Collateral Damage (5 page)

“Squatter six. This is Birddog four.”

I picked up the radio. “Squatter Six.”

“What's your name?”

I knew the pilot was making sure that we weren't enemy soldiers trying to lure him close enough for a shot with a rocket-propelled grenade that could bring him down. “Matt Royal,” I said.

“Hometown?”

That wasn't information found on the dog tags and was another layer of security for the pilot. “Sanford, Florida,” I said.

“What do you want to be when you grow up, son?”

“Fuck you, Flyboy. Get down here. We sure do need a ride home.”

He laughed. “There's a shitpot load of Charlies on your six coming out of that tree line. They're moving fast. They must know you're out here.”

“Yeah, we saw them,” I said. “They're about five hundred yards behind us.”

“I've called in a fast mover. He's due in less than two minutes. Drop smoke on my say-so. As soon as he makes his pass, I'll set down right where you are. Be ready to load quick. I don't want to wait around.”

“Roger that.”

Seconds passed and then I saw it on the horizon, angling down, moving fast, the twin intakes of the F-4 Phantom barely visible in the distance, the ordinance slung under his wings menacing.

“Smoke,” rattled the radio.

I threw a smoke grenade toward the advancing VC. Its red trail would mark us, so that the F-4 jock wouldn't plaster the good guys with whatever he was carrying. The jet was moving over us not two hundred feet up, the sound of the straining engines roaring around us, the sound of death to the VC who were turning and running back toward the tree line.

I saw canisters drop from the plane and then a terrible roar as fire engulfed the struggling troops. I hoped they were the ones who had tortured Ronnie Easton, that their deaths would be as painful, if much quicker, than Ronnie's.

The jet pulled up and began a two-hundred-seventy-degree turn, coming back across the scattering troops. The pilot dropped more canisters, this time between the fleeing VC and the tree line. They were caught between the lines of fire, the heat blast warming the air around Doc and me. I could hear the men screaming, terrible screams of pain, not unlike those of Ronnie Easton. I chose to believe that we were taking out the same men who'd killed him. Maybe we were.

The smell of gasoline wafted over us, the residue of the burning na-palm. The F-4 did a barrel roll just above us, waggled his wings, and climbed into the waiting sky, gone in an instant.

I watched the Huey descend at a sharp angle. The red cross on the white background was clearly visible on its nose. A med-evac. I don't know
why they wore those crosses. Charlie didn't cut them any slack because of it.

Doc loaded me onto the chopper and crawled in. We were taken directly to a field hospital where the medics found a clean, if painful, wound, no fractures. They promised I'd be back in shape in a couple of weeks. Just as we landed, the pilot told us that he'd heard on his radio net that our team had been safely extracted with no casualties. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Doc went back to our base camp to wait for the team's return, and I was shipped to Saigon to an army general hospital and spent three weeks recuperating. Jimbo Merryman caught a chopper ride down to visit for a day and assured me that the team was doing fine. They had been pulled from regular patrols and were getting a little downtime themselves back at the base camp. Two of the guys had flown out to Hawaii for R & R, relaxation and recreation, which meant they'd drink a lot and find women willing to trade a bit of their virtue for stories of soldiers at war.

I returned to the unit to find it intact, except for Doc, who'd been transferred into some extra secretive unit that had no name. We'd heard rumors about it, but no one actually knew any specifics. I never saw him again, until that July morning on Longboat Key when I opened my front door and found him standing on my stoop.

“Doc,” I said, “Come on in.”

We shook hands, hugged, and he walked into my living room. I choked back some emotion. “Man, it's good to see you, Doc. How the hell have you been?”

“Okay, Matt. I've seen better days.”

“Let's get some coffee and sit out back.”

We went into the kitchen, and I poured a mug full of the black coffee. “You're still drinking it black, I suppose.”

He grinned. “Damn right. No cream in the bush, L.T.”

We went to the patio and sat in two wicker chairs with cushioned seats covered in a floral pattern. A light breeze moved across the bay, barely touching the water. Out by my dock, a fish jumped, a mullet probably, running from a predator. The sun was up, hanging a few degrees above the horizon, painting the bay in pastels of orange and ochre and crimson. It was quiet, the only noise coming from the splash of the diving pelicans that lived on nearby Jewfish Key. Doc and I were quiet too, each in his own thoughts, remembering those long ago days when we were young soldiers doing what we thought was right, trying to survive, dreaming of the big PX that was the United States, of going home and living out the rest of our lives. Mine had turned out well. I wondered about Doc's.

“How did you make your way to my door, Doc?”

“Do you remember my real name?”

“Of course. Charles T. Desmond, aka Chaz. Hometown, Macon, Georgia. Graduate of Willingham High School, class of nineteen seventy. Had a girlfriend named Julie.”

“Damn. You're good.”

“I remember them all, Doc. Every last one of them. I knew them, their hometowns, their hopes and dreams, the ones who came home and the ones who didn't. Not a day goes by that I don't think about you guys.”

“The same thing happens to me, Matt. I'll be in the middle of something, concentrating on whatever it is, and one or all of you guys will come traipsing across my brain. It's almost supernatural, but it usually gives me a smile. I get a little warm feeling deep down in my gut, even when I think about the ones who didn't make it back.”

“They all made it back, Doc. We never left a man.”

“You know what I mean. We got them all back, but some of them were just cold meat. Jimbo Merryman told me about you.”

“Good old Jimbo. I go fishing with him now and then, down on Lake Okeechobee.”

“He told me. He also told me you'd become a lawyer and were living here on Longboat Key.”

“I'm sorry it took us so long to hook up, Doc. Back in Nam, when I got out of the hospital, you were gone. Nobody knew exactly where.”

“You remember what they did to Ronnie Easton.”

“Cut him up like so much fish bait.”

“He was my best friend. I wanted some revenge. More than we got with the napalm that day in the grass. I'd heard about this deep-cover unit that assassinated the VC top dogs. I went down to Saigon and rattled around until some colonel decided to listen to me. He checked out my credentials and the next thing I knew I was part of the secret world. I became part of a group of special-operations types, soldiers, Marines, and CIA people, called Operation Thanatos, after the Greek God of Death. We went after the leaders, and we took them out. It wasn't bad duty, if you didn't mind killing up close. I didn't. I kept thinking about Ronnie Easton and how those bastards butchered him.”

“Did it do any good?”

He smiled ruefully. “No. I still hear Ronnie screaming sometimes in the night when I can't sleep. When I first got home, I went up to McCormick to visit his grave. It didn't do anything for me. There was just a slab of concrete with his name on it, sort of lost in a big cemetery behind a church. Some of those graves had been there for over a hundred years.

There were crypts that had fallen in on themselves from lack of maintenance. The inscriptions chiseled into some of the older stones were mostly obliterated by age. Ronnie had a few wilted flowers. Somebody had planted a little American flag at the head of his grave. That was all. I couldn't feel anything. And I knew that in a few years, in a time after we're gone, when the memories of Ronnie are lost forever, his grave will be as meaningless as all those others. And maybe the screams will finally stop.”

“I'm sorry, Doc. I am so fucking sorry.”

“I married the girl from high school, you know. Julie. We had a son. I named him James Ronald Desmond, after Ronnie. He grew up into a fine young man, married a pretty girl from Savannah whom he'd met at the University of Georgia. And then some son of a bitch shot him dead on the beach over near the Hilton. Six weeks ago.”

It hit me. I'm sure I must have heard the name of the shooting victim, but it didn't connect, didn't even make an impression on me. “Shit, Doc. I'm sorry. I never made that connection.”

“He was our only child, Matt. Julie's not doing well. This thing is about to kill her. She had a hard pregnancy, but wanted Jimmy so bad she stayed in bed most of the nine months. He came out healthy, and so did she, but she couldn't get pregnant again. We gave up on that years ago, but we'd been happy. Now, life is a dismal pit.”

“Do you know if the police have any leads on who killed your boy?”

“Not much. A detective, a woman named J. D. Duncan, is working the case.”

“I know her. She's good.”

“Yeah. I checked her out. A lot of years on the Miami-Dade police force, ten years as a detective and toward the end, the vice commander of homicide. She's good, but she has almost nothing to go on.”

“I wish there was something I could do,” I said.

“There is. I want you to sue somebody.”

“I don't practice anymore, Doc.”

“I checked you out, too. You were one of the best trial lawyers around, practiced a long time in Orlando, and gave it up to come here and be a beach bum.”

That pissed me off. “You checked me out?” I asked, my voice cold.

“Don't get your panties in a wad, L.T. I'm a businessman. I check people out before I get into bed with them.”

“And just what kind of business are you in, Doc?” My voice was tinged with suspicion and skepticism.

He chuckled. “You can check me out, Matt. After I got out of the army, I went to Georgia Tech, got a degree in mechanical engineering, and then over the years built a consulting firm that does business in twenty-six states. It's all legit.”

I relaxed. “Sorry, Doc. I've had a few rough patches over the last few years. People trying to kill me, if you can imagine that.”

He laughed. “I can't. Will you help?”

“Asked the man who saved my life. It ain't like I owe you much, Doc. Whatever you want, if it's in my power to do, I'll do it. Tell me how I can help.”

“I understand that you can often prove a case in civil court that you couldn't prove in criminal court.”

“That's right. The standard of proof is different. In criminal court, the prosecution has to prove the state's case beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil court, the plaintiff only has to prove his case by the greater weight of the evidence. That's quite a difference in the burden of proof. What are you thinking?”

“And any evidence you dig up can then be used in the criminal system?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I'm thinking that if you could use the civil system to gather evidence that the cops can't get to, we may be able to find out who killed Jimmy.”

“Then what?”

“I'd want it all turned over to the prosecutors. I'm not going after them, if that's what's bothering you. I learned back in Operation Thanatos that all the killing in the world won't bring back the dead. I just want to see justice done to the bastards who killed my son.”

“Do you have any kind of a starting place? Any suspicions about who may have wanted to hurt your son? Or you, for that matter?”

“I've thought a lot about that, but can't come up with anybody. If
Detective Duncan has any persons of interest, I think they call them, maybe you could sue those people and sort some things out that law enforcement can't get into.”

“It's a thought, Doc. But we have to have a starting place. We can't just haul off and sue somebody. We have to find a legitimate defendant. Somebody who we think is guilty, that we at least have an outside chance of proving he murdered your son.”

“Will you talk to the detective?”

“Sure. She's a good friend of mine. So is the chief of police.”

He looked at his watch. “I've got to go. My plane is at the airport, and I have to be in Montgomery for a mid-morning meeting.”

“Your plane?”

He grinned. “Yeah. Didn't I mention that I'm richer than hell? I can pay your fees.”

“You paid that fee, Doc. A long time ago. Back in the grass.”

Doc left me with my thoughts drifting back to the men I'd served with in Vietnam. I had not kept up with them, and I wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was the fear that they would trigger memories I'd rather forget, bring the past into the present. I could not reconcile those terrible days in a war-torn country with the life I had now, living quietly on an island awash in sunshine and good cheer, with friends and fishing and booze and the occasional pretty girl to share my bed.

A couple of years back, I'd run into my old first sergeant, Jimbo Merryman. He lived over in the middle of the state near Lake Okeechobee and every now and then I'd drive over and we'd take his skiff out for some bass fishing in the lake. He kept up with the guys, but we didn't talk much about those days or the people who had shared them with us.

I wasn't sure about the civil suit that Doc wanted me to file. I owed him a lot, but I also owed my profession something. I wouldn't file a groundless suit, even if the end result could be justice. On the other hand, if I could find someone who I genuinely thought culpable in the death of Jim Desmond, I'd go after him. This wasn't the kind of suit that resulted in money damages for the plaintiff, in this case Doc Desmond. The idea of the suit was that Doc was seeking compensation for the death of his son. But that was subterfuge, what the lawyers call a legal fiction. What we really wanted was to uncover evidence that would lead us to the murderer. We'd turn over whatever we found to the police and the prosecutors and let them proceed in the criminal courts. We'd drop the suit right then. Money was not the object.