Lincoln left a small force of men at the former Pathet camp to defend it and bury the dead, and headed up the mountain to Vang Khom with the rest. There would be feasting, drinking, the slaughter of buffalo. Women who had lost their men would wail their sorrow, but those cries would be drowned out by the celebrating. Lincoln guessed he would have to requisition more ammo, not just because of the battle but because the men would fire off whatever was left as they partied late into the night.
When they reached the village, a light rain had started to fall, though the massing of dark clouds in the near distance warned that it would get heavier.
Lincoln broke into a jog. It had been too long since he had seen Sho, held her. He’d had moments during the fight when he wondered if he ever would again. But he had survived, and his house was just ahead. He was a little surprised she hadn’t come out when she’d heard the sound of the returning army, but then he thought about some of the things that could signify, and they mostly had to do with her being naked and waiting for him. He ran faster and burst through the door. “Sho!” he called. “I’m back!”
The inside was dark, and his eyes needed a few moments to adjust after climbing in bright sunlight. There was a strange, coppery smell, but he thought that was him; his sleeve was drenched in blood from his arm wound.
It wasn’t, though.
She lay on the bed, her clothes torn, her head tilted back, her arms and legs splayed out, her beautiful brown eyes open but sightless. Her throat was a gory red slash.
“No!” he cried, falling to his knees and scooping her into his arms. “Sho! Sho!”
She was already cool; life had been gone from her for a while. He pressed his forehead against her, his tears splashing onto her supple flesh.
He didn’t know how long he stayed like that, releasing great sobs that racked his spine and made his chest ache. After a while, his thoughts turned in a darker direction. Who had done this, and why? Somebody would pay, and pay dearly.
Finally, he tore himself away from her and went outside again. People had gathered in the rain, drawn by the sounds he’d made. Worried faces turned up toward his.
“Sho’s been killed,” Lincoln said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I want to know who did it. Someone here knows.”
A couple of English speakers translated for the rest, and within moments, loud, wailing cries soared up toward the heavens. No one came forward with information, though.
“Who did it?” Lincoln thundered. He came down from his house and went to the next one, kicking out one of the stilts from beneath a front corner. “I’ll tear this fuckin’ piece-of-shit village to the ground, piece by piece!”
“No, Lincoln!” It was Pos, shoving his way through the growing crowd. “Do not hurt the village! We’ll help! We’ll find the killer!”
“I want his ass in front of me now,” Lincoln said. “Right now. Whoever knows who it is better fuckin’ turn him over.”
Pos said something that Lincoln assumed was a desperate appeal for information. He saw only people looking uncertain, confused. No one volunteered anything useful. He kicked over another stilt, and the whole house lurched forward. The door swung open and contents spilled onto the ground: cookware, rubber sandals, a jar of water that trickled into the dirt.
Lincoln knew he was threatening the wrong people—most of these men had been in the battle with him, and the butchery done to Sho didn’t look like a woman’s work. But he was out of ideas, too frantic to think clearly.
Finally, he turned away from them and stormed toward Mai’s hut. She was Sho’s best friend; maybe she knew something.
By this point, word had spread throughout the village. Everywhere he went, people eyed him with pity or fear or something in between, and they whispered among themselves as he passed. “Mai!” he called as he neared her place. “Mai!”
Nobody answered. He yanked open her door and stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. She was on the bed, curled up in an almost fetal position, and for one horrible instant he was afraid she had been killed, too. Then he saw her back and shoulders hitching, heard her soft sobs.
“Mai, damn it,” he said. He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her around, onto her back. She tried to writhe away, but he held her down. “What the fuck is going on around here?”
She relaxed a little, lowered her hands from her face.
That’s when he saw what had become of it. Her lips were mashed and pulpy. She had a black eye, and the left side of her face was a mass of bruises. He wasn’t sure, but he thought her cheekbone might have been broken on that side. Bruises encircled her throat, and more stood out on her upper arms.
“What happened to you?” Lincoln asked. “What . . . Sho is . . .”
He couldn’t finish his sentences. Sho and Mai, both brutalized. It was too much. He didn’t understand. He said the only words he could manage, asking the only question that seemed important. “Who did it?”
She wrenched out of his grip and turned back toward the wall. Less gently than before, Lincoln grabbed her and turned her around again. “Goddamnit, Mai, who did this? Who killed Sho?”
Mai exploded into loud sobs and curled into his arms. He held her, realizing he would have to wait until she calmed enough to remember her English. Every now and then he prodded her, stroking her head or drying her tears with his fingers. “I know, I know,” he said quietly. “I feel the same way. Whoever did this is gonna fuckin’ pay, Mai, I promise you that. I promise you.”
After a long while, she got hold of her emotions. “Corbett,” she said softly.
Lincoln wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Corbett? Corbett hurt you?”
“Yes,” Mai said. “Corbett.”
“But why? He loved you!” But even as he said it, he remembered what Sho had told him. Corbett hit Mai sometimes. He had a violent temper. “What happened?”
Mai sniffed, wiped her nose on her dress. “He say . . . he said he would kill Sammy when he goes back to U.S.”
“Sammy?” Lincoln echoed, confused. “Sammy who?”
“Sho said Sammy is your father.”
“He’s gonna kill my father? Why? He doesn’t even know my father!”
Lincoln realized abruptly that he didn’t know that for sure. Corbett made regular trips back to the world, usually to sell heroin. He had asked Lincoln about his family in the past. He knew Sammy’s name and his position in the New Bordeaux underworld.
“He knows him,” Mai said. “He said Sammy talked to him like he was a child. Said Sammy insulted him. Nobody insults Corbett, he said. He will go back and kill Sammy.”
“I still don’t—where does Sho fit into all this? And why did he hurt you?”
“After he told me that, he hit me some, then got drunk. Fell asleep here in bed. I worried, so I told Sho what he said. Sho said Sammy is your father, that she had to tell you. When I came back here, Corbett was gone. I was glad. After a little time, his plane went away.”
“So he didn’t leave right when he woke up? You came back here and he was gone, but it was a while before he left? How long?”
“Not a long time. But not short.”
“So you think he killed Sho?”
“Maybe he heard me talk to her? Hid until I come back here, then killed her, then left?”
It had probably happened in just that way, Lincoln thought. Corbett hadn’t been as passed out as Mai thought. When she left the house, he followed. The bamboo structures were far from soundproof, and Corbett spoke Hmong. He could have hidden by Lincoln’s longhouse and listened to the conversation. He would have known that Sho would tell Lincoln as soon as he returned to the village but would have also believed that, since he had already brutalized Mai and killed her best friend, she wouldn’t dare say anything to Lincoln, or anyone else. Besides, killing Mai would have cast even more suspicion on him. Once he had murdered Sho, he would have wanted to get airborne in a hurry, in case someone found her.
But where would he have gone from here? Vang Khom was usually in the middle of his rounds, not the beginning but far from the end. Not only did he have to make more official stops before returning to Saigon or Vientiane, he would want to pick up more poppies and distribute more heroin money, too.
Would murder have changed those plans? Lincoln didn’t think so. He believed Corbett to be utterly amoral. Snuffing out the life of a Hmong woman wouldn’t seem like much of a crime, particularly compared to killing Lincoln’s adopted father. Corbett could probably do both murders, then come back to Vang Khom acting like Lincoln’s best friend.
Lincoln could wait for his return and take his vengeance then.
But that would risk Sammy’s life. And he didn’t want his revenge served cold. It burned inside him, like he had swallowed coals straight from the fire.
He wanted his hands on Corbett’s throat, now.
“I’ll be back,” he said. He ran from the hut and toward the village center, calling for Pos. In another few moments, he was explaining his plan. “Get on the radio,” he said. “Find out where Corbett landed after he was here, and if he’s still there, let me know. Immediately!”
Pos nodded his understanding. Lincoln would rather have trusted Koob with this, but he had no reason to think that Pos wouldn’t do his best.
Waiting was the hard part. He couldn’t be sure how much time had elapsed since Sho’s murder and Corbett’s departure. Even the few Hmong who wore watches didn’t seem to pay any attention to them. Lincoln had, for a while, admired a life that was at once so busy and so slow that the passage of time hardly mattered. Now, he felt like every minute was an eternity, because every second that passed meant Corbett might be getting farther away.
As it turned out, Pos came back with the information after only about fifteen minutes. He named a village that wasn’t too far away—along the spine of their mountain range and downhill a ways, it looked down on a more central section of the Plain of Jars.
“Is he still there?” Lincoln asked.
“Yes! He is there! He still is!”
“Make sure he stays there,” Lincoln instructed. “Have someone disable his airplane. They’ll get a big reward. Lots of cash.”
“ ‘Disable’?” Pos asked.
“Break the engine. Slash the tires. Pour dirt in the fuel tanks. Burn the fucking thing, I don’t care. Just make sure Corbett can’t leave in it. I’ll pay you, too. You and whoever in that village destroys that plane.”
“I will,” Pos said. He scurried back toward his hut.
Lincoln couldn’t wait around to hear what the outcome of the conversation would be. He needed to be on the move. Once Corbett’s plane was wrecked—if it was—he would be on his guard. Lincoln had to get there before he was able to get out of the area, because once he knew Lincoln was gunning for him, he might never come back.