Once a Warrior (36 page)

He’d been tempted, so damn tempted, to take her up on that baby-I’m-yours look he’d seen in her eyes right before she’d run down the stairs. Had, in fact, felt his heart tumbling headlong after her. It was something that had never happened to him before. And it surprised the hell out of him.

Not the lust. Hell, he’d been in let’s-get-it-on lust with plenty of women over the years. Sex without strings—that had always been his specialty. He wasn’t proud of it. Neither was he bragging about it. That was simply the way the world had turned.    

No, it wasn’t the lust but rather the love he felt for this one special, spunky woman that had struck him like a bolt out of the blue and left him reeling. Which in his line of work wasn’t just dumb. It was deadly. Because a man who lost himself to emotion was in serious danger of losing his life.

So now, he parked the slim cigar in the corner of his mouth and flicked her a smile over his shoulder. “Is Flipper asleep?”

Cat had taken the coward’s way out, hiding in the cabin and using the baby as an excuse not to have to face the man. Emotions had poured through her—sweet and confusing and sad—as she’d tried to come to terms with her feelings. Despite what Johnny had done, she knew she would always care for him in a special way. He’d been her first love, the boy to whom she’d given her heart when she was but a girl.     

But what she felt for Cain was different. It encompassed her entire being. She loved him as a woman should love a man—intellectually, spiritually and physically. The fact that it was a love without hope of a future made it no less genuine. It simply spurred her determination to make the most of the few days they had left to them. Because those few days would have to last her a lifetime.

So now, she took a deep breath and answered the question he’d asked her as she stepped in beside him. “Finally.”

He shot her a glance, then tucked his tongue firmly in his cheek. “You look a little frazzled.”

She blew her sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes. “Don’t start any trouble, and there won’t be any trouble.”

He snapped her a crisp salute. “Yes, ma’am.”

Cat tried to laugh, but couldn’t quite manage it. Her heart had fluttered into her throat and swelled. She laid her hand on his arm and looked up at him. “Thank you, Cain.”  Her voice went husky with emotion. “Thank you for my son.”   

Fucking war, he thought on a sudden burst of fury. He gunned the throttle when what he really wanted to do was turn this old tub around and head for the South China Sea. Take Cat someplace safe and secluded and solely their own. A peaceful place where he could kiss her and savor the taste of her mouth, the silk-soft texture of her skin for the rest of his days. He wanted nothing more than to breathe in the life of her, the gentle compassion wrapped in courage, the grace of her body against his. And he wanted nothing less than all of her for all time.

Because that was impossible, because he was already committed to a cause that was sacred to him, he focused his attention on the river that was carrying them back to Saigon. “You’ll make a good mother, Cat.”

It wasn’t simply the compliment, but the confident way he paid it that touched her deeply. At the same time, though, she sensed him pulling back on every level. She dropped her hand before she made a fool of herself. Again.

“He really is a sweet baby. And just a touch stubborn.”

“I take it he didn’t want to go down for his nap?”

“Not at first. So I gave him a bath in the galley sink, which he loved. Then I gave him his medicine, which he hated.”  With a half-laugh, she lifted her hair off her hot neck. “And then I had to rock him and sing to him until—” 

“He’s making up for lost time.”

Seeing his jaw square reminded her that he was a man who’d been through hell as a boy. He’d survived, though it tore at her heart to think of the scars he must carry on his soul. Losing his parents was bad enough. But as a student teacher, she’d seen how cruel children could be. How they formed little cliques and, often simply echoing sentiments they’d heard at home, made fun of other children who were somehow different from them.

Cat knew the slurs Cain must have been subjected to. Words like “chink,” or much worse, that would have been intolerable to a boy who loved his mother and was proud of his heritage. She knew too that he’d probably had to study harder, run faster, jump higher, work longer just to keep pace with his “pure-bred” peers.  

Pained, not only for him but also for any child who had to suffer those kinds of taunts, she looked away. She stared out the window and toward the shore, where a grove of twisted banana and coconut trees reminded her that this was a country at war. “May I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”  He heard their rolling thunder before he saw them—a flight of jets, their silver bellies reflecting the sun, the bombs they carried hanging slim and dark from their wings—and it all came back to him in a flash. The soaring sense of freedom in conquering the heavens. The electric buzz of terror while dropping ordinance in 45 degree dives with the black puffs of flak and automatic gunfire thickening the air around him. The almost sexual thrill of flying into the face of death and surviving.

Cat waited until the deafening whine of the planes’ engines faded into a dull roar. While she waited, she watched a woman and a scrawny boy in a rice paddy stop working and stare up at those birds of the Apocalypse. She couldn’t see their eyes, of course, but she imagined they were pools of fear. When the woman put a succoring arm around the boy’s shoulders, she thought of the baby sleeping peacefully below. And she wondered who would have comforted him if she hadn’t come along.   

“How many of these children would you say there are?” she asked as the jets’ contrails drifted behind them like lazy carnival streamers in the air.      

“From this war, tens of thousands.”  Cain uttered a sound that could have passed for a laugh, though it was far from jovial. “Since 1945—who knows?—probably hundreds of thousands.” 

She turned back to him, shocked, and tilted her head. “That many?”

“Soldiers always leave children behind, in every army.”  He took another drag on his cigarillo. “Confining it to Asia now, have you ever stopped to think how many children the American occupation of Japan and South Korea have produced?”

She hadn’t, of course. “I wonder why I’ve never read anything about it.”

“No one’s bothered to write the story. And an ugly story it is, too.”  A muscle flicked in his jaw. “In Japan, for instance, those children are called
Half
’ and are ostracized for their Caucasian or black features by a society that prides itself on its ethnic purity.”

“How sad.”

“It’s even more complex in Korea. They respect Americans, almost all of whom have mixed blood, but they don’t respect Amerasians. So the kids, who are branded
twi ki
—half-breed—face a lifetime of discrimination, unemployment, and even exclusion from marriage.” 

“In other words,” Cat deduced, “they treat the children like criminals when their only ‘crime’ was being born.”

“What you have to understand,” Cain explained, “is that paternity, family name, means everything in Confucian societies. It’s the father who enrolls the child in school, bringing along the family birthright. Later the missing name means the child is excluded from the family trade, which is handed down by the father or paternal uncles. Because Amerasian children must retain their mother’s name, they have no family rights.”

“Their mothers must be devastated.”

“Most of them are outcasts themselves for having consorted with the enemy.”

“And the American fathers of these children?”

“Some of them really want to marry the women but can’t get permission. Others don’t even know they’ve sired a child. And still others just don’t give a damn.” 

She thought a moment. “Do the people at the Pentagon or in Congress know this is happening?”

“They don’t want to know,” he said in a derisive tone.

“Why not?”

“Because in addition to the politicians having to admit that we got into this war for all the wrong reasons and the generals having to admit that we’re losing it for all the right reasons, they’d have to assume responsibility for the kids that resulted from it.”

“What about the commanders on site?”

He snorted. “Half of them have hootch-girls themselves.”

“Hootch-girls?”  Cat’s confusion made a blank of her face.

Cain’s think-about-it look told her he was talking about women like Lily.

“I wonder if Colonel Howard has a hootch-girl?” she murmured.

Spotting a fishing boat along the shoreline, he cut his speed to avoid rocking it. “Ol’ Pencil-Dick is too busy trying to track me down to worry about women.”     

“Pencil-Dick?”  She barely conquered the laugh that sprang to her lips. “Now who’s calling names?” 

His white teeth grinned around his cigarillo without a hint of apology. “And that’s a nice one.”   

Frowning now, she got back to the subject under discussion. “What about the commanders who don’t have hootch-girls?”

“They believe . . .” His smile faded. “Well, it’s a pretty gross old military adage.” 

“I’m a big girl,” she said flatly.

“They believe that a man who won’t fuck won’t fight.”    

She watched the smoke from his cigarillo haze, then vanish. “I’m still surprised the media hasn’t picked up on this.”

“They’re so focused on their own agenda—which mainly consists of making war on our warriors—that they’ve yet to notice the boom in babies with round eyes and wavy hair.” 

Cat tilted her head, considering. “What if someone called it to their attention?”

“Front page news, maybe.”  Cain hailed an old couple on a sampan going in the opposite direction, then swiped his sweaty face with the back of his hand. “Would you mind getting me a beer the next time you go below?  I’m wringing wet.”  

“No, of course not. I need to check on the baby, anyway.”  As she stepped out of the wheelhouse, she drew a breath that lay heavily in her lungs. “Gosh, it’s really gotten humid.”

“Storm’s coming,” he said, and put the pedal to the metal, hoping to make port before it broke.

CHAPTER  NINETEEN

They didn’t make it.

When the first patrol boat came plowing through the murky water and pulled alongside them, less than a mile from the Port of Saigon, Cain didn’t give it much thought. He simply figured it was heading for the naval base on up the river and that the small chop had thrown it off-course. But when the second and third boats moved in like armored geese to complete the V formation, he knew that this was his own personal welcoming party.   

Lightning blazed in the cloud-bruised sky as he eased back on the throttle and, ever watchful, started looking for a way out. Thunder boomed, loud as a shot across his bow, when the patrol boats slowed right along with him. At the same time a fourth boat pulled in behind him, blocking that exit.

Despite the adrenaline that was boiling through him, urging him to make a break, there was only one thought in Cain’s mind now—how to keep Cat and the baby from getting caught in the net that had been cast for him.

It had been the busiest afternoon of Cat’s life. She’d sterilized bottles and nipples, slapped sandwiches together for lunch and scrubbed a couple of dirty diapers. Leaving her hair wet after the quick shower she’d managed to squeeze in, she’d put on her dry underwear and those black pajamas—for the last time, she hoped—before she’d fed and changed the baby. Then, when the boat slowed, she’d wrapped him in his blanket and brought him topside, believing they were about to dock.    

But now, squinting against the patrol boats’ searchlight eyes that suddenly glared in through the wheelhouse glass, she held his tiny body closely to her breasts and turned blindly to Cain. “What’s going on?” 

“If I’m not mistaken, we’re being busted.”  And he knew exactly how it had come about, too. He’d broken radio silence only once this entire trip—to let Tiny know what time they’d be pulling into port and to ask him to have Loc meet them so he could take Cat and the baby back to the hotel. But it was obvious that someone else had patched in to the transmission. 

“Busted?”  With a panicked sound in her throat, she looked up at the sky and saw three helicopters hovering overhead, rotors twirling, like a band of avenging angels. “Busted for what?”

He pointed toward the dock. “Ask Colonel Howard.” 

She turned her head in disbelief. “Colonel Howard?”

“James Lee Cain, it is my duty to place you under arrest!” the familiar voice barked at him through a bullhorn.

Her eyes widened with horror as lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating Colonel Howard’s figure on the dock. He was wearing a regulation trench coat that was buttoned to the throat, and his free hand was hidden in a pocket. Four military policemen in shiny black helmets and fatigues flanked him, Galils at port arms with their right hands on their holstered .45s.  

The patrol boat on the starboard side bumped up against Cain’s. Once it made fast, the other boats backed off. Then the helicopters rose over the water one by one and, blades
thwap-thwap-thwapping
, were gone.

The baby, startled as much by the noise and the lights as by how tightly Cat was squeezing him, let out a lusty wail. She relaxed her hold and reminded herself to stay calm. It wasn’t going to do anybody any good if she freaked out.

But she gaped at Cain, incredulous, when he idled the motor. “What are you doing?” 

“I’m turning myself in.”  If he’d been alone, Cain would have made a run for it. He had the room, now that the patrol was down to one boat, and God knew he had enough horse- and firepower to either leave both Howard and his merry band of MPs in his wake or to go out with a bang. But he wasn’t alone. He had a helpless baby and the woman he loved to think about. And right now, their safety was more important to him than saving his own skin.

“No!”  The fierceness in Cat’s voice surprised her. Cain, too. She saw it in the sharp, sideways jerk of his chin. Felt it in the searing gaze he turned on her. “You can’t do it.”  Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to shed them. “Howard hates you. I saw it on his face the day I went to talk to him. He doesn’t just want to lock you up. If he has his way, they’ll hang—”