The only thing that would help was revenge.
Father James had always taught that vengeance belonged to the Lord, but Sammy Robinson hadn’t seen it that way. “His vengeance takes too long,” Sammy would say. “Time He gets around to it, the guy might not even remember what it was he’d done wrong. I say take your revenge now, while it’s fresh, and let the Lord have His turn later on.”
Colonel Phan ran that Pathet Lao camp, and he was the reason the Pentagon brass had wanted it attacked. If Lincoln could take out Phan, the whole thing would collapse. The rest of the men would probably go back north, where they belonged, and leave this end of the Plain of Jars to the Hmong.
Even if they didn’t, it would be worth it. Killing Phan would avenge his men. It wouldn’t bring them back, but it would enable Lincoln to live with their loss.
Maybe he wasn’t officer material. Not cut out to lead an army. But if there was one thing Lincoln Clay was good at, it was killing people.
He would kill the warlord, and he would do it soon. While it was fresh.
• • •
Sho tried to talk him out of it. “It is too dangerous,” she pleaded. “Lincoln, I love you. I cannot lose you. You will be killed!”
“What about the other men who were killed?” he asked. “Don’t their women feel the same way about them?”
“I do not love them,” she said. “I do not care about them, only you. If you die, too, how would that help them?”
He couldn’t answer that one. There was no answer. His death would do nothing to make theirs more worthwhile.
But Phan’s would. Without their leader, what would the Pathet soldiers do? Lincoln didn’t think they had the unit integrity to hold together. They were followers. Killing Phan would not only be sweet revenge, it would bring about the outcome he had been hoping for in the first place.
“I have to do this, Sho,” he said. “It’s why I’m here.
She threw her arms around him and buried her face against his chest, sobbing. “You will not come back.”
“I will,” he assured her. “Don’t worry about me. I’m good at this kind of thing.”
Lincoln hoped he would come back, anyway. If he didn’t, then killing Phan might not count for much after all. The men of Vang Khom weren’t much of a fighting force yet with his help, but without him they were even less useful. He needed more time to work with them, to train them. And he needed to bring in men from other villages to forge a large enough unit to do the enemy real harm. That wouldn’t happen until he could point to some successes with what he had.
The success of this mission required two elements—Colonel Phan’s death and his own survival.
He wondered if he could pull it off.
• • •
Every day, the afternoons grew hotter and more humid, sapping Lincoln’s energy. He kept working with the men—those who had survived and who still wanted anything to do with him—and his relationship with Sho deepened. But his focus was on his next self-assigned mission, and he spent hour after hour planning it out. The rainy season was coming, and cloudy nights would mean dark skies. Rain would also discourage the Pathet Lao soldiers from being outside, which would make it easier to reach Phan’s quarters. He would wait until the first week of the monsoon—any longer and the soldiers would be accustomed to it, would know they had to make their rounds regardless, but during that first week, he hoped, they would resist.
Besides, Corbett was coming in a few days, and although Donovan had given him free rein to take action, Lincoln wanted an American to know where he was going and what he planned to do there.
On the morning Corbett flew in, Lincoln took him for a walk while the villagers unloaded the supplies he had brought and loaded up the poppies they had cultivated since his last visit. Lincoln didn’t know where he had them processed, or really what was involved. He didn’t ask, either—the less he knew about the heroin trade, the happier he was. Sammy would be pissed that he was even this involved. But a man had to have something going on, and Lincoln had decided to keep 10 percent of what the village made for himself. He didn’t plan to go home from the war without something to show for it.
Usually, Corbett did most of the talking. He liked telling Lincoln stories of his Korean War days and offered combat and survival tips he’d learned over the years, which Lincoln enjoyed hearing. This time, however, Lincoln had an agenda in mind, and he got right to it.
“That plan to attack the Pathet base was a disaster,” he said as they strolled into the village. “I told him they weren’t ready, and I was right. I lost fourteen men.”
“I heard,” Corbett replied. “Sorry, man. I was hoping you were just underestimating their preparedness. I should’ve known better.”
“It’s cool,” Lincoln said. “You weren’t the one who ordered us in there; you were just passing on orders.”
“I know, man, but I hate to see anyone fighting for our side die. There’s already been too much of that, and it’s not going to end any time soon.”
“Well, my next trip down there won’t wind up with any Hmong casualties.”
Corbett raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
“I’m going in solo. On a moonless night, in the first week of the rains. I’m going to take out Colonel Phan.”
“That’s a suicide mission,” Corbett said, stopping in his tracks. “You can’t do that.”
“I can, and I will. I’ve got it all figured out. I just wanted to make sure someone knew where I was going and when. Just in case.”
“Brother, Donovan’s going to be pissed.”
“He’ll understand.”
“He might understand. Don’t mean he won’t be pissed.”
“When the unit falls apart without their leader, he’ll come around.”
“We’ll see,” Corbett said. “Why don’t you let me say something to him first? He could order a bombing run, take the camp out that way.”
“Why hasn’t that already been done?” Lincoln asked. “Because we’re still trying to pretend we’re not in Laos? Anyway, they’d just rebuild, right? Human life doesn’t mean shit to them—there are always more soldiers to throw at the problem. They need to be scared off. They need to know that it’s never going to work, that no matter who’s stationed there, or how many people, they’ll never be allowed to control the Plain. That’s what I’m going to do.”
“Yeah, okay,” Corbett said. He stood there, seemingly thinking over Lincoln’s words. After a few moments, Lincoln realized he was looking at something. When he followed Corbett’s gaze, he saw what it was.
“That’s Mai,” Lincoln said. “Sho’s best friend. You want to meet her?”
“She’s a beauty,” Corbett said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the young lady. Lincoln understood why. She was, in his opinion, second only to Sho in looks among the villagers, a beautiful woman with a model’s face and a pinup girl’s physique. She was sitting in the shade of a hut, grinding flour, and her hands and the tip of her nose were dusted with it.
“She is,” Lincoln agreed. “She’s no seven-foot-tall blonde, but she’s single. I can introduce you if you want.”
“I’d like that.”
Mai hadn’t lost anyone in the attack on the camp, and because she was close to Sho, Lincoln had spent a lot of time with her. She knew some English, which would make it even easier, though Corbett’s mastery of Hmong was pretty advanced. “Come on,” he said.
As they approached, Mai put down the pestle she had been using and rose to her feet. “Hello, Clay,” she said.
“Mai, I’d like you to meet Brad Corbett. Brad, this is Mai.”
“I know who you are,” Mai said. “You are the pilot.”
“That’s right,” Corbett said. He offered his hand, and she dusted flour off hers and took it. “It’s great to meet you.”
“I’m gonna go check on Sho,” Lincoln said. “I’ll leave you two alone to get acquainted.”
“Works for me,” Corbett said. Mai was silent, which Lincoln took to be tacit approval of the idea.
Back in his longhouse, he told Sho what had happened.
“Corbett?” she asked, bursting into laughter. “With Mai?”
“I don’t know if she’ll go for it. He saw her and it was like he was in a trance.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Not as pretty as you,” Lincoln said. “But yes, she is.”
“More pretty than me,” Sho said. “She’s more Hmong.”
Lincoln shook his head. “No. Nobody in the village is prettier than you. Nobody I’ve ever seen.”
“Even in America?”
“Even there. There’s nobody like you. And being more Hmong doesn’t matter. My mother was black, but nobody really knows what my father was.”
“Like me,” she said.
“Like you. We are what we are, and that’s cool with me.”
“Sometimes it is lonely here,” Sho said. “Everyone else has big families, but not me.”
Lincoln took her in his arms. “You have me.”
Suddenly sad, she dropped her gaze to the floor. “I wish you would never go away, Lincoln.”
He knew what she meant. He had always told her that his time in Vang Khom was limited, that one day he would be rotated back to the world. He didn’t intend to spend the rest of his life on a Laotian mountaintop. Some American soldiers would, he expected, take Vietnamese women home to marry, but he doubted that he could do the same, given the secret nature of his assignment here.
So his romance with Sho was always going to be short-term. He had made sure she knew that going in, and she had agreed to it. Now she was having regrets about it. So was he. But it couldn’t be helped, so he pretended to misunderstand her concern.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll only be gone for a few hours. Overnight. I promise I’ll come back to you, Sho. I will.”
“That not what I—”
He cut her off. “Shh. Let’s not talk about it, okay? Let’s go see how Mai and Corbett are gettin’ along.”
She shook her head and lowered herself to her knees. “I have a better idea,” she said. “Let’s give them more time together . . .”