Four Blind Mice

along with his men. It seemed likely that I was going to be killed soon. I couldn’t imagine how I would get out of this one. I thought about the kids and Nana, and Jamilla, and I wondered why I’d risked my life again. Was it a sign of good character, or a serious character flaw? And did it really matter anymore?
    Eventually the car turned off the smooth highway surface, onto a seriously bumpy road that was probably unpaved. I estimated that we were about forty minutes from West Point. So how much longer did I have to live?
    The car rolled to a stop and I heard the doors open and slam shut. Then the trunk was sprung.
    The first face I saw was Hutchinson’s. There was no emotion in his eyes. Nothing human looked back at me.
    The two others were behind him. They had handguns pointed my way. Their stares were blank as well.
    “What are you going to do?” I asked a question that I already knew the answer to.
    “What we should have done the night you were with Owen Handler. Kill you,” said Colonel Walker.
    “With extreme prejudice,” added the general.

Chapter 113
    I WAS LIFTED out of the car trunk and unceremoniously dropped on the ground. I landed hard on my hip. Pain lanced my body. Just the beginning, I knew. These bastards were out to hurt me before they killed me. I was handcuffed and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
    Colonel Walker reached toward me and ripped open my shirt. The other man was pulling off my shoes, then my pants.
    Suddenly I was naked and shivering in the woods somewhere in upstate New York. The air was cold, probably in the low forties.
    “Do you know what my real crime is? Do you know what I did that was so wrong in Vietnam?” Hutchinson asked. “I gave the fucking order to fight back. They killed and maimed our men. They practiced terrorism and sadism. They tried to intimidate us in every way they could. I wouldn’t be intimidated. I fought back, Cross. Just like I’m fighting back now.”
    “You also murdered noncombatants, disgraced your command.” I spit the words at him.
    The general leaned in close. “You weren’t there, so don’t tell me what I did or didn’t do. We
won
in the An Lao Valley. Back then, we used to say there were only two kinds in the world, the motherfuckers and the motherfucked. I’m a motherfucker, Cross. Guess what that makes you?”
    Colonel Walker and the other man had paint and brushes. They began to swab cold paint onto my body. “Thought you would appreciate this touch,” Walker said. “I was in the An Lao Valley too. You going to tell the
Washington Post
on me?”
    There was
nothing
I could do to stop this. No one could help me either. I was naked in the world, and all alone, and now I was being painted. Their calling card before they killed me.
    I shivered in the cold. I could see in their eyes that killing me meant nothing to them. They’d murdered before. Owen Handler, for one.
    So how much longer did I have? A few minutes? Maybe a couple of hours of torture? No more than that.
    A gunshot rang out in the blackness. It seemed to come from beyond the headlights of the blue sedan we’d driven there in.
What the hell?
    A dark hole opened in Colonel Walker’s face, just below his left eye. Blood spurted. He flopped over backward, landing with a heavy thud on the forest floor. The back of his head was gone, just blown away.
    The second soldier tried to duck, and a bullet drilled his lower spine. He screamed, then fell and rolled right over me.
    I saw men come swarming out of the woods — at least half a dozen. I counted nine, ten of them. I couldn’t see who they were in the darkness. Who in hell was rescuing me?
    Then as they came closer, moonlight illuminated some of their features. My God! I didn’t know them, but I knew where they had come from and who had sent them — either to follow me or to kill Hutchinson.
    The Ghost Shadows were here.
    Tran Van Luu’s people had been tracking me. Or Hutchinson.
    They were speaking in Vietnamese. I didn’t understand a word they were saying. Two of them grabbed the general and threw him to the ground. They began to kick him in the head, the chest, and stomach, in the genitals. He cried out in pain, but the beating continued, almost as if they couldn’t hear him.
    They left me alone. But I had no illusions — I was a witness to this. I lay with my face pressed against the ground. I watched the attack from the lowest vantage point. The beating of General Hutchinson seemed unreal