Chapter Six

      Somewhere near the seventeenth parallel, North Vietnam, July 1972

      Our Father who art in heaven…

      Jimmy Malone was surprised at how quickly the words leaped to his tongue. The short one, the one with the bad teeth, kept poking at Jimmy’s broken arm. Tears of pain filled his eyes. The short one poked harder, his finger touching bone through the deep gash that ran from Jimmy’s elbow to his shoulder. The short one said something unintelligible to the taller one with the lazy left eye, and without even knowing their language, Jimmy could tell they were angry.

      Bile rose in his throat. Six months ago, out of shame or politeness, he would have turned his head. Now, sweating in the jungle, insects swarming around his eyes, making blinking a necessity to ward off insanity, he merely leaned forward and retched from the pain. He felt his own vomit warm the front of his shirt.

      Hallowed be thy name…

      The prayer was there. On the edge of his consciousness. He repeated it over and over in his mind. A mental salve on the open sore of being twenty-two and hopelessly bent and broken in a jungle farther from New York’s west side than he had ever imagined he might go. Farther than he’d ever wanted to go.

      Thy kingdom come…

      Sometimes Jimmy thought about the words.

      Thy will be done…

      How could this be God’s will? This war, his arm, the short one with the bad teeth. The hunger. The bugs. The fucking bugs. God, how can this be your will? Death. Cowboy McMann blown to smithereens right in front of him. The land mines. The bugs. The infection spreading up his arm. Malaria. In two days, I will be dead. If I make it that long. God’s will. Jimmy wanted to weep, but that wasn’t how he was raised—his father would have just as soon punched him in the face than allow a son of his to cry. His mother was the same, a tough old woman, always a bourbon away from passing out.

      On earth as it is in Heaven…

      Hell. Fucking hell. Hot as hell. That’s what this place is, he thought through the pain, so intense at times he thought he was floating above himself. When had the short one left? He couldn’t remember. It all ran together. Day and night. Bugs and stickiness and pain and bugs all the time. Same day. Different day. All the same.

      And lead us not into temptation…

      And sometimes he didn’t think about the words but just the sound of them. Like a mantra, he repeated the prayer. I am still alive. I am still alive. Our Father. Our Father. Our Father. I am still alive. Not that he was sure being alive was a good thing. Dying far from home on the floor of a hut, gooks poking him, swollen mosquitoes too fat to fly from drinking the blood clustered on his wound. Young North Vietnamese—no more than boys—hitting him with sticks. All he could think of was relief. Death or rescue. One way or the other. Relief.

      But deliver us from evil…

      And that line, when he thought about it, was for the Washington assholes. The politicians whose own sons would never see the war, or if they did, it’d be as paper-pushers somewhere. Fucking evil motherfuckers. You come die here.

      Amen… Fucking evil.

      He tried to imagine the antithesis of evil. He thought of Mai. He had a rule when he was flying. He wasn’t allowed to think of her. Men died when they let down their guard, fragments of thoughts of home or their girl making them careless. Instead, he put Mai in a box in his mind. Then, when it was time, when he was on the ground, when he was safe, he would shut his eyes and open the box and take her out.

      Their moments together were rare. It was hard to get away, to get to her village. And she came to Saigon infrequently. But when he saw her, Vietnam was bearable. He couldn’t believe he was content to do as little as hold her hand. But he was. He liked to bring her things to make her smile. An American camera, candies, bottles of Coca-Cola, a Timex watch. He kept a picture of her inside his helmet. Mai. His Mai. She was smiling at him in the picture, sunlight on her face. He would look at her photo and almost forget the war. Maybe what she said about Buddha and reincarnation was true. Maybe he’d known her in another life.

      He hoped she was safe. Mai’s father was dead. Killed a year ago. Determined to keep Mai from harm, Jimmy had brought some buddies and they’d dug a hiding spot big enough for her and her mother and baby sister in case their village was raided. Between the hiding spot and the money Jimmy was able to give Mai, he’d even won over her mother. He wished this fucking war would be over and he could bring them all to America.

      Jimmy thought of Mai and the pain eased a tiny bit, replaced by an ache in his heart. He would never see her again. Sometime between dusk and dawn, in the darkness, the rats came. He named the first one, a fat son of a bitch, Cass, after Mama Cass, and he felt a twinge of pride at his bravado. Humor in the face of an amazingly hopeless situation. When the second and third and fourth rats showed up, a tidal rush of pity and fear swept over him. Cass bit his ankle. A second prayer entered his mind.

      Hail Mary, full of grace…

      Then he abandoned the prayers and spoke to God from the very depths of his soul. He spoke with the abandon of an angry man, not much out of his teens, in despair. Without artifice. Without bargaining. He had nothing to offer God. He whispered in the darkness. God, if you get me out of this fucking shithole, I’ll do something with my life.

      In a flash, an explosion rocked the earth and sent the rats scurrying. Gunfire, screaming. The sound of choppers in the distance. The ground beneath him shook, and he screamed as his arm jostled. But God—or Mai’s Buddha—had just delivered Jimmy Malone his first miracle.

      The