the war is ten thousand miles away. But when war comes home to America, and it will, the American people will turn to a military hero to make them feel safe. They will turn to me.”
But then the verdict was read: guilty. War criminals don’t get to be president.
Jack Odell Smith would not call himself a thinking man. He had always left his thinking to the major. But now, driving back to their mountain compound with Ben Brice’s granddaughter in the back seat, he found himself thinking about how one event could change the course of history: What if Lieutenant Ben Brice had honored the soldiers’ code?
Viper team would have continued covert operations in Laos and Cambodia and North Vietnam. The war would have been won by professional warriors. Soldiers would have come home to a hero’s welcome. No one would know about Quang Tri because no one walked away from Quang Tri. And Major Charles Woodrow Walker would be in the White House because on 9/11 the war had come home to America.
Now Lieutenant Ben Brice was coming home to Viper team.
Gracie had seen Ben’s tattoo many times, and he had even let her touch it, but he would never tell her why he got it or what the strange words meant. He only told her they were Vietnamese. Looking now at the same words on Jacko’s tattoo, she saw her chance.
“What do those Vietnamese words mean, on your tattoo?”
Jacko blew out smoke and said, “ ‘We kill for peace.’ ”
Gracie had often asked Ben about his war-she wanted to know why he was a drunk-but he refused to talk about it. “Honey,” he’d always say, “you’ll learn about the bad things in life soon enough. No need for me to hurry that day up.”
She sighed. That day had come.
“Did Ben kill people in his war?”
“Damn sure did. He was a sniper.” Jacko sucked on his cigarette, exhaled smoke, and said, “Your grandpa was a traitor, but I’ll say this for him: he was one helluva shot. He could put a bullet between a gook’s eyes from a thousand meters.”
Gracie fell quiet. Because now she knew something she wished she didn’t know, like when she’d read ahead in a book and find out the ending. She knew what Ben would have to do, and it made her sad to know it. She had figured out that he drank his whiskey to forget his war; now she knew he drank to forget killing people in his war. She didn’t want him to drink more of his whiskey because of her.
Jacko said, “Yep, damn shame he betrayed his team and now I gotta kill him.”
Gracie’s voice sounded odd, even to her own ears, when she said, “No, you’re not going to kill Ben. He’s going to kill you. And Junior, too.”
The two men didn’t say anything for a long while.
“I was still in ROTC at A amp;M when the Quang Tri shit hit the fan.”
FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had just reported to her superior her latest findings on the Gracie Ann Brice abduction. Agent Devereaux was still in Des Moines. The boy abducted there had been found dead. A manhunt was on for his abductor, a convicted child molester out on parole. For the third time.
“I’m running searches on Major Walker,” Jan said.
“Why?”
“Because Colonel Brice served under Walker in Viper unit. Because he has a Viper tattoo and the man in the park had a Viper tattoo. Because those soldiers committed a massacre, Brice testified against them, and Walker said he should’ve killed Brice. Because you said you wouldn’t have closed the case.”
“I know, Jan, but you think Walker’s been waiting almost forty years to get revenge on Colonel Brice? And somehow finds his granddaughter living in a gated community in Post Oak, Texas, kidnaps her, frames Jennings, and takes her to God knows where?”
Now that she actually heard her theory aloud, it did sound pretty ridiculous.
“And even if Walker wanted revenge on Colonel Brice, how would he connect him to Gracie and how would he find her? And if he wanted revenge, wouldn’t he just kill Colonel Brice? Why would he abduct his granddaughter?”
“He wouldn’t. I guess you’re right, Eugene, but this Viper connection, that’s an awfully big coincidence.”
John hadn’t invited Ben to his MIT graduation because of that damned Viper tattoo. He was worried that someone important to his future business career might see it and learn his father had been in the Army and had fought in Vietnam: the prevailing thought back then among professors at elite Northeastern schools was that only Southern crackers, minorities, and losers had gone to Vietnam. He had feared that because his father was a loser, someone might think John Brice was a loser, too. He had never talked about Ben to anyone, not even Elizabeth. He had never told her about that damned tattoo. But she knew Ben Brice was a loser; and that her husband was a loser, too.
Now, looking over at Ben sleeping in the passenger seat as John R. Brice, billionaire, drove a new $53,000 Land Rover loaded with weapons like the freaking U.S. cavalry through the Navajo Indian Reservation in northwest New Mexico, red cliffs looming large in the moonlight, John realized that those professors had been full of shit. As he had been. As his wife was.
Ben Brice was no loser.
Thirteen hundred miles due north, Junior stopped the Blazer in front of a cabin on a mountain in Idaho called Red Ridge. He would give anything for the major to walk out that door and see Patty. She was sleeping in the back seat.
“I got her,” Junior said.
Jacko grunted and disappeared into the dark, heading to his cabin. Junior opened the rear door and leaned inside. He slid his arms under Patty and lifted her. He stepped out of the vehicle.
“I’ll walk,” Patty said in a groggy voice, rubbing her eyes.
Junior gently leaned over until her feet touched the ground. He held onto her lightly to make sure she was stable.
“You awake enough?”
“I think so,” she said. Then she punched him in the nose and took off running into the darkness. Damn, she was fast for a girl. And hit hard, too.
Junior didn’t give chase because she was running straight for Jacko’s cabin. Sure enough, Junior shortly heard a scream. After a moment, Patty appeared again, carried by Jacko like a bag of fertilizer. He dropped her at Junior’s feet.
Junior sighed. “Patty, you’d’ve froze to death before morning. Now, if you run again, I’m gonna have to teach you a lesson you ain’t gonna like. I don’t want to do that, but I will for your own good. This is your home now, Patty, you got to accept that. We’re always gonna be together.”
Patty looked up at Junior.
“In your dreams, mountain boy,” she said.
Kate stirred in bed. She felt someone rustling around beside her. Sam.
“Nanna, I got the creeps again.”
“Another bad dream?”
“Unh-hunh. About Gracie.”
“You got Barney?”
“Yep.”
He wedged the stuffed Barney doll in between them and snuggled in tightly. After a moment, she thought he had fallen asleep, but his little voice broke the silence.
“Nanna, some man’s not gonna take me away too, is he?”
She propped herself up on her elbow and touched his smooth face. “No, Sam. That won’t happen. I promise.”
