The Price of Blood

cave in her surgically enhanced, gorgeous right cheek.

They dragged Lola into the van and stretched her out in the aisle perpendicular to Nina. Trin picked up her purse and threw it in after her. Then he dug under the seats and pulled something out and grinned. “Duct tape. The only good thing the American army brought to Vietnam.”

Quickly he taped Lola’s ankles, hands, and ran two strips around her mouth. Then he scrambled to the wheel. “Now, we run like hell.”

69

“It’s all right,” soothed Broker as he cradled Nina in the backseat. She opened one eye.

“Don’t bullshit me, Broker,” she croaked.

“It’s better,” he allowed.

He had sponged her off and opened Trin’s first-aid kit and had attempted to clean up the ear. Then he’d wrapped her in a blanket. Like a morbid footnote to the mad night, he remembered that the rest of her ear resided in a little glass jar, pickled in rice alcohol, in the house on the coast.

He dribbled mineral water on her caked lips and used his bandanna to clean more of the ugliness from her face. He didn’t know what to use to medicate the emotional wounds on the inside.

Unconditional love, maybe.

Fitfully, Lola stirred against her binds and moaned from the floor. Trin drove Highway 1 north out of Hue with agonizing restraint, cautious, now, of drawing attention. The headlights made a weaving tunnel of illumination that was regularly invaded by impassive Vietnamese crouched over handlebars. Occasionally a truck. It took forever to get to the turnoff to the coast. As the black farmland closed around them, Broker entertained paranoid fragments of the past: driving through the countryside at night with the lights on. Unarmed.

They were in the paddies now, going slow. Shadowy bicycles jostled the van. Nina turned in his arms, dug her face against his chest, and used her forehead for leverage to push herself up.

“She’s coming around,” said Broker.

With her face still buried in his chest, her marble cold hand worked up his throat and chin and felt his face. “Just barely,” she said in a hoarse voice.

“How you doing?”

“Sloe gin,” she muttered. “First time I had a horrible hangover, was sloe gin. I feel like sloe gin. ’Scuse me, open a window. I gotta puke.”

Broker quickly pulled back the sliding side window and helped her lean out. Her ribcage heaved and she retched down the side of the car. He pulled her back in and wrapped her in the blanket. “Got anything to drink?” she said in a dry voice.

“Water.”

“That Trin up there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Give us a drink, Trin,” said Nina. “Got this horrible taste in my mouth.”

Trin reached under the front seat and handed back an unlabeled bottle of clear liquid. “Watch it. That’s home-made rice whiskey, it might not mix with what they gave you,” he cautioned.

“Gimme,” said Nina. She fastened her hand around the bottle. Broker smiled. A dicey smile. He’d been afraid she’d be in shock. Trauma. By the thin light of the moon he could see the set of her jaw. She was one pissed female human.

Nina gagged on the first swallow of whiskey and lurched toward the window. But she kept it down and went back for a second jolt. She handed the bottle to Broker. “Drink with me,” she said. He did. The moonshine brought tears to his eyes. He handed the bottle back to Trin, who took a long swig, corked it, and stuffed it back under the seat.

“Who’s that on the floor?” said Nina, arching her neck.

“Madame LaPorte. She led us to you. We’re not real sure we trust her so she’s not traveling first class.”

“You found it.”

Broker nodded. “It’s something.”

Nina shuddered and Broker took her in his arms again. “You all right?” he asked foolishly.

“Hell, no, I’m not all right. Got a cigarette?”

He put a cigarette in her lips and popped his Zippo. She steadied on the tobacco, drawing it deep into her lungs. Exhaled.

“You remember anything?” asked Broker.

“The bad parts. There weren’t any good parts.”

“Knock on wood. We might have a fighting chance now.”

“I’m for fighting,” said Nina. She smoked and gazed out the window. They were into the sand now and moonlight twinkled on the dunes. Willows spun crepuscular shadows around the stark geometry of a North Vietnamese cemetery.

She said slowly, “They burned me with cigarettes. I didn’t tell them shit. Gave ’em a lecture on the fucking Code of Conduct.” Gingerly her hand went to her festered left ear.

“I saved it for you,” said Broker absurdly.

“What?”

“You know.”

“Fuckers.” Her voice was still hoarse, but stronger. He could feel her cinching herself by an act of will into a tight knot of leather and stitched canvas and buckles.

“That red-headed creep tried to rape me.” She shook her head ruefully and dragged on the cigarette. By the flare of the cigarette tip she saw the expression on Broker’s face. “Don’t worry, fire base cervix didn’t get overrun…here.” She tried to smile. “Might have in Minnesota, though.” She turned and gazed out the window. “Little shit tried to rape me,” she said, forcefully this time. “But the only thing he could get up was cocaine up his nose. I laughed at him. That’s when he burned me.”

“That was Bevode’s little brother. We took care of him.”

“Fuck him and his limp little dick,” she muttered.

Broker winced at her truculent vulgarity. But she needed it now. If there was a part of her childhood left that remembered playing with dolls it had died in that room.

They drove on in silence broken only by Lola LaPorte’s gagged protests. Nina used Broker’s bandanna to give herself a quick cat-wash. She excused herself and crawled over Lola to the back of the van with the bottle of water and performed a crude douche. She returned at least ritually cleansed. Broker helped her into her clothes.

A farmhouse up ahead was illuminated by an improbable glow. When they went past, they saw a family gathered on a sleeping platform in front of a big color TV.

“Huh,” said Nina. “Is there electricity out here?”

“Batteries,” said Trin.

“That’s the beginning of the end of Vietnamese culture,” pronounced Nina dryly and they all laughed. Shaky. But a laugh. She was trying to let them know she was all right. Not a burden. They drove for a long time in silence and there were no more houses.

Then Trin arched in the front seat and yelled. “Oh-oh.” Just before he killed the headlights Broker saw the tree felled across the road.

The barrel of a rifle poked through the open driver’s window. The van was surrounded by limping side- slanting shadows, crabwalkers.

A low discussion commenced in Vietnamese. “It’s all right,” Broker told Nina, recognizing Trung Si behind the rifle.

“It’s not all right,” said Trin very coldly.

Trin cut the tape on Lola’s feet so she could walk and pushed her toward Broker. She tried to pull away, the whites of her eyes bulging in the moonlight, mummified protests coming from her gagged lips. Nina shoved her roughly ahead.