Page 55 of Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1)

Saigon, Vietnam

TOM AND ELLA DEPARTED the Continental Palace hotel in a motorized rickshaw.

Ella preferred the rickshaws to the taxis, as she thought they were a much better way to experience the city.

The taxis put up a protective barrier between the passenger and the outside world, whereas with a rickshaw you were a part of it.

Tom was not so sure. Rickshaws seemed dirty and dangerous.

Why pick that option when there were others available?

“We are going to be late,” Tom said, looking at his Rolex.

“My father was young once too. He will understand,” Ella said, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “That reminds me, we still need to get that bracelet for your watch switched out.”

“Maybe tomorrow.”

One block to the west of Lam Son Square they merged into the chaos of Bùng Binh Sài Gòn traffic circle. Through swirling dust, exhaust, and a clamor of horns and shouts they emerged unscathed.

Tom was astonished they survived.

“I must admit that I do like the Cercle Sportif Sa?gonnais,” Ella said, as they got closer to their destination.

“I have fond memories of it growing up. My mother loved it. It was a safe place for us. We could ride horses, swim, play chess or billiards, take dance and fencing lessons, eat lunch, even have what she called ‘quiet time’ in the library.”

“I didn’t know you fenced.”

“I have not given up all my tricks, Tom Reece,” she teased.

They turned onto Rue Chasseloup-Laubat, the beautiful tree-lined approach to the prestigious club, and drove through the gates.

This is more like a compound, Tom thought as they pulled to a stop in front of the distinctive white French colonial with its massive wraparound porch.

“Mademoiselle DuBois, welcome,” a Vietnamese greeter said. He was dressed in an off-white suit with a black tie and offered Ella his hand as she dismounted the rickshaw. “Will you be joining your father for lunch?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Follow me, please.”

The greeter escorted them up a steep set of stairs and into the spacious lobby with huge windows open to the elements.

They followed him down a long hallway to the lunch pavilion, an open-air deck arranged with tables and chairs, overlooking its famous swimming pool.

It was encircled by mammoth trees, beyond which were a series of tennis courts and a grass pitch.

The colossal pool was the center of activity.

Its green tiles gave the water a unique hue that reminded Tom of Ella’s jade necklace.

“They play rugby here?”

“On occasion, football mostly, your soccer of course. Past those trees are the stables and polo fields. Just over that rise is a sporting clays course, along with trap and skeet.”

There was an air of aloofness to the whole affair, men and women sitting together and whispering conspiratorially as they noted who arrived with whom.

Some were dressed for tennis and others, just out of the pool, wore bathrobes.

While children and old men splashed in the water, young mothers sat in the shade under a long trellis covered in purple bougainvillea supported by white columns.

They had the manners and style of people long accustomed to comfort, yet there was an underlying edge, an uneasiness in the air, the ominous disquiet of words unspoken, the knowledge that at any moment NVA tanks or Viet Cong sappers could upend their illusion of paradise.

A sense of impending doom permeated every meal, every sip of wine, every stroke of the racket, every lap in the pool.

Just as it did for the French, this manufactured civilization, this remnant of Old-World colonialism, could at any moment dissipate into the ether under the crack of rifles chambered for 7.

62 x 39. It was not so much apathy as it was a pretentious deception brought about by a forced reality.

They believed they were immune to the plague of war that existed outside the gates, beyond the membership, that they were somehow impervious to the effects of mortars and RPGs, should they be hurled over the fence.

They were going to hold on, even if it killed them.

Their escort stopped and gestured to the center of the dining area. Gaston DuBois glanced up from his paper, smiled, and folded it, waving them over.

They had arrived at the height of the lunch rush. Waiters in white shirts, black pants, vests, and bow ties, holding trays of food and drinks, hurried from table to table, attentive to their patrons’ every need.

Gaston had a glass of white wine in front of him. Due to their tardiness, Tom guessed it wasn’t his first.

Tom smiled back and waved as Ella led the way forward, weaving around a toddler who had escaped from his mother and dodging a waiter with a tray overladen with mimosas.

That was when Tom noticed the waiter, one slightly out of step with the flow of controlled chaos that defined the Cercle Sportif’s afternoon rush.

His gate was faster than the others, his face still and intense.

Focused. He was approaching from the right, his eyes locked on the elder business magnate.

All of that in and of itself might not have been enough, but Tom’s eyes caught the tray.

The waiter was holding it with his left hand just above shoulder level. It was empty.

There were natural rhythms in a restaurant, just as there were in the jungle. A disruption of those patterns was a warning.

The jungle is neutral.

Tom grabbed Ella’s arm, pulling her down and back, his hand clearing his untucked shirt and going to the grip of his Browning Hi-Power.

The waiter was a step away from Gaston.

Tom had heeded the warning a second too late.

By the time he cleared leather, the waiter had already lowered the tray and raised a Makarov pistol from under a white napkin. He placed it to the old man’s temple.

Tom found the front sight of his Browning, centering it on the waiter’s chest, and depressed the trigger three times in rapid succession, but before his first round flew, another sound echoed through the pavilion. A gunshot.

Gaston’s head snapped violently to the right as blood and brain matter exploded across the white tablecloth. His body slumped unnaturally as gravity pulled him from his chair and he toppled to the floor.

The room erupted in chaos as mothers, fathers, children, and grandparents rushed for the closest exits. Some scampered under tables, others trampling and pushing people out of the way in their panicked rush to escape, to survive.

All Tom’s rounds had found their intended target. The assassin took three nine-millimeter rounds to his upper chest, his body convulsing around the wounds, his head hitting the table as he dropped atop his mark.

Tom took a kneeling position, his left hand pressing Ella to the floor as she struggled to get up, screaming and cursing at him to let her go. His right hand stayed on the gun scanning the room, finger on the trigger.

There might be more.

“Stay down!” Tom ordered.

Look for something out of place.

Everything is in chaos.

Look for what isn’t in chaos.

Tom’s eyes clocked a movement out of sync with the calamity that had followed the shooting.

Another Vietnamese waiter, standing on a platform that overlooked the pavilion, raised a pistol in the SEAL’s direction.

Tom was faster. He angled his body slightly to the right and sent two rounds into the waiter’s chest. As the man fell forward, Tom adjusted his aim and sent another into his head after he hit the ground.

“Tom! Let me the fuck up!” Ella screamed.

He kept her pinned.

“I said stay down!”

He continued scanning, keeping Ella restrained.

She continued to struggle.

“My father! Tom! My father!” she screamed.

“I’m going to check on him,” Tom shouted above the commotion. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”

He knew Gaston had been killed, but Tom needed to ensure the first assassin was dead as well. Even though he had taken three rounds to the chest, the human body could be extremely resilient.

“Promise me! Stay down!” he said.

Tom stood and quickly scanned the room. It was still pandemonium, but the majority of people had found their way off the pavilion and were running past the pool and tennis courts. He slowly stalked toward the table strewn with blood and brain matter, pistol in his outstretched right hand.

Tom never heard the bullet that struck him just under and behind his right ear.

The overwhelming sensation was not pain but a shock that instantly paralyzed him.

He could still hear the screams of the club patrons, still feel the chaos around him, but they were now echoes, almost a memory of something that had once been.

He blinked his eyes and couldn’t understand where he was.

He should be looking at a table, a table with two dead bodies nearby.

Instead, all he saw was white wood. He slowly realized he was on the ground and looking up at the ceiling of the restaurant.

He blinked his eyes again, and there was Ella on top of him, grabbing his face and shoulders, shaking him.

Try as he might to respond, he could not do anything.

He could not feel anything. He wanted to tell her to take his pistol, to be careful because there might be more assassins, and that they might have additional targets.

He wanted to tell her to run. He wanted to scream at her to move, but he could not form the words.

The echoes of violence receded, replaced with the sound of his own breathing.

He could tell it was labored. He tried to move, to reach out to Ella above him, tears streaming down her cheeks as she continued to shake him.

Darkness crept in from the corners of his vision, and the blinding pain in his head began to radiate through his body.

Ella stopped shaking him and turned her head toward her father. Tom watched helplessly as she pushed herself to her feet.

Run, Ella!

Her primal screams were the last thing he heard before the darkness, before he accepted that death had found him.