by John Hart
“And why was that, Rick?”
“My, you are just full of questions tonight, aren’t you, Doc?”
“Occupational hazard,” Gregg said, struggling to keep his voice conversational. They were all going to die, just like the Headman and his wife. He couldn’t protect Kate. It was the worst way he could possibly go.
“Anybody ever tell you that you’d make a good shrink?” Rick chuckled as he went about attaching the grenades with precision to the claymore wires.
“Apparently not good enough.”
“Now, now, don’t you feel too bad about not catching my hand in the cookie jar sooner. I’ve had lots of practice at this and I’m a very good planner. That’s important, you know. Careful planning is always critical in fixing things, Gregg.”
“Like the matches you hated giving up because. . .?”
“Back to that are we? Let’s just say the matches were a little keepsake for a good deed, a reminder not to always just think of myself when it comes to taking out the trash. Okay, I am just about done here, not my best work, but it’ll do. I will enjoy a little more chat time with you, Gregg—because I really will miss you most of all, Scarecrow—and maybe have another drink since this is some very fine vodka. But then?” Rick licked a finger and put it to the sky as if to determine the weather. “Sadly, it will look like I’m going to arrive just a little too late to avert a horrible Viet Cong atrocity, committed by this Professor guy and his little Charlie buddies.”
“Come on, pal. What would Nikki say if she heard you saying stuff like this?”
Rick scratched his head, shrugged. “Dunno. But you can ask her once you get to where she’s already gone.”
“Did you do it? Did you kill Nikki, too?”
Rick looked offended. “Hell, no. She would be easier than the Headman. Even easier than a kitten. There’s no challenge in that. If you don’t believe me, you can ask her yourself shortly.” He checked his watch. “Let’s say in two minutes.”
“But what about you, Rick?” Gregg frantically asked. “Where do you go from here? You know the CID, the CIA, they’ll eventually figure it out and then they’ll be hunting you down.”
“Really?” Rick chuckled. “Now how did that work out for them this last time? Or the time before that? Naw, sorry Gregg, but I’m smarter than them. In fact, smarter than you, too. The way it’s going to play out here is that the army’s going to ask me and my new guys to hunt the Professor and company down since they took out the whole hospital, even the kids, in a bloody, horrific massacre. You know, like what happened in Hue during Tet.”
Rick stepped back to review his handiwork, nodded in satisfaction, went to the bar, decided, “Maybe I’ll just take the bottle to go,” and picked up his gun.
At the sound of a window breaking, he whirled around and a flying shadow came soaring right at him. Rick opened fire, but J.D. was faster, hitting Rick’s gun arm just before he could swing it around, and knocked the gun to the ground, where it skittered across the wood floor, inches away from a claymore wire.
J.D. was on top just for a moment before Rick flipped him over, and that’s when another body came sailing through the window. Izzy had something in his hand and was dodging the struggle as he tried to get closer to Rick—Rick who freed his knife arm and swung it in a blur at J.D.’s chest. Then reaching down to his calf sheath, he whipped out another blade, and was flashing it towards Izzy’s chest when Professor Nguyen threw his body over the wire, his hands and feet still bound, and took the hit for Izzy.
Rick smiled with a kind of radiant ecstasy as he impaled the professor with one hand, had a knife partially in J.D.’s chest with the other, and crowed, “Good try, kids! Now it’s time to finish everything up nice and tidy. Perhaps Mikel will notice he has a souvenir to remember me by.”
Izzy got up from the floor and swiped his palms together as if ridding them from dust or germs. “And perhaps, Captain Galt, you will notice a souvenir of your own. Or possibly not. The thing about violent adrenaline-oriented people is they quite often don’t recognize immediate pain themselves. Say, like the Benzodiazepine needle I have jabbed in your leg?”
Rick looked down where Izzy pointed, and in a trip-hammer moment his face contorted, filled with rage. He released a diabolical roar and was trying to rip the needle out of his leg when he seemed to lose control of his muscles and slowly collapsed.
J.D. got up. He pulled out the knife embedded in his flak jacket before throwing an arm around Izzy’s shoulder.
“Great job. How long will he be out?”
“At least two hours. I injected enough to take down a horse.”
“Okay, cut everybody loose, and nobody touch any of this stuff. Let me disable all the explosives he has strung up. All you medical folks, get busy here taking care of each other. The professor looks really bad.”
His chest wound was pulsing blood and he gasped for air. Having seen to Shirley first, Izzy sliced the bindings on Robert David and Margie so they could help work on the professor. His wheezing breath mingled with Shirley’s continued utterance of the Lord’s Prayer over and over her dead husband.
Kate struggled against the trusses that bound her to Gregg, her voice urgent. “The children, he said he was killing them, too. What if he already has?”
“The professor’s dead,” Robert David pronounced.
“Then leave him here,” J.D. said briskly as he disabled the last of the claymores. “Kate’s right. Who knows if he started here, or in the hospital wards. There’s no telling what we might find there, but we better hurry.”
J.D. flipped open a switchblade. “Excellent work, Doctor,” he said quietly to Gregg, then cut the rope that bound him to Kate. Kate, who J.D. lifted up, who in turn kissed him quick and hard, full on the mouth.
It hurt more to watch than the butt of the rifle Gregg had taken to the face.
J.D. offered him a hand up. Gregg ignored it and got off his own knees and went over to Shirley whose pain had to be so much worse than his. He put a hand on her shoulder, letting her know she wasn’t alone as she kept rocking back and forth while she stroked her husband’s bloodless face.
“All right everybody,” J.D. said to the group, “We need to clear this room and get over to the wards immediately.”
“Come on,” Gregg whispered to Shirley, knowing she was in shock and yet the longer she stared at the ghastly vision of her husband, the deeper she would go. “We need to check on the kids. Come on, Shirley. David would want you to do that.”
She vaguely nodded and Gregg managed to extricate her from Dr. Donnelly. Margie wobbled over to lend her support as Shirley’s legs gave way. Robert David seemed oblivious to his ruined nose and slashed cheek that had coagulated so the blood no longer drained as he and Izzy made for the exit.
“Just to be on the safe side,” J.D. said as he hastily tied Rick’s arms and legs.
They were a sad looking troop of the walking wounded doing their best to race across the lawn to the children’s ward. Kate got there first and was reaching for the door when J.D. shouted, “Do NOT open that door.”
With deft and knowledgeable precision J.D. scoped out the perimeter of the building, looked through windows, and quickly ascertained the situation.
“Okay, there are bodies all over the floor but the children are in their beds. He’s got wires all over the place and the door is rigged to blow. Everyone get back.”
They all took cover and J.D. did his magic, somehow disabling the explosives at the door, then doing the same inside before calling, “All clear. Get in here, on the double.”
The place was a disaster with dead nurses and children so traumatized and damaged already, they were probably still alive because most of them didn’t have all their limbs to get out of bed and trip one of the wires en route to a murdered nurse or the booby trapped exit.
They all went to work as best they could
, even Shirley, covering the dead bodies to hide what the children had already seen, and then seeing to each of the kids. Gregg knew he and Robert David must look pretty scary with their injuries, but the children clung to them nonetheless.
Everyone pitched in as a unit, except for J.D. who went to check the other units and no doubt find more of the same, until a finger tapped Gregg’s shoulder.
Gregg jumped. The little girl with half a face he was holding cried, “Oh! No!”
J.D. said something to her in Vietnamese and she nodded, releasing her hold around Gregg’s neck.
“I hate it that kids this age can understand how quickly they have to let go,” said J.D. “But I need you and Izzy with me right now for backup. I radioed in for a pick-up with our favorite chopper. They’ll be here soon and I want Galt out the second they touch ground. We should have at least half an hour before the drug starts to wear off according to Izzy, but Galt’s something that’s not quite human and that was a rush job I did on his restraints. Like Rick said, always be prepared, right?”
J.D. did the Boy Scout three finger hand signal and Gregg had to admit the guy was good. Gregg gave a curt nod and minutes later he, Izzy, and J.D. were back at the mission house they had left, traipsing up the veranda, and reentering the foyer, then the living room where Professor Nguyen laid dead, having sacrificed himself to save Izzy and everyone else, where Doctor Donnelly was just as dead with his neck nearly severed from his head.
And where Rick Galt had been, there was only a rope.
32
The distant sound of a chopper coincided with the distinct revving of an outboard engine.
“Where the hell is he?” Gregg examined the ropes like they had come out of Houdini’s magic box.
“Never mind that”—J.D. stated as he headed for the door— “we need to get to the beach, if it’s not too late already.”
It was. On the beach they could see a Zodiac and there was Rick standing in the bow, blowing them a kiss goodbye as the boat gunned away onto a moonlit sea.
“That bastard!” Izzy started rummaging in his pockets. “I hit him with. . . ” He frowned. There were two prefilled injections in the medic bag he had grabbed when J.D. raced into the villa and said he would explain on the way to the mission. Izzy was terribly afraid he might have screwed up. “Well, where the hell can he go? He’s a fugitive in a war zone in a foreign country.”
J.D. laughed dryly. “This guy? He can go anywhere and disappear, live in the jungle for weeks. He can get up to the border, contract out to a warlord and have a nice cushy job doing what he does best, killing people, by next week. Probably with a big pay raise. We have to get him now. Let’s go.”
The chopper was getting closer as Rick sped further away. Crystal Blue came low, right over the water, and Izzy beat a path to the chopper when it touched down, propelled by his fear he might have used the less potent IM injection and if anyone else died by Rick’s hand, it would be his fault.
“Hop in boys,” said the pilot in greeting. “We gotta stop meeting this way.”
J.D. issued orders to the pilot and in seconds Crystal Blue was lifting up, spinning, and they were flying over the water. This time there was no Jimmi Hendrix or “In-A-Gadda-Davida” blaring from the speakers, only their hot, single minded pursuit of the Zodiac.
They were lucky the moon was bright. Izzy could see the white spray from the outboard and the wake of the boat on the inky black water.
“Looks like he’s heading for the river mouth just ahead,” J.D. shouted over the whirring blades. “Yeah, that’s exactly what he’s doing so he can beach the boat and disappear in the jungle. We have to tackle him on the boat before it’s too late. If he gets on land, he’ll be hoping we chase him so he can have some fun. Izzy, do you still have that knife I gave you on the way?”
Izzy nodded. The sheath on his leg with the blade felt awkward but comforting on his body as J.D. laid out the plan.
“Okay, when we’re close enough we’re all going to jump onto the craft. While I get him subdued, Gregg, you man the boat, and Izzy hit him again with the other needle. Got it?”
“Got it,” Izzy said, his jaw set while he double checked to make sure he had easy access to the syringe he probably should have delivered the first time. Any mistake that had been made was on him; he had to make this right. He didn’t have the luxury of being afraid to jump out of the helicopter when J.D. gave the order.
“Now when I say ‘jump’—wait! Not yet!”
Too late Izzy was out of the chopper and landing awkwardly on the Zodiac, right next to Rick, who immediately pounced. He had a hand on Izzy’s throat, and just as immediately sent a message overhead with a wave: Jump and he dies.
Izzy could feel his eyes bulging behind his glasses, could see the chopper hovering while Gregg and J.D. hesitated. Then there was a jolt, like the boat had hit a submerged rock and Rick bounced off of him.
Izzy did not analyze. He acted on pure adrenaline and instinct and unsheathed the knife J.D. had given him, scrambled back to the other end, and madly started stabbing the inflated craft.
“You stupid fuck!” Rick screamed as the knife punctured the skin and Izzy kept stabbing and stabbing while the boat deflated.
They were close to shore and Rick jumped out while Gregg and J.D. leaped from the chopper, landing near the edge of the beach where Izzy scrambled out of the deflated Zodiac.
Rick was already running for the jungle.
“Don’t lose sight of him!” J.D. yelled, going right after him, and Izzy knew if they lost this maniac any future blood spilled would be on his hands. He had to have used the wrong injection in the heat of the moment when there wasn’t time to think, just act.
No time to think now, they were all on the ground running, trying to catch up to a physical force of nature. Gregg seemed to turn into a thoroughbred and sprinted past J.D., closing the gap on Rick, then flying through the air to make a pro ball tackle.
Rick spun around, kicked, and dropped Gregg with a blow that left him gasping at the jungle’s edge. Rick stopped in his tracks. He grinned.
“Okay, great, we might as well have some fun now and finish off you clowns, and then I just may go back and have my way with the girls you all left behind.” He laughed jovially as Izzy caught up, gasping for breath. “Now who’s first? Larry, Moe or Curly?”
“Try me,” said J.D. and walked straight into Rick’s onslaught.
Izzy grasped the syringe and tried to track their movements, knowing if he got J.D. instead it was over for them all. He watched in the milky moonlight as the shadows of two figures whirled and spun in a choreographed like rhythm. Rick was still laughing, enjoying himself immensely, until his knife went flying out of his grip, his wrist was snapped, and he was dropped to his knees by a kind of martial arts blow to his chest even he must not have seen coming.
Izzy seized the moment.
Rick tried to get back up but fell on his back, further embedding the needle that Izzy had jabbed into his shoulder.
“Strike hard. Strike first. Isn’t that right, Rick?” he asked.
Rick howled in frustration. But he couldn’t move.
“Your muscles will not respond,” Izzy informed him. “It’s a little like curare, Rick. The medication is paralyzing your system right now. You will soon even find it hard to breathe.”
“You fucking idiots,” Rick gasped. “They won’t take me anywhere but somewhere they can use me.” He gasped again. “They can use me. But you? You’re just a couple of shrinks who know too much. You’re the expendables.” Another gasp. “Hit me with something else…to reverse this. Not too late. I can still. . .save you. From him.”
It was then that Izzy became aware of a creepy crawly feeling at the base of his neck, making his skin prickle, his hair stand on end. He looked at Gregg, kneeling beside him over Rick’s fallen body, and in Gregg’s eyes was a kind of primal fear that echoed Izzy’s own. Like every snake in their
minds had come alive.
Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man’s tools.He uses them only when he has no choice.
—Lao Tzu
Dilemma of Picking Flowers
If you flew like a Nightbird up over the water and into the dark of the jungle and then sat on a limb above a small animal trail and waited. . .
You would see the assassin. His growing uncertainty is becoming palpable. He thinks he can feel something like a conscience worming its way past the determination to do what he should do, and has done many times before. A thousand thoughts and calculations are happening in a part of his mind that is too ingrained to shut off.
The two men on their knees in front of him look like they are praying. His grandfather would simply say it is the way of the Tao. From the beginning this was the way it was supposed to end.
But then again his grandfather would also say:
The highest good is like water.
In ruling, be just.
Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject. . .
And so it is like the Tao.
The two men kneeling are frozen. Their hearts are hammering with the urgent beat of Run through the Jungle. On the ground they see a predator. They sense another predator right behind them.
They slowly turn.
They see the gun.
“J.D.?” says the one named Izzy. His hands have begun to shake. “What are you doing?”
“Yeah, knock it off,” says the one named Gregg but his voice quivers. He sees a cold glitter in the green eyes like sea glass.
The Nightbird watches as a flare shoots into the sky and explodes, bathing them in the shimmering orange light as the predator stares straight at them and wonders when he got so soft.