He walked Lett into his lavish command tent with an arm around his shoulder. Lett was still in fighting mode, and it was all he could do not to repel that arm and snap it. The tent had ground cover and a living area with canvas armchairs. Lansdale stood Lett in the center of the room like he was the unassuming boy who’d fought off the street bully, sizing him up and down, looking for wounds, and Lett didn’t know if he was to be punished or praised and he didn’t care. It all took him back to the orphanage in Ohio a moment, and that oddly calmed him. Lansdale shouted and his Filipino orderly rushed in with warm water and towels and clean fatigues for Lett. The orderly pulled off Lett’s clothes and a medic came in to check him out fully, prodding and tapping him—“breathe in, breathe out, good”—before the orderly wiped Lett down like a prize horse.

Meanwhile, Lansdale talked to Lett, giving him the rundown. The commando had returned from up high in the mountains with two tribal warriors, likely former scouts from the war. But Lett was there to stop them, hunt them down. Lett had foiled what Lansdale called a “venal and deranged incursion to hijack a valuable operation.”

“The man obviously wasn’t responding to his cure,” Lansdale said. “But you? Look at you. You’re back to your old self. And how.”

Lett could imagine what Frankie and Kodama would do to the commando. He’d seen it for himself. “Where are they taking him?”

“Don’t you worry about that.” Lansdale sneered but then wiped at his mustache and a full grin appeared, just for Lett. “Look at you, just look at you. You obviously are responding to the cure—with flying colors, I’d say.”

Lett was expecting one of Lansdale’s trite slogans any moment, but none came. The orderly wrapped Lett in a dark, satiny Chinese robe that Lett shook off, prompting Lansdale to snap his fingers, and then the robe was out of the room completely.

Lansdale planted hands on his hips. “Why, you didn’t even need your weaponry.”

Lett remembered he’d been carrying his M1 carbine. His knife was still clean in its sheath—the orderly now wrapped a new web belt around his waist and hung the knife off it. “Where’s my rifle?” he muttered.

“We have it for you. You left it.” Lansdale wagged a finger. “That old Selfer, he had you pegged right indeed,” he said. He seemed to have forgotten altogether that Lett had stood up to Kodama and wouldn’t do his bidding.