Drone Command

It was nearly midnight in Hanoi, and Pearce was exhausted after a long damn day that had nearly gotten him killed. The VPA medics on the helicopter had checked him for wounds and injuries, but there were none save for the purpling bruise on his hip about the size of his fist. Sore as hell, but nothing broken. A hot steaming shower and room service was all the doctoring he would need, along with twelve hours of dreamless sleep.

Hanoi at night was the back lot of a movie studio, an eclectic anachronism clogged with extras and props from a dozen motion pictures. Even at this late hour, there were gawking European tourists with knockoff Gucci purses, peasant women in conical hats toting shoulder-pole baskets laden with fruit, street vendors squatting around open braziers grilling skewers of meat, traffic cops in pith helmets yelling at teenage hipsters racing past on their gleaming Japanese motor scooters.

The art department had been busy, too. The ancient yet modern city was an absurd pastiche of Communist flags and neon signs, pedicabs and BMWs, KFC chicken franchises and French colonial slums. It was all too much and too familiar to Pearce. He’d grown up poor in the mountains of Wyoming but wound up fighting in the sprawling urban squalor that fueled the Global War on Terrorism. Hanoi was like most other third world capitals he’d been in. He noticed an intense pride in the few Vietnamese he’d met so far. The poor Communist government of Vietnam had won the war against the mighty Americans and the French before them, but clearly capitalism had conquered Hanoi along with the rest of the country. A Pyrrhic victory, indeed.

Just when Pearce thought the side trip to Vietnam couldn’t get any more surreal, his jeep pulled up to the hotel Dr. Pham had booked for him. It seemed like a bad joke told in poor taste. Or it was corporate marketing at its best. Maybe both.

The Hanoi Hilton was, technically, the Hilton Hanoi Opera Hotel, built next to the old yellow and white French colonial opera house. From his top-story window, the opera house looked like a garish yellow wedding cake. The hotel itself was nice enough, comfortable and clean like any stateside Hilton with the familiar amenities, granite tops, glass shower, and, most important, a soft bed instead of a cramped and cold tiger cage. When he arrived, he resisted the temptation to ask the bleary-eyed check-in clerk for the Admiral Stockdale suite.

Pearce planned on using the extra day layover to recoup and process. The president’s office had already rescheduled everything Pearce had painstakingly arranged back in Japan before he had even landed back in Hanoi. He owed the president a brief on his mission today, but Pearce’s CIA training told him to assume his room was wired. His experience with Jasmine Bath taught him that nothing and nowhere were safe. Pearce would lay out the details of his Vietnam adventure to the president when he got back to Japan. There wasn’t much to report. The Vietnamese confirmed what Lane already knew from his intel sources. China was pushing the limits of international civility, to put it mildly. And the Vietnamese weren’t interested in parting with the Chinese hardware that Dr. Pham had retrieved from the crash site. It was all probably stolen American technology anyway.

A quiet and efficient room service had set his covered food tray on the dining table by the time Pearce emerged from the steaming shower wrapped in a buttery soft but undersize microfiber bathrobe. Pearce had chosen the fragrant Australian beef baked in bamboo for his entrée, accompanied by a bowl of pho chicken and noodles and a sweet taro dumpling in coconut milk for dessert. He could’ve ordered a bottle of Yamazaki 12 single malt from the bar for the price of a small car, but he’d laid off the booze since Mali. He went for the bottled water and green tea instead.

After wolfing down his food, Pearce stood on the balcony with his tea and watched the traffic below, still thrumming at the late hour. Another city that doesn’t sleep, he thought. Another reason to hate cities. He missed his cabin in the woods. Wondered if he’d ever see it again.

His mind drifted back to the wiry VPA sergeant on the mountain and the way he had glowered at Pearce, hatred flaming his eyes. Pearce understood that kind of rage. It usually got the better of him, too. He hunted down and slaughtered Zhao and Guo for killing his friends Early and Mossa. He’d dropped many more bodies on a few other continents for lesser offenses over the years. Too many. Even if they were sonsofbitches.

He lost a lot of friends, too. People he’d served with, bled with, loved. Early. Johnny.

Annie.

He figured he was just getting old. It was getting too hard to keep losing people. It was a helluva lot easier to not let anyone back in. An occupational hazard.