Blood & Tacos #2 (8 page)

They turned right, then left, then right again. Tinh caught sight of two more
men coming at him from fifty feet away. He put his shoulders up, trying to cover
his ears as best he could, and opened fire. The AK tore through both men. Tinh
never stopped, stepped right over the bodies in his path. His throbbing ears
picked up shouts, but he had no idea where they were coming from. He kept his
finger on the trigger.

"Mathes!" he shouted. "Your six!"

Mathes turned and the big gook was on top of him. How they ever fit this boy
down in this tunnel was beyond him. He was shirtless, and his brown skin almost
glowed. He leered at Mathes as he brought his hands up around the young corporal’s
throat. Mathes stared bug-eyed as the boy—he couldn’t be any older
than Mathes—strangled him with his massive hands. It took Mathes only
a few seconds, though, before he put his Colt .45 under the boy’s chin
and painted the ceiling with his brains.

"Jesus," Mathes said, his whisper loud in his skull. "Jesus
Christ."

"Mm," said Tinh, "let’s go. And bring your buddy."

Gummy Ba had killed at least eight of Thuy’s men by himself, the jungle
his cloak. He almost laughed out loud as Thuy’s men ran around like cocks
with no hens. Thuy must have got these faggots wholesale from Hong Kong.

Lang appeared next to where Ba squatted watching the main hut, the soft light
of its cookfire in the window. Lang nodded towards it, but Ba shook his head.
"This is Tinh’s fight."

In the hut, Thuy sat in the lotus position, his rifle oiled and cleaned at
his side. My lay on the floor, her sights on the trapdoor in the corner. The
mongrels howled now. Thuy had almost succeeded in shutting out the noise, the
screams, the smell of smoke. But then Hai burst in. A thin trail of blood was
spattered across his face.

"Sir!" he said, "they’re killing us out there! I don’t
know what to do!"

"You can start by shutting the fuck up." Thuy rose. He walked calmly
to Hai, the idiot’s lazy eye spinning in uncontrollable circles in its
socket. Thuy smiled and then slapped him in the face. "And then you can
close the door. We’re expecting our real company any moment now."

Hai did as he was told and then squatted down in the opposite corner from the
trapdoor, his rifle in his shaking hands.

Thuy stood in the center of the room, his hands clasped behind his back. The
rain outside started up again, a few sprinkles on the roof, and then sheets
of rain. The scar on Thuy’s right arm began to itch.

Slowly, so slowly, the trapdoor opened.

My’s whole body tensed, then relaxed.

A hand poked up through the trapdoor. Then the door itself opened all the way.

My fired, just once. The trapdoor slammed shut, and they heard the ladder snap
as whoever it was fell back to the tunnel floor. The babies screamed louder.

Hai laughed. He bounced across the room and flung the trapdoor open.

My had time to shout, "Hai!" before a .45 round tore Hai’s
face off.

Sergeant Son Tinh rose from out of the tunnel. He fired Mathes’ revolver
at My, clipping her in the shoulder. The yellow of her ao dai blossomed a red
flower. She fell to the floor with a cry, landing on her narrow bottom.

Tinh faced his brother. "Shall we?" he said to Thuy Tinh.

"We shall."

Corporal Joseph Mathes once saw a Marine, a big black private, smash another
Marine’s teeth into a curb outside a bar in Fallbrook. In high school,
he saw two greasers get in a knife fight over a girl, watched as one slit the
other’s stomach open. The kid’s guts showed, just a little, through
the curtain of blood. A bunch of the guys, just six months ago, dragged him
to a dogfight in Cholon, and he watched two scrawny mutts fight until one tore
the other’s throat out with its teeth.

He’d never seen anything like this.

Tinh dropped Mathes’ pistol, and then carefully removed and laid down
the AK strapped to his chest. He tossed the KA-BAR away. It landed point-first
in the floor with a thunk. Thuy kicked away his own AK. He lifted his shirt
to show no weapons in his belt. Then they both bowed to each other.

Thuy leapt across the room with a yell. Tinh blocked his punch and then bowled
him over. Thuy landed on his back, and kicked up, catching Tinh in the chest.
Tinh took three steps back as Thuy leapt to his feet in one motion, landed in
a crouch, and swept a kick at Tinh’s legs. Tinh jumped, bending his legs
at the knees, and then landed knee-first as he delivered a tremendous punch
to Thuy’s face. Both men rolled back into a somersault, onto their feet,
and back into a crouch. Thuy smiled at his brother. Tinh did not return it.

This time they came at each other simultaneously. Mathes, crouched on top of
the tunnel’s ladder, could not make out their individual fists in the
flurry of blows that followed. Each man would block, block, block, every third
or fourth blow finding its mark. Blood exploded from Thuy’s nose, Tinh’s
mouth. Tinh grabbed Thuy’s left arm and pulled it up behind his back.
Thuy stomped his instep and elbowed him in the kidney with his free arm.

Tinh whirled back and around. Thuy spun him further, whipping him into the
wall. Mathes looked to the woman still staring at her bloody shoulder in disbelief,
and then moved his attention to the bamboo pen where the babies were kept. They
screamed and howled. But one baby had pulled herself up and was just standing
there. Watching.

Thuy pinned Tinh’s throat to the wall and punched him in the breadbasket.
As the air rushed out his lungs, Tinh felt Thuy’s hold on his throat tighten.
He butted at Thuy’s face, but Thuy shook the blow off and laughed.

"When you get to hell, little brother," Thuy said, "be sure
to have the devil build a new wing for all your American friends." And
he reached back and drew the short knife he had hidden under his belt.

The baby pointed and said, "Uh-da!"

Mathes said, "Sarge!"

My grabbed the Colt off the floor and fired.

Thuy saw the bullet strike Tinh in the shoulder, but then felt the blood running
down his own back and knew it had passed through him first. He immediately released
Tinh and turned, and then My fired again, shooting him in the stomach.

Thuy fell to the floor.

Tinh coughed and coughed as Mathes pulled himself out of the trapdoor, kicked
the gun out of My’s hand. "Don’t move, lady. We’re taking
these kids and we’re getting out of here."

Tinh looked down at his older brother, watched the blood pool on the floor.
Thuy smiled. "You might as well kill them now, Son Tinh. Fucking b?i d?i.
You know as well as I do what kind of life they’ll have."

"Your blood," Tinh said. "I can smell the Chinese in it."

Thuy laughed, a pathetic wheeze. "Yes, it stinks. You should be used
to it by now, though, I would think."

Tinh reached down and pulled the KA-BAR out of the floor. "Say hello
to Father for me."

"I will," Thuy said. "Chúc ng? ngon, Son Tinh."

"Good night, Thuy Tinh." Sergeant Tinh cut Thuy’s throat.
"You fucking asshole."

Son Tinh focused carefully on My’s shoulder as he bandaged it but could
feel her eyes boring into his face. He said, "Does this mean you’ll
take me back, little one?"

My laughed. "Not if you were the last bastard in Vietnam, Son Tinh."

"That’s what I thought."

He let that hang in the air. My waited until he’d finished bandaging
her up and looked her in the eye. She said, "Once, Thuy Tinh fought with
honor for his homeland. But somewhere along the way, he began fighting for himself,
and with dishonor. Bringing a knife to a fistfight was the last straw."

"Mm." Son Tinh nodded. "Can I get you anything else, My?"

"Yes," she said. "You can get the fuck out of my house."

Son Tinh gave a sharp whistle. After a few minutes, Gummy Ba returned it, signaling
the all-clear. Mathes and Tinh came out, each with two babies in his arms. All
of them except little Yen cried and screamed in the rain.

Even with the ringing in his ears and the screaming bastards in his arms, Mathes
smiled hugely at Gummy Ba and his men standing at the bridge. "Well, goddamn,
boys!" he said. "Mission accomplished, huh? Let’s go home."
He stepped onto the bridge and Gummy Ba hauled him back.

"You fucking crazy, Joe?" he said and pointed at the MON-50 poking
out from under the bridge, glistening in the rain.

"You want whole place go up?" Ba said.

"Sure he does," Tinh said. "But not tonight."

THE END

Jimmy Callaway
lives and works in San Diego, CA. He is
the underboss of
Criminal
Complex
and overboss of
Attention,
Children
and
Let’s
Kill Everybody
!

By Moses Starkweather

(discovered by Frank Larnerd)

Not all men’s adventure books of the mid-1980s were Reagan-era paranoia
combined with liberal doses of gun porn (and borderline actual porn). Some authors
used the freedom of the genre to make social commentary and show the grit and
grime of the world they themselves lived in. The Cruel series was short-lived
but has been cited as an influence on many writers' work, including discoverer
FRANK LARNERD.