Free Dark Specter by Michael Dibdin Page B

impossible.”
    He even managed to sound slightly envious! I started to warm to him.
    Having exhausted every other topic we had in common, we began to talk about the others. Vince had lost touch with Greg, who had last been heard of working on the Alaska pipeline, but he had news of Sam and Larry. It was bizarre and a little disturbing.
    “When they got drafted, we all figured Sam would get some cushy desk job while Larry ended up as a grunt, right? Wrong! The army found out that Larry had worked as a painter, and he got to stay right here fixing up the mess and recreational facilities at the base. Never even went to Vietnam.”
    I laughed.
    “Good for him.”
    Vince shook his head.
    “Two days before he was due to go home, he got hit by a truck. Some guy had been drinking, came around the corner with no lights on, didn’t even see him. Larry didn’t stand a chance.”
    I was shocked. I’d read about the war, of course, and seen the familiar, horrific pictures on TV, but it had all seemed as remote from my own existence as gangland killings in Miami or race riots in Los Angeles. But Larry was someone I’d known. He’d painted our house in his spare time, using up leftovers from whatever job he happened to be working on. The results were quite spectacular: strips and patches of every hue, shade and finish, some matt, others shimmering satin, a few in high gloss. I’d joked and smoked with Larry, eaten and drunk with him. Once in a while we even talked. I suddenly remembered that last time, down at the Commercial Hotel, when he’d clashed with Sam over the existence of God.
    As so often in the past, when the joint had passed and the vibes were good, Vince must have been having the same thought.
    “Well, I guess Larry knows the answer to all the big questions now,” he said. “Shame he can’t come back and have the last word.”
    “Sam made it OK, then?” I asked, glad to change the subject.
    “Uh huh. Which is almost as weird as Larry getting killed.”
    “How do you mean?”
    Vince looked at me.
    “You remember how the system worked? After induction you did two months basic training, and then you got to find out what classification they’d assigned you. The one no one wanted was Eleven Bravo. That meant you did two more months training as a rifleman, then got shipped to Nam to replace the guys who were coming home in body bags. But there were eight support personnel for every man at the front, so if you had any kind of qualifications or education your chances of avoiding combat were pretty good.”
    “Like Sam,” I prompted.
    “Yeah. Except Sam volunteered.”
    “Volunteered?”
    Vince nodded.
    “Doesn’t make sense, right? Anyone that crazy to see action had already joined up, and they’d mostly all been in ROTC at college and were into all that military bullshit. But for someone to wait to get drafted and then deliberately lay his life on the line when he could walk away with a job as a filing clerk! And a guy like Sam!”
    I shook my head.
    “I don’t get it.”
    “Me neither. But that’s what he did, and he spent his whole tour of duty under fire. The company he was in took eighty percent casualties in one firefight. He was out there the full year, and he came back without a scratch on him.”
    “You met him, then?”
    “He wrote me. We talked about getting together, but nothing ever came of it.”
    We chatted some more about this and that, and then my flight was called. Vince and I hurriedly exchanged addresses, phone numbers and formulaic promises to keep in touch. By the time my plane was airborne, the whole encounter seemed unreal. I didn’t bother to mention it to Rachael when I got home.
    It must have been almost a year after that when Sam called me at home one evening. It was not a good moment. David had recently developed chronic asthma, and although the medication normally kept the symptoms in check, he was still liable to have periodic crises. This was one. He had caught a heavy