When first deployed to Vietnam, the Green Berets’ primary mission was to organize the Montagnard tribes into Civilian Irregular Defense Groups to stem Communist infiltration into South Vietnam along the western borders with Laos and Cambodia. Ben was supposed to teach the Sedang guerrilla warfare tactics; but it was the Sedang who taught him: how to live off the land, how to hunt wild game and Viet Cong on the mountains that rose eight thousand feet and in the thick jungles that covered the valleys below, and how to move through the night like a shadow. The Sedang were natural hunter-killers. He became one of them. They even presented him with a hand-fashioned brass bracelet, which represented membership in the tribe; it was a great honor for a white man. Ben Brice had “gone native.”
They were operating in North Vietnam just inside the Seventeenth Parallel-the DMZ that divided North from South, Communist from free-when they spotted a USAF F-4 Phantom flying low overhead and trailing smoke, hit on a Rolling Thunder raid over Hanoi. The two-man crew ejected just before the jet crashed and exploded in a fireball; both parachutes opened, so Ben and the Montagnards made for the Americans. But they arrived too late; the NVA had captured them.
The NVA marched the pilots north to the San Bie prison camp. On still nights, camped a thousand meters out, Ben heard the blood-curdling screams of the Americans being tortured. The next morning he heard them sing “God Bless America.” Ben and the Montagnards planned a rescue, which required he be captured. The NVA had standing orders to kill their American prisoners in the event of a rescue attempt. The only successful rescue would come from inside, with help on the outside.
Now, six months a prisoner of war, he will escape and take one hundred American pilots with him, with the help of the Montagnards. Ben Brice had taught them a few things too, including the proper use of C-4 explosive. Together they destroyed enemy arms depots, disrupted supply convoys on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ambushed VC, assassinated NVA officers, radioed in grid coordinates for B-52 Arc Light bombing raids, and snatched that Marine slick driver back from the NVA in Laos. Today they will rescue American POWs.
He remains sprawled in the same position on the concrete floor in which he had been deposited five hours earlier, awaiting the morning guard. He soon hears the familiar sound of keys rattling, so familiar that he knows the guard’s exact location in the hallway outside as he comes closer and closer to Ben’s cell. The guard arrives and bangs on the cell door, then looks in through the small barred opening and sees the American colonel still lying on the floor, the blood on his raw back dried and caked and the rats nibbling at his feet. Ben hears metal grating against metal as the guard slips the key into the rusty lock. The key turns, and the lock releases. The door creaks open. Footsteps, a bit wary, come close; the guard wonders if the highest-ranking American officer in the prison survived the fierce beating inflicted by Big Ug and his fan belt last night. Ben braces himself not to react to the kick that is sure to come and does; he stifles a groan as the guard’s boot drives into his side. The prisoner did not respond, so the guard circles around and squats to check his pulse.
It is his last living act.
Ben grabs the guard by the throat with hands made strong in the oil fields of West Texas and the jungles of Vietnam and chokes off all sound and jerks him to the floor. Ben Brice does not kill him out of vengeance; he kills him because he must. The guard’s neck sounds like a brittle chicken bone snapping when Ben rotates his head past the breaking point.
Ben stands and surveys his cell for the last time. The thick odor customary to the cell is joined by that of fresh urine and feces as the guard’s body accepts its death and surrenders its dignity. More death will follow. He must kill to save these pilots. He takes no satisfaction in the killing, but he is skilled in the art of killing. It is what he knows.
This is his moment in the great human tragedy known as the Vietnam War.
John ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape and walked into Gracie’s room. He hit the overhead light switch.
“Hiya, pal,” she would always say when he knocked on her bedroom door each day when he got home. He would usually find her on the floor, reading the sports pages or doing her homework or singing a new song. But her room was empty tonight. Her stuff was still there, but without her there was no life in this room. Or in this house. Gracie Ann Brice had been the life of the house.
He turned on the nightlight and turned off the overhead. He crawled into her bed. He pulled the comforter up and buried his head in her pillow. He cradled her big cushy teddy bear. He closed his eyes, breathed in his daughter, and remembered.
“One day you’ll be singing on the radio,” he had said to her once, sitting right here on this bed.
She had frowned and said, “You know how hard it is to get radio stations to play a new artist’s songs?”
“No. How hard?”
“Like, totally.”
“Then I’ll buy a bunch of radio stations and play only yours.”
“You can’t do that.”
“After the IPO I can. I’m gonna buy the Red Sox for Sam.”
“No, I mean it doesn’t work that way. I’ve got to struggle a long time trying to break in so I’ll have material for my songs.”
“Oh, so that’s how it works.”
“Yeah, see, the Dixie Chicks struggled for like, well, a really long time, and they had to move to Nashville. I guess I’ll have to, too.”
“And leave me? No way, girlfriend. I’ll buy a jet, you can fly to Nashville to record. Or I’ll build you a recording studio here, and they can come to you. And they will.”
“Yeah, right. You know how many great singers are out there totally begging to break into country music?”
“No. How many?”
“Well… a bunch.”
He shook his head. “Odds don’t apply to statistically unique occurrences.”
“Huh?”
“There’s only one Gracie Ann Brice.”
She had looked at him with a strange expression, one he had never before seen on her sweet face; he immediately thought, Cripes, I said something wrong! You bogoid, you never could talk to girls! But she abruptly hugged him and said, “You’re the best father a girl could ever want.” When she pulled back, her big blue eyes were wet. “Thanks for not making fun of my dreams.”
He had cupped her perfect face and said, “Gracie, ill-behaved cretins can thrash your user interface, frag your hardware, unplug your peripherals, uninstall your components-but dreams are proprietary technology.”
“Huh?”
“No one can take your dreams away.”
But he had been wrong. Someone had taken his dream away.
Ben was now sitting at the kitchen table and flipping through the stack of FBI lead sheets. By this time of night, he was usually drunk enough to sleep. He wanted a drink now, just one shot of whiskey. Or two. He could feel its warmth inside him.
But there would not be another drink for him. On the drive from Taos to the Albuquerque airport, alone in the pre-dawn hours, he had made a vow to Gracie, a vow that now required he reach back almost four decades to find the strength to overcome: when they had beaten him at San Bie, he thought of Kate and John and found strength; now, when the cravings came, he thought of Gracie and found the same strength.
He went over to the refrigerator, a commercial-sized one concealed behind wood paneling that matched the cabinetry. Inside he found orange juice. Maybe a glass of juice would relieve his craving. He opened several overhead cabinets searching for the glasses; he found a liquor cabinet instead. He stared at the bottles. He reached in and removed a fifth of Jim Beam. Only his third sober night, but looking at the familiar label brought the cravings back. He was still staring at the bottle when he heard, “Ben.”