The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) Read Online Free PDF

descriptions, no attempt to chronicle the horror of the individual deaths. It was simply a roll-call of the dead.
    At the base of the wall were small American flags hanging limply in the still air. Next to one was a floppy camouflage hat, faded by exposure to the sun and rain. There were wreaths, too, from parents and wives and children, and one from a high school in Chicago.
    There were no tourists that Lewis could see, though he wasn’t alone. A middle-aged black woman in a cheap coat and thick stockings stood at the far left wiping her eyes with a red handkerchief, a black plastic handbag looped over one arm. A hefty guy in his forties with a bushy beard and thick prescription lenses stood staring at the wall, his arms folded tightly across his chest, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels. The man slowly turned his head until he was looking directly at Lewis. Even through the distorting lenses Lewis felt the cold eyes bore right through him. Lewis nodded but there was no reaction from the man and eventually Lewis had to look away. It was like looking at a dead man.
    He found the first name at about the level of his knee, two-thirds along the memorial. James E. Colby. Not that anyone other than his mother had ever called him James. On the streets he’d been Cherry, because he’d never managed to lose his virginity while he was in Baltimore. Tall, lanky with bad skin, he was a bit on the slow side but played a mean game of basketball and was never short of friends. He’d died six weeks after arriving in Vietnam, crushed by an American tank driven by a nineteen-year-old guy from Albany who was high on his first ever joint. Cherry hadn’t even had time to get laid. Lewis reached up and ran his fingers over the individual letters that made up the boy’s name. James E. Colby. For ever a virgin. Lewis still owed him five dollars, he suddenly remembered.
    He heard a scratching sound to his left and he looked over to see a woman standing on tiptoe with a piece of paper held against the wall. In her other hand was a pencil and she was making small brushing movements with it to take an impression of the name below it as if she were making a brass rubbing of a medieval church decoration. The woman was well dressed and a gold bracelet jangled and glinted with the movements of her hand.
    One by one, Lewis located the six names and paid homage to them, touching the marble and filling his mind with thoughts of his friends. Overhead he heard the whup-whup of helicopter blades and for a wild moment he flashed back to a muddy pick-up zone in Nam, hovering twenty feet above the ground because the pilot didn’t want to put the Huey down in the mud, throwing down a ladder to pick up a reconnaissance team who’d been out in the jungle for six days and nights. He looked up and saw that the slick was a civilian model, blue and white, circling overhead. Full of sightseers, maybe. He couldn’t think of any other reason for its flight pattern.
    He spent more than an hour at the wall, saying goodbye to the friends he’d lost. In some crazy way it made him feel easier, knowing that guys he’d grown up with were dead and that he’d be joining them. It wasn’t that he was religious – but there was a feeling of security knowing that he wasn’t alone, that others had died and that it was just part of the process of life. You’re born, you live, you die. Seeing the names made him feel less frightened. They’d been through it already, and they’d died suddenly with no chance to prepare themselves. Lewis decided that he would take advantage of the opportunity the diagnosis had given him. He’d prepare himself. He’d do some of the things he’d always promised that he’d do when he had the time. Now he’d make the time. He had a few thousand dollars in a savings account, and he knew that his two mechanics could take care of the business, which wasn’t exactly booming, what with the recession and all. He wouldn’t wait until the