The Price of Blood

extreme situation.”

The urgent growl of an approaching motor vehicle carried to the beach. Behind them in the dunes. Broker saw that Trin heard it too. He snapped his head in a self-important gesture. Agreeing with something he had just said to himself.

“Okay,” he yelled to Lola.

She grinned at Broker. “Mr. Trin is about to get the surprise of his life.” She withdrew a compact, solid-state radio from her purse, whipped up the antennae, pushed the transmit button, and said, “Come to Mama.”

Nina had moved beside Broker. Her eyes trailed back toward the dunes. “You think…?”

But Broker was watching the guard, who was momentarily distracted, fascinated with the shiny radio. Broker swept out his foot, hooking the man’s good leg and wrenching the rifle away as he toppled.

He hefted the rifle, covering Trin for a moment. Then they turned and sprinted up the slope. Broker heard Trin’s warning yell, “Don’t do it, Phil…” But they’d gained the crest and pounded past the surprised vets, who knocked over their pot of rice as they struggled to rise from their cookfire.

The trees were thickest a hundred yards away. That’s where they headed. From the corner of his eye Broker spotted the gray van: Vietnam Hue Tours. Parked at the edge of the woods. He shot out his left hand, cautioning Nina, slowed his pace, and shifted the old bolt-action rifle up in his right hand, holding it like a long dueling pistol. His thumb fumbled on the unfamiliar safety. Breath coming in long ragged gasps. Nina not doing much better.

“Broker!” Nina.

Cyrus LaPorte stepped from the shadow of the trees. Red pirate bandanna. Real nonchalant in his pukka sahib desert duds. Another guy appeared. Hard-looking guy. Blue tank-top shirt, lots of muscle, no hat, short- cropped black hair. Had a rifle slung on his shoulder. The guy reached into the trees and pulled Trung Si into the sun-light. Not rough, like, C’mon…

What the fuck…

“Militia my ass. We’ve been had,” Broker panted, lurching to a full stop in the sand, rifle coming up smooth. Blue shirt first. Seventy yards. Couldn’t miss. Casually, Blue Shirt unlimbered his AR-15. Why did they just stand there?

Broker found out why when he squeezed the trigger and the bolt snapped on an empty chamber. He yanked back the bolt and stared into an empty breech.

LaPorte came toward him, smiling, with his hands clasped behind his back. “You’re not having a very good vacation, are you, Phil?”

72

Broker didn’t think it could get any worse. Then it did.

As they were marched back to the beach they heard more motors, loud, snarling, coming in over the water. Two sturdy rubber cargo dinghies cut through a lingering bank of mist, propelled by huge outboards. Lola jumped up and down on the beach like a cheerleader and waved them in.

Bevode stood in the prow of the lead boat, hatless, his oiled hair streamed in the sun. A mean black AR-15 was balanced casually on his hip and he had one foot up on the gunwale in a conqueror’s pose. Tall, gleaming brown leather boots, jeans tucked in. Safari shirt. A thick braid of leather wrapped his shoulder. LaPorte’s heirloom whip. He was smiling.

Trin’s vets weren’t. Seeing Bevode, they clustered in a group and jabbered among themselves. Trin, the mother-fucking traitor, was trying to calm them.

Intuitively Broker and Nina joined hands.

Before the first boat ran up on the beach, three men rolled out and dashed through the surf with AR-15s at the ready. Not Cajuns. More related to the Blue Shirt. The same cropped hair. They vibrated a pumped-up military narcissism that wouldn’t be tolerated in veteran soldiers.

“Mercenaries,” said Nina in a flat voice.

Their rifles covered Trin. Virgil’s pistol had been his brief marshal’s baton. Now he was forced to drop it. One of the mercs shoved Trung Si into the group of cripples. Trin began to protest at the rough treatment. The merc swiftly butt-stroked him in the stomach and sent him sprawling. Fluent Vietnamese rippled from his lips. Under his direction, Trin and his men spread out and put their hands behind their heads.

“How’d I do?” Lola shouted to her husband.

“You were great,” said Cyrus LaPorte. His eyes were fixed on the horizon over her shoulder.

She was grinning, but she also read something in Cyrus’s cold manner. In the way Bevode ambled up the beach.

“Oh God,” whispered Nina under her breath, going rigid. Her fingernails cut into Broker’s hand.

“What?” said Lola. Cyrus had turned his back on her. He walked away, down the beach with his hands cupped meditatively behind his back. Lola spun and confronted Bevode. “Hey,” she protested.

“Ain’t personal, you understand,” said Bevode.

Broker struggled with an inappropriate, disassociative thought. The day was too beautiful for this. Only Bevode looked inspired.

Lola started toward Cyrus. Bevode cut her off, and shoved her back with his rifle.

“Knock it off,” insisted Lola, still smiling. “Jesus Christ, I did everything you wanted.”

“You did fine,” said Bevode conversationally as the rifle swung up. “Only problem is, Cyrus has enough maids. What he needs is a wife.”

Crack. The rifle bucked. Broker jumped back. The shock of the gunshot pierced him like cordite needles. Bevode shot Lola at close range, between the ribs. She plopped straight back and down, heavily on her rump. It had happened so abruptly that her facial muscles were still untangling from a smile. Bevode pushed her over with his boot and, hardly looking, laid the muzzle into her thick black hair.

Broker turned his body to shield Nina when the rifle cracked again and Lola’s head made a thump-dribble up and down on the sand.

Nina tore away from Broker and charged. Bevode watched her come. “Stay put, you,” he joshed. “I mean it.” A rifle barrel pinned Broker in place, jammed deep into his neck, up under his chin. It spoke English with a European accent. Belgian. French? “Don’t even breathe.”

Bevode danced back, taunting Nina, and giving himself time to drop one shoulder and uncoil the whip in a move he probably practiced in front of a mirror. Nina went in on instinct, her hands coming up, tendons raised, fingers arched.

Expertly, with perfect timing, Bevode let the whip snake out toward her and flicked his wrist. The lash snapped somewhere around her hips. She went down like a singed spider and Broker saw blood against her bare flank through the rent in her blue jeans.

“Told you to stay put,” said Bevode.

Broker searched across the bloody beach for Trin’s eyes. Trin had his head bowed. Did not raise it.

Bevode caught the eye play as he casually coiled up his whip. He sauntered toward Broker and stepped over Lola’s body, careful not to dirty his boots.

“Broker, man, you should’a listened to Cyrus. He told you that ole Gunga had a habit of changing sides…”

Broker sat in the sand with his hands clasped behind his neck. Shock manacled his ankles, turning them to wood. He was having trouble breathing. His eyes took pictures that his brain wouldn’t accept and the oxygen in his blood had gone on strike.

Bevode dragged Lola’s corpse into the surf by the hair, swearing loudly when he lost his grip because part of the skull wobbled loose. Still swearing, he heaved the dead weight over the rubber gunwale of a dinghy so the legs dangled, feet in the water.

Then he pawed around inside the boat and came up with a long, plastic-hafted diver’s knife. Swiftly he slashed the muscular clay of hamstrings and calves.

“Draw the fishies,” he said, fastidiously stooping and washing his hands in the surf. He nodded to the green- faced Cajun at the tiller, who was striving to keep his breakfast down. “Take it a couple miles out and dump