clarification from someone in authority because the mission had been changed in mid-flight. The second was a mayday call. The pilot was about to send a coordinate when the radio stopped transmitting.
The next day, as Broker hid in the restaurant cellar, Tuna was picked up on the South China Sea in a survival raft. He said they had looked for a place to put the bird down after the radio went out and decided against it. With Pryce wounded and the copter damaged, the pilot decided he’d never get back up if he set down. He opted to stay in the air and try to make it back to the fleet. But with the load in the net, he miscalculated. The damaged helicopter went down in the sea and only Tuna came out alive. Ray Pryce, the bird, the alleged gold, and the crew went to the bottom of the South China Sea.
Colonel LaPorte had testified how he had signed for the bird and authorized Pryce’s plan for the prisoner extraction. But he’d handled it verbally on the radios and nothing was in writing. When he learned what had happened he burned up the radio channels trying to send in another helicopter to get Broker out. The command had vetoed the project. Radio logs were introduced to verify his testimony.
Tuna and Broker’s appointed JAG attorneys presented the “good German” defense. They were cleared of charges when the inquiry board found that they believed they were following different versions of lawful orders. The blame for the renegade operation was conveniently placed on Ray Pryce, who was listed as dead, body unrecoverable. Inexplicably, no evidence was brought in the investigation that the gold really existed. The new Communist rulers of Vietnam never formally registered a complaint. The Hue gold became a mythic story.
The incident was a final ripple in the sewage of defeat and was buried deep. But the stench attached itself to Colonel LaPorte, who never commanded troops again. Doggedly he stayed in the army and got his Brigadier’s star before retiring. The dishonor also fell heavily on the Pryce family. Broker had assumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today.
Broker stared at his empty glass and looked up. Mike said, “Ah, Phil, Nina’s up there sitting on the porch with your twelve-gauge.”
“She’s cool, Mike.” He paused. “Actually, she’s not.
He could appreciate the irony. The psychological antics associated with returning veterans were for other people. Hell, that was for the Oliver Stone war. His war was different. Four divisions of NVA-hundreds of tanks- coming at him across the old DMZ and batting him down the length of Quang Tri Province. No time to roll a joint. Now here he was, saddled with a fucked-up Desert Storm vet. Size six, female type.
“So,” said Mike, “why are you telling me this now, tonight?”
“Because Nina says she can get proof that Gen. Cyrus LaPorte set me
Mike exhaled. “Ten tons of gold…Back up. How’s she know this-”
“Because last night she stole a map with the location of the goddamn helicopter wreck off LaPorte’s desk in New Orleans. Somebody’s after her. She says.”
“Oh,” said Mike, looking around mildly. “That why you’re packing the Colt? Are we expecting bad company?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. If we aren’t, I tend to disbelieve her story.”
Mike puffed on his pipe. “I pity any fool who meets Tank in the woods at night.”
Broker nodded. “I already put Tom onto a guy who may have followed us. He’s got Lyle Torgeson and some Grand Marais cops keeping an eye on us. We’ll be covered. But I still want you and Irene to spend the rest of the night in town.”
“So…” Mike finally lit his pipe and drew on it, creating a cyclops ember in the dense shadow of his head.
“So,” said Broker.
“A map that marks a…treasure.” Mike Broker chuckled and slapped his knee. “Kinda like when you were a kid and we’d come down here and read-”
“This ain’t no story book,” said Broker.
“So who’s this alleged gold belong to?” asked Mike.
Broker shrugged. “Right now I’m thinking that it got lost in a gray area between two chapters in the history book.”
Broker stood up and placed his hands on his hips and watched the firelight bend over the waves that lapped on the rocks. “Maybe it belongs to the people who stole it. Maybe I’m one of them,” he said.
Mike joined him on the water’s edge. “This LaPorte character, what’s he like?”
“Tough, smart, rich, connected.”
“And you’re going after him?”
“Depends. If she’s right. If the gold is real-I’m going after
“With just that girl?”
Broker laughed. “The other survivor of the raid sent Nina to find me. He’s been sitting on something for twenty years in federal prison. Now he’s out, he’s dying of cancer, and he’s disappeared.”
“Sounds pretty thin, Phil.”
“Right now ten tons of gold sounds pretty heavy to me.”
“You’re going back to Vietnam?”
“I’m not going
“Can you do that?”
“Watch me,” said Broker. He swung his eyes down the dark beach. “We’re going to hold on to these rocks.”
Mike left Tank on Broker’s porch. Then he drove into town with Irene. Nina came from the shadows with the shotgun balanced on her shoulder. “You have a nice talk?”
“Real good one.”
“I feel left out.”
“No. I’m thinking you’re definitely in.”
He patted Tank on the head and then told Nina to give it a rest and get some sleep. He’d be sitting up just a few feet away in the bedroom. She said he looked tired. He said that if he nodded off and anything happened the dog would rouse half the goddamn county. He reminded her to be careful with the shotgun, anything she heard moving out in the dark could be cops watching the place. Or the dog.
As he brushed his teeth, a Scotch-inspired thought caricatured his lean face in the mirror. He recalled a question on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test, one that had recurred in his imagination while working undercover, a personal joke that John Eisenhower would not approve of:
18
The angry scream was Nina. The grunt of pain belonged to someone else. Dammit! Broker shot upright on the bed and grabbed for the Colt.
Broker grimaced as he rolled off the bed, at half-speed, because of the thumb, and charged the doorway to the living room. Bodies crashed against furniture, the screen door buckled.
Three figures thrashed on the back porch, breaking his terra cotta pots. A shotgun was somewhere in the middle. In the porch light, a patch of Nina’s ribcage showed where her T-shirt was ripped. This tall dude with long, blond hair askew was trying to bear-hug her. Burly Lyle Torgeson’s light blue uniform was in there too, trying to lever between them.
The intruder was making the fatal mistake that Earl had made, trying to contain a hysterical woman. Nina darted inside his long reach and butt-stroked viciously with the shotgun stock.
“She’s with me,” Broker yelled, gingerly looking for a way into the tussle.