Bruce and the stranger with short glances in the mirror behind the bar.

They, too, saw the short haircut, and knew all the military operators in the Saigon area. He looked the part but did not have a face that matched a known commodity.

“Hey, I just checked in down here, and tonight got my first chance to scope out the ville,” Pitts offered, since the American who was obviously a serviceman said nothing. “Say, you’re not an officer, are you?”

“Aw, no,” Olsen said and shrugged. “I’m a regular navy enlisted guy— you know, the Donald Duck suit and ‘ships ahoy.’ ”

“Same here, only Marines. Sergeant Franklin’s the name, Jesse Franklin,” Pitts lied, even though the identification card in his wallet read First Lieutenant Joseph A. Russell, matching the dog tags around his neck. The real Jesse Franklin, an old black man, swept the floors and shined shoes in Robbie’s Pool Hall back in Kansas City, and had given Brian his street name, Small Change. Next to his Uncle Joe Russell, he liked Jesse best.

“Bruce Olsen, petty officer second class,” the Phoenix hit man said, and shook Brian Pitts’s outstretched hand. “Glad to know you, Sergeant Franklin.”

Pitts smiled at the stranger as they exchanged introductions, curious to know if this guy was really a deserter in disguise, like himself. When he first ventured into the city of Saigon, just getting his legs back on the ground, he had encountered others such as himself, deserters on the run, mingling in bars along Tudo Street, in the city’s tenderloin, wearing civilian clothes, trying to blend with scores of others who looked like them. With their stoic, out-of-place faces, though, they often presented easy targets for the CID rat dogs who scouted the watering holes now and then, looking for deserters gone native, trying to get lost in the crowds of round-eyed, Western contractors and civilian adventurers who migrated to Saigon from Australia, New Zealand, and the U.S.A. for big money made easy.

Pitts envisioned developing a small circle of American-born confidants to work with him in his Asian empire, operating throughout the Indochina region with home base in Bangkok, where he planned to live like a sultan. However, he needed trusted people in South Vietnam both in the northern provinces as well as in Saigon and its lucrative surroundings. He concluded that deserters on the run would be more than glad to find a fellow countryman who would lend them a hand. They would naturally cooperate and keep their mouths shut.

That’s how he had recruited his two colleagues, Tommy Joyner and Robert Matthews, a pair of division Marines from northern I Corps who stowed away on a C-130 Hercules cargo plane that landed at Tan Son Nhut Airport in Saigon instead of the Marines’ El Toro air station in California. The pair looked worse than Mau Mau Harris when Chung and Bao found them and took the two men to their big brother Huong to either shoot or present to the Snowman for disposition. Talking to the anxious duo who only wanted to go home from the war, Brian Pitts devised his brainstorm for an Asian empire with American deserters as his most trusted associates.

In the few months that he had lain low, clothing, feeding, and educating Matthews and Joyner to the ways and opportunities of the Snowman and his well-paying business, he also had made fresh contacts with Viet Cong and North Vietnamese agents who supplied him with pure heroin and Buddha at cut-rate prices. He had taken a million dollars and invested it in a massive dope inventory, and now looked to move product not only in South Vietnam, but also ship truckloads of it back to America. He needed trusted hands to do the work. Deserters had everything to gain, and if they failed him he could kill them with no questions or concerns coming from anyone. Deserters were disposable.

Tonight, while the Snowman went looking for potential recruits, and took the opportunity to wet his whistle in a setting more sociable than the stucco plantation house with the red tile roof that he and his cowboys had procured in the countryside west of Saigon, just off the highway that led to Cu Chi, Chung, Joyner, Matthews, and Turd held down the fort.

“So, what do you do here in Saigon?” Pitts asked, sipping the suds off the top of his beer.

Bruce Olsen looked at the Marine, who wore an expensive white-on-white brocaded silk shirt and black silk pants with canvas deck shoes.

“Stuff,” he shrugged, and then thought about the prying question and decided to put the dog off his scent. “Logistics, you know, supply stuff.”

“Oh!” Pitts smiled, and then sipped more beer. He could use a man who knew how to get stuff shipped.

“What’s your story?” Olsen smiled at the newfound friend.

“I got reassigned down here to work for, let’s just say part of the embassy,” Pitts lied, feeling like making himself sound exotic and mysterious to the potential recruit.

“CIA?” Olsen shrugged, taking a sip of his whiskey cocktail. “I know guys who got assigned there. Marine Recon guys, SEALs, green beanies. They got special operations, you know. At least that’s what I heard from the guy on the second shitter.”

Pitts laughed at the term for scuttlebutt, unfounded rumor.

“If I told you I’d have to kill you,” Pitts smiled and took a long drag off his smoke.

“I’m not asking what you do now,” Olsen said, putting up his hands, pretending to fend off any sense from Pitts that he wanted to pry into anything he had no business knowing. “What did you do up north?”

“Sniper,” Pitts lied, and took a big drink of his beer. His ego had led him over a line that he knew better than crossing. His subconscious haughtiness and need to inflate his esteem wanted this no-name stranger, who worked some dead-end job on a supply barge trapped in the doldrums, to be impressed with him. To admire his heroic masculinity and dash.

“Oh, wow, Murder, Incorporated!” Olsen beamed, and smiled at his boss, who watched him with increased interest.

“Hey, man, not so loud,” Pitts said, and looked at the two men huddled at the end of the bar who apparently paid him no mind.

“I heard of those scout/snipers up there in I Corps. Who’s that sergeant that’s got all those kills? What’s his name, Hathcock? Yeah, that’s the guy. I read about him in the Sea Tiger. You work with him at all?”

“Sure, Hathcock. Yeah, I’ve done a turn or two with the guy. He’s back at Da Nang last I saw,” Pitts said, taking another drink of beer and now breaking a sweat. He had no idea about this sergeant named Hathcock. Then he thought about something that this sailor said early in their conversation. “I thought you said you were a SEAL when I sat down.”

“Oh, no. Sorry if I misled you,” Olsen shrugged, and offered a sheepish smile while in the back of his mind he pondered the Hathcock answer, and knew for sure that his new friend was a phony. Olsen had worked with Carlos Hathcock and a corporal named John Burke back when he first began the Phoenix program in early 1967. Hathcock had rotated home after that, about a year ago, and Burke had died this spring at Khe Sanh. No way this clown was a sniper and didn’t know that common scoop among the close-knit special operations crowd.

“I work at supply with the SEAL teams,” Olsen finally said, lowering his head as though embarrassed, “so I guess I was vague about my job. I make that mistake sometimes. I’m not a SEAL. I guess just wishful thinking on my part. I’m a storekeeper. Sounds dull when you put it up against a SEAL, so I’m sometimes a little misleading about it, maybe subconsciously trying to impress people. That’s a bad thing to do, considering my friends and what they went through to earn the right to call themselves SEALs. A supply clerk just doesn’t excite anyone, so I’m sometimes vague about it.”

Brian Pitts patted Bruce Olsen on the shoulder.

“Everybody’s job is important,” Pitts said, consoling the storekeeper caught exaggerating about being a SEAL. “You work with the SEAL teams, so that’s pretty cool. They’re your buddies, too. You work inside their circle.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I guess it’s pretty cool what I do,” Olsen said, and smiled. “So, what unit you work with up north?”

“I started with Seventh Marines, then got shipped up to Ninth Marines,” Pitts said, waving to Tam to bring him a fresh beer. “Then I got orders here.”

“You’re not one of those Phoenix guys, are you?” Olsen whispered, widening his eyes, showing his enthusiasm toward the exciting unit that American servicemen mostly knew only by way of rumor and sea story.

“Like I said, I can’t really say,” Pitts said in a hushed voice, and then smiled and gave the man a wink as if to confirm the suspicion.

“Yeah, I knew it,” Olsen said, and drank more seven-and-seven. “Shit, I bet that’s wild-ass work. Damn!”

“How long you been in the navy?” Pitts asked the new admirer, gloating with his phony nonchalance.

“Six years come September,” Olsen said, telling the truth. He had learned in his training to tell as much truth with lies as possible, making the whole story more believable.

“You’re not a deserter, are you?” Pitts then asked, and his face flushed as he asked the hard question. He had to finally ask, though, to get down to business. “I mean, most military guys don’t hang in a fancy bar like this, and dress in nice civilian clothes. It’s cool if you are. I’m no cop or anything. Like I said, I have my own kettle of fish to cook.”

Olsen looked down both directions of the bar and then leaned close to Brian Pitts and whispered, “What if I am?”

“It’s cool,” Pitts whispered back. “If you are, I have a good-paying job. If you’re not, and you do supply like you say, I still have a good-paying job. Maybe.”

“Doing what?” Olsen asked, looking both ways down the bar.

“Stuff,” Pitts said, sipping his beer and then lighting a cigarette.

“I got to take a piss,” Olsen said, and got off his stool and walked to the back of the bar.

Brian Pitts watched him disappear behind the restroom door. When the older of the two men sitting at the bar also got up and went to the toilet, the Snowman got nervous. He left a twenty-dollar bill on the bar, gave Tam a nod to keep the change, and ducked out the main doorway.

As he left the Continental Hotel bar, a middle-aged Vietnamese woman wearing a black cocktail dress walked out the door behind him after the bartender gave her a nod.

“I told Tam to have him followed, just in case,” Sam Madison said to Bruce Olsen in the bathroom as they stood over the urinals.

“If he’s still there when I walk back to the bar, he may be just another jarhead out shooting off his lying mouth,” Olsen said with a laugh, zipping his pants. “He’s got something definitely dirty going on, though, asking me if I was a deserter, and then offering me a well-paying job because of my supply connections. Ten to one the guy’s tied to dope.”

“Dope’s tied to the Viet Cong,” Madison said, washing his hands. “Effective weapon. We have more and more of our guys using it. We’ll find out what this cat’s all about. Tam put his hit team on this guy. Their people will tie a can on his tail he can’t shake. We’ll pass the lowdown on this bum to DIA, or kick it over to General Cushman. Let his folks sort it out. If he’s tied to the Cong, which is a good bet, if he’s dealing serious dope, we might just whack this turd.”

Olsen laughed and dried his hands.

“Man, if this idiot only knew who sat at the same bar with him tonight when he breezed out his line of bullshit,” the SEAL said, shaking his head. “He wore expensive threads, a Rolex watch—not standard Marine Corps issue, my friend. His look spoke of dope loud and clear.”

Brian Pitts kept looking over his shoulder, and the woman in the black cocktail dress finally disappeared in a hotel door. He stopped and turned, and saw no one on the street, so he doubled back up the block and made a right, where Huong and Bao waited for him in the black Mercedes-Benz.

As he settled in the backseat he lit a cigarette and then pounded his fist on his knee, blowing out a big sigh. He had stepped way over the line tonight, and felt sick at knowing how badly he had allowed his ego to brag and jeopardize everything. That so-called SEAL supply guy could easily have been CID stalking a bar, looking for deserters or dope peddlers. He felt stupid for allowing his vanity, greed, and anxiousness to hurry the job of recruiting soldiers for his new army overwhelm his more characteristic good sense of caution and attention to detail.

Sometimes his vision got to pushing too hard, and he knew he had to keep that drive under control, working more methodically and carefully.

“No more fuckups like tonight,” he told himself as he sucked on his cigarette. He watched Huong and Bao both checking the mirrors and glancing in every direction, looking for anyone who might follow them.

“See anyone back there?” Pitts asked his senior cowboy as he steered the car westward toward the edge of the city.

“No, sir, just Vespa, but it turn left back by that last hotel,” Huong said. “One car come now, but it just pull from curb. No follow.”

“Good,” Pitts sighed, and took a relaxing drag off the smoke. “Let’s go home.”