“Okay, Wilson,” Harris said, walking over to where the sergeant leaned against the cage door. “They go, too. We keep Gunner Holden and Gunny MacMillan for barter. My bro, Fryer, he stayin’ here. I call him the Preacher Man. You like that nickname?”
“Sounds good to me,” Wilson shrugged and then gave Fryer a quick smile.
“That ain’t all,” Harris said, and glanced back at Michael Fryer, noticing the friendly exchange between him and Wilson. “You gonna set up some negotiations with the boss man when you take these peckerheads out. He gonna come in here and meet me and my war council at the sally port.”
“What do you want?” Wilson asked, looking at Harris eye to eye.
“They got to send in somebody that can talk for the man,” Mau Mau said, nodding at the pretrial imprisoned sergeant. “We gots demands.”
“Like what?” Wilson asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Like none of your fuckin’ business, cracker,” James Harris snapped, and tapped the steel door with the bat as he spoke.
“So your message to whomever is in charge out front is that you need them to send in an officer to the sally port to hear your demands?” Wilson asked, not reacting to the cracker slur.
“Yeah,” Harris said, and then blinked with an afterthought. “Him and our lawyers.”
“Which lawyers?” Wilson asked, shrugging.
“Not my lawyer, that stupid scarecrow-lookin’ motherfucker,” Harris said and laughed. “He a scary-lookin’ scarecrow, too. No, I want some good lawyers.”
“How many you need?” Wilson asked.
“I don’t know,” Harris said, and looked back at Fryer. “One might be fine, but I think two be better. These be lawyers that’s on our side, not no fuckin’ prosecutor motherfuckers.”
“Defense lawyers,” Wilson said, and wrinkled his brow. “The one who has my case is a good one. I’ll ask for him. Captain Kirkwood.”
Celestine Anderson had walked into the hallway and had sat down on the desk at the barred entrance. Complying with General Mau Mau’s orders, he had searched the cell block and surrounding grounds for James Elmore but had not yet discovered where the rat had hidden.
“You just gonna let these motherfuckers waltz out here?” Anderson said, looking at Mau Mau.
“Fletch need a doc, and maybe Bad John, too,” Harris said, looking at his cohort and inwardly worrying about how it might feel to swing at the end of a hangman’s rope. “We done with them anyway. Elmore, that’s the dude I want. You ain’t found his raggedy ass yet?”
The Ax Man shook his head from side to side and then slid back on the desk and leaned against the wall.
“We need something back for trade,” Anderson said, and glared at Donald Wilson, who had locked eyes with him. Then he shifted his look to Michael Fryer. “I want a piece of that nigger’s ass ’fore we get done here. He broke my nose and bust up my hand, stompin’ shit out of my fingers when he took me down. When him and white boy here be gettin’ me and Jones and Martin off those two assholes layin’ in there.”
“Tell you what, motherfucker,” Harris said and laughed. “We let ol’ Preacher Man out this cage and you and him can go at it out in the yard.”
“Maybe we do that tomorrow,” Anderson said, looking at the big man, who had size, strength, speed, and meanness well above his own abilities.
Harris laughed and then yelled up the hallway to Brian Pitts, who sat at the gunny’s desk in the control unit.
“Ax Man he gonna take down the Preacher Man out in the yard tomorrow!” Mau Mau called, his voice echoing in the building. Pitts showed a thumbs-up through the control room window and laughed.
Celestine Anderson spun on the desk to look up the hallway at Pitts, and then snapped back at Harris.
“I’m gonna kill that smart-ass, white-bread motherfucker sittin’ up there like he in charge,” the Ax Man seethed at Mau Mau.
“He my soul brother, man,” Harris snapped back. “You ain’t killin’ nobody unless I say. I’m general of the Black Stone Rangers, don’t forget. You a lieutenant, and Snowman, he my colonel. My chief of staff. Ax Man, you my bro, but I ain’t lettin’ you mess with my man. We get out this motherfucker, I let you come live with me in Bangkok. How you like that?”
“We ain’t goin’ noplace, bro,” Anderson said, and looked at the men in the cells. “Not unless you talk General Cushman outta the keys to this brig.”
“That’s what we be negotiating, man,” Harris said, and looked back at Wilson. “Our man here gonna set it all up. Bring us lawyers and shit so it be legal. That way they have to give what we say.”
“Kirkwood’s a good man,” Nathan Todd said, now standing next to Wilson. “I know him from back in Chu Lai.”
“Who else good, Chief?” Harris asked, looking at Todd.
“Captain O’Connor is a good lawyer,” Gunner Holden offered, still sitting on the bunk. “Also Captain Ebberhardt. He just got promoted today.”
“Fuck those two flour bag motherfuckers!” Celestine Anderson shouted from the desk where he sat. “They handle my trial, man. Five years all I be lookin’ at before those two shitbirds fucked up my case and I end up with twenty-five years. Twenty-five years, motherfucker, and I start out sittin’ on just five. No way I want O’Connor or Ebberhardt talkin’ ’bout nothin’ ’bout me.”
“One lawyer work fine then,” Harris said, shrugging at Anderson. “Yo, bro, I think that Ebberhardt dude he be Snowman’s lawyer.”
“Why don’t you open these doors and let Wilson get these men out of here so they can go to sick bay?” Michael Fryer said, getting Paul Fletcher to his feet and holding the injured man’s arm across his shoulders. “Yo, Don, you handle this big boy okay?”
“Sure can, Mike,” Wilson said, and looked at Nathan Todd. “The corporal will have his hands full helping Brookman and Turner, but we’ll make it just fine.”
“Open them up!” Harris shouted down the hallway, and Brian Pitts pulled down the handle that sent all the cell doors rolling. He looked at Donald Wilson as he carried Paul Fletcher across his shoulders, and Nathan Todd stood between Brookman and Turner, helping both men walk. “Rangers will lead you across the yard, then you go on your own when you deal with the boys in the tower that got those machine guns.”
Harris laughed as the four guards and Donald T. Wilson walked down the hallway. “Don’t go and get your ass shot!”
“As long as none of your rangers fuck with us, we’ll make it out in good shape,” Wilson said, walking to the stairwell, now lifting Lance Corporal Fletcher across his shoulders and starting down.
“I FIGURED IT was only a matter of time before I ran into you boys,” Jack Hembee said, walking onto the blockhouse front porch where Terry O’Connor, Jon Kirkwood, and Wayne Ebberhardt stood by a table with three five-gallon vacuum jugs of coffee lined up on it and several plastic sleeves of insulated paper cups laid next to them.
“I thought you rotated home back in March,” Terry O’Connor said, filling a cup of coffee for the major and handing it to him.
“I did,” Hembee said, blowing across the top of his drink and then skimming a sip of the steamy brew. “About six years ago I married this sweet little Texas rose from Tyler. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the place. It’s between Dallas and Houston, kind of down in East Texas. Everything went dandy with her, she loved life as an officer’s wife until I got sent to Vietnam last year and she had to leave base housing at Camp Pendleton. I sent her home to Tyler when I did my tour here.”
Major Danger blew over his cup and took another careful slurp of coffee, then walked to a wooden bench set near the blockhouse front door and sat down. He patted a place next to him, motioning for the lawyers to take a seat, too.
“Well, Dixie, that’s her name,” Hembee continued, “she caught the itch and needed to do a little traveling. So she and her girlfriend, Beverly, they hopped in my 1967 Corvette Stingray and shot on down to Houston, where they commenced to having a hell of a lot of fun with an old boy they met at the Hilton Hotel named Spencer Kelly.
“Now, good old Spencer and his low-life compadres, who never saw a day of military service in their lives because their oil-rich daddies bought and paid for the local draft board, they wined and dined Dixie and Beverly and apparently a few other West Pac widows on a regular basis. They’d hang out at Trader Vic’s and the Warwick Hotel, go to the livestock show and rodeo at the Astrodome, dressed up in their fancy cowboy suits, and generally took up the conjugal slack for the husbands of these women while their men served overseas, here in Vietnam.
“I get home last March, and the first thing Dixie tells me is that she has found a new life in Houston, with her new circle of wealthy friends, and that she no longer feels at home as the wife of a Marine. Especially now that she is against the war and all.”
Terry O’Connor laughed and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Major Hembee,” he said. “I don’t mean to laugh at what happened to you. It just reminded me of a blond Swedish girl I left in New York. She sort of has a similar attitude.”
“She know old Spencer Kelly?” Hembee said with a laugh, and slapped O’Connor across the shoulders. “That boy does get around.”
“No, but she sure gives me hell about my joining the Marines and serving in this war,” O’Connor said, smiling.
“Well, shit, boys,” Hembee said, taking larger gulps of his coffee now that it had cooled. “I got my car back, turned it over to my brother to keep care of it, and I put in an AA form, volunteering for another tour in Vietnam.”
“You didn’t divorce Dixie?” Kirkwood asked, narrowing his eyebrows at the major.
“No, I didn’t,” Hembee said with a laugh. “I figure the best way to fuck her back is to stay married to her. She can’t file for divorce while I’m over here, so it kind of fouls up her plans of marrying one of those oil-rich Houston boys, or old Spencer himself.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your marriage, Major,” Kirkwood said, and then clasped his hands. “I guess I am awfully lucky. My wife, Katherine, she got a job teaching school in Okinawa just on the off chance that I might get a hop over there during my tour here. She’s back home in California now, and I never got to the rock either. But she did that out of love for me. Just to try to be near me. Lots of wrecked marriages coming out of this war, so I am awfully lucky to have a girl like Kat.”
“Well, here’s to Katherine Kirkwood then, and all the women like her,” Hembee said, raising his coffee cup in a salute.
“So you’ve gone back to Seventh Marines?” O’Connor asked, and noticed Movie Star dashing out the blockhouse door and looking around in a big hurry.
“No, they put me to work at Three-MAF operations for the time being,” Hembee said, finishing his coffee and crushing the cup in his hand. “I’m selected for lieutenant colonel, and next month when I pin it on, I will pick up command of a battalion. Probably one with the Ninth Marine Regiment. General Ray Davis has command up north and he asked for me by name, once I put on my silver oak leaves.”
“Congratulations!” O’Connor said, raising his coffee cup along with Kirkwood and Wayne Ebberhardt, saluting the major. “I guess it will be Colonel Danger now.”
Hembee laughed, “I guess so, but somehow it doesn’t have that ring that Major Danger does.”
“Sir!” Lance Corporal Dean said, finally seeing Captain Kirkwood sitting on the bench between the other officers. “Major Dickinson needs you inside like five minutes ago!”
“What’s going on?” O’Connor asked, getting up with Kirkwood and the others.
“One of the prisoners, a big guy, he carried out one of the guards on his back and led out three others,” Dean said, talking fast from his excitement. “They’re all beat to hell. One guy’s nearly dead. They got a medevac chopper inbound for them right now. The one guy has a serious head injury. Got brained with a baseball bat.”
“What about the prisoner?” Kirkwood asked, curious if it was who he suspected.
“I don’t know, sir,” Movie Star said, and opened the steel front door to the blockhouse for the captain and the others. “All I know is that he wanted to talk to you, so the chief of staff and Major Dickinson sent me out to find you.”
WHILE DONALD T. Wilson carried Paul Fletcher down the stairs, and Nathan L. Todd followed him, helping Kenny Brookman and Mike Turner negotiate the trek without falling, Brian Pitts left his perch in the control unit and walked down the passageway to his cell and laid down. The white-faced wall clock behind the gunny’s desk showed two-fifteen in the morning, but to the Snowman it felt much later. So he decided to take a nap.
He had just closed his eyes when James Harris stepped inside his cell. “Yo, Snowman, what’s up?” Mau Mau said, tossing back his head and slapping the bat across his palm.
“Fucking after two o’clock in the morning,” Pitts answered, lacing his hands behind his head as he lay on his bunk, looking back at his old partner. “Thought I’d catch me a few z’s before the shit comes down in the morning.”
“Shit like what?” Harris said, reaching in his pocket and taking the last of the little white pills.
“Probably nothing,” Pitts sighed, “but if I had that reaction team, I’d make an assault at about daylight. Catch us sleeping.”
“Nobody sleeping, man, except maybe you,” Harris answered, taking a swig of water from a green plastic canteen that he picked up from the table in Pitts’s cell.
“What’s that you taking? Any good?” Pitts asked, changing the subject to avoid any conflict with his drugged-up friend.
“Uppers, man,” Harris smiled. “Old Carnegie, he know his shit. He know the name of every pill we got in the sick bay.”
“Yeah, he does know his shit,” Pitts said and smiled. “So you’re wired for the night, then.”
“Hey, I feel like King Kong, man,” Harris beamed. “Ain’t nobody takin’ me down tonight, bro.”
“You’re having lots of fun, aren’t you,” Pitts said, closing his eyes and yawning.
“Bet that Hippie got some shit that will make you wake right up, man,” Harris said, looking at the Snowman trying to sleep.