Hours of Gladness Read Free

spent the last three months living in the village, patrolling the roads each night, ambushing the startled VC a half dozen times.
    Among the Vietnamese, Lam had been one of the strongest supporters of this new policy. That—and his doomsday book—made him a primary assassination target. Lam was just beginning to slice the juicy duck his salary had enabled his mother to buy when the four-man VC team came in the door shooting. Lam was the only man with a gun, and he could not fire because he was afraid of hitting his mother or one of the guests.
    Lam was hit by at least ten bullets. For good measure, the VC dropped two hand grenades on his body. Mick was on his feet, starting to run for the house, when the PF, Luong, grabbed his arm. “No. Ambush,” he hissed.
    Nobody had much use for the PFs. For one thing, they had M1 rifles, unable to fire more than one bullet at a
time. Most of them were terrified of the VC and ready to do almost anything rather than fight them. Mick had discovered Luong was the exception. He was a potbellied little guy with protruding teeth, not much bigger than his rifle. He had fought the Japanese and the French on the Cong side and had for some obscure reason switched to the Americans. He was a PF for the $20 a month he got paid, which enabled him to avoid farming or fishing, both of which he detested.
    Mick followed Luong out the back gate of the cemetery down another path that took them to the river. They got there in time to hear the assassination team paddling away. Mick fired sixty rounds in their direction, the M16’s red tracers winging over the dark water, Luong’s M1 banging beside him.
    Back in the cemetery, almost in syncopation, Sullivan and the other marines opened fired on the VC detachment who had been waiting to cream them if they had charged down the main street to help Lam. The VC had tried to come through the cemetery and use the same path to the river Luong had used with Mick. The marines had four bodies to display in the marketplace the next morning. Around noon, one of the assassination squad washed up with the high tide.
    None of that brought Lam back to life. His body was a piece of mangled meat. They buried him in the cemetery while his mother wept and clawed at her eyes. The VC had now killed her husband, all four of her sons, and five of her nephews.
    Ten days later, Nguyen Thang Phac arrived to take Lam’s place as district chief of police. One look at his elongated frame and lean, haunted face and Mick knew the jokes were over. Lam was a killer who had laughed at death. Phac was a killer who no longer laughed at anything.
    WELCOME TO ATLANTIC CITY. The billboard displayed towering casinos, a sun-swept beach and ocean, svelte
women and handsome men beside gaming tables. Past more billboards urging you to lose your shirt at individual casinos Mick roared, his mind, his body, recoiling from what he was going to see and hear in this bedeviled town. But it was better than the unreeling. Better than another night in Binh Nghai.

TINSEL TOWN
    T he clock on the dashboard read 4 A.M. as Mick rolled into Atlantic City’s wet, deserted streets. The usual dozen bums were huddled in doorways freezing to death. One or two of their ragged friends rooted in garbage cans looking for Christ knows what.
    The last time Mick had come down here, he had spotted an ex-marine, Minus One Haines, around the garbage cans. Minus One was the nickname the drill sergeant had pinned on him in boot camp because he could not do anything right. Mick had tried to help Haines, a runty loser from Bayonne who thought becoming a marine would make him six feet six. Mick had gotten him through boot camp. He had learned a lot about being a leader, working on Minus One.
    Haines had wanted to come to Binh Nghai with Mick, but he had turned him down. Mick had picked only the best for Binh Nghai. He remembered the hurt look on Minus One’s face. He had stepped forward with twenty
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