Turn of the cards

Chapter Fifty-one

O. K. Casaday lay on his belly, peering through binoculars at the temple. After the Monster’s departure the little party had made it to the relative safety of a ridge several hundred meters to the north. The PAVN officers had turned up a squad of infantry, which was currently dug into a defensive perimeter around them. Nobody felt too much confidence in it.

“What do you see, man?” Colonel Vo urged from his shoulder. “What do you see?”

“Don’t jostle me, dammit,” Casaday snarled. “Looks like the Brigaders have pretty well rallied. They’re all crowding back into the clearing again.”

“Good,” Vo exulted. “Excellent! All is not lost.”

Casaday rolled an eye away from the eyepiece of his glasses and looked at him.

Freddie Whitelaw sat on his broad bottom, scanning the southern horizon with the telephoto lens of his Leica. “What happened to that horrid thing?” he kept asking. “What happened?”

“How the hell should I know?” Casaday asked, sitting up and brushing soil from his tropical suit. “I saw the same thing you did: son of a bitch just blew up.”

“What on Earth could have destroyed it?”

“When you find out,” Casaday said, “I’m sure you’ll have a hell of a story.”

The senior PAVN officer had been speaking over the squad’s radio. He came forward now with an air of grim satisfaction.

“We have been holding a weapon in reserve,” he announced. “We could not deploy it against that… creature, because it was in the midst of our own troops. We could not risk so many tanks.”

“Typical socialist priorities,” Whitelaw murmured. “Worry about the war toys first, and the men last.”

“Now that the monster has been dealt with, however that occurred, we can use our fuel-air explosive shells against another menace to our Socialist Republic.”

Casaday looked at him in surprise. “You have FAE?” The officer nodded.

“You will destroy the rebels with it, then?” Vo asked, eyes shining with eagerness.

“No. They are too dispersed. To be effective, FAE devices require concentrated targets. Concentrated, like that mass of smaller monsters down there by the temple.”

Vo went white. “What are you saying? They’re our men!”

“They are monsters. They attacked us. They are rabid, like dogs. They must be destroyed.”

“No!” Vo shouted. “You can’t! We can still use them! We can still win! They”

The PAVN officer’s backhand blow knocked him to the ground. When Vo blinked away the big balloons of light from behind his eyes, he saw Casaday standing over him, aiming his Beretta at his face.

“But why?” Vo gasped. “It was your project too.”

“My main priority,” Casaday said, “is wiping out wild card filth wherever I find it. If the project’s a write-off, I can still say, mission accomplished.”

To punctuate his words, a whistling crossed the breaking sky.

When Mark came in sight of the clearing, he saw that a pole had been set up in front of the pagoda. Colonel Sobel’s head was stuck atop it. The New Joker Brigade was dancing around and around it.

He stopped, swallowed. What am I getting myself into?

But Eric was hurt. Eric needed him – needed Moonchild. Hell, needed all of them. Eric had saved him twice tonight, once from the mob and once from himself.

Mark shut his eyes, willed his conscious self to recede, let himself slip as far into Moonchild mode as he could.

Eric, she thought. Eric, where are you? I’ve come to help you.

“Isis?”

Mark’s eyes opened. Yes, Moonchild said within his mind. I’m here.

Panic filled her mind. “No, you’ve got to get away from here. It’s too late for me – too late for any of us.”

Eric, tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.

“Isis, you can’t. They’ll kill you.”

Who? The jokers?

“Or the nats. It’s a race now, don’t you see? Do we destroy ourselves first, or do the nats finish us off?”

She saw him now, staggering from the midst of the exuberant mob. Weak, moving painfully, his T-shirt dyed red with his own blood: Eric.

I see you. Just walk a little farther into the trees. I’ll come for you -

He stopped, cocked his disfigured head to the side.

“No, don’t! Get away – run! It’s too late, I told you. Run!”

Eric – A scream filled the sky.

“Wouldn’t you know,” came the sardonic thought. “The nats win again.”

She heard popping then, too small a sound, she thought, for bombs or shells. Most of the jokers didn’t even pause in their dance.

Eric, I love you!

“I love you too, hon.”

And then temple, clearing, the jokers, and Eric, all vanished in a single brilliant orange flash. Mark was hurled backward, into darkness.