He paused. “Except this kid Hinton.”
“He wasn’t afraid?”
“Nope. Not a day he was over there. Probably not the night Country shot him either.”
“Why?”
“The way I figured it, Hinton thought he had a direct connection to God himself. You could tell it too, the way he came over there and sat down in the middle of us. Like nothin’ and nobody could touch him.” McGovern shrugged. “Or maybe he just felt safe because Country was sitting there with us. Anyway, he sat down, looked us all in the eye, and ordered a soda pop. Like he was Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke or something.”
Maggie waited. The hardest part of conducting an interview was knowing when to be quiet and let silence make the person being interviewed talk.
“After we had a round or two,” McGovern said, “Victor suggested we go hunting. And that’s when things started to get real interesting.”
53
›› Intensive Care Unit
›› Las Palmas Medical Center
›› El Paso, Texas
›› 0815 Hours (Central Time Zone)
“Hunting?” Shel asked.
His daddy nodded but didn’t look at him.
“For what?” Shel tried to imagine, couldn’t, and gave up.
“Victor didn’t say,” Tyrel answered. “Just told us there wasn’t nothing like being out in the jungle at night.”
“You’d run night maneuvers before.”
“Yep. But we’d never run night maneuvers with Victor Gant. Everybody talked about him like he was a ghost out in the jungle. I wanted to see him in action. See if he really knew that much more than I did. My daddy taught me how to hunt at night. We used to go coon huntin’ down in the hollers all the time when I was a kid. When I got older, Daddy taught me how to take deer during the daytime and how to track a coyote at night. I was a whisper in the darkness.”
Shel listened to his daddy talk. In all the years that he’d known the man, Tyrel had never talked so much about what he’d done. Others had told Shel stories, but Tyrel wasn’t one to abide bragging. If he’d been talking to his daddy for any other reason, Shel would have been happy to sit and listen.
“So we all went and got our rifles,” Tyrel said. “Then we slipped through security and went out into the jungle.”
“Hinton went with you?”
“Yeah. That’s where I…” Tyrel stopped speaking for a moment. “He didn’t come back that night. He died out there.”
“Why did he go?”
“I don’t know.” Tyrel’s voice was dry and paper-thin.
“Did you ask him?”
“No. I was twenty-one years old. I was scared to be going, but I was excited too. I was going with Victor Gant. A genuine penetration team legend. There was nothing that coulda kept me from going that night.” Tyrel paused. “Except knowin’ how it was all gonna turn out.”
›› Highway 19
›› Qui Nhon, Vietnam
›› 2207 Hours
›› October 15, 1967
An hour after leaving the cantina, Tyrel was still drunker than Cooter Brown. He figured an hour of walking would have put him near to rights, but he was still having trouble seeing straight. And walking straight for that matter.
They were three miles out from Qui Nhon when Victor Gant called a break.
“How are you boys feeling?” Victor asked.
Everybody answered that they were feeling fine except for Denny. He’d been kind of hanging back from the crowd even though he’d agreed to come. Watching Denny now, mad at himself because he couldn’t sober up enough to take care of himself and wasn’t quite drunk enough to forget about being afraid, Tyrel didn’t know why Denny had come.
“That’s good,” Victor said, “because now we’re going to do exercises.”
“Exercises?” Denny asked.
“Yeah,” Victor said. “A few night maneuvers.” He looked at Tyrel. “Country there said he wanted to learn to be a better soldier. Tonight I’m giving lessons.”
“Country needs to be in bed,” Denny said. “He’s three sheets to the wind as it is.”
Fat Mike jabbed Denny in the chest with a big forefinger. “You think him bein’ drunk is any different than bein’ out there in the jungle for four or five days? Dude, you don’t get no sleep out there. You’re too busy tryin’ to grow eyeballs in the back of your head to sleep. You think sleep deprivation is any different than being drunk?”
Denny didn’t say anything.
“Glad we got that cleared up,” Victor declared. “We’re going to divide up into teams for this. Country, you’re with me.”
Tyrel’s chest swelled with pride at having been chosen. He took a fresh grip on his M14 and walked unsteadily over to join Victor.
“Hinton, you’re with Fat Mike.”
Denny wasn’t happy about that.
“Hey,” Tyrel said, “I’ll see you in a little bit, okay?” He winked at Denny to show him he was having fun.
›› Atwater Apartment Building
›› Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
›› 0924 Hours
“Wait,” Maggie said, trying to understand everything that had happened on the night of October 15, 1967. “Victor Gant took men who’d been drinking out into the bush to run maneuvers?”
McGovern smiled slyly. “No. You see, that’s what he told Country and Hinton. He figured that’s the way they’d tell it when they got back to camp.”
“Then what was really going on?”
“Victor was using the maneuvers as a cover,” Remy said.
McGovern grinned hugely and touched a finger to his nose. “My man here knows the score.”
“Then why was Victor out there?” Maggie asked.
“Back in those days, Victor had him a black market and drug scam going with a Kit Carson named Tran.”
“Tran who?” Maggie asked.
“I don’t know. Victor didn’t let anybody except Fat Mike up in his business. And I don’t know if he told Fat Mike the truth about everything.”
“So why was Victor out there?” Remy asked.
“Man had to pick up a delivery,” McGovern said. “He was supposed to get it on the way into Qui Nhon, but the dude who was supposed to deliver it wasn’t there.”
“Why wasn’t he?”
McGovern sighed. “That’s another question I can’t answer. All I know is that Victor was using those two cherries to cover up what he had going on. If anybody asked, they’d just say they were out running maneuvers. Only that ended up all wrong.”
“What went wrong?”
“I went with Country and Victor. The three of us hit the jungle. I was pretty high. In addition to the drinking
