Czytaj książkę: «Winter Soldier»

CHAPTER ONE

THAN SON NHUT.

Even above the roar of the jet engine he caught the echo of the pilot’s words, felt them snag the edge of his consciousness. Than Son Nhut. For almost twenty-five years, more than half his lifetime, Adam Sauder, had returned to that place only in his nightmares. Today, he was actually going back.

Before he heard her voice he smelled her perfume, a light, lemony fragrance had tantalized his senses. “Dr. Sauder?” He pretended to be asleep. Maybe she’d go back to her own seat, leave him alone. God, it had been such a long flight. Thirty-six hours from Chicago to—

She spoke again, a bit more forcefully this time. “Dr. Sauder? Are you awake?”

Damn, she’s persistent.

He rolled his head toward the well-modulated but demanding voice, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said in the don’t-tread-on-me tone that had struck fear into the hearts of interns and residents at St. Barnabas Medical Center for the past five years.

“I thought so.” She sounded neither cowed nor embarrassed. “We’ll be landing in Saigon in a few minutes. I thought I should introduce myself.”

She could have done that anytime since they’d left Chicago. Why did she have to pick now, when he had almost willed himself to that gray nothingness between waking and sleeping that was the only place he seemed to find peace? Saigon. Than Son Nhut. The names wouldn’t die, just like his memories of the days he’d spent there. “I thought they called it Ho Chi Minh City now.”

She chuckled, a sound as light and pleasant as her perfume. “No one calls it that. Even our luggage tags say Saigon.”

The laughter was irresistible. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked at his tormentor. Clear hazel eyes, neither green nor gold, stared steadily back. He blinked and her face came into focus. She smiled, and like magic her deceptively ordinary features turned from plain to pretty. “I’m your gas-passer,” she said.

Gas-passer? She must have been raised on M*A*S*H reruns. “You’re my anesthesiologist?” She didn’t look a lot older than his nineteen-year-old son, Brian. She sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a doctor.

“Nurse anesthetist,” she clarified.

They didn’t give out advanced nursing degrees to teenagers, either. Mentally he added ten years to her age, pegging her somewhere close to thirty.

“I’m Leah Gentry.” She held out her hand. He took it automatically. Her handshake was as firm and no-nonsense as her voice and, surprisingly enough, as potent as her smile. He pulled his hand from hers and her smile disappeared. “I’m in practice with Caleb Owens,” she said more formally.

He knew who Caleb Owens was, although he’d never met the man. He was a friend of a friend—or an ex-friend. Adam directed a sour glance at the back of B. J. Walton’s head, as his old Marine buddy lolled, snoring away two rows in front of him.

B.J. had made it big in computers in the eighties. He had more money than he could count—not that he didn’t put a lot of it to good use. He’d sponsored half-a-dozen private medical-aid missions to Central America, Africa and even Russia over the past ten years, and he’d badgered and bullied and made a damned pest of himself until Adam had promised to be part of the next one.

B.J. had made a big deal of Adam’s moment of weakness. He’d called a press conference and talked up the humanitarian mission of top-notch nurses and doctors taking time from their busy lives and careers to help the less fortunate. Then he’d promised a bundle toward the new spinal-injury rehab center if St. Barnabas agreed to let Adam come along. St. B’s knew a good deal when they saw one. They agreed to supply all the specialized equipment Adam needed and offered to send technicians to keep it running at peak efficiency. It was a hell of a public-relations coup, the hospital administrator had told him. And it wouldn’t do Adam any harm in his quest to be the next chief of neurosurgery, either. And then BJ. had dropped his bombshell.

This time they were going to Vietnam.

“Caleb was so disappointed he couldn’t make the trip. He was looking forward to assisting you.”

Adam continued to scowl at the back of B.J.’s head a moment longer, then shifted his gaze. “I’ll manage without him. But what about you?”

She looked puzzled. “I’ll be fine.”

“I mean, are you up to operating with me? Owens is a general surgeon. You’re probably used to gallbladder and uterine excisions, not keeping someone under and stable while I tinker around in his brain for eight or ten hours.”

“Caleb does a little of everything. Slate Hollow’s a small place. You have to be flexible.” A hint of defensiveness had crept into her voice. Adam suppressed a momentary twinge of conscience. She was a colleague, a professional. They’d be working together for the next three weeks. He was barking at her as if she was a not-too-bright first-year intern.

“Ever scrubbed for brain surgery before?”

“You mean other than bashing a patient on the head with a hammer, while Caleb drilled through his skull with the Black and Decker Two Speed to let out the evil spirits?”

“I didn’t mean—”

She cut him off. “Yes, you did.” She was right. He couldn’t deny it without lying through his teeth, so he kept quiet. Neurosurgeons were considered the glamour boys of medicine and had a reputation for being arrogant and imperious. He’d just reinforced the stereotype, big time. “The answer is yes, Doctor. I have worked with your kind before.”

Your kind. The emphasis on the words was so slight most people wouldn’t have noticed, but he did. He almost smiled. She was a fighter. Good. They would need that kind of grit and stamina where they were going. “I apologize,” he said. “B.J. told me he always gets the best people for these jaunts. He was right. What I should have asked you was if you’d had experience operating under...less-than-ideal conditions.”

He’d almost said battlefield conditions. What had made those words pop into his head? Was it because, below a sleeveless white tank top that molded itself nicely to her breasts, she wore desert-patterned utilities, fatigues to everyone but an ex-Marine, and combat boots—a look that was decidedly military. Or because the past was growing stronger with every mile they flew, bringing long-guarded memories dangerously close to the surface?

She glanced down at the U.S. Marine Corps emblem tattoo on his left forearm, partially visible below the rolled-back cuff of his shirt, a souvenir of his first liberty after boot camp at Parris Island all those years ago. “I’ve been around the block a few times, Marine. I won’t bug out on you.” She gave him a mocking little salute and headed down the aisle toward the front of the plane.

He closed his eyes but could still see the proud tilt of her head, the sway of her hips in the baggy utilities that tried hard but couldn’t completely hide the fact she was all woman. Three weeks in close proximity to Leah Gentry was going to be very interesting. And maybe, just maybe, it would be interesting enough to keep him from losing what was left of his mind.

“MAY I JOIN YOU?” Leah asked Kaylene Smiley, the mission’s head nurse, as she came abreast of the older woman’s seat. She and Kaylene had met for the first time in the lounge at O’Hare the evening before. Dr. Roger Crenshaw, the anesthesiologist Leah would be working with in Dalat, and Kaylene were playing gin rummy on a folded-down tray.

“Of course. Roger just won my last nickel. You’ve saved me from losing another hand and being in his debt,” Kaylene said.

“It’s a good time for a break,” Roger agreed. “I’m going to use the lavatory before the plane lands. If you ladies will excuse me.” The elderly physician stood up, pocketed his small pile of winnings and with a courtly gesture offered Leah his seat.

“What do you suppose it will be like there? Saigon, I mean. The only pictures I’ve ever seen are from the war. And in the movies.” Kaylene was looking out the window as she spoke.

“They make most of the movies in Bangkok, you know. There are parts of it that look like Saigon did during the war.” Shielded by the high back of the airplane seat, Leah tried to shake the feeling that Adam Sauder’s eyes were boring burr holes into the back of her head in preparation for taking it off her shoulders.

“Really? I didn’t know.”

“I have three brothers, all making a career of the military, and my dad just retired after thirty years in the army. So I know about war movies.” Leah also leaned forward and looked out the window at the green tangle of jungle and rice paddies visible below.

“You’re wearing dog tags,” Kaylene observed. “Were you in the service, too?”

“Yes, I’m an army reservist now.”

“My brother was here in 1967. He was stationed near Dalat, where we’ll be staying. I never thought I’d come here.” Kaylene returned to looking out the plane window. “According to the travel books, Dalat’s supposed to be a beautiful place. The brass from both sides vacationed there during the war, but my brother can’t imagine why I wanted to come on this mission. He said he’d never come back—never in a million years.”

THE PLANE ROLLED to a standstill, the stairs were drawn up and the door opened. Brilliant sunlight poured into the cabin as Adam walked out to meet his past. Much had changed. Oh, yes, there was still the same heat, the same stifling humidity, the smell of hot oil, metal and concrete baking in the sun, and the guard posts between the runways he’d manned as a nineteen-year-old Marine corporal still stood. But the sandbags were gone. And the skeletons of crashed and burned aircraft that had made takeoffs and landings so dangerous toward the end of the war had been hauled away. Most of the other buildings he might have recognized were gone, destroyed in the final hours before the airport had been abandoned to the conquering Vietcong.

But it was the sounds that were the most different. In fact, it was the lack of noise that marked the biggest change. There wasn’t another aircraft in sight. Their chartered Air Vietnam jet was the only plane landing or taking off. It was quiet, eerily so. Absent from the scene was the drone of helicopter blades, the whine of fighter jets taking off and landing, the roar of cargo planes evacuating load after load of civilians....

Adam shut down his recollections with an efficiency that was the result of long years of practice, retreating behind the buffer zone of reserve most doctors learned to erect around themselves early on in their careers, or else they risked losing their sanity. From that perspective he could view Than Son Nhut from a place outside himself where he observed, but didn’t participate in, what was going on. He spent a lot of time in that limbolike state these days, and every time he went there he found it harder and harder to come back.

“Damn, Adam. Did you ever think we’d be back?”

It was B.J. at his elbow, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, a wondering look on his face. B.J. was a millionaire fifty times over, but you’d never know it from the way he looked or dressed, or from the luggage he carried.

“No,” Adam said truthfully. “I never expected to come back.”

“It’s friggin’ spooky. I half expect a MIG to come screaming out of the sky the way it did that day and strafe the runway, or a sniper to start taking potshots at us when we unload the plane.” His expression darkened as he looked around him, but a moment later his usual good-natured smile returned. He mopped at his red face with a blue bandanna he pulled out of the back pocket of his jeans. Then he tied the four corns of the bandanna into knots and put the makeshift hat on his balding head. “I’m going to have to get myself a cover. I forgot how friggin’ hot the sun is here.” He looked sourly at Adam’s full head of hair. “Some guys have all the luck.”

Adam and B.J. had gone through boot camp and infantry training together, and ended up with the same duty assignment, attached to the embassy in Saigon. A cushy assignment anyplace else on earth. In Saigon in 1975 it was the stuff of nightmares. They’d arrived in country just before Christmas in 1974 and left in April of ’75. B.J. on an Evac flight after a sniper’s bullet hit the tire of a jeep he was driving, causing it to flip over on him, and Adam aboard one of the last helicopters off the airfield. But at least they’d gotten out alive; many hadn’t.

“Yeah, all the luck in the world,” Adam said.

“Mr. Walton?” It was Leah Gentry again. She was wearing a boonie cap in the same shades of brown as her utilities and mirrored sunglasses. She had a decidedly unmilitary, traffic-stopping, lime-green backpack with a picture of Minnie Mouse emblazoned on it slung over one shoulder, and in her other hand she carried a large, locked, fire-engine-red toolbox. “Sir, I was wondering if I could speak to you for a moment.”

“Hey, don’t go calling me sir.” B.J. grinned.

“Yes, sir, B.J.” Her lips tightened momentarily, then curved into a heart-stopping smile.

“Never made it past PFC, myself. Adam here was a corporal, though. No wait. You ended up with sergeant’s stripes before you got out, didn’t you, Marine?”

Adam ignored his friend’s question. “I think she’s deferring to your age, not your rank.”

B.J. laughed loudly enough to turn heads in their direction. “That’s a low blow, buddy.” He turned to Leah. “And even more of a reason for you to cease and desist, Captain, ma’am.”

“Captain?” Adam repeated.

“Officer on deck, old pal,” B.J. said, slapping Adam on the back as he made his little joke. “Ms. Gentry here’s an officer in the United States Army.”

“You’re active duty?” He hadn’t expected that. He’d noticed the utilities, but had her pegged for a military wanna-be or maybe a weekend warrior, not regular army.

“Reserves since ’94.”

“Desert Storm?”

B.J. answered first. “And Somalia and Bosnia. I told you I only get the best. Leah knows the ropes. And she’s not going to go into a screaming panic if the lights go out or some ex-Charlie bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur starts hasslin’ us about our paperwork. We’re damned lucky to have her, so don’t go giving her a hard time.”

“It’s too late,” Leah said mildly. “Mr. Walton, could you spare me one of the interpreters to run interference with the customs officer?” She lifted the big metal case a few inches. “I’ve got everything I need to work in here. I don’t want any of it confiscated by some round-butt desk jockey with an overactive sense of duty or a quick eye for a bribe. If I don’t work, Dr. Sauder doesn’t, either. Or anyone else, for that matter,” she concluded with a grin.

“I’ll walk you through myself,” B.J. said, suddenly all business. “It’s liable to take some time to get us all through the red tape, so we might as well start with you. The commies may have lost the cold war, but they won the paperwork one. Then I’m coming back to ask for volunteers to stay with the plane. I don’t intend to see any of our stuff get ‘liberated’ . by any of those desk jockeys you mentioned and end up on the black market. Can I count on you, Captain?”

“Certainly. Just tell me when.”

“I’d like to get everyone squared away at the hotel ASAP. Would you be willing to take the first shift with the plane? I’ll leave Adam here with you. Got a problem with that, Marine?” B.J. asked in a softly challenging tone. He had made his peace with the past. He knew Adam had not.

“No,” Adam said. “No problem.”

“Great. It’s settled, then. I’ll make sure the government liaison guy they promised to have waiting for us gets us some guards. Once they’re stationed around the plane all you have to do is stick around a while to make sure they stay honest. Piece of cake.”

Adam wasn’t so sure of that, but maybe with Leah Gentry to keep him company, he could fill the silence of the present with the sound of her voice and keep the horror of the past at bay.