"Whoa. One step at a time. Let me catch my breath. That was a lot of work. Whoosh!"
"Okay," Phong said, squatting beside her. "I have proof."
"Yeah?" said Copra, primping what one fashion magazine called "The Last Afro Haircut Known to Man."
"Proof of MIA."
"Good for you," said Copra.
Sam Spelvin came running up. He had three strapping young men with him. They looked like bodybuilders. "Copra. I brought help."
"Too late. Thong here is on the job."
"Phong," corrected Phong, jumping to his feet and bowing before Sam. "I have proof of MIA."
"Did you hear that, Copra?"
"Yeah. So what?"
"MIA's. They're one of the hottest issues going. You did two shows on them last year."
"I did? Which ones?"
"You remember. Twins of American POW's, and wives who cheat on their POW husbands."
"POW's? This guy is talking about MIA's."
"Prisoners of war. Missing in action. Same difference. None."
"Why didn't anyone tell me?" Copra complained. "I could have done four shows last year. Brought all the guests back and called the POW's MIA's. Then we wouldn't have had to do that clunker about sex with fish."
"Never mind, Copra baby. Let's hear this guy's story." Sam turned to Phong. "You have proof?"
"Yes, proof of MIA. You wish to see? Take me to America. I show."
"Show us now. Then we'll take you to America."
"Okay," Phong said. And he began to unbutton his shirt.
"Hey, keep your shirt on, pal," Sam Spelvin said. "We're not auditioning Vietnamese bodybuilders here."
"I have proof I show," Phong said. He finished pulling off his shirt and presented his back to them.
His back was covered with plastic sheeting that was taped on all four sides with silver duct tape. The sheet hung loose and rippled when Phong moved.
"What's this?" Copra asked.
"I put on back when get to camp. To protect. Take away. You see."
Sam shrugged. "Okay, I'll bite," he said, he started to peel away the tape. Phong made painful noises. "Oh, God, I can't look!" squealed Copra Inisfree. She covered her face with her hands. Her entire head disappeared. "He's probably got some grisly war wound."
"Think again," Sam Spelvin said. He had the sheeting in his hands. He was looking at Phong's bare back. Copra looked too.
Copra was so astonished that she did something that was to become a legend around the water cooler back at her home studio. Without thinking, she got to her feet without anyone helping her. She grabbed Phong, spun him around, and gave him a kiss that almost broke his front teeth.
"Phong baby, you're coming to America."
Phong's dark eyes lit like candles. "I am?"
"I got just one question to ask you."
"What?"
"Do you do windows?"
An hour later Phong found himself seated in the first-class section of a Thai passenger liner. As the Bangkok airport sank beneath the rising wings and they vectored out over the immaculate blue of the Gulf of Thailand, he made himself a vow that he would not rest until his American friends were one day free to return to their homeland too.
And then all the nervous energy that has sustained him for so long rushed out of him like air leaking from a balloon. Phong lay across three empty seats and went to sleep.
He didn't know what it was that brought him to wakefulness, hours later, in a cold sweat. He thought it had been a nightmare, because he had heard those hated footsteps again.
Phong looked up. The jet was dark, the overhead lights dim. A man's back disappeared into the rest room just ahead of his seat. He hadn't noticed the man before, but because he was awake and his heart pounded in fright, he sat up and waited for him to come out again.
When the man came out, he was rubbing his face as if it were sore. He kept his face averted as he walked past Phong's seat.
But there was no mistaking him. The pock marks on his chin, the way his shoulders stiffened as he walked like the cross-brace of a scarecrow. And the dreadful sound of his footsteps.
Captain Dai. Captain Dai was on this plane.
Phong sank into his seat, trembling. He was not safe yet. Not yet.
Chapter 4
Captain Dai Chim Sao hated Americans.
An American had killed his father when he was ten years old. He vowed to take his revenge upon all Americans on the day the local political officer brought the news to the family house in Hanoi. He vowed that he would exact a price from all Americans, a hundred times greater than the pain he felt. His mother had long ago run off with another man, leaving him to care for his younger sister. She hadn't cried at first. Not for a week.
But then the American bombers came and the thunder was so great, the ground so shaken by their might, that his sister broke down and wept bitterly and silently for days without end, even long after the bombing stopped.
Nothing was the same after that. When he was twelve, he abandoned his sister just as his mother had abandoned him, and tried to join the People's Liberation Army. But they refused him. So, packing his few possessions, he set off for the south and joined the Vietcong. The Vietcong didn't care that he was a boy. They gave him an old Enfield rifle and two hand grenades and sent him out into the bush.
He shot his first American in the back. The man was in the rear of a patrol. He stopped beside a tree for a drink of canteen water. Dai Chim Sao nailed him to the tree with one shot. The noise brought others. He tossed a hand grenade in their startled faces and jumped into the elephant grass. The grenade made only a small pop. But the screaming carried for kilometers.
They never found him. In the long years of the war, he killed and maimed and ran, never staying to fight because everyone knew there was no way to beat the Americans at war. Ambush and run. Kill and hide. Live to fight again.
When victory finally came, Dai Chim Sao was a man. In the closing days of the war he had enlisted in the North Vietnamese Army, quickly rising to the rank of captain. He swore to kill twice as many Americans as before. But the U. S. troops withdrew back to America and suddenly there were no more Americans to slaughter.