Chapter 1

These are the reminiscences of a cranky old man, born in the Twentieth Century. There is an old curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Some demigod decided they didn’t like me and turned it into, “May you live an interesting life.”

I’m ninety years old today. I expect to live at least ten more years, but the trend that’s been going on in my body for the last year or two makes me think not much that might be “interesting” to other people is going to happen, so I’m ending my story today.

Here’s my story:

At the end of the Vietnam War there were a few people like me who didn’t exist, at least on paper my birth name didn’t exist. I wasn’t in the Social Security records, the IRS files, or even the live birth records of the Great State of Iowa. My mom told me I was born early one frosty morning in Mercy Hospital, and I don’t think mom would have any reason to lie about it.

On the other hand, one part of my life was built on lies. Lies were my life blood and the tools of my trade. As far as the normal paper and computer records were concerned, Mike Mitchell didn’t exist.

The Vietnam War ended and I was suddenly unemployed due to circumstances beyond my control. Now my Uncle Sam wanted to make sure I was on file, could be gainfully employed, and start paying taxes as the price for all those rights and privileges and freedoms they kept telling me were mine as an American Citizen.

Before they brought me in from the cold and gave me one last mission. One last job. It was a particularly nasty piece of wet work to rid the world of a Chinese agent who had sent hundreds of American soldiers to their graves by keeping the Viet Cong and the NVA supplied with weapons. True the war was winding down, but those eighteen-year-old kids who got holes blown through their guts deserved more than just a gravestone and a crying momma. We finally knew where the bastard was, and I was going to eliminate him, someplace in the jungle, on the other side of nowhere.

Normally I’d drop in, take out the target from a thousand yards, crawl through the mud, swim a river or two, and get myself to somewhere safe. I guess even Generals and Directors and Secretaries of Something Important can have feelings. They wanted this to be up close and personal. There wasn’t going to be anything neat or clean about this kill.

I flew into the grass strip as an Air America pilot. My ride was an ancient C-119 Flying Boxcar. Wrestling that hunk of junk solo should have qualified me for a handful of medals, but of course the Agency doesn’t give medals. After all, I didn’t exist, so there was no one to give the medals to.

Now I’ve operated with some stupid covers, but this one was so thin, you could practically see through it in a dark room. Supposedly I was delivering a case of the dirt bag’s favorite scotch as a wedding present. The present was supposedly the Agency’s attempt to recruit the guy as a double agent. After all, why would I try to recruit Mr. Slime Ball and then blow his brains out?

Are you buying it? I know I wasn’t and I was pretty sure the comrades in Beijing wouldn’t either.

I flew in, touched down in the POS, and lugged the case of Chivas to the wedding venue. I got Comrade Porky alone in the john and put two .45 slugs into his evil brain. I made sure he was good and dead. He’d pissed and shit himself and everything. Just to make absolutely sure there would be no miraculous recovery, I put two rounds through his heart. Then to make sure the displeasure of the United Fucking States of Fucking America was crystal clear, I put one in his portly belly. To show what I thought of him personally, I put a bullet through each testicle.

I ejected the empty magazine and slid a full one in place. I stuffed the 1911 Colt in the waist band of my slacks and headed for the door.

On my way out, I stopped dead in my tracks. The bride to be, now sort of a widow, was the loveliest female I’d ever seen. It was obvious she was not even close to legal age most anyplace in the world.

She had to be Chinese. She was tall, and comic book skinny. She was flat as a board, but her nipples were big, pointy, dark brown, and they were very hard. I can’t believe I noticed that little detail, but then details and observation were the difference between life and death in my business.

She fastened her big black eyes on me and said, “You aren’t leaving me here are you?” in an Oxford accent.

I didn’t think, I just grabbed her slender hand and we ran for the plane. I did mentally chastise myself for having a boner for an obviously under-age girl.

I made it off the field in a cloud of dust and oily black smoke. The JATO bottles added their own cloud, and the Boxcar had flying speed. Before I could climb high enough someone opened up with an AK-47 and put both of the ancient radial engines out of their misery.

I dead-sticked the burning Boxcar into a paddy. I got the cargo door open. We jumped out the back and ran for it. We weren’t around when the C-119 blew up.

Then I was in a ditch with a barely teenage girl. She was wearing a traditional Chinese silk wedding dress that was now soaking wet and transparent except where there were mud stains. Through the wet silk I could see the girl had a perfectly shaped pair of small teenage tits, big pointy nipples, slender hips, and a black bush. I kicked myself again for looking, but we had too many problems for me to spend much time on chastising myself.

The girl looked at me and whispered, “Call me Beth.”

I pulled a Ka-Bar knife out of the sheath strapped to my leg. She operated on her dress and hacked off the extraneous parts so she could move. I was going to bury the silk in the muck but Beth wrapped it around herself, mummy style. I gave her a questioning look. Beth gave me a shy smile and whispered, “I might need it later. That was thinking I understood, so I didn’t say anything more about it.”

I sheathed the knife and pulled a compass out of my pocket. We started crawling toward the last operational Agency Station in that part of SEA (South East Asia.) It was in the most god-forsaken, inhospitable hunk of jungle there ever was.

Beth stayed right on my heels. She kept her mouth shut and she never cried or complained. Incredibly, she didn’t slow me down.

I normally travel at night and hide during the day, but where we were was too nasty. Even crawling on my belly like a reptile, there were too many land mines not to mention undetonated bomblets, courtesy of U.S. Air Farce cluster bombs to travel at night.

Beth let me get the leeches off the parts she couldn’t reach and she didn’t give me any modesty shit. She returned the favor and didn’t seem grossed out by my hairy ass.

We cuddled up to keep warm at night. Beth whispered her story in my ear as we shivered in some thicket.

Beth was the daughter of a Chinese Communist Party Boss. He was a big shot in a big city, but he backed the wrong side in a power play and was sent out to the smallest, poorest village in the most remote province there was. Beth said it was such a shithole that exile was worse punishment than liquidating him.

When daddy was a big shot, Beth was educated in the best schools in Hong Kong. Shortly after his demotion, her dad was given the honor of donating his daughter to the party. They sent her to marry the agent I killed. She was his reward for keeping the Viet Cong and NVA armed so they could kill “running dog capitalist American pigs.”

“Are you married Mike?” Beth asked me one night.

“Why would I do a dumb thing like that?” I replied.

Beth punched my shoulder and said, “You’ll get used to having me around. Before you know it, you won’t be able to live without me.”

I was worried because I knew Beth wasn’t going to be honest about her age and I was more and more attracted to her. I always did prefer slim girls, and I liked itty bitty titties. She was flirty and sometimes a little aggressive. I hoped I could resist because we were covered with mosquito bites, we were filthy and caked with stinking mud. I didn’t want her first time to be so nasty. I definitely didn’t want to give her a UTI.

The next night Beth said, “You saved me. I owe you. My family always pays our debts. I will pay my debt to you. I will do all the work of a wife for you. I won’t be like an American woman. I will keep quiet and never give you any shit. I definitely won’t give you any trouble.”

I should have just accepted the inevitable, but I said, “I’ll give you a freebie. Just think of it as one last present from Uncle Sugar to the eternally grateful nation of South Vietnam, or to you, as their proxy.”

Beth nearly choked from laughing so hard. I put a hand over her mouth, trying to muffle the noise. When she got herself under control I pulled my hand away from her lips. Before I knew what was happening, Beth kissed me hard on the mouth. I was a goner from our first kiss.

I thought for about ten seconds and then asked, “Can you cook?”

Beth said, “I can cook Chinese starving peasant food. Teach me what you like. I’m reasonably intelligent, and I learn quickly. If you have a tiny bit of patience, I think you’ll be pleased.”

“I promise not to yell at you or hit you,” I said.

“You kill bad guys so I’m not worried. It’s a little unorthodox, but what you just said works as wedding vows for me.

“Just promise me you won’t be sarcastic or mean or call me stuff like ‘stick’ or ‘board’ to tease me because I’m so flat chested,” Beth said.

“Why would I do something stupid like that?” I asked.