The Price of Blood

up, and we boogied. Except the bird was shot up and the pilots were sweating it. Didn’t think they could fly with the weight. I made a mayday call, said we were hit and we had to set down.” Tuna smiled triumphantly. “Then it came to me. All those years I always did what Cyrus wanted. Suddenly I was in a position to do what I wanted. We were so damn close anyway and I had the place all picked out. Just like that.”

“The place?” asked Broker.

“Perfect place,” said Tuna, grinning. “You’ll see.”

Broker studied the relish on Tuna’s face. Going out on one last joke.

“Wasn’t hard to convince the pilots to dump the stuff. So I showed them where. There was this ravine. We dropped the sling into it, cast it off, and then we landed. We set some charges and blew this slope down over the gully.”

Nina was bursting with her question. Broker stayed her with his hand. Tuna spoke rapidly now. “It was getting light. Without the load we could fly, they thought…”

Tuna sucked at the bottle and slowly lit another Pall Mall. He blew a stream of smoke and inspected his curled fingernails. “We didn’t fly far. I saw to that.”

“You sabotaged the chopper?” asked Nina.

“Part of the plan. We were going to drop the pallet on the boat and then deep-six the chopper and the pilots and Ray’s body in the sea. So I put a whole magazine in the controls. Auto rotation time,” said Tuna, his voice softened, musing. “Funny thing about gold, Phil. It’s just a word until you actually see it, touch it. There’s nothing like it, even in the dark of the moon, in the rain…”

Nina took a sharp breath and held it.

“Let him finish,” said Broker.

“They were like kids, those other guys. They couldn’t help grabbing at some ingots and stuffing them into their flak jackets before we covered it.” Tuna cackled. “I’d tossed out the life jackets, except for one. Gold has a lot of magical properties but flotation isn’t one of them. Saved me the trouble of shooting from a tippy raft.”

Broker shook his head. “That’s why LaPorte found ingots with the chopper wreck.”

Tuna grinned. “When we went in the water I stuffed this in my jacket.” He reached under the towel on the crate and threw a folded, worn piece of laminated paper at Broker. A tactical map of Quang Tri Province. Grid squares. One-to-fifty-thousand scale. “So simple. A piece of paper. An X that marks the spot,” he said.

“Jimmy,” said Broker patiently. “There’s no X on this map.”

“Not yet. Saved the best for last.” He took another sip of beer. “Everyone was gone. Drowned by their gold. I sat on that raft all day memorizing that grid coordinate. I was the only person in the world who knew where it was. So I just played along with Cyrus’s cover story. Said it all went into the drink. Last person I wanted on my case was fuckin’ Cyrus.”

“Dammit, Tuna.” The fire and ice in Nina’s eyes was starting to melt. “That creep Walls gave us this note that said my dad-”

“Walls is something, isn’t he? I befriended him just by reading to him. No one bothered me in there after Walls and me were buddies.”

“Yeah, buddies are nice,” said Broker softly.

Tuna’s chest heaved and he looked away. “We saved your young ass in Quang Tri City. Maybe you belonged to us after that. Maybe you were ours to spend.” His eyelids drooped and Broker thought he might be getting ready to go. He gripped the map in both hands.

“Jimmy, for Christ sake,” said Nina.

Tuna’s eyes rolled dreamily. “I had plans, man. You know, I educated myself in prison. I figured I had time. Be more mature. No more nutty stuff like that banks mess in New York. Be easier now, going back, because we were normalizing relations…Set up the whole operation with Trin.”

“How much does Trin know about this?” Broker shook Tuna by the collar. “It’s important.”

Tuna grinned. “Remember how Trin used to know everything. Not this time, baby.” His eyes turned dreamy again. “I was going to go back to this village in Italy where my family were dirt poor peasants and live like a prince…”

Heroin tears dripped down Tuna’s sunken cheeks. For the first time he seemed to become aware of his physical condition. With a look of horror he touched his hands, his bony knees jutting through the trousers. Something snapped in his eyes. A malevolent grin twisted his festered lips. “Now to get the rest you gotta forgive me,” he croaked. “Both of you. For my act of contrition.”

“Man, I’ve done some hard shit in my life…” Nina breathed out, breathed in and said, “Fuck you, Jimmy. And damn you to Hell.”

Tuna fell back in his chair and laughed. “Didn’t hurt to try,” he said. “Aw, shit. I don’t care who gets it now, long as Cyrus doesn’t. You guys take it. Give it to the gooks. Theirs anyway…” His voice tailed off and a whitewater of foul-smelling perspiration poured from the cancer rapids. They were losing him. Helplessly, they listened to his shallow breathing. The only living thing left in his body were his eyes, two bright Christmas ornaments sinking in decayed flesh.

“Ray,” said Tuna very distinctly in a chilling voice, as if he were greeting a fourth person on the porch. “Gold,” he muttered and then he slurred a word that sounded like “disgrace.”

They stooped forward. Nina held a bottle up and dribbled beer on his caked lips. He coughed and pronounced with deliberation, “Cigarette case.” His hand fumbled toward his bloody works that lay on the towel, then suddenly dropped still. The bowl of cherries spilled over and cracked apart on the deck and the fruit bounced in a frenzy around their feet.

51

Broker nodded. “Ray’scigarette case.”

Nina’s eyes narrowed. “Mom gave it to him for Christmas.”

They leaned close, undeterred by Tuna’s putrid breath. He arched as if electrocuted and fell back and groped feebly and muttered, “Big one…”

Nina’s fingers flew over the towel on the crate. “Hold this.” She slapped the cooking spoon in Broker’s hand like a scalpel.

“That’s too much,” said Broker as she shook the heroin into the spoon and thumbed the plastic lighter. They watched the powder turn gummy in the heat, bubble.

“Sorry about the dirty needle, Jimmy,” Nina said under her breath as she inserted the syringe and drew back the plunger. “Okay.” She took a breath.

Broker fastened the rubber tie around Tuna’s left arm. Last time he’d shot in the right. Then he held the arm straight down and with both hands tried to duplicate the motions of clenching Tuna’s fist.

“Not much of a vein,” said Nina, judging her target.

“Hit him,” said Broker.

The needle punched into the flour-colored parchment of Tuna’s arm. She pulled back the plunger and got a watery blossom of blood in the clear liquid. She shoved the shot home. Total concentration. Nothing but steady. She was field-grade material, all right. She could send men to their deaths. No problem.

Tuna’s jaw unhinged and fell slack. His tongue got stuck in the dry rot of his cheeks. Nina reached for a napkin next to the food plates and wet it with San Miguel and swabbed his lips. “C’mon, Jimmy,” she crooned. She could have been coaxing an infant.

This time Tuna didn’t vomit. Broker imagined the cancer chasing down the jet of heroin like a sparkle of tracers in the dark cavern of Tuna’s brain.

“Joke,” gasped Tuna. “Joke’s on Cyrus.”

“We got him back,” said Nina.

Tuna blinked and then smiled with immense calm. “Man, she’s something, ain’t she,” he said and stared at the bloody needle in Nina’s hand. “They teach you that at OCS?”