Killing a Cold One (34 page)

59

Friday, January 9

LARAMIE MOUNTAIN, WYOMING

When Service called Friday to tell her where he was next headed, she said, “Heading west is not coming home,” and she'd huffed and hung up, giving him no chance to explain that Gunny Prince had discovered Varhola's CO had been Brigadier General Paul Revere Mindred, long ago retired, founder and current honcho of an eight-ball outfit called The Horse River Citizens Patriot Tea Party Militia. Mindred had commanded a Special Services battalion in Vietnam, Special Services being to Special Forces as tap dancing was to knife-fighting. The photograph from Father Eyes had drawn a blank in St. Louis. Maybe it would here, too.
Then what do you do,
he asked himself, and had no answer.

“General was Mindred's army rank?” Service had asked Prince.

“Nope, he retired as a light colonel as soon as he got stateside after his Nam eployment. Promoted himself to general when he started up his militia.”

“Voluntary retirement?”

“Postwar reduction in force.”

Called
RIF,
a common occurrence after wars.
“He wiggy?”

“No, but there are rumored loose-cannon tendencies.”

Service called Mindred from Lincoln, Nebraska, and though the man sounded gruff, he was amenable to a visit.

 

•••

 

The militia compound was north of Cheyenne in the Laramie Mountains, south of the 9,400-foot Warbonnet Peak. The property was called Six Six Two and lay at the end of a long gravel road that terminated in a massive steel gate, with vintage World War II tanks on pedestals on either side.

A double cyclone fence topped with razor wire stretched all along the property line. Two men in white fatigues, white parkas, and camo berets stood guard at the front gate and called ahead when Service presented his credentials. The sign over the gate read
hq, 662 brigade, horse river citizens patriot militia:
our arms keep us free.
The guards carried shotguns.

“Sir,” the guard on his left greeted him when he rolled down his window.

“Name's Service. I have an appointment with the general.”

“Sir, remain here, sir.” The man took his ID and stepped into a small brick building sprouting various commo antennae.

“Sir, 'kay, I will, sir,” Service mumbled. Military bookend language. The brick building was sandbagged, and Service could see two other sandbagged emplacements on rises in the distance. There was only a small dusting of snow on the ground, and it was mixed with dirt. He guessed tunnels connected the installations on the hills.

The guard returned. “Sir, five miles west, sir. Sir, you've got precisely fifteen minutes, sir. Follow the blue signs to the visitors' reception center, sir.”

“What if I don't make it in fifteen minutes?” Service asked.

“Sir, you
will
make it.” He didn't tack on a second sir this time.

Mussolini would have gotten off on this place: timetables, spit-shined boots, and all the gaudy attachments.

Near the end of his drive he passed an obstacle training course and a tower used to train parachutists, no airfield or aircraft in sight. There were sandbagged positions on nearly every hill, a lowlife boys' club caught in a war in their heads. Bizarre, but every militia outfit he'd come across over the years was pretty much the same mixture of efficient and pathetic.

The visitors' center was a white pole barn. Several Humvees had machine-gun mounts but no weapons displayed. Two small squads of men were doing close-order marching, no weapons apparent.

The center's interior was paneled in knotty pine, the furniture from Steelcase, and new. A woman in a tight-fitting white jumpsuit was behind a counter marked
information
. A wall rack held numerous publications,
free
.

“Mr. Service,” the woman greeted him.

He nodded. She was tall with green eyes and silvery hair. Her jumpsuit was seriously tailored, not some old thing off the rack. She wore white flats, definitely not your average mud soldier.

“Please accompany me.”

They went upstairs to a large room with blue carpeting, framed photographs on the walls, racks of weapons along another wall, and behind a desk, a large eagle. The woman brought him a cup of coffee.

The general walked with the assistance of two aluminum canes, the kind with metal collars wrapped around the wrists. He was short with a potbelly, faded jeans, scuffed jungle boots, and a too-tight khaki shirt with epaulets. GI whitewall haircut, dull blue eyes, today's stubble beginning to sprout on his face.

Mindred fell back onto a couch with a grunt and pointed at Service's coffee. “Please,” he told the woman, who scurried away.

“The docs don't allow me much fun these days,” the general said as he watched the woman's behind. When she was gone he said, “They can take the snakeskin off the snake . . .”

Service had no idea what the man meant.

“Not that I could do anything with that if I happened to catch it,” Mindred added.

The snake or the snakeskin?
The general's voice was estrogenic, almost comical, but there was some military bearing to the man, a way of carrying himself that suggested he was a putz accustomed to being taken seriously.

“Sorry not to give you more warning, General.”

“A lot of people out there write us off as extremists or lunatics, but the fact is, we're law-abiding, God-fearing citizens, and if the law comes calling legally and politely, we want to cooperate, even if their jurisdictions don't pertain.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“You're from the Upper Peninsula, son?”

“Yessir.”

“Guard your land, Officer. I have it on impeccable authority that the One World Government plans to take away our wildernesses. I mean ta tell ya, ya can't have America without boonies, am I right?”

“You were in Vietnam, sir?”

“Weren't we all?” Mindred said gloomily. “Goddamned special services, national parks and recreation service in Vietnam, two years of herding doper split tails for USO shows, Bible bangers on the federal dole, the whole Hollywood grab-ass and pepperoni sideshow. Yeah, I was there. People these days ask me what hell is, I tell them it's being trapped in Special Services in a shooting war. I know morale's important, goddammit, but I say send the boys off to a whorehouse every month or so, and make sure they've always got hot chow and clean socks. Pussy, hot chow, clean socks, and ammo—what more does a man need to fight? It ain't complicated.”

Ooh boy.
“Sir, I'm trying to locate someone named Lakotish.”

“That some kind of Moozlim handle?”

“I don't think so.”

“Hell, they all reported to me, everything from Anabaptists to damn Mormons. Sky pilots, of course. I avoided them as much as I could, figured they knew their own business, didn't need me in their way.”

“Lakotish may have worked with Father Clem Varhola.”

Mindred grinned. “Exception to the rule. Clem was the best damn chaplain I ever saw, always wanting into the shit. The kids loved his hot-dog ass. Made a field tour once dressed as St. Elvis, swear to God, sang this song, ‘Blue Suede Boots.' He was an original.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“Same as the rest of us. Did his time and caught the Freedom Bird back to the World—not that it was worth coming back to by then.”

“Do you know where he went?”

The general stopped talking when Ms. Jumpsuit brought him a cup of coffee, and he stared at a wall. “Hold your horses: Forgot that. Clem got beaucoup shot up in '66. The medics evac'ed him up to Jappoland for repairs. Never saw him again.”

“Wounded in action?”

“Who the hell
was
the enemy there? I never did figure that one out. Our gooks or the damn commies' gooks? Clem was always trying to bail people out of jams. He had an assistant, wild as a March-damn-hare. We lost a shitload of kids in '66. I heard something about how the two of them went down to some ville and it turned into a Vietcong shitstorm, got both Clem and the crazy kid who worked for him. Several attacks. Hell, my exec was with them that day and got a round that went in through his mouth and out the back of his head. Always told him he talked too damn much. Bullet never touched his teeth. I got a photo of that somewhere.

“Hell, it was weeks before we got everything straightened out again. Both Clem and his boy got hit. The kid was killed, burned up in a fire that consumed the whole ville. By the time I got details, Clem was up at the hospital in Yakota, I think.”

“You remember the dead kid's name?”

“That name you threw at me—that sounded about right.”

“Lakotish.”

“Yeah. He was trained infantry, but ended up with Clem after a stint with an outfit in the bush. Heard he'd been a little overzealous, but how can that be if what you do is in your nation's interest? That's Uncle Sam: Train a man as a rifleman, then ask him to lug around a Bible.”

“Have you got photos from those days, General?”

The general moved over to his desk and opened some drawers. “What am I looking for?”

Service handed the general his phone and pulled up the photo. “Anyone you recognize?”

Mindred studied the picture for several minutes and declared, “Be damned.”

“Sir?”

“Fog of war . . . ever hear that term?”

“Yessir.”

“Like I said, things were major fucked in those days. You issue an order and expect shit to happen, only it doesn't and nobody tells you. You never get anything sorted out; nothing's ever simple or clean.”

The general rooted in another drawer and pulled out a photo. “Here you go, son.”

“Father Varhola?”

“Him and his wallah.”

Service pointed at Lakotish. “Varhola?”

“Hell no, that's the kid who got wasted. Clem's next to him.”

“Lakotish?”

“Like I said, that name sounds right.”

Service looked at the photo on his phone. It was Lakotish in the retreat photo Bill Eyes had sent to him. Not Varhola.
Holy shit!

“There a copy machine I can borrow, General?”

“Sure, how many copies you want?”

“Just one.”

Mindred pushed a button on the desk and the woman reentered. He held out the photo and minutes later the woman returned. Service bid farewell to the general and she led him to his vehicle and handed him the envelope containing the copy.

“You've got fifteen minutes,” she reminded him. “You think I like being all the way out here in nowhereland with all these toy soldiers?”

He shook his head, started the Tahoe, and hammered his way out to the main gate, his heart racing. Only conclusion to draw now:
Varhola died in Vietnam, and Lakotish took his place. What the hell does it mean?

Out on the highway Service headed south. He tried to call Father Eyes, but Gunny Prince called first. “Major Harry Axtall lives in Battle Ground, Indiana, plant manager for an outfit called Nocturne Solar Panel Systems. I called the major and told him you may call him, too. In fact, I want you to.” Prince gave him the number and hung up.

Service pulled over and tapped in the phone number. “Major Axtall?”

“Just Harry these days. Prince said you wanted to talk about Lakotish.”

“Yessir.”

“I had him for half of '66. I was losing new brown bars every seventy-two hours, and some platoons got pretty disorganized. Lakotish was one tough customer and never gave me any problems, but one of my new Looeys stopped by one day with a bag full of Vietnamese hands and heads. Told me Lakotish had been freelancing at night, got caught by his platoon sergeant with the bag. Fricking mess. I called CID and then we got hit hard and lost a bunch of my men, and Lakotish fought like a damn demon. I would've kept him, but what he'd done was wrong, and we had reporters crawling all over the bush with us. Couldn't keep the boy. He told me he wanted a chaplain's assistant job to atone for his sins, so I got him transferred to Special Services and never heard of him again.”

“He got caught with body parts,” Service said. “What about the torsos?”

“Found some after the firefight.”

“Lakotish kill them?”

“Nine or ten, all head shots. That kid could shoot the nuts off a flying mosquito.”

“Anything else about the bodies?”

“Nothing jumps to mind.”

Service started to end the call, but the former major said, “Wait—I think I remember that all his kills were stripped of their clothes and weapons and had cuts right along their spines.”

“Before or after they were shot?”

“Didn't much matter to me.”

“This have any influence on your decision on Lakotish?”

“Might have. That kid helped keep us alive, and when the shooting stopped it was water under the bridge.”