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Tin Can
by Hostile Seventeen
Summary: Vietnam-war Angel Fic.
Long: 12,000 words.
Author Notes: Inspired by an offhand line in "City Of."
Doyle: "Wow, you're really going to war here. I guess you've seen a few in
your time, yeah?"
Angel: "14, not including Vietnam."
Thanks so much to Rebecca and Michelle for beta-ing.
In my heart I know this story isn't quite ready, but I'm posting it anyway
while I've got the nerve.
I would love to get feedback.
Story Notes: All the stuff about the Vietnam war is completely made up or
guessed-at from movies. Apologies, to anyone who knows better, for any
mistakes. Let me know and I'll fix them.
The details of dates in the Chinese Lunar Calendar are correct though.
Disclaimer: Joss owns these characters. And if he didn't want me to wonder
what Angel did in the Vietnam war, why was that line there?
Prologue: August 1972. Hays, Kansas.
Marie's husband was the most dependable of men.
He ran a crop-spraying operation that served most of the big farming
operations around. They'd never be millionaires, but they did all right.
There were joy flights, aerial photography, and the charters for people in
a big hurry to get to Kansas City or over the border to Lincoln, Nebraska;
plus they had her job at the bank.
They were doing all right.
Jack's trick ankle meant he couldn't fly for a living much any more, but
he knew pilots and he knew farmers too, which made him well liked. He was
known as a steady man and a hard worker.
So when she called him from the doctor's and was told he'd left his
office, for no reason, half an hour ago, she couldn't imagine what was
wrong. Today of all days he was going to let her down?
She drove home to their farmhouse off Route 183 and found him drinking.
Not grimly staring into a bottle of whiskey, but sitting, misty-eyed, on
his fourth or fifth beer, staring into the distance, out to the horizon
where the cornfields flickered in the heat haze, and nodding, calm and
composed.
He'd got mail, she saw. A photograph was on the table. An Asian man, a
pretty Asian girl in a long white gown by his side, a baby in her arms.
The man was obviously the father; the girl, her joy showing through her
composure, the picture of a proud mother. The plump little baby looked as
though he was pondering the mysteries of the universe or possibly
suppressing a belch.
And there was an inscription on the back of the photograph.
The baby's name is Dahn. It means Redemption.
It was signed "Tin Can".
Part 1.
June, 1968.
Saigon.
Linh was fed on the morning of her first day in the cell. She was still
bruised a little, and disoriented, but when the food came, she realised
she was hungry.
She looked at the rice in the bowl. It was normal white rice, but with
sharp green strips of leaf in it.
Maybe this is how they ate rice in the city. Maybe they were betel
leaves?
She took a bit and almost gagged. It was some bitter, foul-tasting herb.
She spat it out, and the guard, the man in a sergeant's uniform, shouted
at her.
-- No! You have to eat it.
-- But it's horrible!
-- You have to eat the herbs. Don't try to fake it. Don't try to take
them out and hide them in the cell. Don't try to hide them in your
clothes. He'll know.
When they'd grabbed her, the soldiers, they'd tied her hands behind her
back and gagged her. They'd hit her head on the side of the helicopter,
but that was just an accident in their hurry. They put her in the back on
some sacks and left her there. The pounding of the engine and the swaying
made her sick, but she'd managed not to vomit.
When they'd landed, they'd handed her over to the sergeant, who put her
in the back of a truck and drove through dark city streets, and then he
brought her to her cell and untied her. She wept and pleaded with him back
then, but he'd put his hand to the revolver in his belt, an unmistakeable
threatening gesture, and she kept quiet while he locked the door and went
away.
Now his face grew a little less stern, though he never looked her in the
eye.
-- Mix it with the rice. It's not so bad that way.
Linh gulped and forced some of it down, aware of him watching her. She
lowered her eyes respectfully and addressed him using the formal title for
an elder.
-- Uncle? What's going to happen to me? Who brought me here?
-- I can't tell you. Don't ask me.
-- But this is the army, isn't it? Am I a prisoner?
-- This is Cao-Li's place.
-- Not the army? Who's Cao-Li?
His face wavered again.
-- You'll meet him. Eat.
He left.
After forcing down the meal, Linh sat in the corner of the cell and tried
to think. If they'd brought her here to be a comfort girl for the
soldiers, why had she been left alone? Why had she been locked up and fed
bitter herbs? There were many prettier girls in the village, but the
soldiers had picked her -- shy, skinny Linh who no village boy had ever
looked at twice.
Could she try to escape? The cell's walls were thick, and there were only
a couple of small barred windows. It smelled dank and unpleasant like the
river in the dry season, when the water goes down and the dark mud gets
exposed.
She thought about her mother and tried not to cry. Maybe the guard could
be persuaded to get a message to her mother, whatever it took. As long as
she could get a message to her mother, she didn't care what happened to
her. She thought that men, soldiers, would come soon and have sex with
her, and it would probably hurt, but she bit her lip and prayed and hoped
that it would be over quickly. It had happened to one of the girls in the
village a couple of years ago, and everyone had talked about it in
whispers, but the girl seemed unhurt, when she saw her a week or so later.
But of course, back then, Linh didn't really know what sex or rape meant.
She was just a kid of twelve.
Now she was all grown up. In a couple of years she'd be sixteen and ready
to get married.
She tried to prepare for the worst. She tried to sleep.
The girls at Mama Rose's all smelt of over-ripe fruit.
They wore cheap scents that smelled of peach or rose, they wore hibiscus
flowers choking with perfume in their hair, and they draped themselves all
over you, sighing and whispering in squeaky little-girl voices.
Then you were obliged to buy them a drink, which was lemonade served as
champagne.
They would run their fingers through your hair, exclaiming over its
redness, or blondness, and they took care to make you feel manly,
exclaiming over your muscular arms or comparing their delicate little
hands to your big, rough ones.
They were coy and warm and kittenish, and they would rub themselves up
against you more and more until after a couple of drinks it was easier to
just let them sit in your lap.
That would be about the time, as they lowered their faces coyly, raised
their eyebrows seductively and looked at you through their long lashes,
that they suggested you take them out on a "date".
All you had to do was pay Mama Rose their fine for "leaving work early",
and she was all yours. -- You wan' come wi' me? they'd ask, and wriggle
themselves just a little closer.
Jack was sick of it. Tonight he'd rather just pick out a girl and leave,
but you had to play the game. You had to buy the drinks and you had to pay
the fine.
This one, though, was different.
Her touch was dry and cool, and she looked at him with a look that was
anything but coquettish; businesslike and, yes, hungry.
Jack didn't hate himself for coming here. He guessed his mother back in
Kansas City might not be too happy about it, but she didn't have to know.
After you'd flown a couple of missions upcountry, you got ... "shaky" was
the way he said it to himself. You got shaky. You went down town, you had
a few drinks, you took one of Mama Rose's girls upstairs, you felt kind of
dirty afterward, but ... you didn't feel shaky any more.
He'd worked with a guy called Tommy back home, his high-school summer job
with an asphalt crew on the highway. Tommy would give gave Jack a ride
out, most mornings, to the stretch of highway where the crew were working.
Tommy had a problem with the booze. He drank quietly every night, and
every once in a while, he'd go on a bender, spend all his pay in a
weekend, start a fight in a bar, miss work for a week and get canned, even
ending up in the county jail a couple of times.
Tommy had once said to him, bleary-eyed and ragged, in a confessional
mood at six in the morning as they headed out toward work, that he didn't
even know why he did it.
-- But, see, my old lady? She's so scared of spiders, she can't sleep if
there's one in the room. She sees it run across the ceiling, or something
like that, and I have to hunt it down and kill it for her, or she can't
sleep, knowing it's there. Jack had waited a while, and Tommy had drifted
off, staring off into the distance until a bump in the road started him up
again. -- With me, it's like I'm scared of something, and I know it's
there, but I don't know what it is. Someone can hunt the spider and kill
it for her, but nobody can do that for me. I need to drink because that's
the only thing that takes that shit away.
Jack thought he knew now what Tommy'd been talking about. You felt
feverish, and tense, like there was someone standing behind you breathing
in your ear. And you had to do something to make it go away. So you came
to Mama Rose's.
Jack had once seen, in a decaying mirror above a battered dressing table,
the face of one of Mama Rose's girls as she prepared herself for him; her
expression, caught by chance, was, not disgust, not humiliation, not even
contempt, any of which he would have understood, but the most profound
expression of boredom he'd ever seen on a human face.
Whatever this girl was, she wasn't bored.
The girl's touch was cool and dry in the August heat, and she seemed to
have skipped over a few pages of the establishment's Standard Operating
Procedure. She ran her fingers up the inside of his arm, taking him by
surprise, and looked him full in the eye; she didn't flirt with him more
than the minimum, and apart from -- What your name? And you soldier? Oh,
fly-boy, fly B-52? Hel'coptah! Very good! she didn't try any small-talk.
Five minutes after he'd walked in, he'd bought her the obligatory drink
-- which she left untouched -- and a minute after that she'd skipped
straight to you come wi' me?.
The formalities were concluded coldly, the other girls at the bar looking
at her out of the corners of their eyes and spitting what he guessed were
insults under their breath.
Jack was relieved. This one seemed to have a need herself. He was strung
out from flying wounded boys out of battle zones while under fire and she
needed money in a hurry. He would go with her, and a half an hour later
they'd both be on their way, and everyone would have gotten what they
wanted.
"Upstairs" this time was a dingy room with a balcony reached by crossing
a dank alley behind Mama Rose's place. There was a smell of sewage, mud
and incense, and of fresh laundry as they crossed, and her hand was still
and firm in his as they went up the crumbling stairs.
It wasn't really her room. It wasn't anybody's room. It was a bed and a
dresser and a chair. She looked shyly at him and stepped off into the
shadows behind a length of fabric hung as a makeshift curtain across the
width of the room.
Jack sat down and took off his shoes, and began to take off his shirt. He
could feel desire welling up in his belly, hardening in his --
...and then he froze, his fingers at frozen on the buttons of at his
throat.
There was a chair below the window opposite, with the moonlight falling
across it. And a man in the chair, smiling at him.
-- Jack? We need to talk.
Jack was on his feet, fists up in front of him, before he knew it.
-- You -- what is your--? What in the hell?
The man continued to smile, unmoving.
The girl had moved from the alcove behind him. She came up behind Jack
and put her hand on his shoulder.
-- Now, you just get the hell out of here, you -- you just leave us
alone... He felt rage surging as the warmth of desire was replaced by the
prickling of adrenaline, sweat turning cold under his arms ...how do you
know my name?
The man in the chair glanced over Jack's shoulder. Leave you here with
her? Are you sure? He had a lilting voice, playful, almost melodic.
That was it. Jack wasn't about to let the man insult him for consorting
with whores, or insult her for that matter.
-- Damn you !
But the stranger just looked, more pointedly over Jack's shoulder, with
an almost courtly gesture, as if to say he wouldn't dream of pointing out
Jack's mistake, but...
Jack turned.
Her face was demonic, animal, contorted in the moonlight. For a split
second Jack thought that she was disfigured, that he'd been tricked, that
one girl had been substituted for another, but then she opened her mouth,
smiling horribly, and showed him her long, canine teeth, and he felt the
shameful warmth of his bladder letting go.
When she didn't kill him, just smiled at him, his knees gave out and he
sat down on the bare wooden floor, as if he were a child and the stranger
had promised to tell him a story.
The stranger spoke to her in Vietnamese and she pouted, a horrible fanged
grimace, then slunk away down the stairs.
-- Jack. As I was saying, we need to talk.
-- What about? Jack's voice came out hoarse and wavering. He shook
himself and tried again. What about?
-- It's about your boss.
-- My -- you mean my C.O.? The Lieutenant?
-- Not him. The Colonel. Colonel Cowley.
When Linh had been there more than a week, the doors of the prison opened
with a clang in the middle of the night and the guard came in. With him
was an older, smaller man. They carried something between them.
They unlocked the cell opposite and dumped it on the floor. A whimper
came from the bundle. It was a person. A child? She tried to catch the eye
of the guard but he gave her a warning glare, jerking his head just
slightly toward the man beside him; angry, but also afraid, and she knew
that keeping quiet would be for her own good as much as his.
The child turned out to be Huynh, from a region Linh had never heard of.
Huynh said it was "a thousand thousand miles" away, and she'd flown in a
helicopter for a hundred hours to get there. She called it a
"bird-machine", though, because she was only young, perhaps seven or
eight. Linh knew she must be from quite a way away, because she spoke in a
strong mountain dialect.
She refused to eat the rice with the bitter herbs at first, but the guard
hit her with his stick and after that she did. He wouldn't let Linh talk
to her, but after he'd gone, they pushed themselves against the bars to be
as close as possible and whispered to each other, and Linh taught her how
to let the rice get sticky and then mould it into a ball with the herb
inside it. She told her stories and sang her songs in the evening to try
to help her sleep. Huynh asked her a couple of times why they were here,
but Linh changed the subject, or laughed about the crazy soldiers -- who
knew what they were doing?
She asked if Huynh wanted her to sing another song. Huynh said she was
singing them all wrong, that it wasn't the way her auntie sang them ...
but yes, if she wanted to. She sniffled a little, but fell asleep
eventually.
Linh once asked the sergeant if he could get some message to her mother,
to say that she wasn't dead, but he just looked at her, very quickly, then
turned away with a pained expression and said nothing.
-- Why, what about Cowley? Who are you, anyway? And what was she? Jack
was slumped against the bed, holding his head in his hands.
-- Tm? She's just a regular everyday vampire. She won't hurt you if I
tell her not to. As to who I am? Think of me as a foreign correspondent,
maybe, or an agent -- or, no, what I really am, is an adviser. I've been
called in to advise on a ... situation.
Jack was still struggling to come to terms with this surreal
conversation, and the smile on the stranger's face wasn't helping.
-- You're a spy? You're working for, what, the Communists? The Russians?
You're threateningme because you want me to spy on the Colonel, give you
military secrets? You're out of your mind, buddy!
-- It's not about countries. It goes beyond wars and countries. The world
you live in is not what it appears, Jack. Imagine you're an ant, and the
ant's on a leaf, and the leaf's on a branch, and the branch is on a tree,
and the tree's about to burn up all to hell in a forest fire. Am I working
for the Russians? That's like asking me if I'm working for the other side
of the leaf. Cowley's dangerous, in ways you can't imagine, and I, and
some friends of mine, need to know what he's doing. I'm here to talk to
you and ask for your help.
-- But -- the, that girl, you're not going to --
-- I'm not going to hurt you, Jack, or even threaten to hurt you. I just
wanted to show you a glimpse of something; get your attention. When you
find out what the Colonel's up to, you're going to want to help me,
because you won't be able to help yourself.
-- I've just joined the squadron. I don't know anything. Some guy took
sick and I transferred over from the '63rd.
-- That's why I chose you. You're new, you're not one of Cowley's regular
soldiers, and you're a boy scout at heart, Jack, admit it.
There was that infuriating smile again.
-- I'm not going to tell you a damn thing.
-- Does Cowley strike you as a regular Air Corps Colonel, Jack? Are his
methods regular...
-- That's none of your damn business. Those are military matters. I'm
going to get back to base and call the MPs and have them come by here
and--
-- ...or does he have a reputation for running his own, maverick
operation, Jack? The stranger kept talking as if he couldn't hear Jack's
protestations. -- Do people sometimes go missing from the squadron? Are
civilians going missing? Are prisoners taken, but never handed over to the
authorities? Does he run his upcountry missions by the book, or does he
use his own maps, and his own order of battle?
Jack swallowed. All of those things were true. People looked askance at
the members of Cowley's squad. Conversations stopped when you entered the
mess. And nobody would tell him what had happened to the pilot who'd
"taken sick". Whatever it was, he hadn't had time to clean out his locker,
and nobody ever came for his belongings. Plus there was the business with
the flares.
Jack shook his head, trying to find sense in all of this. He saw himself,
the ant, on the leaf, skittering from side to side as the flames roared
near.
-- Jack? Next time you're back at the airbase? Check out the old
ammunition store in Cowley's part of the compound.
-- I'm not going to--
-- After you've seen that, you're going to want to talk to me again.
But the sound of footsteps on the stairs interrupted them, and Jack
turned quickly, defensively, thinking the girl was returning. It was a
young Vietnamese man in black robes, with a shaven head.
-- Tin Thnh, Tin Thnh, come quickly.
They spoke for a moment in Vietnamese then the man looked at Jack.
-- I have to go. The Abbot needs to see me. He gave a conspiratorial
smile, as if Jack and he both knew the Abbot, and how demanding he could
be.
-- I'll find you again, don't worry. He got up from his chair, and as he
stood, he lurched a little, and Jack saw that he was probably drunk,
though steady enough in his speech.
He reached out a hand to Jack and helped him to his feet. His touch was
cool and dry, like the girl's. Their eyes met.
-- What did he call you? Tin Can?
The stranger smiled. -- Tin Thnh. It means 'immortal saint' or 'ancient
spirit'. We'd probably translate it as 'Angel'.
Part 2
Linh thought she'd been there about five days when the guard came back
in, walking hurriedly and looking nervous, followed by the old man she'd
seen before.
In the dark, she hadn't noticed, but the old man wasn't Vietnamese. He
was white. He looked very old, seventy or eighty. He had a deeply lined
face, jowly like a dog, and his eyes were yellowy-brown and sunken. He
spoke to the guard in English.
The guard abruptly spoke to the little girl.
-- Take off your clothes!
Linh couldn't help herself. She was on her feet and at the bars, and she
spoke to the guard.
-- Is he going to ... is he going to, to hurt the little girl? Is he a
devil? Please! She's very young. Tell him he can make love to me instead.
I won't fight, I won't cry. It's not right, uncle. She's barely seven
years old!
The guard made as if to hit her, but the old man held out his hand and
instantly the guard withdrew.
The old man looked at her, tilting his head back. He examined her.
She shivered, expecting a blow or an order or a violent assault. She bit
her lip. And then he did something that made her shiver even more. He
laughed.
It was a wheezy, genuinely amused laugh, but there was a look in his eyes
as he laughed that made her sorry she'd spoken.
-- You too, younger-sister. Take your clothes off. Our preparations are
nearly completed. A little more time and then it will all be over.
He spoke perfect, accentless Vietnamese, old-fashioned and formal like
Linh's grandfather, almost the way the monk spoke in the temple when he
read from the sutras.
He held up something in his left hand. It was a robe, made of some stiff
black material embroidered with snakes and triangles.
He and the guard watched impassively as both girls stripped, as modestly
as possible, and dressed themselves in the robes, which smelled, up close,
musty and old and of something barelyremembered.
They had to give up their old clothes.
-- This is fun, isn't it? Linh said, when the men had gone, to try and
cheer Huynh up. -- A fancy dress like a princess. But her voice shook a
little, and the girl wouldn't talk to her. Linh cried for a while, but she
tried to keep it from Huynh.
After a while she noticed that there was a third robe, hung in the empty
cell to her right.
She tried to pray, again, and went to sleep and dreamed of Cao-Li, who
was a black snake forty feet tall who laughed at her as she shivered,
naked, in the middle of her village. She called out to all the villagers
around her but they couldn't see her. She awoke and the thought swam
through her mind, half awake, that it was temple incense that the robe
smelled of, before she fell asleep again.
When Jack woke up the next morning, his head was surprisingly clear. He'd
drunk a lot more before he'd finished, but then he'd thrown it all up
again in a ditch before catching a cab back to base.
He'd been shaken awake by the cabbie at three a.m., and had given him a
huge tip out of some obscure sense of shame, then he'd fallen into his cot
and slept solidly for ten hours.
He wasn't due to return to normal duties until the next day. He showered
and shaved and ate in the mess, and after that, the day stretched in front
of him. The events of last night were playing through his head like a bad
movie. Sometimes he laughed, and tried to pass it off as a bad dream.
Sometimes his heart thumped and his stomach churned as the vision of Tm
with the obscene vampire grimace on her face came back to him.
He read a magazine. He strolled over to the PX and bought himself a new
shaving kit and drank a coke. He played checkers with a private from
Detroit who had an inexhaustible supply of very dirty jokes. He read the
magazine again.
He looked at his watch.
It was still only 14:00 hours. The rest of the afternoon stretched ahead
of him. He tried to take a nap. He had another shower. He tried not to
think about Angel's words.
An hour later he was headed for the ammunition store.
The building was disused, it seemed from the outside. It was a low
brick-built bunker, most of it below the ground; slits of windows showed
at ground level and the entrance was a trench cut deep into the earth in
front. Poor design for a city where the rain came down in torrents most of
September. Maybe that's why it wasn't used any more.
Or was it? The door had a big brass padlock on it and there were fresh
scrapes in the earth where the door would open.
He looked through the barred opening in the door. Everything was so
gloomy inside that he could make out nothing more than that the room was
divided into sections by bars, like a small-town jail in a cowboy movie.
He walked around to the back of the building.
There was an open, partly ruined section at the back. Jack could tell
that it had been used to keep pigs, and not all that long ago. A farm boy
could tell these things.
He walked across the stinking mud and into the shelter of a section that
backed onto the main building. There was another door, heavy and
padlocked, but not recently used like the other. He looked in through a
grating in the door, and again, saw nothing but shadows and bars.
And then a voice spoke to him.
He jumped back, startled. The voice was close, speaking in Vietnamese,
right below the grating.
It was a girl's voice. He moved closer, and this time, he could see, in a
patch of light that came from a slit window, the face of a young girl, no
more than thirteen or fourteen.
She was speaking, quietly but intently. Jack only knew five or six words
of Vietnamese. "More Beer" and "Fried Chicken" weren't going to be much
use to him.
-- English? Speak English?
But she shook her head.
-- Sorry, honey, only English.
She pointed at her chest -- Linh.
-- Your name's Lynn? Jack. He pointed at himself.
-- Zak. She almost smiled. She began talking to him earnestly.
Was she asking him to get her out? To go around to the door? He made a
gesture like a man unlocking a door, and raised his eyebrows.
-- You want me to get you out?
She bit her lip and raised her eyebrows in return. Can you?
-- I'm sorry, honey. I can't do it. He made the key-gesture again, then
opened his hands and looked from one to the other. Where's the key? I
don't have it, sorry.
A muffled voice came from across the room, and Jack's eyes, more
accustomed to the darkness now, could see another girl, much younger,
pushed up against bars. She was asking the teenager a question.
The teenager spoke to her for a second, and Jack imagined the
conversation. Who's he? Has he come to get us out? No, he doesn't know
anything.
She turned back to him. Her eyes were full of tears, and she waved her
hand at him, a pushing, urgent gesture. Then he realised that she was
telling him to go away. They were tears of resignation, and she was
telling him to leave, telling him he was in danger. And she was repeating
"Cao-lee, cao-lee" and gesturing at the room. This place belongs to
Cowley. Better get away before he finds you.
She was trying to protect him. The idea caused a lump to rise in Jack's
throat. He had a little sister back home.
-- I'll, I'll come back. He made what he hoped was a going-away,
coming-back gesture. He tapped on his watch and made circles on its face.
I'll go away and come back later, honey, OK? I'll help.
She turned away, and Jack saw why she'd been trying to warn him. The door
at the far end of the building opened and two figures entered.
The man in front was a Vietnamese soldier, wearing a sergeant's uniform
of the ARVN, the South Vietnamese army; he was dragging something. Behind
him was a taller figure, thin and unencumbered ; Colonel Cowley.
The man in front was dragging a body, or an unconscious man. Cowley used
a set of keys to open an empty cell and the sergeant half-shoved,
half-threw the man into it.
The fall seemed to wake him. He groaned loudly and tried to push himself
onto one elbow, but fell back as if drugged or sleepy.
The sergeant closed the building's main door and started making an
inspection of the cells containing the girls; Jack ducked down, breathing
heavily. What would happen if he were caught? Maybe nothing, but he didn't
want to find out.
When he heard the sergeant's footsteps moving away, he risked a glance
into the room. Both Cowley and the sergeant were on the other side of the
room, looking the other way. The girl gave him a panicked glance, but he
held up his hand reassuringly, nodding, trying to convey
I'm-being-careful, I-won't-get-you-into-trouble. She bit her lip and stood
silently.
With the door shut, the armoury was dark and all Jack could make out was
that Cowley, with his back to him, was talking quietly to the prisoner
they'd just brought in. Talking in Vietnamese, but it sounded to Jack like
a "do what you're told, or there'll be trouble" speech.
The prisoner was shaking his head as if he had water in his ears, and
when he'd finished, he started yelling. He started waving a fist at Cowley
and shouting what could only be insults or protests.
Cowley kept speaking, without paying any attention to the man's
invective, for a minute or two. He was calm and deliberate, eerily calm in
the face of the other man's passion.
The man paused for breath, baffled at Cowley's composure, then started
again, even louder and angrier. After a few moments, he gave up on his
captors and began yelling, directing his voice up in the air, leaning back
and trying for distance; making what could only be calls for help,
attention, an appeal for sanity in the face of the insane calm that faced
him.
Jack wondered why he didn't attack Cowley.
And then Cowley started to speak, in a different voice entirely.
The language wasn't English, but Jack didn't think it was Vietnamese
either. The cadence had some of the quality of scripture or a recital, and
as he reached a certain point, the end of a sentence or a verse, the man
shut up instantly.
From what Jack could make out, Cowley had thrown the man back against the
wall, snapping his head against the bricks, and the man was silent, his
eyes wild. Why didn't he just haul off and punch Cowley? Cowley was an old
man, and this guy might be skinny, but he looked tough, and he was in his
teens or twenties. The sergeant hadn't drawn his pistol, didn't seem
worried about Cowley's safety.
Jack shifted position to see a little better, and as he did, Cowley spoke
quietly to the man again, in a normal voice: the man spat a reply through
clenched teeth. Jack could almost hear the conversation in his head. "Are
you going to behave now?" "Fuck you!".
There was a pause.
Cowley took off his glasses, the Ray-bans he always wore, even at night,
and started speaking, declaiming again, and the prisoner's voice changed
from a defiant grunt to a manic, inhuman wail. Cowley's voice rose in
volume and he moved his hands in a ceremonial gesture.
There was a low, wet, crunching sound, a snapping, that Jack felt in his
gut and almost made him vomit. He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the prisoner's arm was limp and bent at an
impossible angle, and he was weeping like a child. He tried to raise his
arm and then howled -- the pain was so bad he stumbled and almost lost his
footing. He sobbed, and raised his good hand as if praying. Cowley asked
his question again and the man nodded, eager, entreating him. He spoke and
then instantly shut his mouth as Cowley gestured for him to do so. His
whimpers were full of pain, but now they were equally full of fear.
Cowley stepped back, speaking to the sergeant, and as he did so, Jack
rubbed his eyes and squinted: two, three steps, how could Cowley step back
if he was in the narrow cell with the prisoner?
As the sergeant moved and the light and shadows changed, Jack could
finally see where each of them stood, and Cowley wasn't in the cell at
all. He'd never been in the cell.
The weeping prisoner was against the far wall of the cell, six or seven
feet from the bars, and Cowley was on this side of the bars.
Whatever he'd done to the prisoner, he'd done it without touching him,
thought Jack, with a weird clarity; he'd done it, Jack searched for a
word, by ... magic.
And as Cowley turned, before he put his sunglasses back on, Jack saw,
unmistakably in the gloom, that Cowley's eyes were glowing, a smoky,
brooding orange glow.
-- Who is he?
-- Cowley? He's an old man from Louisiana.
The next time Jack left the base, he was drinking a beer in a caf on
Avenue Pasteur around sunset when Angel had just showed up and sat down,
uninvited, at the table. When the waiter arrived he just waved him away.
Jack had told him, hesitantly, about the bunker and the thing Cowley had
done. Angel hadn't seemed surprised at any of it.
-- Just an old man from Louisiana? I'm not sure he's a man at all. He
might be ... he might be like that girl?
Angel laughed. -- You can say "vampire" to me Jack, don't be shy. And no,
whatever Cowley is, it's not that. He's an old man from Louisiana. I've
been asking around, and trying to find out just how old.
Angel held out a manila envelope to Jack, who took it and opened it. He
drew out a small sheaf of photostats of newspaper clippings it appeared.
-- What are these?
-- That's your Colonel. I got a friend of a friend in the newspaper
business to pull up archives. I've been doing some research.
The top clipping was a posed photograph of people at a party. It showed
women in gowns and men in uniforms of the Old South. A ball, what did they
call it, a "cotillion"? Colonel Cowley was visible in the front row, a
cavalry officer's sword at his side.
-- What is this, a costume party?
Angel wordlessly pointed to the pencilled notation in the margin of the
clipping, "Picayune-Times, June 12 1889".
-- But, that's him. This is from 1889? It must be some mistake.
-- I don't think so.
-- Then this is his father, his grandfather?
-- I told you he was an old man. As far as I can tell he's been alive for
nearly three hundred years.
-- But that's impossible!
Angel just smiled. -- You'd think so, wouldn't you?
Jack puzzled over the photographs. Cowley, once again in uniform, during
the 1920's, Cowley, now with a cavalry moustache, shown commanding a
regiment during the First World War. He tried to sort them, putting them
in order of time. The earliest was the cotillion, and the latest was
Cowley pictured with a group of officers with General Macarthur on a
tropical beach; Jack reasoned that it must be from the Pacific campaign,
forty-six or seven?
-- I don't get it. Here, he looks no more than forty. Here he looks about
seventy. Then, young again. Then, here, he's younger again. And now, he
looks like he's eighty years old. How did they ever let him back in the
Army again at his age?
-- He pulled some strings, I'd imagine. Plus, this is him when he first
arrived in Saigon, a year ago?
Angel pushed another clipping across the table. This one was from just a
year ago. Cowley's arrival, and that of other officers, had been noted in
Stars and Stripes for April of 1967, with a picture that made him look no
more than fifty-five or sixty.
-- I don't get it.
-- There's more than one way to be immortal, Jack.
For a moment Jack thought some hackneyed old saying about living on in
the hearts of our loved ones was coming, but then he remembered who he was
talking to.
-- You can be set forever at the age you were when you ... changed,
Angel's eyes were fixed on Jack's beer bottle in front of him -- or you
can live many lives, becoming old each time, and making yourself young
again.
-- How, how would he do that?
-- Normally, by sucking the life out of someone else. But I don't know,
Jack. That's why I want you to help me.
-- What do I know?
-- My friends tell me that Cowley has some weird ideas about night
missions.
-- Yes, he does at that. There are these weird flares he has the units
set off.
-- Phosphorous flares? To blind the enemy, reveal their positions, what?
-- That's just it. I don't know what they are. Plus, a phosphor flare,
you fire from the chopper. Being up in the sky is pretty much the point of
it. These ones, he has the ground troops set off. Green flares, in the
jungle. They just set them off at the map reference he tells them and lets
them burn. He says it's for "targeting".
-- And it's not?
-- Targeting for what? I'm not firing missiles out there. We drop troops
off at the Landing Zone, we pull them out, we sometimes spray the bushes
with a little machine-gun fire, but what's to target? If the VC had big
targets you could hit with artillery, we'd have won this war two years
ago. That's not how this war works. We bring the heavy artillery, the
avionics, all the well-fed, well-trained soldiers, and when we get there,
there's somebody's grandmother and a couple of pigs -- there's no army,
there's just... people, mostly. Often as not, grandma will try to kill you
too.
-- Jack?
Jack was staring off into the distance.
-- Huh?
-- Map references? He gives them coordinates and they set off the flares?
-- That's right.
-- Can you get me a map? Get me the references?
-- I guess. I don't see why not?
-- Thank you. I'll find you again. When's your next off-base leave?
Wednesday?
-- Yeah.
Jack took a drink of his beer, warm now and flat, and when he put it down
again and looked around for the waiter, Angel was gone.
It was late, and Linh was half asleep and half awake, thinking about her
mother, thinking about her brother, thinking about the girl that the bad
things had happened to in the village further down the valley.
The clouds had cleared and a patch of moonlight fell across the cell
floor, and she had, she realised, a folk song going through her head, just
a foolish rhyme about the moon -- moon-moon, half-moon, quarter-moon, full
-- and she was nagging at a strand of memory, something about her
family...
-- Linh, are you awake? It was Huynh's voice.
-- Yes
-- I can't sleep, the moon's in my face. Is it the quarter-moon?
-- Yes, I think so. I lost track of the days though. I think I've been
here four weeks now.
-- If it's the quarter-moon, it's my birthday, I'm seven.
-- Oh really? I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm sure when we get back, your
mother will have a present for you...
Linh tried to talk about "when we get back" whenever she could -- and
then she remembered.
-- This is the seventh month, right? Your birthday's quarter-moon day,
seventh month?
-- Yes, I told you. You think I don't know my own birthday. The child's
voice was petulant and drowsy.
-- But, Huynh, that's so funny. It's my birthday too.
-- Really? Huynh sat up.
-- Yes. Seventh day, seventh month. Easy to remember, I always tell my
brother.
They laughed. That was the strand of memory that she'd been tugging at.
Her birthday. She felt like crying. Even when the family was at its
poorest, they could always make something for her, sticky rice pudding
wrapped in palm leaves, sugary lemonade. But in this godforsaken place
there was nothing, not even a twig and a scrap of cloth to twist into a
funny little doll for Huynh.
-- What did you say, girl?
Linh jumped. The third prisoner was speaking to her. He never spoke to
them. After Cao-Li had hurt him, he'd sat in the corner of his cell and
refused to answer any of her questions or Huynh's. He'd looked at them
with fierce eyes and turned angrily away. Linh guessed he didn't want to
show weakness, that he didn't like two little girls seeing him cry. Now he
was up against the bars of his cell and talking angrily to her.
-- What did you say! Damn village girls!
-- It's my birthday. Today. Seventh-day-moon, seventh month. She pointed
at the moon, instantly feeling foolish as she did. -- And we were just
laughing, because ... it's her birthday too. She nodded at Huynh.
The man was silent for a moment, and then he shrugged and shook his head.
-- How old are you?
-- Fourteen. Now.
-- And the little mouse?
-- Hey! said Huynh. I'm seven. And I'm not a mouse.
There was a pause.
-- Did we wake you? I'm sorry...
-- Me too.
-- I -- I'm sorry, what?
-- Me too, it's my birthday. Today. Tonight.
Linh wanted to laugh, but then she realised he was serious.
-- Some party. The man was bitter. -- I'm twenty-one today.
Seven, fourteen, twenty-one; Linh held the numbers in her head and they
twirled around. Seventh month, seventh-day-moon; twenty-one, seven,
fourteen; moon, moon, quarter-moon, half...
The sergeant came, a few minutes later.
There were other men with him.
He'd never come after dark before.
Part 3
Jack and Angel met on Wednesday evening, just after sunset, in a dusty
little shopfront near the Cholon waterfront. The outside said "Shanghai
Lucky Golden Dragon Import Export" but there were no clerks to be seen,
just Angel's friends with the black robes.
Chanting came quietly and incessantly from another room somewhere above
them.
Jack brought with him a map and an order of battle. He guessed if an MP
found him off-base with the envelope in his possession he'd be arrested
for espionage, or treason. Court-martialled, sentenced, and shot. Or was
it hanging, for spying for the enemy? Jack wanted to laugh. It would
almost seem normal and reassuring to be calmly, politely, and officially
hanged.
Angel had one of the monks spread out the map on the table, where he had
a hand-painted map of Vietnam in French to compare it with.
He and the monk spoke in Vietnamese, breaking off occasionally to speak
to Jack in English and ask questions.
Jack, most of the time, just answered with "I don't know". He didn't know
what happened with the flares, he didn't know who prepared the orders of
battle or the maps, but he guessed it was Cowley or the Lieutenant. He
didn't know how it worked, other than he dropped infantry off at
prescribed locations, three or four of them, and they set off the flares,
deployed, and two or three hours later were picked up.
Did they ever engage the enemy? He didn't know of it ever happening.
Normally it was in hilly country, 75 miles or so East-North-East of here;
not far from the Cambodian border, but not a hot spot by any means.
How often were these missions run? Irregularly. A lot of the time
Cowley's troops were running regular support for other, bigger missions,
but these maverick operations came and went with no set pattern he could
see.
-- There's one on right now, in fact. This one. He tapped his finger on
some of the papers on the desk. -- I'm not on it, it's not my rotation,
else I wouldn't be here.
-- Where? They found the location of the operation on the map. Like he'd
said, Seventy miles out, heading for Cambodia. The hilly region was marked
with darker shades of green on the map.
Angel looked at it and drew breath. -- What day is it?
-- It's, Jack looked at his watch -- Wednesday, July 18.
-- Not you! Angel was distracted, his fingers counting off on each other.
He meant the monk. -- Sam. What day is it, moon calendar?
-- Seventh day, uh ... seventh month, Tin Thnh.
-- Damn! Damn! I'm going to get the Abbot. Stay here.
There was silence. Or, as Jack realised, there was the continued dull
murmur of chanting, then there was silence, and he could hear urgent,
hushed voices coming from the next room.
He stood there with the Black Monk.
They both stared at the map.
-- So you speak English?
-- Uh-huh.
-- So, where'd you learn?
-- Upper East Side.
-- I'm sorry?
-- Pierre's Patisserie, French Bread and Fancy Cakes. Pierre's my uncle.
Lexington Avenue between 74th and 75th. You know New York much?
-- Uh, no, I've ... never been.
The monk looked at him, with just a hint of condescension. -- Where you
from?
-- Kansas.
-- Kansas. The monk nodded politely. -- That's nice.
More silence, then Angel was back in the room, and five more monks were
with him.
-- Jack, we're going. Now.
-- Oh, well, I guess, I'll see you--
-- No, I mean we're going. His finger stabbed down onto the map. You have
to get us a chopper. Now.
-- But I can't, I mean, there's one at the base, it's in for repairs,
but, I can't, I mean--
-- Now. We have to. Tonight's the night. The prisoners are probably
already there. Those girls? They'll be dead by midnight. We have to go.
Jack's thoughts about courts-martial and hangings danced in his head, but
the girls? He couldn't leave them to die. With a sort of drunken clarity,
he began thinking, methodically, about security at the base, where keys
were kept and how best to manage a take-off without a ground crew and no
co-pilot.
-- So you and me? I'd have to get you on base some how...
-- Not just you and me: all of us.
Jack looked around at the robed figures. You're asking me to get six
local civilians onto a military base at night?
-- Don't worry about them. Making themselves invisible is what they're
good at. Let's go. Bring your maps.
A minute later, they were out of the door, down the stairs, and into a
battered Citroen saloon that drew up around the corner.
Nobody spoke as the driver headed at a terrifying speed for the airbase.
Jack's mind was still calculating, figuring. The chopper was serviced
and-- oh.
-- Angel. We can't do it.
-- Why not?
-- The chopper won't be refuelled yet. It will only have one tank full.
The other one was holed last time out. We could get to the zone, but we
couldn't get back...
Angel's face contorted, and for a moment Jack thought it was with rage or
disgust, but then he realised it was a sardonic smile.
-- Getting back?
The idea just hadn't occurred to him. The old car, smooth as a rowboat,
lurched around a corner and Jack's world took another wild swing with it.
Ant. On a leaf.
-- We'll figure something out, Jack.
True to their word, the monks and Angel made themselves scarce before the
car got to the gates of the airbase. Jack and his "taxi driver" were waved
through by the bored MP on guard duty, and they made their way to Hangar
17, where the Huey helicopter had been repaired. The area was deserted,
and Jack was still making his flight checks when the rest of the party
silently appeared out of the darkness and without a word, helped him drag
the chopper into position.
Five minutes later they were heading east-north-east. Jack's headset hung
around his neck by force of habit, and he'd almost called in a flight
plan, but then he realised he didn't have one; indeed, might never call
one in again.
Linh awoke, in pain. Her chest was constricted, her arms bound. She
struggled to make sense of the scene in the semi-darkness. She was tied to
a thick stone column. Ropes around her chest, and her waist, and her
ankles bound her to it, and her hands were secured behind her back.
To her left she could see the third prisoner, tied to his own column. He
was moaning and struggling helplessly against his ropes. The tying of his
broken arm must have been agony to him.
On the other side of her, she could see Huynh. She was tied to a third
rock pillar and appeared to be unconscious. The three pillars formed a
triangle. At the centre of the triangle was a smooth black rock, roughly
worked into the shape of a throne.
Cowley strode forward into the centre of the triangle, sat cross-legged
on the throne and began chanting. His eyes were inhuman and glowed bright
orange. He was facing her, but not looking at her. As she watched, little
sparks of orange light, like brief lightning, began to shoot between the
stone and Cowley, and around his head. There was a crackling in the air
throughout the temple, and as the pitch of the chant increased and
loudened, Linh began to feel a wrenching, twisting pain inside her. It was
like the feeling when your body is still retching and convulsing, trying
to throw up, when there's nothing left in your stomach. She whimpered and
struggled, but the pain just got worse and worse. Stars began to swim
across her vision. She saw Huynh's body shaking, vibrating, and before she
passed out, she could see blood running from the little girl's ears.
Flying into a battle zone was always intense, but Jack felt almost calm
through the hour it took them to make the journey. At least this was what
he knew, flying. He had his job to do and he was needed. The incessant
thudding of the engine drowned out all sounds, and keeping course took all
his concentration.
Nobody spoke to him until they were over the landing zone, when Angel,
after consulting with Sammy, tapped Jack on the shoulder, and motioned for
him to slow down.
He showed Jack a point on the map.
Jack checked. They were nearly there; he looked down at the jungle below.
-- We're here! He yelled over the pounding of the rotors. Where can I
land?
Angel motioned to him to wait a second.
-- We're here? Pointing at the map.
-- Yeah, more or less.
Angel called Sammy to the cockpit. Sammy asked that Jack bank to the
east, looking out of the window and down, then waved his hand: here.
-- I can't set down anywhere here! It's madness. We're in the middle of
the jungle! Jack yelled over the noise of the engine.
But the signal wasn't for him. Two of the monks had already leapt from
the chopper, two hundred feet above the forest canopy, their robes
flapping and rippling in the night air as they disappeared below.
It happened twice more. Jack was directed to map references, and the
monks leapt, like black birds, wings unfurling as they fell. Sammy nodded,
politely, at Jack before he dropped into the darkness.
Pierre's Patisserie, thought Jack, in a moment of irrational calm. Huh.
Now it was just him and Angel. The hill they'd been circling loomed, and
Angel motioned for him to gain altitude. Jack looked around for a landing
spot, and saw that the top of the hill was, unusually for this part of the
country, jagged and broken.
Jack looked at the fuel gauge. It was as close to empty as he'd ever
seen.
-- I can't do any more. Five more minutes and we're down. Helicopters
don't glide gently to a stop, you know. If the engine cuts out it's
nothing but a steel cage.
-- I know, I know. Angel nodded. -- Just get me as close to the temple as
you can.
And even as Jack put the chopper down, in a bumpy landing that would have
made him blush back in basic flight training, he was realising that, yes,
the top of the hill wasn't jagged at all, it looked that way because of
the broken tower, the crumbled walls ... a ruined temple.
Part 4
When Angel stepped from the shadows into the light of the torches,
Cowley's chanting stopped.
He looked up, enraged, the orange lightning crackling around his head,
and spoke, in a voice that seemed to come from far away.
-- How dare you. Don't ... come any closer.
-- Let them go, Cowley. It's over.
Cowley shook his head in disbelief.
-- Angelus?
-- You know me?
-- I haven't actually had the pleasure, though our paths crossed once in
Vienna I think. The eighties. I was lowly corporal Czerny of the Hungarian
cavalry. I knew you by ... reputation. I saw you from across the room,
dancing with a Countess. Did she live out the night, I wonder?
-- Charmed to make your acquaintance, I'm sure. Now let these people go.
-- You're here to stop me? But why? You've killed hundreds, thousands of
people. Angelus in a fit of conscience? What a strange idea.
He laughed a rich, choking laugh, which dissolved into a coughing fit.
-- I'm not Angelus any more. I go by ... Angel.
-- Oh to be sure. I had heard. You were cursed by the Romanys and now you
have a soul. The torment you must be in. And do you now protect the
innocent? Do you seek to atone? I've never heard of a vampire who wanted
to make good before. The idea seemed to amuse him greatly.
Jack drew in a sharp breath.
-- A vampire?
Angel glanced at him momentarily, but returned his gaze to Cowley on his
stone altar.
-- That's a story for another time, Cowley.
-- You're here to rescue these people from me? People are dying all
around us, Angelus, there's a war going on, or didn't you notice?
Angel grimaced.
-- I'm here because the Black Monks made a bargain with me to find you,
to stop you.
-- The Black Monks? I should have known. They do so love to meddle. But I
can't allow you to stop me, Angelus, I'm so close now.
-- Do you think you can hold me back? You're an old man, Cowley, and
you're weak.
-- Oh, more than that, my friend, I'm dying; but in just a few minutes I
will be young again, and more powerful than you could dream. And I still
have ... powers.
He raised his hand, and held it out toward Angel. Angel winced and
grunted, seeming to push back against an invisible force, but Cowley was
thrown back too.
-- Oh, but you are strong too, Angelus. Your friends of the Black order
have fortified you against my baser magics. But not, I think, against what
I am shortly to become.
Angel looked around at the three uprights, the two girls limp, the man
straining against the ropes with the last of his strength.
-- The dark triangle? You've resurrected the rituals of the Order of Gic
Dahn.
-- You know it? But you were of course something of a connoisseur in your
day. Indeed, I tracked down the books, I located the surviving members,
and I found the location of this temple marked on an old map in a temple
in Nepal. Imagine my annoyance to discover that this petty little corner
of Asia had outgrown its sleepy beginnings and attracted the attention of
the world. But nothing would hold me back. I had to travel a long way to
find this knowledge, and kill many people to keep it.
-- What's so special about this place?
-- If you ask the members of the Order of Gic Dahn, they will tell you
that it's "where the lines meet", but they won't tell you which lines, or
why. I had to torture them for days to get that much, frankly, and they're
all dead now, anyway.
-- This disgusting ritual will make you young again?
-- Oh, far more than that. After the sacrifice is done it will make me
truly immortal, and give me powers that will make me tower above the
world. What coinage can the Black Monks offer you that compares with that?
-- They have promised to get me safely to America. A vampire cannot
easily cross the oceans.
-- America? You have a hankering to travel to the New World? But why?
What's in America?
Angel looked down for a second.
-- They tell me that's where I must go. That I must seek my destiny there
Cowley laughed again, a horrible bleating old man's laugh.
-- Your destiny. Your destiny! Oh, there's still a streak of Irish
romance in you, Angelus, isn't there? A belief in heroes, a hankering for
stories of knights and kings and of magic singing swords. I can see it in
your eyes. May I tell you what your destiny is, my boy? It's to kill, and
to eat, to kill and to eat like all the rest of us. If you'd really wanted
to make amends, if you'd really wanted to do good, or to make the world
safe, you know what you should have done? You should have killed yourself
seventy years or more ago when you first awoke and realised what the curse
on you meant; you should have snuffed out your existence like a candle.
That would have made the world safer. The demon is still within you, is it
not? It could be awakened again?
Angel did something Jack had never yet seen him do.
He blinked.
-- I thought as much. Instead of this dull business of making amends, of
keeping score, this dreary accounting of rights and wrongs, of lives saved
and lives destroyed, you could have taken your own life in a second, but
it's pride that keeps you from doing so, Angelus, not righteousness;
pride.
Angel still did not speak.
-- The only way that you could truly make amends would be to kill
yourself, unless ... but surely, even you, you don't think ... but you do!
It's so tragically funny. That's what the Black Monks have told you. That
one day, you could be human again? Oh, that's rich. There's only one man
who can do that for you, Angelus. One man in all the world who can burn
the demon out from inside a vampire and make him a mortal man again.
-- Who? Damn you, Cowley, who?
-- Why, myself, of course.
There was a long silence.
-- It's true: you must have suspected it, Angelus.
Angel still said nothing.
-- How else would you know so much about the black triangle, the ancient
order, and their craft? You must know that they knew more about the
borders between demon and human than any men alive.
-- I know what they were seeking.
-- Then you know that they made ... experiments with humans and demons.
And they more than sought, they found. They tamed forces that you have
only guessed at. I have striven for many years to locate their holy book
and interpret their rituals. I can make you human again Angelus. It's what
you've dreamt of.
Angel was silent.
-- So you must ask yourself: is it the redemption that's most important
to you, and the dream of being human again your reward?
Or is it that to be human again, to live and die as a mortal man in the
sunlight, is your dream, and that redemption is just the means to an end?
Which is it, Angelus? Look deep in your heart and tell me.
There was a long silence, as the orange light crackled around the room.
Jack looked at Angel, and for a moment, far off in the jungle, Jack heard
the cry of a nightbird.
Angel spoke at last.
-- Complete your ritual.
Cowley smiled and began chanting again. The orange light intensified.
Jack exploded, grasping Angel by the shoulder and spinning him around.
-- Are you fucking insane? All this, and now you betray us? You'll trust
that, that--
But Angel had changed. His eyes were a grim yellow, wolfish, and his face
transformed. His strength was unimaginable, as he shrugged off Jack's grip
and pulled him close by his collar. Jack heard a guttural, animal growl, a
noise so low it resonated in his gut, and he was thrown across the room,
slamming against the wall.
Cowley's voice was solid, rhythmic, chanting in a solid, accelerating
pattern. The orange fire crackled and flickered, and the air grew dense
with smoke.
Bobby Finn, one of Jack's fellow pilots, a month later, told him how it
looked from the air.
-- It was like, these three green lights, flares or fireworks or
something, like in a triangle, like this: He made three dots with an index
finger dipped in spilt beer, three equidistant points, an upward-pointing
triangle.
-- and then, this orange light, like lightning, started sparking between
them. He drew three jagged lines between them. -- Bzzt, zzz, bzzzt
His hand flickered over the table, making spasmodic, fluttering gestures.
-- It was like lightning, but it was sideways, across the ground, I mean,
between these three points on the ground, I mean... but then it started
to... we saw these other lights start up.
He dipped his hand in the spilt beer again and dabbed three more points,
dot, dot, dot, which made a second triangle, the opposite of the first,
crossing over it, pointing down. Now, as his hand drew the lines between
these new dots, it made a six-pointed star, one pointing up and another
down.
His hand drew three more lines, each one driving in from outside the
triangle, crossing its sides at right angles, driving toward a point at
its centre.
-- These other lines start coming in, they were, the lightning was kind
of green, they: this seems stupid, right?
-- No, Jack had said, it's not stupid. I saw it too.
-- Man, will I be glad to get out of this weird place and back to Iowa, I
tell you, Jack.
-- Me too man, me too.
-- The lightning from the outside got stronger. It was all kind of
glowing and shining and looked like it was going to blow, you know? I got
out of there.
-- I know, man, I know.
Jack knew, because he'd been there.
Because Angel, before he'd thrown him, although he'd growled and hissed
into Jack's face, despite his demonic appearance, had managed a wink and a
fierce whisper; the words "take cover".
As Cowley neared the climax of his chanting, he faltered, and, looking
around him, seemed to ask what had gone wrong. His eyes, burning with
orange fire, seemed to falter, flicker: he caught his breath and looked
around him with an expression of puzzlement, exasperation.
The light that was enveloping the triangle, shining and crackling and
arcing between the uprights and the throne, had changed. Where the
triangle of orange lightning had surrounded them, there was a confused,
buzzing, shivering feeling in the air, and then the room lit up, almost
blinding Jack as green light shot in from outside, piercing the orange
lines and arcing into Cowley's body.
It seemed for a moment to Jack that Cowley rose up from his throne, rose
to his feet, but then he realised that he was being wrenched upright by a
column of green flame from beneath him.
In the markets of Saigon, you could buy frog meat. The carcasses are
displayed on sticks, thrust though their mouths and out between their
legs, like grotesque beads on a thread. That image came, bizarrely, to
Jack now as Cowley's body rocked and spasmed; the flame powered up through
him, his mouth opened and spewing green light, a livid column of
inexorable energy transfixing his body; his spasmodic movements halting as
his body baked and crisped, turning black and shrivelling before finally
disappearing altogether.
The darkness, when it came, seemed very dark indeed.
Jack shook himself.
He wanted nothing more than to go home and lie in a bed for a week, but
there were still things to do.
He lit his Zippo, and in its light, he saw the temple, the throne, the
three uprights with the prisoners tied to them.
He untied Linh, and she fell into his arms. Her breath was panting and
harsh, but alive. He laid her carefully on the ground, on what matting was
there, and moved to untie the little girl. She wriggled in his arms and
tried to escape. It made no difference when he spoke to her, "hey, hey,
please, baby, calm down" but then he waved his hand in front of her eyes,
realising that, like so many soldiers he'd rescued from the battle zone,
she was deaf. He got her attention, patted her hand, and then directed her
eyes to Linh, just a few feet away. She shot him a quick glance, then
rushed to Linh, and hugged her intensely, talking nineteen to the dozen.
Linh was groggy, but hugged her back, and even managed to laugh at her
chatter, stroking her hair and reassuring her, that yes, it was over, it
was over, it was over.
Angel had untied the man, the third prisoner, but as Jack met his eyes,
he shook his head. The body slumped forward and fell.
-- He's...
-- Yes.
Jack, for a moment, considered asked how Angel knew so definitely, but
thinking better of it, looked him straight in the eye.
-- Was he telling the truth?
-- Cowley?
-- Yes. Could he have made you human again?
-- I guess, Angel said, you'll never know. My job was just to keep him
talking, Jack. Sammy and the boys were out in the jungle, preparing the
counter-flares, short-circuiting the ritual.
Jack looked him in the eye. -- You were just playing for time. Waiting
for Sammy's signal.
-- We couldn't stop him, Jack, not without a lot of bloodshed. But the
Abbot could fix it so the energy he was trying to harness flowed through
him undiminished. Sometimes, you don't need to fight a man to kill him.
Sometimes it's easier to give a man what he wants and let that kill him.
Hunger can be a terrible thing.
They spent three days hiking through the jungle, living off rice and
dried beef, with the Black Monks guiding them; Jack expected to be
arrested for desertion when he turned himself into an ARVN base, but
apparently anyone reporting in from Cowley's regiment was being treated
with a sort of embarrassed amnesia, and a patrol picked him up a day later
without comment and without repercussions.
Jack flew fifteen more missions before breaking his ankle in a bad
landing, being invalided out of the service, making his way back to Fort
Worth and spending the rest of the his time in the service as Flight
Instructor First Class, J Hunter.
Honorable Discharge and a Purple Heart, May, 1970.
He never saw Angel again. But he remembered, from time to time, that when
he'd asked about Cowley's promises, Angel had said, not "I'll never know",
but "You'll never know"...
Epilogue
Marie picked up the photo.
-- This some guy you knew back in the service, honey? Over there in
Vietnam?
-- Uh, no, actually, I knew the girl. Her name's, uh, Lynn.
-- Oh really?
-- Now it wasn't anything like that honey.
-- OK, honey. So how do you know her?
-- Oh, there was this guy, uh, treating her badly, you know, and I kind
of helped her out.
-- My Jack, always one for a damsel in distress, Marie said, imagining
some kind of bar-fight over the honour of a lady.
-- So how come she's sending you a picture? And how did she get your
address anyway? And who the hell would "Tin Can" be?
-- Honey? It's a long story.
-- You'll tell me sometime.
-- I will, I promise. Want to have a beer with me honey?
Marie patted her stomach. -- Actually, I don't think I should. They might
have baby pictures of their own soon. Maybe today was a good day to tell
him after all.
End
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