Nature of the Game (17 page)

A dark room. Bed.

Awake, he was awake, lying in a narrow bed, sheets soaked with his sweat, his skin clammy, his heart slamming against his ribs, his hands gripping the sides of the lumpy mattress.

A blast of a semi truck's horn shook Jud's trailer as the truck roared past on the night highway.

The glowing hands of the alarm clock on the nightstand showed four thirty-five.

Five hours, thought Jud, I slept almost five hours.

He snapped on the lamp, listened to the ticking clock and the wind tapping grains of sand on the trailer's walls.

One of the trailer's previous inhabitants had screwed a mirror in the wall opposite the bed. Jud watched himself stand. He wore green drawstring pants given him by Carmen and the chopped-sleeved sweatshirt in which he had fled L.A.

Four days ago, he thought. In the mirror, he rubbed his stomach—still a big gut, but the bloated look was gone: his liver had shrunk.

Four days since I had a drink
.

The trailer was bigger than a coffin. Jud fit in the shower stall. A sink and a hot plate were the kitchen. A dying refrigerator served as the shelf for a black-and-white TV. Under the bed, where Jud hid his gun, he'd found a decade-old
Playboy
magazine. The centerfold was a lean blonde with green eyes, wearing a sheer white negligee. She stood in the doorway of a shadowed bedroom, wisps of dry-ice fog all around her. She was smiling.

Quarter to five. Jud didn't need to walk over to the café until six.

In the mirror, a skeleton sitting behind a desk laughed silently.

“He who laughs lasts,” said Jud. He turned on the TV.

Phantoms lit the screen, a man and a woman sitting around a coffee table in New York.

“… and today in federal court in Washington,” the TV woman said, “one set of government attorneys will argue against the release of classified documents while another set of government attorneys will argue that they need those documents to prosecute defendants in the Iran-contra scandal. The administration's position in this is—”

Jud snapped off the TV.

In four days he'd cleaned Nora's Café with a thoroughness the business had never known. He rehung the screen door, unstuck windows, even changed the oil on Nora's Jeep.

He paced the length of the trailer. His hands barely trembled. Five o'clock. Dawn would come soon.

His thoughts drifted to a lean sergeant he'd known years before at JFK Special Warfare school.

“Time must be your ally!” shouted the sergeant as he marched through the rows of Special Forces trainees locked in the push-up position, his jump boots barely missing their splayed fingers. “If you want to survive, if you want to win, you must always be gettin' approved rest and rec-re-a-tion, gettin' ready, or gettin' it on! All that gettin's up to you! You don't get it your way, you get it from the other guy!”

The other guy
. Jud turned out the trailer's lamp, pushed aside the black muslin curtain. In the end of the night, he saw no one.

Yet.

He put on his socks and sneakers. The breeze outside chilled his arms; his pants whipped his legs. The scent of sand and sagebrush filled his nostrils. Packed earth crunched beneath his sneakers as he paced between his trailer and the café. He faced Nora's adobe house.

Don't think about not remembering
, he ordered himself.
Don't think about whether it's been fifteen years. Don't think:
do. Sand pellets stung his face.
Not important. Not there
.

He raised his hands until his clenched fists reached his armpits, sank into a squat, toed-out his feet, then swung his heels out and settled into a pigeon-toed stance.

A tingle of pride ran up his spine. Jud had to push it aside, not think about the 130 moves left in the beginner's form of
wing chun
. Anyone can begin.

His hands shot down in a cross block. Punches, circle blocks, palm strikes, finger jabs. In a martial pantomine on the night floor of the desert, Jud fought an opponent who wasn't there, who was everywhere; who had no face, who was everyone.

The moves of
wing chun
blurred into blocks and strikes from other systems—and rage. Punch. Block. Grab and trap. Punch. Jud's chest heaved, his skin grew sticky and his arms ached and still he fought. Faster. Harder. Faster. Stylistic orthodoxy was forgotten, but the rage, the rage woke.

And then a hook punch threw him off-balance as surely as if a real opponent had grabbed his arm. He stumbled, staggered across the sand. Felt like a fool, a drunken old man. A clown.

A rosy shimmer outlined the flat horizon behind Nora's house. A lamp's yellow glow silhouetted her in the open doorway.

How long she'd stood there, Jud didn't know. She turned her smile up to the sky; stretched and breathed deeply, sighed.

“Got another one,” he heard her tell heaven.

Nora closed her house door and walked to him.

“Do you know what I smell?” she asked, smiling.

Jud shook his head, conscious of his sweaty body.

“I don't smell whiskey in you anymore,” she said. “That smells good.”

“Better than cheap cologne,” said Jud.

“Nothing's cheap.” Her brow wrinkled. “You like that tough-guy stuff you were doing?”

“Legend says a woman developed that style.”

“Then it ought to work. But if you got tough-guy trouble, you'd be better off practicing running.”

“I can do that, too.”

She eyed his belly. “Uh-huh.”

“I'm not bullshitting you!” he insisted. “I can run.”

“Good.” She walked to the café. “Coffee when you want.”

The café's back screen door banged, and she was gone.

“I can run,” he said, but no one was there to hear.

Two gas pumps stood sentry in front of the café. A phone booth sat between Nora's house and the road. Jud stepped onto the black-snake highway. Nothing moved from horizon to horizon.

The asphalt was cool. Lights came on in the café. He sighed, pumped his lungs full of cool air …

And ran down the highway. Ten steps and he was panting, thinking about quitting, so he chanted:

“
Airborne, Airborne, have you heard?
We're gonna jump from the big-assed bird
.”

And they had. Into Laos.

Falling, floating, silent stones in the November night of 1969, timeless, brutal cold, Jud and Curtain steering their human daisy chains toward the intermittent blink of an orange light below.

They'd popped the Nungs six hundred feet above the jungle canopy, hit their own silk, crashed into the trees. Monkeys screamed. Bats took wing. They cut themselves free and climbed down, rendezvoused with the ground asset on a midnight patch of earth.

One of the Nungs had lost his mind.

Somehow he'd climbed down the tree. But he wouldn't let go: his arms and legs were locked around the tree trunk. His haunches tried to root in the jungle floor. The man sobbed.

“He's done!” Curtain whispered to Jud as the other three Nungs tried to pry the madman loose. “Punch his ticket.”

“He's on the team,” said Jud.

The haggard Vietnamese ground asset was fifty-seven, looked seventy. His eyes glistened as he watched the two Americans argue.

“He's dead weight!” insisted Curtain. “He flips out, we're nailed! What will you do with him?”

“What I want, when I want, where I want!” snapped Jud.

Curtain barked an order at the sane Nungs. They looked to Jud—he nodded. They left their mad comrade clinging to the tree.

The team stripped out of their jump gear, dressed in black pajamas unpacked from the canvas bags. Radios, ammunition, food, and medicine were in rucksacks. Jud used his thumbs on nerves in the man's collarbone: he spasmed and fell away from the tree. One Nung helped Jud strip the jump gear off the mental case: he'd fouled himself. The stench made Jud reel. Jud pulled black pajamas over the man's soiled long underwear. As the Nungs buried the jump gear, Jud put the madman on his feet and strapped his rucksack on him. He slung a rifle on the pack, cut off the man's black pajama sleeve, tied it as a gag in his mouth. Jud tied a rope around the man's waist, handed it to a Nung.

Tears rolled down the gagged man's face—but he followed when his compatriot jerked the rope.

As Jud strapped on his pistols and grenades, checked his AK-47, Curtain told him, “You're as nuts as he is.”

“Believe it.”

Curtain shook his head, spit. “I got point.”

He slid into the jungle night. The Vietnamese asset followed Curtain. The Nungs came next, a single file of three men leading a human mule.

Jud held the rear, his eyes and Russian assault rifle sweeping the bush. He followed the Nung ten steps in front of him as much by internal radar as by sight. Leaves rustled. Night birds exchanged secrets. He heard his own tense breathing and that of the man moving through the brush ahead of him. Something slithered over Jud's boot; something scurried through the tangled roots to his left. An insect buzzed his face. Lit. Stung. His lips burned from his salty sweat; his dry mouth tasted of gun oil.

The jungle at night magnifies the senses. For Jud, each member of the team had his own scent: one Nung smelled like pine, another like lemons, a third bamboo. The madman reeked of shit. The Vietnamese spy who'd guided them in smelled like Saigon: charcoal and barbecued fish. Curtain smelled like warm milk.

What's my smell?
wondered Jud.

They marched for an hour in dense jungle, twisting and turning, slapping branches out of the way, climbing over felled trees, slogging through mud. Their path sloped uphill, into thinner air. Jud's clothes were soaked, each breath was a rasping effort.

Without warning, the jungle opened up into a clearing sixty feet wide, a cluttered circle of twisted logs and churned earth. The smell of rotting wood hung in the clearing beneath the first stars Jud had seen since they'd landed. An American blockbuster bomb had blasted that hole in the jungle.

Jud took the gag out of the madman's mouth, held the canteen while the Nung drank. No life showed in his eyes. No words came from his lips. Jud replaced the gag.

“Let me keep point,” said Curtain. “I been in these boonies before.”

“That's right,” said Jud, “you have.”

“How about you?”

“No,” lied Jud.

“Watch the Nungs,” said Curtain. “Can't ever tell.”

“No,” said Jud as the Nungs fell in line, “you can't.”

On they marched, climbed. Their rucksacks pressed into their backs. Jud's boots trembled, trees swayed: from far off came the rumble of B-52s unloading on Laos. Two million tons of American bombs rained on Laos between 1965 and 1973—more bomb tonnage than the U.S. used against both Germany and Japan in World War II, dropped on a country smaller than Oregon.

But no air strikes near here tonight
, Jud told himself. The bomber crews in Thailand, Okinawa, South Vietnam, floating on carriers in the China Sea, didn't have this path of real estate on their mission lists.

Even by SOG standards, Jud's mission was secret. The B-52 crew that dropped them had been briefed on the runway. The sergeant major who was the team's handler was under quarantine in Okinawa: he thought Jud's team was dropping into North Vietnam, as Jud had before. Their ground asset had been activated at the last moment. Jud and Curtain were briefed together eleven days before the mission so they had time to plan, memorize topographical maps, satellite photos.

And plan on coming back
, thought Jud.

The valley jungle thinned as they climbed along a ridgeline. Jud's compass agreed with Curtain's route. With luck, they'd get through the hills and reach the Plain of Jars by full light. Then the op plan called for them to wait for darkness.

Like a mist, night faded to gray light floating in the trees.

The birds stopped singing.

What's that smell?
thought Jud.

The brush to Jud's left exploded. A rifle barrel whacked his shins. He fell forward, hands grabbing his arms, bodies crashing on top of him. A machine gun burst cut the night. His face slammed into the mud. A dozen Asian voices shouted. Rifle butts thudded into his back, his shoulders, his legs. They twisted his arms behind him as his pack and weapons were pulled away. They jerked him to his feet.

In front of Jud stood an Asian in a long-sleeved, drab-green shirt, matching pants. He wore a billed cloth cap. A jagged scar ran down his cheek. Scarface speared the barrel of his Czech AK-47 into Jud's stomach. Jud wretched, doubled over despite the three men holding his bound arms. The wooden butt of Scarface's machine gun smashed into Jud's cheek.

A whirlpool sucked Jud into black nowhere.

How long he was gone, he couldn't be sure. He realized he was on his knees, his forehead pressed into the dirt. His face was wet, his jaw throbbed. Blood dribbled out of his mouth. Rope cut his wrists, his hands were numb. The pressure of the derringer against his thigh was gone, as was the flash-encode communicator in the pouch strapped under his black pajama top. Asian voices babbled all around him. Sunlight filtered to the jungle floor. Slowly, waiting for the smash of a gun butt, he raised his head.

Saw a scruffy pair of American jungle boots inches from his eyes.

We're in a clearing
, thought Jud.

Beyond the khaki-clad knees in front of him, Jud saw Curtain standing at the treeline, his hands tied at his belt buckle. An Asian in a cloth-capped uniform stood next to Curtain. The Laotian wore wire-rimmed glasses and an officer's pistol belt. The round-lens glasses gave him owl eyes. Other soldiers were dividing up the American team's gear.

The man standing in front of Jud poked him with the barrel of his rifle.

“Get up,” he said.

In perfect American.

Jud struggled to his feet.

His captor wore a black pajama top with his jungle boots and khakis. A GI web belt hung with grenades, a K-bar combat knife, ammunition pouches for the Czech AK from the arms shipments the Soviet Union started sending to Laos in 1961.