thought of Mai and the pain eased a tiny bit, replaced by an ache in his heart. He would never see her again. Sometime between dusk and dawn, in the darkness, the rats came. He named the first one, a fat son of a bitch, Cass, after Mama Cass, and he felt a twinge of pride at his bravado. Humor in the face of an amazingly hopeless situation. When the second and third and fourth rats showed up, a tidal rush of pity and fear swept over him. Cass bit his ankle. A second prayer entered his mind.
Hail Mary, full of grace…
Then he abandoned the prayers and spoke to God from the very depths of his soul. He spoke with the abandon of an angry man, not much out of his teens, in despair. Without artifice. Without bargaining. He had nothing to offer God. He whispered in the darkness. God, if you get me out of this fucking shithole, I’ll do something with my life.
In a flash, an explosion rocked the earth and sent the rats scurrying. Gunfire, screaming. The sound of choppers in the distance. The ground beneath him shook, and he screamed as his arm jostled. But God—or Mai’s Buddha—had just delivered Jimmy Malone his first miracle.
The door to the hut flew open. The jungle was on fire. The short one had returned with a large knife.
No! Not this way! Please…
Gun blasts. The short one’s eyes bulged, his face illuminated by orange flames behind him. He fell forward. Dead. God’s second miracle.
Two Americans burst through the door, guns in hand. They saw Jimmy tied to a wooden post.
“Holy Christ. Get him, Mac. I’ll cover the doorway.”
The one called Mac cut Jimmy free. “Buddy, your arm’s in bad shape. What’s your name, soldier?”
“Malone,” he managed to shout above the sound of gunfire. Then he saw stars as the circulation of blood suddenly returned to his mangled arm. From somewhere far away, he heard himself scream, and then he passed out cold.
He was lucky. He wasn’t going home missing a limb, like some freak. His face was still good-looking, he had all his limbs—he’d go on to fight another day…back in Hell’s Kitchen
He was lying in bed, squeezing a tennis ball he’d somehow managed to trade for a pack of smokes. He squeezed it with his bad arm maybe ten thousand times a day as he listened to the morphine-addled screams of other patients.
Sometime near midnight, as he lay awake, a shadowy figure approached his bed.
“Malone?”
“Yeah?” He looked up at the tall man, whom he didn’t recognize, the man’s face backlit by the bare bulb in the hallway.
“You up for a walk?” His accent was homegrown U. S. of A.
“Sure,” Jimmy said, lengthening the word with uncertainty.
Jimmy climbed out of bed, leaving the tennis ball on the mattress as he followed the American man out into the hall and then downstairs into the courtyard. He had no idea who this guy was, but something about him spoke of power, as if he didn’t hear the word no too often.
In the center of the courtyard, the man turned to him. “I hear you have steel balls. You’re scared of nothing.”
“Have we met?”
“No.”
“Well, where the fuck did you hear that from?”
“Fingers O’Reilly.”
“What the fuck?”
Fingers O’Reilly wasn’t in Vietnam. Last Jimmy had heard of him, he was in Sing Sing Correctional serving ten to twenty for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon.
“Do you?”
“Look pal, do I what? What’s with the head games?”
“Do you have steel balls?” The man was dressed in khaki pants and a white cotton shirt that looked custom-tailored. He had silver hair and the coldest eyes Jimmy had ever seen—a pale gray. His face was unlined, tanned, strong looking, with a scar on his left cheek that looked like a tiny sunburst.
“Maybe. Listen, you see this arm? It’s my ticket out of this fucking hellhole.”
“What are you going back to? You don’t have a girl back home. She’s here.”
Jimmy fought his temper. Whoever this asshole was, he knew a lot about him, so he wasn’t going to ask how he knew. He wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“So what? I’ll get her home somehow.”
“Not likely. Not in this political climate. And what are you going back with?”
“What do you mean? I’m going back with both my fuckin’ testicles, all four limbs, and my mind, which is more than I can say for most.”
“How’d you like to go back with a few hundred thousand dollars?”
“Yeah, okay. You’ve been here too long pal, whoever you are.”
“I have a proposition for you.” The man didn’t smile. Jimmy realized he also never said what his name was. “I have an offer to make you, Malone. A gamble, if you will, for a pilot like yourself. Maybe a quarter million in untraceable money”
“U. S. dollars,” Jimmy said disbelievingly.
“Yes.” The man still didn’t smile. “Cash.”
Jimmy didn’t speak for a long time. He could hear the honking of car horns and the noise of soldiers out in the streets on R & R. He looked up at the night sky, and then finally turned to face the man in the shadows of the courtyard.
He took a calculating breath. “I never said I wasn’t a gambler.”
“Excellent,” the man replied. “That’s exactly what I heard.” Then, for the first time since he’d appeared on the hospital ward, the man grinned. But Jimmy noticed the smile never reached his eyes.
Chapter Seven
Bobby had a headache. It was concentrated on the right side of his head, near the temple, then snaked up around the top of his skull and down the base of his neck. His temple throbbed. He never used to have headaches. Not even when he was a drunk and woke up each day shrouded in the fog of a hangover. But ever since he’d met Maggie, he’d started getting headaches. Often.
When Maggie’s uncle had delivered the news that her father was dead—murdered, according to Con—she had crumpled to the floor in slow motion. She didn’t cry. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out, and she rocked back and forth for a while.
Bobby had knelt down next to her, pulling her to his chest, and then she’d whispered, “My father’s dead.”
He’d stroked her hair, not really knowing what to say. He knew her father was a Vietnam vet and that he owned the bar. He knew even less than that about her brother, until he’d shown up the previous night, his face smashed in.
