“You prick!”
“Calling me names ain’t gonna get us anywhere, brother.”
“I’m not your fucking brother, man.”
“You black, aren’t you — or that shoe polish?”
“I don’t go ‘round killing kids.”
“Then what took you so long to make up yo’ mind, man?”
“I thought you were bluffin’,” Kacey said.
“Until we did her, right?” Pepper smiled, his AK-47 pointing right at Kacey’s gut, his head nodding back at the two elderly sobbing Laotian hostages. “Life’s cheap over here, man. Dyin’ is a way of life this part o’ the world.”
Kacey said nothing.
“Lookit, man, all we want from you is the location of your boys settin’ up ambush ‘round here. We ain’t interested in yo’ fucking war, man. We just want safe passage.”
Kacey stared blankly at him before asking, “Safe passage for what?”
“Business,” Pepper said easily. By now a stream of porters were coming down the track, butter-box-sized loads suspended from poles and knapsacks on their backs. Kacey could tell they were Khmer Rouge, and when the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to kill people, there was only one other reason they’d be there.
“Heroin?” Kacey asked.
“Pure.” The other man smiled. “White as you inside, Oreo.” He jerked his head in the direction of the woman with the good figure and the camouflaged pith helmet. “Ain’t only thing I got that’s white.”
Kacey said nothing.
“You coming with us, buddy.” Pepper said. It was a statement, not a question. “You guys put up any ambushes, you’ll be the first in it, right?”
“What if I don’t want—”
“Hey!” The other black man suddenly lost it, jabbing Kacey hard in the gut. “I ain’t fuckin’ askin’, asshole. I’m tellin’ you. You’re comin’ or grandma gets it — then grandpa, right? You dig me, Oreo?”
“Yes.”
“Then off we go. You screw up, nigger, and grandma gets it. You understand?”
Kacey didn’t answer, so Pepper stuck him in the back with his AK-47. “You understand, asshole?”
“Yes,” Kacey said, and began to walk, knowing that up ahead, about two miles down the jungle trail, his buddies in Foxtrot were waiting, while behind him came Salt and Pepper Two with the two elderly hostages. He didn’t know what to do.
Pepper suddenly stopped the column with a hand signal and gave an order softly to Salt, who led the old folks back to the village. He could hear an argument, then Salt returned with two children, a boy and a girl around ten years old. Kacey figured that Pepper had suddenly realized how the old folks might slow him down. The kids could move much faster.
They started off again, and Kacey still didn’t know what to do. The only hope the Ranger could harbor was the possibility that Foxtrot’s western approaches security team of two would get a good look at him, recognize he was one of their own, and let him pass before opening fire. But what about the two kids no more than ten paces behind him? To make everything worse, more confused, it was getting dark.
Like most things in war, Kacey mused, no matter how well you plan things, something always goes wrong. What kind of luck was it to be setting a trap for Khmer Rouge troops and instead run smack into a freakin’ drug caravan armed to the teeth?