Hour of the Assassins by Andrew Kaplan Page B

they couldn’t understand that, how would they understand how he found Lim when he returned to base? The camp had been hit by a cluster bomb and most of her body was a festering blob of flesh and insects, indentifiable only by her plastic shower shoes. The stench was indescribable and he was retching with the salt taste of tears and sweat on his lips. Nothing was left of the little girl’s body, except for a few tatters of rags and charred bones, and all he kept thinking was, we did it. It wasn’t just the gooks or Charley, it was us, and he knew that he had to quit.
    â€œI’ve been thinking about you while I was asleep,” C.J. brought out tentatively. She patted the bed for him to sit beside her and then she began stroking his arm.
    â€œYou were in Vietnam, weren’t you?” she asked.
    â€œYes, sort of.”
    â€œDid you ever kill anybody?”
    â€œThat’s what war is all about, isn’t it?” he snapped.
    â€œWhat’s it like to kill someone?”
    That question always fascinated women, he thought. Maybe it’s a turn-on for them. Maybe that’s what war is all about, a turn-on for the spectators.
    â€œIt’s easy,” he said.
    â€œGod, sometimes you scare me.”
    He leaned over and kissed her brutally, his hands pressing her into the mattress, his tongue thrusting deep into her mouth. At first she responded, then she twisted away desperately, terrified at the sudden power and sheer savagery of his body. Abruptly he shoved her away and took a drag from his cigarette, his eyes bright and cold as green ice.
    â€œHow long have you been back?” she asked, surprising him. He hadn’t given her credit for being so perceptive and tough-minded.
    â€œIt’s been a while,” he said, and suddenly tired, he lay back on the pillow and watched the smoke rise to the ceiling.
    She thought a long time, then put her fingers hesitantly to his cheek.
    â€œNo,” she said softly, sadly. “You never came back.”

CHAPTER 4
    Everything is for sale in Las Vegas. That’s probably true in most cities, but nowhere does money talk more loudly and openly than in Vegas. In its own way Vegas is the unique embodiment of the American dream carved in concrete, neon, and white stucco. It is the Babylon of the middle class, the Monte Carlo for salesmen and secretaries, the one place in America where the term working girl means prostitute and where you can indulge in any sin, so long as you pay for it in cash.
    Even before the Paiute Indians came, the sixteenth-century Spaniards, who were building the Spanish Trail between Sante Fe and the Camino Real, had discovered the fertile valley. Ringed by harsh treeless mountains, the valley was an oasis of grass fields fed by natural springs, and so the Spanish called their settlement Las Vegas, meaning “The Meadows.” But if Vegas got its name from the Spanish, it got its character from Bugsy Siegel, a gangster of the forties, who understood, perhaps better than anyone else, that what Americans really wanted was a gaudy cut-rate merry-go-round where everyone gets a crack at the brass ring and where even the losers can pay for their sins on the installment plan. And that was why Caine had come to Vegas. There were things he had to buy and it would be easier in a town where money is as sacred as the name of God to an orthodox Jew.
    Or at least so Caine thought in the taxi from McCarran International Airport to the Strip. The taxi turned into the circular drive around a huge fountain display and pulled up to the main entrance of Caesars Palace. As the driver got Caine’s suitcase out of the trunk, he said, “There it is, pal. The biggest Italian car wash in town,” gesturing at the fountains spraying water at least a hundred feet into the air. Caine smiled appreciatively, but his eyes behind his sunglasses were not smiling. The tail in the brown sports jacket he had first spotted at LAX was