Finding Jack Read online

  For beautiful Kerry. MAYVTW.

  And for the dogs that never made it home.

  Acknowledgments

  Special and heartfelt thanks to my U.S. agent, James Schiavone of the Schiavone Literary Agency, and to my editor at St. Martin’s Press, the simply divine Nichole Argyres.

  Thank you both for taking a chance on me.

  And for believing in Jack.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Part I: The Land of Ghosts

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Part II: Left Behind

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Chapter Sixty-two

  Chapter Sixty-three

  Chapter Sixty-four

  Chapter Sixty-five

  Chapter Sixty-six

  Chapter Sixty-seven

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Chapter Seventy

  Chapter Seventy-one

  Chapter Seventy-two

  Chapter Seventy-three

  Chapter Seventy-four

  Part III: The Last Dance

  Chapter Seventy-five

  Chapter Seventy-six

  Chapter Seventy-seven

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Chapter Seventy-nine

  Chapter Eighty

  Chapter Eighty-one

  Chapter Eighty-two

  Epilogue

  Jack

  Author’s Note

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chicago

  12 January 1972

  The wind sulked around Hampton Lane cemetery like a child lamenting the loss of a favorite toy. It stirred the crisp autumn leaves lining the many cobbled paths, but did little more than tow them along slowly, like condemned souls being dragged to the afterlife.

  Standing among the rolling fields of dead in a sea of granite and marble tombstones, Fletcher Carson trudged toward the foot of a tree where his life lay buried under two stark stone crosses. His wife, Abigail, had been such a positive person that she had seldom discussed death, a reluctance underlined by the loss of her parents barely a year ago. Only during the drawing up of their wills did it emerge that she wished to be interred under the shade of a maple tree with only a simple cross to mark her final resting place. Her epitaph was every word as humble as she was. It read:

  HERE RESTS ABIGAIL CARSON, LOVING WIFE AND MOTHER.

  MAY HER LIGHT NEVER FADE FROM OUR HEARTS.

  Kelly’s cross was half the size of her mother’s. It carried only her name and the dates of her short life. When it came down to it, and despite being a writer for most of his working life, Fletcher hadn’t been able to commission a message. The right words, he was certain, did not exist.

  “Fletcher.” A voice drifted toward him. “I thought I’d find you here.”

  Fletcher immediately recognized the broad Southern drawl. It was Marvin Samuels, his editor and possibly only remaining friend in the world.

  “You look good,” Marvin remarked, but the inflection in his voice suggested otherwise. At just under six feet, Fletcher Carson was by no means a particularly tall man, but there was a stoop in his posture now that belied his true height. He was blessed with smooth olive skin, thick black hair, and hazel eyes like large nuggets of carved oak. A distinctive cleftlike scar in the middle of his chin did little to detract from his good looks. At twenty-nine, he was in the prime of his life, but the burden of the recent months weighed heavily on him. His athletic build remained, but his face carried the expression of a man who had wandered into a dark labyrinth and long since abandoned hope of ever finding his way out.

  “I read somewhere that the dead can hear you,” Fletcher said, staring at the ground.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “They say that if someone they really loved visits their grave, they can hear that person’s thoughts. It can be raining or blowing a gale around the cemetery, but just around their grave, everything becomes still. That’s when they’re listening.”

  “I hope it’s true.”

  Fletcher slipped his hands into his pockets. “Why have you come here, Marvin?”

  “Why do you ask questions you know the answers to?”

  “We’ve been through this; there’s nothing left to discuss. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “You know your mother’s going out of her mind with worry? I can’t keep making excuses for you. When are you going to return her calls?”

  “We keep missing each other.”

  “Like hell you do.”

  “It’s complicated, Marvin. Please stay out of it.”

  Marvin folded his arms and looked up at the sky. “Sure. I’ll just stand around and watch while you try to get yourself killed.”

  “I’m asking you to respect my decision.”

  “Do you think this is what your girls would’ve wanted?”

  Fletcher snapped his head around, anger curling up a corner of his mouth. “You’re in no position to ask that. Do you have any idea what the last few months have been like?”

  “Of course not, but going off to fight in Vietnam isn’t the answer.”

  “What if it were Cathy or Cynthia? What would you do?”

  “I’d try to find a way to get over their passing and carry on with my life.”

  “Really?” Fletcher said, swallowing hard, and then pointing to his daughter’s grave. “Kelly was barely seven, Marvin. How do you get over that? If you know, please enlighten me.”

  “Fletcher—”

  “Tell me something,” he went on, his voice faltering, “do you know where the line is?”

  “The line?”

  “Where you end … and your family begins.”

  “C’mon, don’t do this.”

  “I’ll tell you. The
re is no line. I understand that now. You’re one entity, and when a part of you is cut away, the rest of you slowly bleeds out.”

  “Jesus, Fletcher.”

  “Our soldiers are being massacred in Vietnam. Most of them are still kids. They’ve got their whole lives ahead of them. It makes sense that people like me enlist.”

  “People like you,” Marvin repeated. “You mean people who want to die. You need help, Fletcher, you need to speak to a professional.”

  “A shrink? Will that bring back my girls?”

  “It might help you to learn to cope without them.”

  “That’s just it,” Fletcher said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to cope without them.”

  Marvin tried to reply, but could draw on nothing meaningful to say.

  “I appreciate you coming and all that you’ve done for me, but I think you should leave.”

  “Just let me—”

  “Please,” Fletcher whispered. “Just go.”

  Marvin began to walk away, then stopped. “Do you remember that piece you did on suicide when you were still covering hospitals? At the end, you wrote that if only the sufferers had been able to see past the moment of their pain, they could claw their way back to life.”

  “What I didn’t realize at the time,” Fletcher replied, his voice thin, “is that you can never truly understand things that haven’t happened to you.”

  Marvin stared up at the sky. “I’ve stood by you through this whole goddamn nightmare. From the moment the plane went down to the day you were discharged from the hospital. If you leave tomorrow, then I’ve just been wasting my time.”

  “I’m sorry, Marvin, but this isn’t about you. I’ve made my decision.”

  “Fine, but know that this is the last thing your girls would’ve wanted for you. You’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “Maybe … but it’s mine to make.”

  Marvin turned away, shaking his head. “You’re heading into a nightmare. It’s hell over there.”

  Fletcher nodded slowly and pictured his girls beneath his feet. “It’s hell everywhere,” he whispered.

  When Marvin was gone, Fletcher knelt down between the two graves. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a silver frame Abigail had kept on her bedside table. It held one of her favorite photos of the three of them, sitting on a large boulder in Yellowstone Park. He gently placed it down on the plot of fresh grass covering her grave. From another pocket, he withdrew a small wooden box, which he rested against the foot of Kelly’s cross. In it was a crystal sculpture of the dog he had promised to buy her. She had died three days before her seventh birthday.

  It was the present she would never have.

  PART I

  The Land of Ghosts

  One

  Death Valley, Vietnam

  Six months later

  6 July 1972

  Only the top half of Fletcher’s head was visible above the murky water. The rest of his body was submerged beneath the mud and thick reeds alongside the riverbank. He was drawing short, shallow breaths. From his position, he could make out three members of his platoon. Point man Mitchell Lord, radioman Gunther Pearson, and their lieutenant, Rogan Brock, were hidden in a classic L-shaped ambush awaiting an enemy patrol. They had been hiking up to a site three kilometers away to set up a landing zone when they were warned about them. Their information had the group at a little more than twenty soldiers—large by Vietnam standards. The fact that their own platoon numbered only half that was of no real consequence, as the ambush, coupled with their superior firepower, gave them a telling advantage. Their chief concern was that many Vietnamese patrols comprised small groups of soldiers staggered sometimes half a kilometer apart. There was a real danger that during the firefight, they would be outflanked.

  Fletcher blinked away the sweat around his eyes and checked his rifle again. There was always a chance, however vague, that it would jam and leave him defenseless at the vital moment. As sniper, his job was to try to pick out the ranking officer and take him down first. Cut off the head, and the body will fall, the army taught them. It was the same modus operandi for both sides, and as such, none of the soldiers wore any insignia out in the field that would reveal their rank. But there were other ways of telling. Often the soldier consulting the map would be the ranking officer. Regardless, it was crucial that Fletcher allowed the point man to pass in front of him. If Fletcher fired too soon, the soldiers would have a chance to scatter and find cover. Another problem was that both the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong, or Charlie, as U.S. soldiers nicknamed them, were extremely smart and notoriously elusive. On one of Fletcher’s first tours, several weeks before, they had set up an identical ambush on a patrol of sixteen Charlie, yet several of them had escaped. Given their position and superior firepower, the trap had seemed watertight, but there was a leak somewhere. An unseen hole through which some of the soldiers had managed to disappear. By the time the last of the rounds had been fired and the rifle smoke began to lift, only twelve men were left dead on the ground. In fact, so slippery was Charlie that some U.S. troops had been on tour for months and had never even seen him, although most had felt him. He was small, nimble, and blended seamlessly into the jungle. His tactics were to attack and retreat—basic guerrilla warfare. No helicopters, gunships, or bombing campaigns to support him. Just cunning and cutting. He would stab you and then withdraw into the shadows. Charlie was a ghost that never slept. He made traps that intended to maim, not kill. Traps that would slow down platoons and gnaw away at their spirit. In the jungles of Vietnam, Charlie was a highly formidable enemy.

  Faint voices.

  Fletcher narrowed his gaze to hide the whites of his eyes. He remained perfectly still, the area around him disturbed only by a swarm of flying insects breaking the surface of the soupy water with their wings in an attempt to lure out prey.

  It seems everyone’s hunting, he thought grimly. The body of his gun was covered with mud and rotting leaves to guard against reflections. Only the open barrel—the killing eye, as they called it—was visible to the trail.

  Footsteps and voices. Louder now.

  A soldier, barely five feet tall and wearing a worn pith helmet, emerged over the rise. Holding his breath, Fletcher curled his finger around the trigger of his M16 and followed the diminutive figure as he approached the ambush. Something slick and heavy swam between his legs. Still no sign of the rest of the patrol.

  Waiting … waiting.

  Fletcher flinched at what he saw next. An American soldier wearing the distinctive emblem of the First Air Cavalry Division appeared into view. His arms were bound over a wooden pole behind his back, and his face bore the obvious signs of interrogation. As he limped forward slowly, he was kicked from behind by one of his captors.

  Fletcher looked to his lieutenant for instruction. Through a series of hand signals, Rogan ordered him to take out the two soldiers directly in front of and behind the hostage. This would minimize the chance of the American getting shot in the firefight. He then signaled for the rest of the platoon to switch from automatic to single fire. He looked back at Fletcher and held up his fist, waiting for the right moment.

  A bead of sweat rolled down the bridge of Fletcher’s nose, paused for a beat, then dropped into the water. With one eye on Rogan and the other straining toward his two marks, he again held his breath. C’mon … c’mon …

  Rogan dropped his hand.

  Fletcher squeezed off two rounds in quick succession. Before the second soldier even hit the ground, the rest of the platoon opened fire. The sound was devastating. As Charlie tried to return fire, point man Mitchell Lord burst out of his hiding place, tackled the U.S. hostage, and dragged him down an embankment. It was typical Lord. He was every bit as brave as he was crazy. Toward the back of the patrol, three of the soldiers had managed to find cover, but they were quickly flanked and taken out. In less than a minute, twenty-three Charlie lay dead in the burning sunshine of Vietnam.

  Just another day i
n hell.

  Two

  After a quick sweep of the area to ensure that there were no splinter patrols nearby, Fletcher’s closest friend in the platoon, infantryman Travis Tucker, untied the hostage. He appeared badly dehydrated; his tongue was so swollen, he could barely speak. Only after several generous sips of water was he able to relay some basic information. He was a helicopter pilot who had been shot down while dropping a platoon into a hot zone. He was the sole survivor. He had been held hostage for more than a week and taken to three different camps, where he’d been interrogated and tortured each time. Sometimes they would ask their questions in Vietnamese, knowing full well he couldn’t answer. In Vietnam, the most horrific things passed for humor. His hands were shaking so badly, he could barely hold the water canister up to his mouth. Each sip seemed to improve his pallor though, as if the canister wasn’t filled with water, but rather a skin-toned ink that was being infused into his body.

  “Easy with that,” Rogan warned. “He’ll bring it all up.” From a physical perspective, few men registered a more imposing presence than Rogan Brock. Although tall and heavily built, he was not the largest man in Vietnam, but there was something deeply unsettling behind his stare. There was a sense of raw aggression lurking beyond the black centers of his eyes. His shaven head and pitted face added additional threat to his appearance.

  The pilot wiped his mouth with the side of his torn sleeve. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Jesus … thank you. I’m pretty sure they were going to kill me today. From what I could make out, we had one more stop to make. One more interrogation, and they were going to put a bullet in my face. How’d you know where to find me?”

  The question saddened Fletcher. In his delirious state, the pilot believed that what had just transpired was a planned rescue. The truth was that the U.S. was having enough of a battle just trying to keep a foothold in the war without having to coordinate rescue attempts for POWs.

  “Forget about it. The important thing is that you’re safe now. We’ll have you back at base tomorrow morning, where you can get some rest. The name’s Travis, by the way. Travis Tucker.”

  “Will Peterson,” he replied, accepting Travis’s hand.

  “Let me introduce you to the rest of the Fat Lady.”