Red Flags
Authors: Juris Jurjevics
 
Copyright © 2011 by Juris Jurjevics
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jurjevics, Juris, date.
Red flags / Juris Jurjevics.
p. cm.
ISBN
978-0-547-56451-7
1. United States. ArmyâOfficersâFiction. 2. Drug trafficâFiction.
3. Vietnam War, 1961â1975âFiction. I. Title.
PS
3610.
U
76
R
43 2011
813'.63âdc22
2010050013
Book design by Brian Moore
Printed in the United States of America
DOC
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jeanne,
BELOVED CIVILIAN
Neil Olson,
AGENT PROVOCATEUR
And for the guys . . .
J
AMES
51609945 P
EARSON
⢠H
ARRY
P
EWTERBAUGH
J
ERRY
R
OWLAND
⢠E
LLSWORTH
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MITH
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EORGE
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UCKMAN
⢠R
ICHARD
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TOLZ
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RANK
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EVIVO
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ARBER
⢠B
ERNIE
G
ELLMAN
⢠J
ERRY
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OLD
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APOLITANO
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AVE
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ASPERSON
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B
ENNETT
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. H
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"P
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ARRISON
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THE LATE
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. . . M
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. . . W
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. . . S
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CHEURLEIN
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THE LATE
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USTAV
H
ASFORD
But most especially this is dedicated to thoseâfriends and foeâ
we light the joss sticks for who didn't make it home.
The only tribute you could really pay, and I can still pay, is to remember. What else is there?
âClark Dougan in Christian G. Appy,
Patriots
Mike, you're talking well, but where are your facts? You state things so glibly. What percent of territory has the government lost in the last month? What percent does it have and what percent does it not have? Where are your statistics? Don't give me poetry.
âU.S. secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara
in A. J. Langguth,
Our Vietnam
"This is the place where everybody finds out who they are." Hicks shook his head. "What a bummer for the gooks."
PrologueâRobert Stone,
Dog Soldiers
S
OMEDAY
WAS STANDING
on the gravel in front of Bert's store, collar turned up against the cold.
I knew right off. It wasn't like I hadn't been expecting her. Once, when she was an infant, I had imagined her. The grown version demanded a quick revision. She was a stalk. Maybe a twenty-four-inch waist, a bust not much bigger.
"I'm Erik Rider," I said. "How can I help you, Miss . . . ?"
The lips were her father's, the hazel eyes soft, like her touch as we shook hands. The bones felt hollowâa bird's, they were so light. Like his when we recovered the body.
"Celeste Bennett," she said. "Sorry to just barge in on you." She withdrew her hand.
"Pleased to meet you," I said, although pleased was the last thing I was.
"You knew my father. I was hoping I could talk to you about him."
"Colonel Bennett . . . ? Dennis Bennett?" I weighed my words, pretending it was taking time for me to recall the man, as though I hadn't thought of him pretty much steadily for nearly forty years. I launched into my fine-man, exceptional-officer patter.
An honor to serve under him
. From her impatient expression, I could tell she'd heard all the customary guff before and wasn't buying.
"Mr. Rider, I'd really like toâ"
"How on earth did you find me?" I said, feigning the most genuine curiosity, anything my face might conjure by way of camouflage.
"Your ex-wife." She brushed the hair off her forehead.
"Which one?"
"Hillary?"
"Wife number three."
She looked away, nervous. She had the colonel's angular nose too. His kid all right. Her eyes caught me again.
"She said you were in northern California, around Redding, but she wasn't sure where. You weren't listed . . . or even unlisted. I did a title search online and saw you had property near Creek. I took a chance."
She pulled her gloves on and hunched against the cold.
"Title search, huh? What is it you do in the world?"
"Lawyer. I'm a lawyer."
Shit, I thought. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-eight." She shifted her feet, uncertain. "I was conceived the last time they were together, in Hawaii," she said, by way of corroborating herself, as if that were at issue. "And you?"
"I don't know where I was conceived. Probably the back seat of a Nash Ambassador in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin." She didn't blush and she wasn't laughing. "Sixty-three this year. I'll be sixty-three." I indicated the macadam behind me. "You drive in from Red Bluff?"
"Yes. I'm still swaying. That's some twisty road."
I looked west, toward the higher turns through the pass. Some of it I'd driven yesterday, the S-curves dusted with snow.
"Yeah. There's two more hours of mountain road before you hit the Pacific Coast Highway."
I waved to Bert, visible just behind her in the big window of his grocery store. He had called to summon me downâ"There's a gal here looking for you."
She glanced back at him. "Your friend volunteered that he had a weapons permit. His wife also."
I nodded. "Yep. Most everyone here carries. Not many citizens bother with permits."
She squinted against the winter sun. "Why all the weaponry?"
"The nearest law is in Weaver, two hours away. Takes them a day to get here, when they come. Which is why Bert's wife has her pistol out when she takes the night receipts to her car. They make their permits and weapons known to everyone, especially strangers."
"The neighborhood's that dicey?" she said.
"It's isolated."
"Looks so idyllic."
"There are temptations."
She took in the tiny post office and Bert's grocery store and bar, the two connected through a common wall. "I hadn't noticed," she said. "The sign coming into town put the population at twenty-five."
"Sounds about right."
"Not a lot of nightlife in Creek, I take it."
"Bert's bar is it. The temptation's up on the ridges. The hills are full of marijuana farmers, if they're not cooking meth."
She scanned the voluptuous green slopes and pine groves all around us.
"They grow the dope in small patches," I said. "Can't be spotted so easily from the air. Reduces losses if a field gets busted. They've got armed illegals guarding them."
"Should I worry?"
"It gets a little rowdy some nights at Bert's." I pointed to the unlit neon sign in the saloon window behind her. "Otherwise they're respectful neighbors."
"Your wagon full of firearms too?" She looked over at my Bronco, probably scanning for a gun rack.
"No. I haven't kept company with a weapon in a long while. So I have to be especially polite."
A momentary silence fell between us. I was forgetting how to have a conversation.
"How did you come to settle here, Mr. Rider?" she said, her tone light, like we had just met at a cocktail party. She was pretending interest in my life to keep me talking, coaxing the reluctant witness.
"Came for a month years ago," I said. "Never left. A pal from the service asked for help building his house, a few towns over. He had a crop-dusting business, spraying walnut and almond trees from a helicopter."
"The signature sound of your generation," she said.
"What?"
"Those blades beating the air."
"Oh . . . yeah. I suppose."
The day was bright and crisp. A cloud and its shadow passed, and the air turned colder beneath it.
"About my father." She put a gloved hand on her rented car and leaned a hip against the rocker panel. "You're the thirteenth member of the advisory team I've found."
If she was just running through the roster, I could pass her alongâfast. "Guess I was next on the list."
"Not exactly. The last couple of men I spoke to wanted to know if I'd seen you yet. So I moved you up."
I was tempted to ask who but suppressed the urge. Instead, I lifted my tattered Dodgers cap, scratched my head, and made homely noises, stalling with hick gestures.