He went low, seriously low, so far down he could reach his hand and scrape all the skin off his palms on red clay if he wanted. Between the buildings he flew, accelerating to his maximum thrust, which, while not much by the standards of jet aircraft, looked awesome to the man on the ground. It also reduced Cosmic Traveler to a mewling wreck inside him as the walls of the hangars flashed past.

There were armed dudes in front of him. He kicked his flame-aura back in. They threw away their guns and ran like bunnies.

He whipped between two flak pits, extending his arms to give each a flying finger in passing, as they stared openmouthed at a target they couldn’t depress their guns to track.

He had cost the Socialist Republic and their Soviet butt-brothers some heavy change, but nothing on the scale of even a pissant little war like this one. A blip on the scope. PAVN had other strike planes, other airfields, other air-traffic towers.

But nobody was going to feel quite as safe in any of them from here on in. That was the win that had him laughing out loud as he hit the plateau’s rim and let every bit of the wild, exhilarant energy blasting through him go in a blinding supernova flash, so that as he dove over the edge out of sight, he seemed simply to vanish.

If there was one thing Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Esquire, knew, it was how to make an exit.

Propelled by an arm the size of an elephant’s trunk, a fist slammed against the side of Ngo An Dong’s head and snapped it around. Sheet lightning went off in his brain. His red Rambo head-rag got loose and slipped into his eyes.

The spectating trio of PASF officers looked at one another in amazed approval as Rhino stepped back, rubbing his horny fist. “These monsters really are good for something,” said one.

“Yes,” agreed a second. “But we should tell him to go easy. We don’t want him killing the dog.”

“Yet,” added the third.

Through red-and-black haze that filled young Ngo’s skull limped the realization that you could, too, be too brave it wasn’t like rich or thin. Getting caught in a piddling little raid on a supply depot near the coast proved that. Now the dashing young warlord could only hope that he could find some way to die before he broke. Even the spirit of Woodrow Wilson – venerated by his sect – could not help him now. The fog crowded awareness from his brain.

“How many aces are working with you traitors?” the first officer asked. Ngo tried to spit defiance, but all that came out was blood and part of a tooth, and they slopped down his hanging lower lip.

“Khong?” the interrogator said: No? Then he turned to the squat American joker and said, in that English every People’s Armed Security Force officer assiduously studied against that happy day when the Americans woke up to their responsibility and started shipping major loot to the Socialist Republic so that its hardworking cops could fight crime like Miami Vice, he said, “Hit him again. Only this time not so hard.”

The door opened. Colonel Vo Van Song of the PPSF stalked in, smoking a cigarette and gazing around with slit-eyed disapproval.

The interrogating officers went rigid. Though none had had the pleasure of meeting him before, they recognized him at once. Colonel Vo had a Reputation. He was one of those delightful chaps who feel it is better to be feared than loved, by your own side as well as by the enemy.

“What have we here?” he hissed in English, for the evident benefit of the guest torturer. His words were slurred and slouched and misshapen, like jokers. “Is this what passes for modern police techniques with People’s Armed Security?”

The third officer stepped to a rickety wooden table and held up a pair of big alligator clips, dangling from thick red-and-black cables. “We were simply softening him up before we put these on, sir,” he said brightly.

“Oh, so? And perhaps even as we speak you are having an iron maiden brought up from the basement? A rack, maybe?”

He plucked the cables from the PASF man’s limp fingers. “The first important rebel leader to fall into our hands, and you interrogate him with this?”

The trio wilted into the collars of their summer-weight tan uniforms. They knew what was coming. In the complicated food chain of the Vietnamese internal-security apparatus, the People’s Public Security Force occupied a much higher niche than PASF And PPSF was a noted credit-jumper.

The colonel signaled. A pair of basic leg-breakers in PPSF khaki lumbered in. They undid the heavy leather straps that bound the now-unconscious Cao Dai leader to the chair, put hard hands under his armpits, hoisted him up, and hauled him out with his bare toes scraping on the cement floor.

“The Socialist Republic is grateful for your efforts on her behalf,” Vo said in his horrible voice, taking another drag on his cigarette. “She is also grateful your clumsiness did not deprive her of such a valuable prize. Good day.”

He threw the cigarette down beside the green-patinated drain grating in the middle of the floor and walked out.

“Have a nice day,” the squat joker said to his back. The door slammed shut.

“Tight-assed Northern cocksucker,” the second officer hissed. The PASF men were all Annamese, local boys.

“Did you hear his voice?” the third one asked. “He spoke as if he had a cleft palate. Chilling.”

The first nodded sagely. “It’s true, what they say of him.”

“Arrogant Tonkinese piece of shit,” the second said.

“One of those men he had with him didn’t even look Vietnamese,” the third officer said indignantly. “He looked… Korean.” He practically spat the last word.

“Indeed.” The first officer stood staring at the door. “A wise man might wonder why loyal officers of the state such as ourselves should run like dogs to the summons of a Northerner with a broomstick up his rectum,” he said at length.

“That’s true!”

“Injustice, that’s all it is.”

“Has it ever been different, since the Tonkinese won their Short Victorious War?” the first officer went on quietly.

“Not for one day!” agreed the second quickly. He wasn’t a weatherman, but he knew which way the wind blew.

“That’s right!” said the third, who didn’t, yet, but was determined to let it carry him along withal.

“War of Liberation, they called it,” the first officer said, his spine uncurling from the beaten slump Vo had put into it. “War of conquest is more like it, wouldn’t you say?”

The third jumped as if the alligator clips had leapt off the table and bit him. “But that’s -”

“Loyalty,” the first officer said, clearly and firmly. “Loyalty to our homeland – Annam. It is time to recognize invasion for what it is, violation for what it is.”

“We must be men,” the second officer said. “We must refuse to be victimized.” He’d been reading American self-help texts as part of his study plan.

“Absolutely!” the third man almost yelled. He’d finally gotten the drift and hoped the others wouldn’t interpret plain slow-wittedness as dissent. “Men! Not, uh, not dogs.”

“There is,” the first officer said, “but one thing to do.”

And they all three turned as one to the horrid Lien Xo joker, who had stood there throughout it all not understanding a word that was said, and smiled. He smiled back with his grotesque leathery lips.

“Thank you,” the first officer said, in English again. “You have been of great help. Return to your unit now and tell your colonel to await our report.”

“In Hell,” the second officer said in Vietnamese, as the being shambled out.

Because the three shared a single thought with total clarity: that night they were going to slip away across the paddies and join the rebels. The answer was blowing in the wind.

Ngo An Dong was unfortunate enough to come partially back to himself as the Soviet-made GAZ jeep pulled away from the police station and its bad suspension began to jolt his tailbone. He had osmotically absorbed the fact that he had fallen from the rice pot into the cook-fire.