The Price of Blood (10 page)
“D
AD, THERE’S ONE THING I WANT YOU TO KNOW. I never took, all these years. And my kind of work, I had chances.”
Mike sucked on his empty pipe and placed a stick on the fire. “Yeeaah,” he said slowly. “So?”
“I’m thinking of taking something.”
“You talking about straight-out stealing?” asked Mike.
“I don’t think so. See, the fact is…” Broker laughed and threw out his arms in an absurd posture. “I’m the only cop in Minnesota who’s blown up a jail to break the inmates out and who’s been investigated for robbing a bank of ten tons of gold bullion.”
“Ah,” Mike exclaimed softly like a man who had just been handed a key.
“Vietnam. I was the last swinging dick out. April 30, 1975.”
“This gold…?”
“National Bank in Hue City.”
“And you robbed this bank for the army?”
“No, I went in to break a Vietnamese guy out of jail. I was the diversion for robbing the bank, but, see, I didn’t
know
about the bank. I was the fall guy.”
“Ha…” Mike exhaled.
Broker took a stiff pull on his Scotch. “All these years I thought that girl’s father had set me up. I trusted him. You might say it soured me on people. Now I’m not so sure I got it right.”
Mike carefully placed one knee on the other and grasped the top knee in both hands. “We always thought you had something big in you, Phil. Irene is of the opinion that you were born in the wrong century. Me, I worried you had one of those…syndromes.”
Broker leaned back and savored another mouthful of Scotch, letting it roll medicinally from one side of his mouth to the other. How to communicate the mood that had gripped Vietnam at the end?
“There were five of us, four Americans, one Vietnamese, the same guys who came back for me at Quang Tri City.”
“I remember,” said Mike.
“Her dad yanked me back over to Nam to work with them again in a Special Intelligence unit. When the bottom fell out in April of seventy-five, we became part of the evacuation effort…”
Broker stared at the swirling pattern of the fire. What people had before electric lights and television. Where they saw their hopes and dreams and fears. He became lost in the flicker the flames painted on the lapping water and his voice sounded far away.
LaPorte was a colonel by then, Pryce still a major, Tarantuna a master sergeant. For a month they flew around the collapsing Republic of South Vietnam trying to salvage Vietnamese agents who had worked for American programs—an alphabet soup of acronyms—CORDS and Phoenix and PRUs. It was like running into a burning house to find scattered pictures from a family album
.
Pryce had been closest to Trin, knew the language and the culture, they had worked some deep clandestine games over the years. The rumor was that Pryce had talked Trin into leaving the Viet Cong after Tet of ’68. LaPorte had the rank but Pryce was the ramrod
.
“We grabbed whatever was around, helicopters, boats, sometimes we based in Laos, other times off ships in the South China Sea. We snuck into collection points in the central provinces. Trin did the dangerous work, working behind the lines, lining up evacuees. The command structure was disintegrating, we glommed on to whatever was around.”
Down in Saigon, the lemming rush to the sea was over and the last chopper had taken off from the embassy roof. They were winding down, calling it quits, afloat on the departing fleet off the coast
.
“We were waiting for Trin to bring out one last group to the coast. Then Pryce learned from a holdout radio site that Trin had been nabbed on the street in Hue City. Trin was being held in the old MACV advisors compound with a group of high-ranking officers and politicals.”
A crazed huddle on the deck of a decrepit minesweeper LaPorte had commandeered for them. Cognac and the Gauloises and a slow voltage electrocution of adrenaline on empty. The insane notion was put forth by Pryce and seconded by Tuna—they didn’t leave Trin in 1972, so why should they leave him now. LaPorte wasn’t even there, he was stuck pulling refugees out of the sea around the port city of Danang. They had to expedite the raid on the radio
.
“We decided to go in and get Trin out. Real nuts. But that’s what we decided to do. LaPorte got us a helicopter.”
They sat down over a street map of Hue City with one of Pryce’s agents who’d made it out with a floor plan of the prison. Hopefully, the victory-drunk North Vietnamese might be literally drunk, celebrating on this particular night
.
Broker, with Quang Tri City on his mind, volunteered to lead the ground component of the operation
.
The last time Broker saw Ray Pryce he was on the deck of the minesweep that had crept in close to the mouth of the Perfume River. Hue City was sixteen kilometers upstream. A Chinook helicopter sat ready on the deck. Broker would go in early, by boat, set some diversions and then blow the jail. The Chinook would rendezvous with them and pull them out. Broker had barely met the pilots. It was all—hey hubba-hubba—let’s get this fucker over with
.
Before midnight, Broker, with six of Trin’s South Vietnamese commandos, slipped up the Perfume River in a fishing boat under the cover of a rain squall. After they set their diversions, the plan was to crack the jail at 3
A.M.
, free as many prisoners as possible, and get them to the broad lawn on the riverfront where the old province helicopter pad had been. Pryce and Tuna would come in with the Chinook, barrel down the river, land, and pluck them out
.
Broker had walked the streets of Hue back in ’72 and ’73. Now the streets were strewn with flags and clutter from a victory march. That night he crept through garbage in the back alleys, clad in black fatigues with greasepaint on his face and a black watch cap pulled down tight. He was not particularly thrilled or frightened. He was too preoccupied with not screwing up. But it was a mind bender—everyone was leaving and he was going back in
.
They set their diversions at a radio tower, a barracks, and the city hall. Just before they blew the plastique, he remembered hearing a dull rumble in the humid rain. Unafraid of the American Air Force, an unbroken convoy of trucks crossed the Perfume River bridge with their lights on, ferrying reinforcements and supplies down National Route 1 to the south
.
Then life accelerated and time slowed amid the confused stutter of one last fire fight in the shadows of the blown building. The durable smile of Colonel Trin appeared in the doorway of a cell and Broker made his radio call. They ran for the riverfront and waited for the Chinook
.
He remembered hearing the rotors and seeing the shadow of the big chopper flit through the flames from the diversion fires. But it swooped down two blocks away from their location. Frantic, he’d called on his radio. No reply. The helicopter struggled back aloft with a heavily laden cargo net. Wands of sparking groundfire batted around the chopper as it disappeared into the gloom
.
They’d been abandoned in the hostile city. North Vietnamese soldiers—angry at the rude nightcap to their victory celebration—boiled out of buildings and swarmed the streets. Broker and his team and the freed prisoners split into small groups and it was every man for himself. A steady cacophony of small-arms fire stalked them
.
Trin made Broker hide his radio and survival kit, then doff his weapons and remaining gear. They dove into the river and swam to the lower story of a restaurant built over the water. Trin left Broker in the care of the proprietor, a Frenchman, who hid him in his cellar
.
The next night Trin returned with a small motorized pirogue and Broker’s radio and the survival kit. They paddled through lotus-choked canals and then side channels, then started the motor and went down the Perfume River to the sea. Off the coast, at dawn, Broker raised a Navy rescue channel and a Sea Stallion chopper homed in on his beacon. Trin declined the offer to escape. They exchanged gifts. Broker traded his Zippo lighter for a tiger tooth set in gold on a neck chain. Then Trin turned his small craft back to the misty shore
.
“T
HEN ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE,” SAID BROKER. HE downed the Scotch and let the liquor talk.
On the deck of a navy carrier he learned that he was the sole survivor of the ground team. Only Tuna had survived of the Chinook crew that had gone in with Pryce
.
Dumbfounded, he was interrogated by tense, exhausted intelligence types who wanted to know why Pryce had used him as a diversion while he took the Chinook in to rob the National Bank of Hue
.
Broker and Tuna were placed in separate detention and didn’t get the whole picture until the preliminary investigation for their classified inquiry convened in Fort Benning
.
He was saved by the radio communications from the helicopter, which had been monitored by the fleet. And by Tuna who testified that Pryce had switched the plan after the chopper took off
.
According to Tuna, Broker’s raid was a decoy, to draw attention away from the real mission. Pryce had discovered that the Communists had amassed a huge cache of gold for shipment to Hanoi. Pryce intended to sling the booty and drop it in the Laotian jungle to finance continued resistance. He said it was a high-priority mission, denying assets to the Communists
.
And Pryce had it planned to the last minute. Two Vietnamese operatives were positioned inside the bank and had eliminated the guards. They rolled the crated gold ingots out on a forklift and dumped them into the cargo net that was lowered from the chopper. The inside men scrambled up the net and they left
.
Tuna had specifically stated under oath that he had queried Pryce about the ground diversion: Shouldn’t they pick them up
.
According to Tuna, Pryce replied that they were “expendable.” The gold came first
.
Tuna then described how the chopper was hit by ground fire, how Pryce was seriously wounded and their radio was damaged
.
Two radio messages figured prominently in the testimony. The first was a call from the pilot requesting clarification from someone in authority because the mission had been changed in mid-flight. The second was a mayday call. The pilot was about to send a coordinate when the radio stopped transmitting
.
The next day, as Broker hid in the restaurant cellar, Tuna was picked up on the South China Sea in a survival raft. He said they had looked for a place to put the bird down after the radio went out and decided against it. With Pryce wounded and the copter damaged, the pilot decided he’d never get back up if he set down. He opted to stay in the air and try to make it back to the fleet. But with the load in the net, he miscalculated. The damaged helicopter went down in the sea and only Tuna came out alive. Ray Pryce, the bird, the alleged gold, and the crew went to the bottom of the South China Sea
.
Colonel LaPorte had testified how he had signed for the bird and authorized Pryce’s plan for the prisoner extraction. But he’d handled it verbally on the radios and nothing was in writing. When he learned what had happened he burned up the radio channels trying to send in another helicopter to get Broker out. The command had vetoed the project. Radio logs were introduced to verify his testimony
.
Tuna and Broker’s appointed JAG attorneys presented the “good German” defense. They were cleared of charges when the inquiry board found that they believed they were following different versions of lawful orders. The blame for the renegade operation was conveniently placed on Ray Pryce, who was listed as dead, body unrecoverable. Inexplicably, no evidence was brought in the investigation that the gold really existed. The new Communist rulers of Vietnam never formally registered a complaint. The Hue gold became a mythic story
.
The incident was a final ripple in the sewage of defeat and was buried deep. But the stench attached itself to Colonel LaPorte, who never commanded troops again. Doggedly he stayed in the army and got his Brigadier’s star before retiring. The dishonor also fell heavily on the Pryce family. Broker had assumed that the weight of it had twisted Nina Pryce into the obsessed young woman she was today
.
Broker stared at his empty glass and looked up. Mike said, “Ah, Phil, Nina’s up there sitting on the porch with your twelve-gauge.”
“She’s cool, Mike.” He paused. “Actually, she’s not.
She’s
got the syndrome now.” Broker laughed.
He could appreciate the irony. The psychological antics associated with returning veterans were for other people. Hell, that was for the Oliver Stone war. His war was different. Four divisions of NVA—hundreds of tanks—coming at him across the old DMZ and batting him down the length of Quang Tri Province. No time to roll a joint. Now here he was, saddled with a fucked-up Desert Storm vet. Size six, female type.
“So,” said Mike, “why are you telling me this now, tonight?”
“Because Nina says she can get proof that Gen. Cyrus LaPorte set me
and
her dad up. But his gold heist went funny and the gold wound up in the ocean. Now apparently he has a boat over off the coast of Vietnam and he’s found the stuff. But the fact that he may have found it doesn’t prove he masterminded stealing it.”
Mike exhaled. “Ten tons of gold…Back up. How’s she know this—”
“Because last night she stole a map with the location of the goddamn helicopter wreck off LaPorte’s desk in New Orleans. Somebody’s after her. She says.”
“Oh,” said Mike, looking around mildly. “That why you’re packing the Colt? Are we expecting bad company?”
“Well, let’s put it this way. If we aren’t, I tend to disbelieve her story.”
Mike puffed on his pipe. “I pity any fool who meets Tank in the woods at night.”
Broker nodded. “I already put Tom onto a guy who may have followed us. He’s got Lyle Torgeson and some Grand Marais cops keeping an eye on us. We’ll be covered. But I still want you and Irene to spend the rest of the night in town.”
“So…” Mike finally lit his pipe and drew on it, creating a cyclops ember in the dense shadow of his head.
“So,” said Broker.
“A map that marks a…treasure.” Mike Broker chuckled and slapped his knee. “Kinda like when you were a kid and we’d come down here and read—”
“This ain’t no story book,” said Broker.
“So who’s this alleged gold belong to?” asked Mike.
Broker shrugged. “Right now I’m thinking that it got lost in a gray area between two chapters in the history book.”
Broker stood up and placed his hands on his hips and watched the firelight bend over the waves that lapped on the rocks. “Maybe it belongs to the people who stole it. Maybe I’m one of them,” he said.
Mike joined him on the water’s edge. “This LaPorte character, what’s he like?”
“Tough, smart, rich, connected.”
“And you’re going after him?”
“Depends. If she’s right. If the gold is real—I’m going after
something
.”
“With just that girl?”
Broker laughed. “The other survivor of the raid sent Nina to find me. He’s been sitting on something for twenty years in federal prison. Now he’s out, he’s dying of cancer, and he’s disappeared.”
“Sounds pretty thin, Phil.”
“Right now ten tons of gold sounds pretty heavy to me.”
“You’re going back to Vietnam?”
“I’m not going
back
anywhere. I might be going
to
someplace. Except this time, I’m going on my own. And I plan to pay myself damn well for my trouble. If all that gold’s really there—”
“Can you do that?”
“Watch me,” said Broker. He swung his eyes down the dark beach. “We’re going to hold on to these rocks.”
Mike left Tank on Broker’s porch. Then he drove into town with Irene. Nina came from the shadows with the shotgun balanced on her shoulder. “You have a nice talk?”
“Real good one.”
“I feel left out.”
“No. I’m thinking you’re definitely in.”
He patted Tank on the head and then told Nina to give it a rest and get some sleep. He’d be sitting up just a few feet away in the bedroom. She said he looked tired. He said that if he nodded off and anything happened the dog would rouse half the goddamn county. He reminded her to be careful with the shotgun, anything she heard moving out in the dark could be cops watching the place. Or the dog.
As he brushed his teeth, a Scotch-inspired thought caricatured his lean face in the mirror. He recalled a question on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test, one that had recurred in his imagination while working undercover, a personal joke that John Eisenhower would not approve of:
I am a special agent of God
. Answer yes or no.