SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (2 page)

The younger boy followed, a hangdog sadness bowing his youthful body into that of a stunted old man.

Eileen's parents discovered the kitten after breakfast. They called Nick's mother into their yard to see Shingles hanging by the wire noose, the stiffened body an incomprehensible warning swaying in the summer breeze.

They did not have any proof, of course, they made that perfectly clear, but everyone knew Nick was the culprit. Even his mother knew it. Eileen had accused him, turning her reddened eyes away when he was led into the yard, his head unbowed.

No one was able to coerce Nick into admitting guilt. His mother beat him for three nights with a wide leather belt, but the punishment seemed useless. Then Daley was beaten, the belt digging deep and raising half-inch welts on his legs and back, but there was no betrayal.

Nick later confided to his brother. "It didn't hurt much."

"Well, it hurt me. I can't sit down or sleep on my back," Daley complained.

"You could've told on me. I didn't care. I was gonna get a whipping for it anyway."

Daley shrugged and quick tears came to his eyes. "Oh, I didn't care. It didn't hurt that bad." He paused and considered his next statement. "I don't think you really had to kill Shingles, though, Nick. It was a pretty kitten."

"It was just a dumb stupid cat. It was supposed to die."

"Okay, Nick, it's all right. Don't get mad," Daley said quickly.

"I'm not mad. Not at you."

Nick leaned over and hugged his brother.

"Nick?" Daley said after an amiable silence.

"Yeah?"

"Don't do it anymore, okay? I don't want you to do that anymore."

Nick walked away from Daley, unable to make a promise he expected he would have to break.

Deep down inside he knew it would happen again.

And again.

The kitten's death was simply the beginning.

Quang Ngai / Bordering Forest

1974

DALEY RINGER expected to die. He was twenty-two years old and specially trained for guerrilla warfare, but he did not believe the training was going to save him this time. Luck had run out for both him and Nick.

It was only a matter of who would get it first. Daley prayed that Nick would outlive him. To die alone would be the ultimate horror.

"Nick?" The whisper seemed to carry through the thick screen of leaves and branches like the raucous caw of a jungle bird. "Nick, are you awake?"

"Sure, I'm awake. I don't want to fall out of this motherfucker and land smack in the arms of a gook."

The two brothers sat on the limb of a tree close to the trunk.

"My trick knee keeps popping," Nick said, holding his right leg out in the air cautiously The kneecap clicked so loudly that Daley flinched. He wished Nick would stop. It was malting him edgy.

"I wish to hell I could sleep one night on the ground," Nick complained.

Daley grunted his agreement. They had been in trees every night since getting separated from their platoon.

It made for lousy sleeping arrangements. The first two nights they fastened their belts and ammunition holders together and lashed themselves to the trunk, but Nick did not like it. He thought they should not give up their freedom of movement. So they took turns, holding each other in place to keep from toppling forty feet to the ground.

Soon it would be Nick's watch, and for an uncomfortable two hours Daley could try to dream of a bed and clean sheets when reality offered only vertigo and mosquitoes. He wondered if they would ever get out of this goddamn hellhole jungle. Not alive, he decided. Daley had already accepted the death verdict. Miracles did not happen for two lone soldiers with only one working .45 sidearm between them even recon snipers, the top special force of the army, could not be expected to make it out alone.

A galaxy of stars glittered in the sky. It was a clear night and the moon was waning. The silence was broken intermittently by the wild flapping of birds' wings. Each time Nick stretched his leg and popped his knee, the birds flew into a different set of branches.

What if the gooks heard Nick's knee-popping trick as they paused beneath the tree? Daley wondered. The night would light up like the Fourth of July and two sitting pigeons would be grounded with guts full of lead.

Sweet Christ!

"You ready for a nap, Daley?" Nick sounded almost cheerful.

“I’m pretty jittery.”

Nick snorted and slapped the branch with his palm. "You're a master of understatement," he said. "Try to get some rest anyway. It's my watch."

Daley scooted near to the trunk and pressed his chest against the rough bark as if embracing a woman.

"What kind of tree is this?" he asked, tracing the sharp whorls of bark with his fingers.

“Vietnamese oak. How the fuck should I know?"

Daley smiled. He felt Nick's arm hold him steady. His brother's fingers were wintry. ”You must be cold.

I'm sweating and your hands are freezing."

"Fear, little brother. It drains all the warmth. Haven't you ever noticed?"

Daley silently agreed, but what good did it do to talk about it? It only caused the fear to become more urgent.

Nick's knee popped again. A bird jeered and flew through pitch blackness with a flutter.

Suddenly a twig snapped at the bottom of the tree. Daley's eyes snapped open. His heart pounded fiercely and he struggled for breath.

"You hear that?" he asked in a low whisper.

"Some animal," Nick reassured him. "Get some sleep while you can."

Daley's eyes closed and his heart slowed until it no lower thumped against his rib cage. Sleep, sure, sleep.

But how? He had nightmares of falling, his body riddled with bullet holes.

All the odds were against their survival. Big shot recon snipers cut off from safety. One M-14 with a broken breach. Nick had buried it. One M-14 lost in the murky depths of a creek while crossing. He would never live it down if they ever got back to the platoon. He could have told them he would fuck things up.

Where the sergeant saw potential, Daley only saw incompetence. Losing his weapon proved it.

“I’m gonna die,” he breathed, but Nick did not hear him. The frightened birds that nested all around the brothers thought the animal in their midst had only breathed a weary sigh.

#

Daley woke groggily, clawing his way out of his nightmare to stare blankly at the trunk of the tree right before his eyes.

"Smell 'em?" Nick whispered harshly.

Smell what? Daley wondered. Then his mind slipped into place and he remembered where he was.

The Cong! You could always smell them before you could see them or hear their approach. They stank of wet stagnant rice paddies and they stank of human excrement. Their own shit betrayed their presence.

Daley touched his brother to let him know that he knew the enemy was close. He strained to hear a sound, but be could not tell where they were. The aroma was still faint so he knew they were not at the base of the tree. Please Jesus save us, he prayed.

"Stay." Nick said the word so softly it might have been a puff of wind passing Daley's ear. He wanted to scream,
No! Don't go down there! Don't let me die alone!
But Nick already was shimmying expertly down the tree, swinging from limb to limb as he lowered himself to the ground. Daley watched his brother becoming a dark shape going down, down, descending silently to death.

Daley decided not to do as Nick had commanded. He could not sit in the branches while his brother stalked the enemy. There might be too many of them. It was probably a night patrol from a nearby tunnel.

The stink grew stronger. The enemy was closer, not more than twenty yards north of their tree. Daley could hear them, the footfalls barely disturbing the thick vegetation of the forest floor.

He looked for Nick, but his brother had vanished.
Oh for godssake, Nick, this is it. This is how it ends. And I don't even have a goddamn gun.

Daley moved like a wraith down the tree trunk and concentrated on the darkness in the direction of the oncoming sounds. Where was Nick? Would he use the .45?

Daley braced himself for anything. Gunfire. Capture. Quick painful death from behind. He felt his bowels loosen and tensed his buttocks. A sweet sensation of relief was followed by the realization that he had wet himself. Shame suffused him, but couldn't overcome the fear. He kept perfectly still, not breathing.

An odd gurgling sound came from the direction of the Cong. Bushes rustled, followed by a thin, throaty rattle, then silence.

Suddenly Daley was running without knowing why or what he would do when he burst through the matted vines that separated him from what he feared on the other side. He flailed through waist-high bushes, tearing away the branches that barred his path. His foot caught beneath a body on the ground and he went down with a grunt. He rolled off the corpse, jumped to his feet, and heard Nick whisper close to his ear, "I told you to stay!"

Daley jerked his head, looking around for more Vietnamese. "Where are they?" he asked. "Jesus, Nick, I thought..."

"Shhh!" Nick put a finger to Daley's lips. They both turned in unison at the approaching footsteps.

Suddenly Nick pushed Daley behind a clump of broad slick leaves. Daley squatted, his gaze riveted momentarily on the dead man's eyes that stared sightlessly up to the treetops. Daley's attention went back to his brother, who stood flush against a tree. In the shadows it looked as if something was suspended from his right hand. A rope? A piece of string? What the hell does he have? Where was the .45? Daley wondered.

A short, skeletal Viet Cong slipped into the bare spot where the dead man lay. He stepped past the tree where Nick waited. As Daley's eyes rounded with terror, Nick moved behind the soldier, wrapped his hands around the man's throat, and tightened the eighteen-inch wire of a garrote.

The Vietnamese dropped his rifle and grabbed at his throat, the fingers clawing at the strangling wire that was cutting off his wind. Nick jerked the garrote more fiercely and the man's feet left the ground, his full weight against Nick's chest. Nick held him, pulling the wire tighter and tighter. The wire sank deeper into the tender flesh as blood began to gush from the wound. The gurgling sounded again.

Nick heaved backward with all his might, and while Daley watched in both horror and fascination, the man's head was severed from his struggling body, blood spurting after the head in a high, wide arc.

Daley turned and retched. He heard the head hit the ground and roll. Then there was a heavier crash as the body dropped to earth, blood still gouting from the neck.

"Let's go," Nick said softly. He touched Daley's shoulder with a hand that dripped warm blood. "There's one more. He took off. He'll bring the whole goddamn North Vietnamese army down on us."

Daley could not vomit. Nothing would come up. They had been eating powdered eggs and C-ration Spam for days. It sat in his rolling stomach like a malignant tumor, but it would not come up. He had killed his share of the enemy. He had seen men killed. Blood and torn flesh were typical scenes in war. But decapitation was too gruesome. It was one atrocity he had not witnessed in Vietnam.

Nick was striking off through the jungle. He seemed to know instinctively where the other Vietnamese had gone. Daley rushed to catch his brother. Someone had told him…maybe it was the battle-weary sergeant…fear was the healthiest emotion a soldier could feel. Fear caused you to fight longer, and more fiercely. But Daley had pissed himself and he had tried to vomit up his guts. What kind of a real soldier was he? And what kind was Nick?

They were going deeper into the forest. Nick slogged ahead, the garrote swinging from his hand like a yo-yo while Daley followed. He could see the entrance of a cave outlined in the darkness. He could not tell if it was a cave that nature had created or if it was mad-made--bored into the hillside by the Cong. As they neared the opening Daley smelled the scent of the enemy once again, the scent of death riding on the breeze.

Nick did not hesitate for a second. He boldly entered the tunnel. Daley hung back, swallowed, wiped a line of perspiration from his upper lip, then stepped inside.

He was momentarily blinded. He could not see his hand, his brother, or the walls on either side of him.

''Nick?" Daley whispered.

There was a sharp war cry. The dark boomed with the sounds of human battle. Vietnamese curses tore through the air.

Daley waited, shivering with fear. "Nick!" he called more loudly.

The chilling gurgle of a man being strangled bounced off the damp walls of the cave.

Daley could not wait any longer. The man being strangled could not be Nick. It could not be! If It was, then he had to save his brother, save him somehow…

Daley stumbled forward, his hands outstretched to feel for the shape of a man. Something hot splashed over him and he knew it was blood.

He screamed.

A cigarette lighter flicked on. Daley stopped in mid-stride, his mouth still open from the scream that was fading away with tinny echoes to the back of the cave. Nick stood over the corpse of the last Vietnamese, the garrote dangling from one hand. He looked mad in the tuckering flame. He was covered with blood. Rubies of it nestled in his fine blond hair. Streaks of it ran down both cheeks.

The front of his uniform was darkly soaked, and at his feet the severed neck of a black-suited Viet Cong continued to pump rivers of red over his boots. I'm right here. little brother." Nick's voice was calm. His stained lips curved into a gentle smile. He looked like a grim circus clown, chalk-white patches of skin and lipstick-smeared lips. "You don't have to be afraid anymore, Daley, I'll always take care of you."

Daley could not help himself. He collapsed against the damp cave wall and began to sob. The cigarette lighter flame hissed and threw giant, bobbing shadows behind the two soldiers. They stood that way for a long time: one brother weeping, one brother smiling and holding his light up high against the darkness.

THE TROPICAL SUN was aflame. The temperature and humidity were both in the nineties, making any physical activity a laborious task. Vietnam was the armpit of the world, and the vast armies sweeping across its interior were merely parasites looking for a more comfortable host.